Chapter Three, Advanced Station Privileges

Jayden sits on the couch in his living room, waiting for his mother to say something; he is anxious to leave so he can go to his first day of class. Jayden fidgets with his hands and can’t find a comfortable position on the couch.

"Don’t worry, Jayden, I’m not going with you, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you in front of all your new classmates," Lana says slyly.

"What? But you’re my mom, you wouldn’t embarrass me," says Jayden wondering if he sounds truthful or not, but she is right and he’s glad she isn’t going.

His mother says, "But I do have some advice for you on how to get respect on your first day," she pauses for effect and continues, "It’s like being in prison, and being in prison on your first day it is always good to beat someone up; that way people won’t give you any trouble."

Flabbergasted Jayden cries, "You want me to do what?"

"Ah good, I’ve got your attention. No, I don’t want you to beat anybody up; I want you to try and do something that will get you noticed so you will have a head start on everybody else. Just try and have that something be a good thing and not a bad thing, o.k.?"

"I understand you. I guess I don’t really know what I could do though," he says doubtfully.

"Well, I’m sure it will come to you. Now off you go. You don’t want to be late."

They hug and off Jayden goes out of the ship, down crowded passage ways, up and down stairs, then an elevator, and down some more hallways. Twenty minutes it takes him to get to a large group of boys and girls all standing in front of two red double doors that reach up nonsensically very high up to the ceiling. Jayden guesses there are roughly a hundred or more kids here.

Jayden looks for Brandon, but no luck; however, he does see Andre Revelle, the bully from the Juliana Star. Andre doesn’t see him, so Jayden sidles his way through the crowd away from his enemy. There are no authority figures in the sight, which Jayden thinks is odd and why are they making us wait?

Before Jayden knows it he’s to the other side of the crowd, on its edge, and he sees awkward conversations sprouting up everywhere. Next to him stands a girl with black straw like hair that is pulled back into a pony tail that sticks out from her head completely horizontal. She is slightly taller than Jayden, and she has a thin face that she turns in his direction.

"Hi there, I’m Lacey Paquette, who are you?" she asks but he can barely hear her, so he gets closer to better hear her.

"I’m Jayden Lander, nice to meet you," and she gets closer so she can better hear him.

"Sorry, it’s the translator. It’s having a hard time with all of these people in here talking." Jayden says, "I don’t understand."

Lacey holds up an inch by inch bar that is pinned to her shirt and says, "You and I aren’t speaking the same language. It takes what you are saying and shoots it into my brain in my language, and it is taking what I say and giving it to you in your language into your brain. They will probably give everyone a translator when they let us in there."

Jayden says, "But I can hear your voice speaking my language."

Lacey says, "No, you just think you do"

Jayden, still not completely convinced, says, "But I don’t hear any overlap, you know, your words on top of my language’s words."

Lacey says simply, "Cool huh."

After awhile Jayden asks, "Where are you from, the station?"

"No, I’m from Magna; my family were boat people until a storm destroyed our boat and our way of life: fishing and some smuggling. So my folks decided to try their luck here. I really like the fish in the tubes in the passageways. I wasn’t really expecting that. It reminds me of home; we’ve only been here for three weeks. I’ve been waiting for class to start that whole time, just for something to do."

Jayden says, "I’ve only been here for two days. I’m from one of the asteroids."

She asks, "Yesterday? On the Juliana Star?"

"Yes."

"Oh my! The broadcast yesterday was from your ship. Do you know the woman that pulled that one over on the governor?"

"Yeah, she’s my mother."

Lacey looks at him appraisingly and says, "Ha, well I wonder if that clever sneakiness is in your blood? I better stick with you if I want to say out of trouble."

Jayden doesn’t know what to say to this, but is glad to have someone to talk to and maybe be a friend. Then he wonders what Signe is doing right now, but he doesn’t want to get melancholy, so Jayden makes himself stop thinking about her.

Jayden says, "My mother was one of the first people on the station; the Juliana Star was the ship that found Hope Station."

"You might want to be careful: you seem too proud of that," but then Lacey winks at him to let him know she’s half kidding.

Suddenly the huge doors open and out spills an additional hundred children. They are all a bit older and taller than Jayden’s group who are spread out to let the other kids go wherever it is that they are going. Jayden examines them as they pass to see if one of them is Brandon, but he doesn’t see Brandon.

Past the huge doors is a very long room that seems to go on and on. Jayden and the others begin to file into the room that is all white, a bright white, with black trim and thousands of differently assorted black outlines of rectangles that line the ceiling, walls, and floor. The ceiling is very high up, so high up that Jayden gets dizzy looking up at it and he quickly looks back down. On either side of the room there are three levels that are divided by platform walkways that have slight openings in them through which ladders run up them, every thirty feet. On every level on each side there is door after door. Back in the middle there are a series of self-contained block shaped rooms that are one story tall which seem out of place with the ceiling looming high over them.

Behind Jayden the doors closes, and he turns to see how they closed. A woman turns back from the doors and she has long curly red hair and she wears a dress that hurts the eyes to look at, because it is a cacophony of wild colors all jumbled together. She is in her thirties, and Jayden thinks that if you are that old that you’d think you would learn not to wear clothes that are that hideous, especially around kids who must have mocked her under their breaths, repeatedly, throughout the years.

She walks through the people who make way for her; she has an air of goodwill and fairness about her that makes Jayden feel like, maybe, this won’t be so bad. She will be a huge improvement, he hopes, over his Grandma Rose who took his education a little too seriously with her iron will that was deaf to his excuses about why he hadn’t finished the mountain of assignments she gave him.

The red haired woman approaches what most are gawking at, which is in front of them all. Someone stands in a suit of sorts, and not one you wear to be fancy, but more like one you would wear in space or in extreme weather. However there are no air tanks on the back for air to breathe and the man’s face can be seen for he wears no helmet. He has a thick mustache that is greased on the sides to end in two points, and the man twirls one end with his fingers. He also bears a long jagged five inch scar across his left cheek.

The man lets go of his mustache, and pushes a button on his belt as he smiles mischievously. The suit and the man begin to grow taller and wider. Jayden steps back as does everyone else. The man has grown a foot taller, and people exclaim their shock as the man grows another foot then another and another until he has doubled his normal height and width. Now it seems he is done playing around as he grows, now, two feet per second as he grows even taller and wider.

The red haired woman backs away with a look on her face that says, "This isn’t going as we planned." The man laughs manically, and with his now huge lungs, his voice rumbles off the walls. The man finally stops growing and has ended up at a height of two and half stories tall like a giant from a nightmare. The ceiling is mere feet about his head.

Behind the suit there rests a limp unfilled part of the suit that would accommodate a third leg. The end of it has a boot lying on its side, but it looks more like a tail instead of another leg. The giant twirls the empty leg behind himself making a whoosh whoosh noise and the twirling causes a wind to whip up so much so that the people who are the closest to the giant have their hair flying back like they are in a windstorm.

Jayden can’t imagine that they have been lured here to be attacked by this giant, but he’s having his doubts. Is this some way to control Hope Station’s population? They did close the doors behind them after all. It is then that the class’s terror breaks: people scream and scatter about, running like startled deer going this way and that, not knowing where they can hide or flee to.

Jayden and Lacey hulk against a wall with wide eyes as the colorfully dressed woman yells, "Enough! Enough of this; stop it right now, Mr. Sweet."

The swirling tail stops swirling, Mr. Sweet shrinks to a mere sixteen feet tall, and says, "I’m sorry I scared you this much," but his apology doesn’t seem too genuine, "Now everybody just relax, come back over here, I’m not going to hurt anybody. We were trying to make a point with this little demonstration.

"This is your first day of Advanced System Privileges where you will learn to use technology, from the Missing who left this station, which you won’t be able to utilize or even find anywhere else in the galaxy. This is going to be exciting stuff you’re going to learn about, but you’ve got to take this seriously. I mean just imagine if at my tallest I would have accidentally stepped on one of you, that person would be dead, so people, use your heads.

"Now we’ve got uniforms for you all to put on that are on these racks behind me. Next to them you will notice that your name is on a bulletin board. Next to your name you will see a room number. You have three assigned roommates, and no you can’t change roommates, so don’t ask. Girls, your rooms are on the left here, my right, and boys, your rooms are on your right, my left. You’ll be staying here Sunday nights through Thursday nights; Friday and Saturday nights you’ll be sleeping at your homes. Well, get going and welcome to the Hive."

Jayden says to Lacey, "This guy is crazy, he’s the one that’s going to hurt somebody. Did you see the other teacher’s face?"

She says, "I did, well at least this won’t be boring, will it?"

"If you say so."

Jayden waits for his turn to see his room number, sees it, and tries to figure out what size of a jumpsuit to wear. They are all dark blue, almost black, just like Jayden likes, and there is an insignia of a book with flames coming out of the pages, which is on the left side of their chests.

Jayden finds a jumpsuit that should fit, nods to Lacey, who raises her eyebrows at him, and they go their separate ways. His room is number 29. The farther down he goes the larger the room numbers are getting. Then 29 stares him in the face, he grasps the handle that is cold to the touch, and he enters the room that will be his for the next year, well, his and three other’s room. The room has two bunks with ladders at the base of the beds on either side of the room. There are closets on both sides as well and that’s it: no chairs, no couch, no nothing, just completely Spartan.

Jayden’s three roommates enter right after he does, and for a moment they simply look at one another. One is fat, not pudgy, but fat, and there is no sight of cheek bones on his face, but he seems friendly. Another is very thin and stands very carefully to have correct posture. The last one is meek, almost scared looking, and probably is afraid of his own shadow.

"I call top bunk," blurts Jayden as he turns, grabs a ladder rung, and climbs up the bunk on the left. The big kid goes below him, the skinny kid takes the other top bunk, and the meek kid goes below him.

The skinny kid says, "I’m Ludvig Feldman, I’m from Magna," with a voice trying to sound dignified.

The big kid says, "I’m Calum Haley, I’m from one of the asteroids," with a thick voice.

The final kid says, "I’m Zane Legan, I’m not from anywhere, my folks are merchants, you know, on the go."

Jayden says, "I’m Jayden Lander," looking at Calum conspiratorially, "I’m from one of the asteroids too. I just showed up yesterday."

Ludvig says, "Lander, why does that name sound so familiar? Oh, I know, the broadcast from the Juliana Star. Lana Lander, is that you mother?"

"Yeah, that’s my mom."

Zane asks, with awe in his voice, "Is the rumor true? Lana was one of the first people to find Hope Station, and on your ship, the Juliana Star, the same ship? I can’t believe it. She was here when the Thorn attacked. Does she talk about it?"

Jayden answers, "Not much, she doesn’t like to think about what happened."

Zane says, "My folks worry that the Thorn might come back. I know I do, I dream about them coming."

Ludvig says stuffily, "It doesn’t even make any sense why they attacked in the first place. We still don’t know why they wanted and why attack only once?"

Calum balks, "What? You want them to come back? Who cares about it making sense or not; oh this is going to give me an ulcer at the age of twelve. Or maybe I’m riddled with them already; they’re like time bombs waiting to squeeze my stomach inside out because of all this stress. Oh what was that? I swear I just felt one," Calum holds his stomach and says, "It must know I was talking about it."

Zane says, "I bet I have them too. Oh no, does stress really bring them on?"

Ludvig says, "You idiots, you can’t possible have ulcers this young."

Jayden is starting to get uncomfortable; he doesn’t like to think about the Thorn and them killing his father. No way does he want to bring himself down on his first day of class. But this thinking is brought to an end as they hear, "Five minutes more and return to the billboards," coming out of a speaker on top of the ceiling.

They get off of their beds and put on their jumpsuits. Jayden, not knowing why he does this, but knows it has something to do with impressing them, says, "You guys want to know what the Thorn look like?"

They all stop, stare at him with disbelief, and Calum open mouthed, says, "But there’s no pictures of them, oh my, you’re mom saw one and told you what they look like, didn’t she?"

Jayden puffs up, and thinking about Mr. Sweet’s Missing Technology suit says, "She did and they don’t have three legs."

Ludvig almost shouts, "I knew it. That three-legged suit proves that the Thorn and the Missing are different. I always figured that if the Thorn had really built this place then they would have had no trouble wiping us out, because they would have known the station inside and out," Jayden winces at Ludvig’s callus remark about Jayden’s father’s death, but his roommates can’t possibly know about his father, "So the aliens that built this station are not the ones who attacked us here."

Jayden says, "The Thorn are not the same as the Missing. The Thorn have two legs and they look a lot like us except their skin is real scaly and grey. They have hornlike things pointing out from all over their heads, and they have long fangs that hang down from their mouths."

Calum says, "You hear all kinds of stories about what they look like, but I never knew ‘till now who to believe."

Zane dreamily says, "I wonder what the Missing look like?" then with a paranoid and very melodramatic lilt to his voice says, "I bet they’re ten times worse looking than the Thorn. Oh no. What if they both come back at the same time and gang up on us?" He closes his eyes shut, and Jayden sees him squeezing his eyelids closed like that would make the idea of them go far away.

Ignoring Zane’s out of nowhere paranoia like everyone else is, Ludvig says, like a broken record, "Well, we know the Missing have three legs," but he says it more to himself than to any of them.

Jayden wonders if the teachers wanted to make a point with the suit, one that wasn’t just about being careful. Maybe it had something to do with showing them that the Missing are more different than any of them could have imagined, and so is their fantastic and bewildering technology that seems no less than magic.

They leave their room and meet back up with the rest of their class. Jayden, who figures he’ll see these guys a lot over the next year, leaves his roommates, and finds Lacey who is trying to extricate herself from a large girl who is singing loudly and apparently for no reason except that she feels like it, much to the annoyance of everyone else around her. She’s not bad at singing, but she’s not that good to get away with singing for no reason though. Lacey, sees Jayden, and rolls her eyes.

Comet warbles,

"There once was a man from Nantucket

Who could not bare the feel of shoes

He said they hugged him something fierce

So it was lucky he was born in Nantucket

Where sailors came with their big brown ships

But no one would take on a shoeless wonder

Not even as a man to swab the decks or to

Scrub away the wee barnacles living on the hull."

"Who’s that?" Jayden asks.

"Comet Mozingo. You can’t make up a name like that. Comet, she’s one of my roommates.

"Lucky you," says Jayden.

"All right everybody," says the red headed teacher, "Now that we’re all dressed we’re all going on a little trip. Everybody stay together and if you get lost, just come back here, but that’s not going to happen is it? Everybody stay together. Oh, I’m Ms. Baxter, I hope to learn all of your names soon. We’ve got pictures of you all, and I’ve been trying to put names to faces, but 150+ people is a lot of people to try to remember, so if I don’t remember your name, or call you by the wrong name, I apologize in advance, and ask you to all bare with me."

So they all leave the Hive, go down some passages, and enter a room, a large room that is probably an acre big, which has a cube shaped room in the middle. Jayden and the class go into the room. The room is baby blue with nothing in it except for pipes all over the ceiling and lines of attached cabinets around its walls.

Ms. Baxter says, "We are going to have a mock drill; we are going to simulate a rift in Hope Station, a Rift Alarm. Everything that you need to survive in such an emergency is in those cabinets, which when you walk the station you will see throughout the station. Let me show you the contents of this cabinet, and they are all the same, inside is a mask with a container of air attached; an electro magnet, for grasping onto to anything metal, that has a long cord that you should wrap around yourself; and finally what we call the Bag, which is exactly what it sounds like, and you put yourself in it, if you wind up in space."

Many of them moan at the thought of what they are about to endure. All have been lectured on how to survive a Rift whether they lived on asteroids, or if they were from Magna, they heard it on the ships traveling to Hope Station. Jayden never believed that he would be so unlucky as to have a hole form in a room he was in, and have the air be sucked out into the cold maw of space, no way. But now he is going to live it and just based off of the technology he has already seen on the station, he knows this is really going to feel like being in a Rift.

"This is going to hurt I bet," Jayden says to Lacey.

She says, "I was in a Rift on the way here; it wasn’t that bad."

"Really?" he asks shocked.

"Yes, the only reason I’m still alive is because I was sucked right into the hole and I plugged it up." The thought of her plugging up a hole into space with her body is ridiculous Jayden thinks. She would have been sucked right out: not even the strongest person alive could hug the walls around the hole and not be thrown out into space.

"Are you ever serious? I’m so gullible; I think I’m just going to assume you’re lying all the time."

She doesn’t say anything back.

The room is full of people talking excitedly, and Ms. Baxter says over them, "Everybody get into the middle of the cube, no cheating, don’t sit right next to a cabinet. Good luck guys, and please don’t feel like you can’t help other people out," she winks suggestively as she closes the door on them.

Someone, right at the moment most stop talking, says, "I think I’m going to pee my pants," and everyone hears her, laughs, and she turns a bright red.

Lacey says, "That’s one of my roommates."

Jayden, not fooled this time, says, "Sure she is."

"No, I’m not kidding, she really is."

Jayden says, "Knock it off."

Just then the world explodes around them. On the opposite side of the room from where Jayden is, there is a gaping hole in the wall that is four feet by three feet that draws people into it faster than Jayden thinks is possible. There is no time to think; he has to act immediately. The hole calls to him with an insistent pull that he tries to ignore with all his might, but there’s no refusing its strength. All he can do is go towards the hole, but he manages to go at an angle, and arrives at a cabinet. He holds onto its handle for dear life.

The door opens on him, everything inside the cabinet blows out, and runs to the hole. Jayden tries the next cabinet, grabs the first thing that flies out, which is the electro magnet. He turns it on with his teeth and slams it against the metal floor and it sticks to the floor with its cord flapping from the pull of the beckoning hole. Jayden knows that soon all the air will disappear from the room, so he has to act fast. He wraps the cord repeatedly around his waist, and for good measure, around his legs too.

Jayden sees person after person being sucked away into pretend space. Others are at the cabinets, failing to get the items out, and hurtle away from the only help available to them. Jayden tries the next cabinet, opens it only a little, sees the air mask, puts if on, ties it painfully tight against his neck, holds onto a cabinet handle with his left hand and holds the electro magnet with his right hand. His muscles ache but he holds on.

Then without warning the Rift Alarm drill is over. The hole no longer pulls at him and air is rushed in, and Jayden feels the cold air blowing on him. Jayden takes off his mask, and of the 150+ people that were in the room he only sees thirty people, give or take, that were able to get to the electro magnets.

Jayden walks out of the cube through the hole he had worked so hard at avoiding. There is a pile of thick foamy crash pads that he walks over and through to stand before over a third of his class who look at him and the others filing out with admiration, astonishment, and some with jealous loathing. He wonders if this is what his mother had in mind when she said to try and get noticed the first day.



* * *

Thirty minutes before midnight, Jayden closes the dorm room door behind him as quietly as he can. He walks on tip toes into the Hive trying to get to the main doors. He doesn’t really have to walk like this, but it helps him remember the importance of being quiet. The sentence that Brandon spoke earlier rings in his ears, "Everyone beats the wall," and frustratingly so, Brandon wouldn’t say anymore than that.

Jayden is at the tall main doors and he doesn’t see Brandon anywhere; he would wait but Brandon had said it was important not to be late. Jayden opens the doors and there’s Brandon leaning against a wall; he doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping at all: his hair isn’t messy and his jumpsuit isn’t wrinkled. Jayden wonders how he fares, but then thinks, who cares!

Wordlessly Jayden is at Brandon’s side and they jog through the passageway that is strangely abandoned. These halls are always filled with people, and Jayden thinks it’s nice to have them all to himself. He doesn’t have to worry about not running into people or be annoyed by someone’s opinions from a too loud conversation going on right next to him.

Minutes pass and Brandon says, "You’ve been to the top of Hope Station and now you will have been to the bottom," as he opens a door and they are hit with a cacophony of bangs, clangs, and rattling. Jayden enters onto a floor that is not solid: it is a network of thin metal bars fashioned together that is suspended in the air. There is a railing that Jayden holds onto as he looks down into a drop-off that is filled with walkways like he is standing on, and there are machines gyrating back and forth with flashes of light rhythmically working for some purpose that Jayden doesn’t understand. The middle of each floor is hollow, so he can see all the way down into the middle where it is so bright that it is hard to look at.

"Where are we?" asks Jayden.

"The engine room, this is where Hope Station gets all the power that it uses. This place is huge, I mean just think about all the thousands of people that live on the station and all the power they need. Follow me."

Jayden does, they go down a set of stairs, come to a landing, they go down another set of stairs and another until Jayden’s legs start to burn. Brandon opens another door and they are in a room that is exactly like the one they just left. Jayden realizes if this takes up the whole bottom of the station that there must be at least two dozen of these chambers. He looses count of how many energy chambers they have walked through as they enter a door that finally doesn’t lead to yet another energy chamber.

They are in a hallway that stretches to the left and to the right farther than Jayden thinks is possible. But the "hall" is also a huge room for the far wall ahead of them is one acre away in the distance. Brandon walks them deeper into the room, he sits down, and Jayden sprawls out next to him, exhausted.

"So now are you going to tell me what it is we are doing here?"

Brandon spookily says, "Every one beats the wall."

Jayden says incredulously, "Yes, you said that, but what does that mean?"

Brandon pushes his long blond hair out of his face, behind his ears, saying, "You see that wall in front of us that we came out of? Well, in about five minutes we are going to want to be as far away from that wall as we can get, because the floor we are sitting on will slowly pull back and back until there is no more floor anymore; it will slip into the room behind us through a slit back behind us that we can’t see from here. But we won’t fall to our deaths; instead, all those energy chambers as one will flip 180 degrees.

This is kind of like a roller coaster back on Earth. As the engine complex turns we will quickly slide down the wall until we hit a floor that will be on the opposite side of the engine complex from where we are sitting now. It’s just a huge cube."

Jayden says, "This is going to be great," he pauses thinking, and says, "Does anyone ever get hurt doing this?"

Brandon says, "Everyone beats the wall."

Jayden rolls his eyes and starts to get nervous with excitement and a small ball of dread begins to creep through him.

Brandon asks, "What was it like on the asteroid that you came from? Were there lots of people our age?"

Jayden scoffs, "No, just me and Signe, everyone else was an adult or they were toddlers. There were only fifty people total on our asteroid. We never went on the Juliana Star except to get supplies from Magna, which wasn’t often, so it was mostly moth balled, but occasionally people from nearby asteroids would show up.

"On the asteroid there were passageways cut out of the rock that most adults had to crouch down in so as not to hit their heads, but of course I never had that problem. There weren’t a lot of places to go, they hadn’t made a lot of extensive passageways, because it had been so hard to cut through the rock, and also they didn’t want to make more passages because they didn’t want a cave-in to seal off the areas that they had managed to make. So you got to know everyone really well and everybody got on everybody’s nerves all the time.

"And to make matters worse, we were usually always a little bit hungry. There wasn’t a lot of food to go around, so we had to ration what could grow, so everybody was really skinny. Once a year the Juliana Star would go to Magna and come back with some meat, but none of us had the willpower to make it last all the way to the next year, so we gorged on meat for a couple of months until it was all gone, but it was glorious while it lasted.

"How about you? What was it like growing up here?" he asks Brandon.

Brandon says, "Oh, just look around, there isn’t much more than what you’ve already seen. Fighting crowds all the time and seeing a planet that we couldn’t really go to because it’s so rough down there; Akron’s just a tease."

Just then the floor they sit on begins to slide backwards, and Brandon says, "Here we go!"

Jayden stands and follows Brandon who walks towards the back wall. They have no trouble keeping up with the receding floor, so are in no danger of falling, but Jayden can’t help but keep looking back over his shoulder. They approach the back wall, and indeed, Jayden can see the bottom of the floor disappearing into the wall. He only has to wait three minutes until the floor is almost all completely gone, but Jayden isn’t worried because he sees the side of the energy complex wall revolve away from them and the bottom half of the wall comes up to meet them where they are standing.

The wall, which will soon be the floor, comes up to them, and the floor they were on is completely gone, and they drop three feet, which knocks them off of their feet. They stand up, Jayden looks at Brandon for instructions, but he merely stands there with his eyes bigger than normal, waiting. The cube has one more turn to make, and it will completely have made a 180 degree turn.

Then the new floor begins to slope down, and Jayden tries to stay standing but can’t. He beings to slide, slowly at first, but as the cube turns, Jayden picks up more and more speed, until he starts to worry about how hard he is going to hit when he hits the floor that he truly hopes is on the opposite side from where they were sitting earlier. On that other side the floor had also receded into the back wall, but as the energy complex completes its final turn, the floor will, in theory, have fully returned by the time Jayden and Brandon get there.

Brandon screams, "Here it comes, jump for it."

The angle of their descent is getting real scary now, it is way below 45 degrees and any second from now Jayden won’t be sliding down a wall but will be dropping like a stone in the air. He fights to keep his panic at bay, and Jayden sees the promised floor that he has to jump for. Here it is and he kicks off from the cube, is in the air, and smashes onto the floor. Jayden has fallen so hard that he knocks his head against the solid floor. Jayden fights back unconsciousness and groans as it seems like every bone he has protests the damage he did to them with that fall.

What a price was all that fun he just had, but then he makes himself sit up; he realizes it’s not that bad after all, and that he might be sore for a couple of days, but who cares, he’ll be fine, he’s no Calum.

Brandon says, with a hint of strain in his voice, "Told you."

"Told me what?" asks Jayden.

"Every one beats the wall," and Jayden nods his head. He can’t wait to be back in bed, but he could do without the walk back to the Hive.

A couple of days later Jayden is back in the forest at the top of Hope Station. Well, they are near that forest, in a garden that stretches over a mile long. There are apple trees, tomato plants, chili pepper plants, cilantro plants, watermelon patches, and even pumpkin patches. Jayden has seen this type of thing before on the asteroid, but nothing this size or with such a great variety of things being grown.

"I’m surprised no one has thrown any fruit yet," Lacey tells Jayden.

"Give them a few days," he says knowingly, everything is too brand new to everybody before they would sufficiently begin the goofing off.

It is then that a hunchbacked woman in her fifties begins to speak. She wears knee pads, elbow pads, and a water tank on her back with a cord running to a pistol like nozzle that sits in a pocket in her utility belt that also houses several different sized hand shovels.

"Now you might think gardening will be your most boring class, but you all have a great responsibility to learn and take to heart what I tell you. We all like to breathe air do we not? The more green things we have in the station means the less air that we have to retrieve from Akron below us. Plants turn the air you exhale, carbon dioxide, into air you can inhale, oxygen. Also plants are important because they give us food which there isn’t much of on the planet. And green things are important for the soul. Yes, I hear some of you laughing, so go ahead and make fun, but a walk up here will lighten your load considerably; you would do well to try and remember this when you are plagued by some weight that seems to heavy to bare.

"So your responsibility isn’t to the green things but to yourself and your community. If you see a plant or tree anywhere in the station in need of a watering do not pass it by; a potted green thing cannot walk and get a drink of water, instead, it will communicate to us through the signs of drooping, wilting, and discoloring that communicates that it desperately needs water, so be aware of this call and heed that call."

Jayden stops listening to her rant and looks out past the wall into space to see the huge planet, Akron, with its swirling clouds hovering over oceans and its continents that look like puzzle pieces. He imagines walking from one side of the planet to the other battling mythical beasts along the way and meeting indigenous tribes on his quest, but he knows full well there neither of those are down there, well maybe some beasts. Hopefully one day soon he will see for himself.

Jayden turns his attention back to the gardener who has just asked everyone to call her Mrs. Bloom, probably due to the fact that her real name is a thing with k’s, z’s, and v’s that no one can seem to be able to pronounce properly. She is on her knees demonstrating how to prepare the dirt and a baby evergreen to begin their journey of joining together and becoming one and the same.

Jayden stifles a laugh at how over the top she is in how serious she takes growing and the upkeep of her green things, but before he knows it the class and the day is over. Jayden and Lacey linger to look at the ships below and at one in particular that is having work done on it from much smaller support ships and space suited people along its hull.

"They look like ants from here, don’t they?" asks a voice from behind him that Jayden recognizes as belonging to Brandon.

They turn and see him dressed in a similar dark blue jumpsuit with a yellow arm band signifying his place in the second stage of Advance Station Privileges.

"Brandon! Here you are; I looked for you today at the Hive but didn’t see you. What were you up to today? Oh, I almost forgot, this is my friend, Lacey."

"Nice to meet you, Lacey," beaming at her, "What did we do today? Boring stuff, boring stuff, I was stuck in a simulator all day learning how to dock ships to the station. I think I fell asleep a couple of times; the only thing keeping me awake was the simulator warning alarm that would go off. I think I may have even destroyed a ship by accident and made a rift or two in some other simulator ships."

Jayden and Lacey exchange a look at the mention of rifts.

Seeing this, Brandon guffaws, "What, you’ve known each other not even two weeks and already you have your own silent language?"

Both blush and fidget in embarrassment.

To change the subject, Jayden asks, "So what are you doing up here?"

"Well, I know your day usually ends up here in the first stage, and I thought you would like to see a sword fight."

"A what?" Lacey interrupts, "Did you somehow manage to rattle your brain in that simulator today?"

"No, I heard a rumor that Siege had challenged someone to a sword duel: something about not properly spotting the other with some weights in the gym."

Perplexed, Jayden asks, "What?"

"You know, when you lift a lot of heavy weights you sometimes need help in case you can’t lift the weights off in case you get too tired," says Brandon like he’s talking to a toddler.

Aghast Jayden says, "No, not that part. Why in the world would two people be sword fighting?"

Brandon says, "Oh that, oh yes of course, you two probably haven’t heard of the Guild. The Guild is a kind of organization or club. You don’t have to pay dues or anything, but you have to yearn for days of the past. You know, knights, swords, and the damsels in distress times, but they also claim to think technology isn’t the best of things for us. They claim if we didn’t have so much technology then we never would have nuked Earth to the point where we couldn’t live on it anymore."

Lacey says, "Isn’t that kind of schizophrenic thinking? They don’t like technology but they live on a station, a piece of technology, which is what makes it possible for them to revolve in space around a planet."

Brandon says, "You’re absolutely right, but they have oodles of excuses for anything that you could throw at them. If you ask me, I think they just like to wear armor and swords. So do you want to go watch the duel? I heard Siege is milling about pacing by the entrance to the warehouses."

In unison they say, "Absolutely," at the same time.

"There you go, look at you two," mocks Brandon.

"Oh shut up you, and let’s get going," says Lacey.

Thirty minutes later Jayden and his friends are at the entrance to the warehouses and a line of people, obviously in the Guild due to their Middle Ages attire excitedly chatter as they wait to go into the warehouses. Then the people dressed in cloaks, leather breeches, peasant dresses, and armor begin to enter the warehouse. Jayden and his friends enter after them, follow them into the first open door, and join a group of the Guild in a corner. The gigantic room has shelves, boxes, and pallet jacks scattered about.

Siege paces, waiting for his dueling partner, and Jayden realizes he recognizes Siege from when the Juliana Star arrived at Hope Station. Siege was with the governor; he was one of the three police, the one in armor with the sword, the same one that he wears today. The man looks like he hasn’t shaved in a week. Jayden also notices that the police insignia usually on his chest is nowhere to be seen.

All talk stops as a man in red armor enters who is grim faced, serious, and a tad nervous. The man brings out his sword and swipes it through the air to get himself loose, and Siege follows his example. Jayden sees that Siege’s sword is at least a foot shorter, but the foe has to use two hands to wield his weapon and Siege only one.

"Who is Siege fighting?" Jayden asks Brandon.

He answers, "That man is called Mack; he is one of the cooks. His food is always great. I had no idea Siege was fighting Mack. I guess I didn’t realize they were even close enough to lift weights together."

As Jayden looks at Mack more closely, Jayden does recall seeing this man in the cafeteria, amongst the other cooks, doling out food.

Then the two put on their helmets and commence without a word. Jayden thinks it must be nearly impossible for them to see through the thin slits in their helmets, but each sees the other’s sword and blocks the other every time as they dance around and around in a circle. No one speaks from the watching crowd.

It looks easier for Siege to slash quicker with his one handed weapon, but he has to compensate against the brute force of Mack’s heavy swings that knock him back and back. Mack swings wide, Siege doesn’t block, steps to the side, and Siege cuts across Mack’s chest leaving a long scratch on his red armor, but Siege doesn’t come close to penetrating the other’s armor. The grating clang echoes through the warehouse setting Jayden’s teeth on edge.

Then after Siege’s successful attack he has left himself open and off balance. Mack doesn’t bother bringing his sword around; he simply smashes the hilt of his sword down on top of Siege’s metal helmet. The sound in Siege’s helmet must make him wish that he had gone deaf with all the ringing he must be hearing, because he drops his sword and grasps both sides of his helmet as he bends over at the waist with his head hanging.

"End it," someone yells.

Mack swoops his sword in a great big arch that hits Siege behind the knees and the effect of the blow is that Siege is knocked over onto his back. Mack sheathes his sword and looms over the man he just defeated.

"It is over."

The man on the floor croaks, "Oh no, it’s not," as Mack walks away in disgust with his helmet in the crook of his arm as he leaves the warehouse. The watchers walk out quickly and Jayden hears one say, "I don’t want to be around when Siege is looking for someone to take this out on." Jayden and his friends get out of there too.

Then they are back at the Hive. Lacey goes to the girl’s side of the Hive, Brandon takes a ladder up to his room on the second floor, and Jayden to his room for some well deserved sleep after a very long day.

* * *

A week passes and Jayden doesn’t know what to expect what this class will be about; he hasn’t been in this auditorium with its stadium seating and the large projection screen that he faces. He sits towards the back so he is above the people in the front most rows. Jayden likes being this high up, looking down.

Jayden hears moans from his Advanced Station Privileges classmates as Mr. Sweet enters the auditorium through a door at the bottom, near the base of the white screen. He tugs on his mustache, blankly looks up at them all, comes to some decision, and says, "Today you are going to learn about some of the animals that lived on Earth, before we drove them into extinction," he stops as people murmur excitedly to their neighbors, and Mr. Sweet continues, "Some of you may wonder about the importance of learning about creatures that no longer exist, and to those people I says that we cannot understand ourselves without understanding our cousins from Earth who share many of the same traits that make us what we are.

"So let’s begin with our first slide," he pulls a remote out of a pocket, and aims it at the screen. On the screen is an elephant in water, but the elephant isn’t swimming half in and half out of the water, but is completely underneath the surface of the water.

"You will notice right away that the elephant which seems like it would be an ideal land dweller is, instead, an awkward water creature. See the elephant’s long trunk: they breathe through the long tube, which they use as a very effective and efficient snorkel. The elephants were not deep sea divers however, because of their great size they frequently needed to come up for air, so they only dove down to about eight feet.

"We believe that they were graceful swimmers due to their great big floppy ears that contained, we believe, a great deal of flexibility, which gave them a giant range of mobility and maneuverability at their disposal.

"Some, however, claim that the creatures were not water creatures at all, but how then can that school of thought explain away the elephant’s trunk, nature’s snorkel?"

Lacey says to Jayden, "Back on Magna if I saw something like that I would try to ride it."

Jayden says, "Did you ride anything that big?"

Lacey says, "Nah, something that big can move pretty quick, of course, none of the Magna creatures had legs, which makes me wonder why a water creature even needs legs in the first place."

Mr. Sweet changes the slide to show a flock of ostriches flying among the clouds, and says, "The ostrich spent time between the ground and the air, but they preferred the air. Don’t be fooled by their appearance for the ostrich was the most ferocious bird of prey that flew the skies of Earth. Its most deadly weapon, you will notice, is its long neck. The ostrich would swoop down, wrap up its prey with

its neck like a snake does, and the ostrich would squeeze the life out of the poor small animal.

"Some argue that the ostriches didn’t fly because of their long legs that they claim are not conducive to flying. And to that school of thought I say how do you explain how the ostrich was able to carry its prey? It couldn’t fly and carry its prey with its neck: that would block its view of where it could fly and make them vulnerable to attack. So instead, the ostrich wrapped its long rubbery and flexible legs around its prey, again like a snake."

This whole time Jayden has been watching Ludvig who sits to Jayden’s left and down a couple of seats where Ludvig has been unable to sit still. Ludvig has been shaking his head, covering his eyes with his hand, and leaning back staring at the ceiling with his lips drawn tightly together.

Ludvig says, rather loudly, "What!?"

Mr. Sweet says, "What’s that, repeat that last part, sure, the ostrich wrapped its long rubbery and flexible legs around its prey, again like a snake. Legs, yes that is a good transition point.

"The elephant, a water creature, had legs, but for what purpose? Remember earlier when I said that we were cousins to the animals back on Earth? Well let us observe a cousin to the elephant, the narwhal," on the screen is now a long whale with an immense, and straight, horn protruding from its head, like a pointer always showing it which way is straight ahead."

Mr. Sweet continues, "You might say that these two water creatures don’t look all that related, right? But look upon this," the screen now shows a different elephant with curvy horns on either side of its trunk.

Mr. Sweet, looking like he is unveiling the greatest secret of the universe, says, "Ah ha! Both have horns, but what does this mean you might wonder. You may have heard that all Earth life started in the oceans, and then went to the land, because you know how it is when you’ve been in the bathtub too long."

No one laughs at his bathtub joke, he begrudgingly ignores that, and says, "Anyway, the elephant had legs and could have gone on the land if it wanted to, but for some reason never did venture on land. Yes, they’ve been found on continents far away from the oceans, but they were found in or near lakes.

"But what is my point? To show the progression of moving from the water to the landmasses we will now see the third cousin."

The screen now shows a beautiful white horse shaking its head and its mane of white hair. On its forehead sticks out a horn that looks just like the one that the narwhal had sticking out of its head.

Mr. Sweet, smiling satisfactorily, says, "Do I even need to say anything about this unicorn and its horn that is shares with its cousins?"

Ludvig, for some unknown reason, has gotten up, and storms out of his seat, and the auditorium.

Mr. Sweet says, "What a great idea, yes, this would be a great time for everyone to take a fifteen minute bathroom break, and don’t forget to come back, so you can hear about the Italian vampire plague of 1509," but Ludvig never returns to hear the rest of the lecture.

A couple of days later at two-thirty in the morning an alarm barks in the Hive, in every single room, and Calum groggily says, "It’s too early for class, would somebody turn that alarm off?"

Zane on the other bottom bunk throws a pillow at Calum, who protests, "Hey, what’s the big idea?"

He is cut off from saying more by a robotic sounding voice that blares everywhere but quite politely, "Please stay where you are; a Rift has been detected in Hope Station. Please do not leave the room you are in. Grave danger could result if you try to go to the next room, which could also affect the station’s hull integrity. A Rift has been detected, a Rift has been detected, a Rift has been detected."

Jayden climbs down from the top of his bunk as does Ludvig. Jayden goes to the door, and the usually meek Zane yells, "No! What do you think you are doing? Are you trying to get us all killed?"

Jayden answers him, "Let’s open the door and see if the Rift is in the Hive; we’ll know right away if it’s out there: stuff will be flying everywhere."

"But what if after you’re done peeking, we can’t close the door?" Zane states imploringly.

Jayden says, "We’ll all push the door shut, and we’ll only open the door a crack. Ludvig back me up here, we can do this, right?"

Ludvig rubs his chin, considering, and says, "Let’s do it."

"Oh, man," moans Zane.

They all go to the door, Jayden cracks open the door, Jayden looks out, and nothing is flying around being sucked towards a Rift. He can also see others walking around, so he opens the door wide, Zane grunts, but sees the others, and stops his guttural complaining.

They walk to the big doors to where there are twenty others milling about. Everyone is looking all around, looking for a hole, but no one can find the Rift.

The polite robotic voice is back, "Security to the prison level, security to the fighter ship bay. Prisoner has escaped; intruders in the fighter ship bay. No Rift is present; Rift alarm was a false alarm. Prisoner has escaped."

Ludvig says, "Holy moly some convict has some smart friends: setting off a false Rift alarm to cover their friend’s escape and their escape. And if you have to leave the station might as well take a ship with weapons so you can shoot anyone that would give pursuit like you know they will."

The alarm shuts off, and behind him Jayden can hear someone yelling. He turns and sees and hears Mr. Sweet, who does a much better job of yelling when he’s thirty feet tall thinks Jayden.

"Everybody to bed, everybody back to bed, why did you even leave your rooms? Didn’t you hear the Rift alarm? Haven’t you new people learned anything? Everybody back to bed," but it’s kind of hard to take him seriously with his hair in a Mohawk from sleeping for six hours on his head.

Jayden and the others have hurried back to their room so Mr. Sweet won’t be able to confront them about leaving their room. As Jayden closes the door, he can hear Mr. Sweet yelling at someone, but it’s not panicked yelling, just his everyday yelling, and Jayden knows they are going to be just fine.

Zoë stands behind Connor who stands behind Kevin

Hobson who stands behind the window that will soon open.

Zoë doesn't think this makes sense, this having to get here

first in order to beat others here to get a bicycle. She thinks

that they should have enough bikes for everyone to go

around, but she also knows that funding for the orphanage is

tight and that the money has to be spread out for many things,

and not just for bikes that everyone wants to ride.

Zoë rubs her full belly that is stuffed from her

overgenerous Saturday breakfast she just ate that was

pancakes, sausages, scrambled eggs, milk, and orange juice;

breakfast is a lazy two hour affair on the weekends. Right

when she got up to she had to race around to get into the

shower before the other girls, all the while staying out of the

way of the older girls. Once Zoë got ready she met Connor in

the cafeteria, they wolfed down their breakfasts, and ran

outside to building D where the sports equipment is doled

out, including the bicycles.

"Where are you going this morning, Kevin?" Connor

asks the tall seventeen year old boy who sports a long black

mullet and two days worth of beard stubble.

Kevin grins down at him and says, "I'm going to go to

a school friend's house. His folks let us practice in their

garage. I think I told you that I'm in a band, right?"

Connor says doubtfully, "Yeah, I just don't remember

the name of it. I think had something to do with a car part,

something like muffler?"

Kevin laughs, "Not exactly, we call ourselves

Carburetor."

Zoë asks, "What instrument do you play?" and she

wonders how in the world he got the money to afford a

musical instrument, unless it was donated somehow.

Kevin answers, "I don't have an instrument; I'm the

lead singer."

Connor asks, "Has Carburetor played in front of an

audience yet?"

Kevin says, "I guess if you consider a dog and a

couple of friends hanging out an audience, then yes we

have."

Connor says, "Ah, not yet, will Betty be there?" Zoë

has heard Tom talk about Betty, his girlfriend, and not

always with tender sentiments.

Kevin says plaintively, "No, she won't be there; we

broke up a couple of days ago."

Then there is an uncomfortable silence, which is

broken up by the window rattling open and Zoë sees Mrs.

Levesque. The woman already looks tired and cranky, and

it's only just barely 9 a.m.

Mrs. Levesque says, unceremoniously, "Okay Kevin,

where to?"

Kevin answers, "Band practice-"

She cuts him off, and says, "Yes, yes, but where, what

part of town, you know we need to know where you are in

case of an emergency."

Kevin says, "Oh, right, sorry, 36th & Minnehaha," as

he writes this down in the log book.

Mrs. Levesque says, "That will do, grab your bike

then, next, ah yes, frick and frack. Connor two days in a row?

Just remember to not hog the bikes everyday; Connor, share

the bikes with everyone, so everyone can get a chance to ride

them. Now where are you two going today?"

Zoë answers, "We're going to Lake Nokomis."

Mrs. Levesque says, "Now you two be careful. Watch

out for traffic and be sure to be careful around the water."

"We will," says Connor as he signs the log book.

Mrs. Levesque says, "And don't be late coming back;

you have until four to check the bikes back in. Don't make us

have to come looking for you, understand?"

"Got it," says Zoë, trying to keep the impatience out

of her voice. Every time she checks out a bicycle she gets the

same tired speech.

Zoë grabs a green bike, Connor a blue one, and off

they go, catching up with Kevin. They don't bike on the

sidewalk, opting, instead, for the road. They are just south of

the orphanage on residential city streets, which don't have a

lot of traffic. There are cars parked on either side of the

skinny street that doesn't even have a yellow line running

down the middle. They come to an intersection where they

don't have a stop sign, but Zoë has them stop anyway,

because sometimes crazy drivers buzz through the

intersections, choosing to ignore the signs, assuming that no

one will be in the intersection at the same time as them.

They quickly descend down a hill, they cross

Minnehaha Parkway, and then they are on the paved trail that

will take them to Lake Nokomis. It is like they are not in a

city anymore with all the bushes, flowers, grass, and huge

trees along the Minnehaha Creek. There are a lot of people

out today, who are biking, running, roller blading, walking,

pushing strollers, or chasing after dogs.

"Here come the crazies," Zoë says to them as they

near the always busy and bustling intersection of Minnehaha

Parkway and Cedar. At the corner there is a gas station, a

coffee shop, and an ice cream parlor. None of which Zoë ever

goes into, because what would be the point she thinks. Why

torture myself with things that I can't buy, because where

would I get the money with no parents to give me the

money? She forces these thoughts away as she cross the

intersection, and Zoë and Connor part ways with Kevin who

continues forward while they go south.

On their left Zoë sees a soccer game going on and

farther down an ultimate Frisbee game being played. She can

also see the lake; she can't see the sailboats yet, but she

knows they are close.

Connor says, "You're going to love this, Zoë. You

have no idea how cool this is going to be. Our own hideaway

that nobody else knows about."

Then they are there at the dock. They chain up their

bikes around some small trees and then they run onto the

dock. It doesn't take anytime at all for Zoë to realize which

one is the Chirimoya, for it is the only wooden ship, and like

Connor said, it is the longest one. The ship's wood is

beautiful, thinks Zoë, with the wood having a light burnt

orange hue, but it clashes with the car tires that hang off the

bow in a horizontal row, which she can only assume must

cushion the ship from a possible impact with other vessels?

"How are we supposed to get over there?" Zoë asks.

Connor says sheepishly, "Xavier had a small

inflatable boat, but we don't, so we are going to have to swim

for it."

Zoë says, "Nice."

Connor says defensively, "Well, I did tell you to wear

a swimsuit, didn't I?"

She says, "Yeah, but I didn't know it would be for

this, but oh well, who cares, it's July," and she pulls off her

white sundress. All this time her bathing suit was on,

underneath her dress. Connor yanks off his shirt.

Connor says, "What about our shoes?"

Zoë takes her shoes off, wraps them up and The

Curtain in her balled-up dress, and says, "Just don't drop

them as you swim to the ship."

Zoë walks off the dock and onto the shore. She

hesitates there not wanting to put herself into the cold that

she knows will be there no matter how warm the air is. She

steps forward, thinking the sooner she's adjusted to the cold

the better. Zoë feels the cold water and bites her lip with the

shock of how cold it really is, then she steps to her left to set

the clothes bundle on the dock, so she won't have to worry

about keeping it dry as she fights the cold. She then stands

immobile, not wanting to proceed, but does as she dives into

the water, feeling the cold wrap around her that, amazingly,

becomes tolerable somehow.

Connor is not as quick to act, Zoë notices with

amusement, but she allows him the sanctity of privacy as she

grabs her clothes bundle, and goes on her back so as to keep

her clothes dry, and swims the short distance to the

Chirimoya. Once she is there she pulls on a rope that hangs

down at the lip of the hull, and with one arm, Zoë pulls

herself up a bit. Once she has a firm grip she tosses her

clothes bundle over, and then Zoë hoists herself up.

She wishes that she would have brought a towel as

she lies on the deck, shivering; it is still early mooring, and

the sun overhead is merely a tease with the hot warmth that it

will bring later, but not right now, like Zoë wishes it would

be. Like a dog she shakes most of the water, and then she

sees Connor coming towards the Chirimoya, also on his back

with his shirt bundle high in the air. Zoë helps him up and he

lays on the deck, panting and dripping with rivulets of water

raining down off of him.

"So you've never been on board, right?" asks Zoë.

Connor, coming out of the transition, says, "No, I've

only seen her from the dock," as he steps forward, away from

Zoë, going to the steering wheel, touches it reverently, and

then Connor spins the wheel and it goes thud, thud, thud,

thud as it spins, but the ship remains in place.

"I wonder what is downstairs?" says Zoë.

They both go a bit forward, turn, and go down a set of

stairs that makes it suddenly dark. Zoë isn't surprised by the

darkness because they are away from the sunlight, but then

the light comes back a bit to reveal a small sleeping area that

wraps around in a U shape and there is a tiny bathroom as

well.

"This is awesome; this is our own little sanctuary that

no one else at the orphanage has," exclaims Connor.

"This is pretty cool, but I'm going up top to warm up;

I'm freezing," Zoë says as she shakes from still being wet,

and they both go back up to the deck.

Zoë walks around the deck, putting her hand on the

wood appreciatively. She looks out onto the lake and feels

like she is out on it, even though they are merely yards away

from the dock, but the ship slowly rocks up and down to help

the illusion take hold. She stares off at the wide expanse of

lake and finds that she is dry and, thankfully, warm once

again.

She goes to her clothes bundle, gets out The Curtain,

and Zoë finds a spot of the deck to sprawl out on contentedly.

She opens the book up, finds her spot, and begins to read

from where she left off. Alston feels a tugging on his cloak,

and the mystery woman yells in his ear, "Stop!"

Alston slows the galloping horse, they stop, the

woman jumps off, and she pukes into a spot of bushes that

probably wish she would have chosen another spot to get sick

into. She straightens after a while, rubs her sleeve across her

mouth, and motions for Alston to get off of the horse.

Alston gets off, ties off the horse, and tentatively goes

to the woman to see what will happen next for they are out of

harm's way. The woman sits down and so does Alston, sitting

across from her.

She says that two years ago she had her fortune taken

and was told that she would die in one year from a terminal

disease, and that her husband had lost interest in her after

that, so she dug up the jewels her husband had buried in the

back yard, and she had used the jewels for road money.

Needles to say her husband didn’t take kindly to her taking

their life savings, so he told the authorities. She was found

and the Tanzians were going to take her back to her husband.

She says that her name is Tara.

Alston asks if that was her hometown, she says no it

wasn't, and he tells her it wasn't his home either. Alston says

he is a thief and also on the run, because he also escaped

from being a prisoner, for thieving.

The two measure one another up and decide, for the

time being, that there is no harm in traveling with the other

one, and so they do.

Zoë puts the book down and wonders what else they

can do this day besides laze around on this ship that is all

their own. She looks at her watch and it says that it is only

eleven. The water gently laps up against the close shore, and

Zoë sees a young married couple lowering an ugly lime green

bass boat into the water at the boat landing.

"Do you know how to sail?" Zoë kids Connor who is

up in the mast, tinkering with the sail.

"Just what I know from books like Treasure Island,"

he answers joyfully.

Zoë nods, sees he is momentarily trapped up there,

and she casually unravels the moorings from the buoy that

anchors the ship, and Connor screams, "What are you

doing!?"

Zoë runs over to the wheel, spins the wheel to the

right, and the ship violently shudders. She feels her stomach

drop as she realizes that something is terribly terribly wrong

as the orange sail unfurls itself from being tied up to being

stretched out wide and ready to catch a wind; luckily Connor

isn't knocked off of the mast as the sail is released.

Zoë is looking off to their right, praying that her

foolhardy act doesn't make them crash into another, smaller,

ship, but as if in a dream, Zoë sees that there isn't a ship to be

seen to their right. A part of her wonders how this is possible,

and the other part of her wonders why the Chirimoya is

rocking so much so up and down to the swell of the great

waves that were not there a moment before.

Zoë looks all around them, she lets go of the wheel,

and screams, "What's going on? Where are we? Oh no, oh no,

oh no."

Connor clambers down the mast, walks over to Zoë,

and says, "This can't be happening."

"But it is," Zoë says in a small voice. Lake Nokomis

is nowhere to be seen; they are on waters that are like the

Caribbean sea with a myriad of different shade of blues, there

are no other ships, they are not anywhere near a shore, and in

the distance off to their left is an island.

Zoë says, "Ship, go to the left," as she whips the

wheel to the left, and miraculously the Chirimoya moves the

left as if obeying her command.

"This isn't possible," whispers Connor in disbelief.

"Oh, it's happening alright," says Zoë.

The Chirimoya is moving, of its own accord, towards

the island.

"What did you do?" Connor spits accusingly.

"I threw off the rope and went to this wheel; what else

could I have done?"

"I don't know; I'm really freaked out. Are you sure

there isn't anything else that you did? Every little detail could

be important."

"Connor, I didn't do anything else; the moment I spun

the wheel we weren't at Lake Nokomis anymore."

"How is this possible," Connor wails into the wind.

Zoë lets go of the wheel and with great consternation

she stares at the blue beyond blue water as they get ever

closer and closer to the island. This is like something she

would read out of one of the books that she loves to read, but

this is really happening; she has never had a dream that was

this vivid or scary, not even her scariest nightmare has ever

felt this real.

The island is getting closer and closer, and Zoë sees a

small village amongst what has to be a jungle that covers the

island. As they get closer Zoë sees that there is dock, she

goes back to the wheel, finds the wheel obeys her commands,

and before she knows it they are roaring towards the dock but

way, way too fast.

"Stop, don't ram the dock," Zoë screams, the ships

obeys, and the Chirimoya slips to the dock without the

shuddering impact that Zoë was sure would come to knock

her off of her feet.

Connor grabs a rope and twirls it around a piece of

the dock, anchoring them, and all by itself the Chirimoya ties

up its own sail against the mast.

"I'm going to change quickly," Zoë says, as she goes

into the hold to get out of her swimsuit and change into her

white sun dress and shoes. When she pops out, Zoë sees

Connor standing on the dock, staring at the village.

Connor has his shirt and shoes back on. It is hot and

humid. Minneapolis was probably in the seventies, and this

place is in the high eighties at the bare minimum Zoë thinks,

but these mundane thoughts disappear as she sees someone

walking towards them down a dirt path. It is a boy who

doesn't look much older than them. He is dressed in

homemade looking clothes that someone would have worn

three or four centuries ago.

Zoë stands next to Connor feeling awkward and

unsure how to proceed, but then the boy is there and he

doesn't seem threatening at all.

"Hello there," the boy says warmly with a genuine

greeting that doesn't seem to have an ulterior motive behind

it.

"Hello," Connor says tentatively.

"Hello," Zoë says.

"I am Isak Legan; what are your names?" the boy

wonders aloud.

"I am Connor Dahl."

"I am Zoë Rivers."

Isak scratches his head, and asks, "Isn't this Arvid

Xavier's ship, the Chirimoya?"

Zoë hopes that Connor isn't registering his surprise on

his face like she is trying her hardest not to show on hers.

Connor says, "Yes, it is; Arvid let us borrow his

ship." Well Xavier said to watch the ship, but he didn't say

anything about taking it for a spin Zoë thinks, but Connor

doesn't seem to let this slip to Isak. Zoë doesn't remember

Connor being this good of a liar, but is glad he is able to pull

it off.

Zoë looks at her watch and sees that it is eleven thirty.

Isak notices what she does, and he asks, "What is

that?"

Zoë says hesitantly, "It's a watch; it tells time."

Shocked, Isak says, "It does?! Can I look?" and he

comes up to her. Zoë puts out her arm, and Isak gazes at the

watch, saying, "Wow, it's moving," and Zoë thinks he must

be referring to the second hand and has he really never seen a

watch before?

Isak says, "We've got a sun dial in town but nothing

like this. This is amazing. Does it even work in the dark?"

Zoë says, "It sure it does."

Connor comes closer and asks, "Say there Isak, this

might sound a little odd to you, but, uh, where are we?"

Isak darts his eyes suspiciously at Connor, and he

says, "Well, this is the village of Denali on the island of

Acadia." Connor and Zoë stiffen and look at each other with

eyes wide. "Have you truly never been to Acadia? Have you

been at sea your entire lives? Or are you both from another

island? We Acadians have never heard of another island, and

we have sent out ships looking, believe you me."

Zoë says, "I don't know if you would believe us, if we

told you where we are from, Isak."

Isak chuckles, and says, "Oh you would be surprised

what I could believe. Try me."

Zoë says, "All right then, we both live in an

orphanage-"

"What's an orphanage?" asks Isak.

Zoë answers, "It is a place where children live who

don't have any parents. We will live there until we grow up to

be adults. We live in a town called Minneapolis and life there

is nothing like life here."

Isak asks, bewildered, "How so?"

Zoë looks at the buildings that don’t look modern in

the slightest and says, "Well, I guess I don't know exactly

how life is here, but in Minneapolis there is a lot of electricity

and things like watches but on a vast scale. For instance we

have cars, boxes more or less, that carry people, which run

faster than a horse. We have planes, also like boxes, which

fly in the sky, and they can travel hundreds of miles in mere

hours."

Isak says, "You said you live in the orphanage until

you grow up. You age?"

Connor says, "Sure we do. Don't you?"

Isak says, "No, we don't age; we live for a long time,

but we don't look any different; no one grows older."

Zoë says, flabbergasted, "You will look like this your

entire life?"

Isak answers, as if talking to a slow person, "Yes, I

will always look like this."

Connor asks in a small voice, "Do people die here?"

Isak says, "People don't die unless they have an

accident or if they are killed, so no, people don't normally die

unless something bad happens to them."

Zoë says, "That's incredible. In Minneapolis people

age, grow old, and then die of natural causes. We typically

live around eighty years."

Isak roars, "Eighty years! Is that all? That's horrible.

We are all seven hundred some years old. I can't imagine

only living for eighty years. That's just the beginning of life."

Zoë and Connor look at each other ruefully. Zoë says,

"Everyone is the same age here?"

Isak says, "Yes, we were all born at the same time.

One day, our first day as far as we know, we all woke up, and

here we all were."

Connor asks, "Is everyone as young as you look?"

Isak says, "No, some are babies, some are my age,

some are adults, and some are old people, and all never age."

Zoë says, "That's so weird. So babies are stuck as

babies here all of their lives?"

Isak says, "Sure, but they are as smart as you or me."

Connor says, "I can't imagine what it would be like to

be seven hundred years old."

Isak, suddenly serious, says, "Guys, if you talk to

anyone else here in Acadia I wouldn't recommend telling

them that you are from Minneapolis, because not everyone

will react like I have. Some people are not as open minded as

I am, and well, they might behave in an unfriendly way."

Zoë says, "Hmm. Yeah, back home I can only

imagine telling people about Acadia; they would probably

think that we were crazy, and maybe, they would try to lock

us up."

Just then Zoë sees something highly unusual. On the

dirt path that leads to the dock, which they are standing on, is

a reddish-brown orangutan that is loping towards their party.

Zoë has seen these large monkeys on television on animal

documentary shows and even in a Clint Eastwood movie, but

she's never seen them in flesh and blood real life, except of

course, behind a set of bars at the zoo.

Zoë says, "Uh, I think we're maybe in for some

trouble here, guys," and the two boys turn to see the

orangutan coming ever closer to them on the dock.

Isak says, "Oh, there's nothing to worry about that is

just Griselda, and she's probably here to pick up a package if

I know her."

Connor says to himself, "A package? Are there

bananas over here?"

The orangutan shows up, looks at all of them, pokes

her tongue against her bottom lip, and then says, "What have

we here? Some newcomers to Denali? Her voice is deep and

thick with our language on its primate vocal cords.

Isak answers for them, because he sees the orphan’s

shock, "Griselda, this is Zoë and Connor and they are from

the sea. Arvid let them borrow the Chirimoya here. You are

waiting for a package I bet."

Griselda says, "Yes, I'm waiting for a package. It's

supposed to be here by noon," Zoë looks at her watch that

says eleven-fifty, "You two are from the Acadian sea? You

look pretty pale to me to be from the sea; everyone I've seen

from the sea is dark from the unforgiving glare of the sun's

rays."

Connor says, "Yeah, we're from the sea," because that

is where they came from when they entered Acadia, so Zoë

guesses it's not that big of a lie.

Just then the water starts behaving oddly next to the

dock. There are more and more waves and then one gigantic

wave. What Zoë sees next makes her quickly backpedal ten

paces. The huge black nose of a killer whale rears up and

rests its head on the dock, and the whale doesn't move a lick.

The whale opens its mouth, and Zoë can see the crouched

form of a man; the man stands up, stretches, and walks out

onto the dock.

The man wears tight clothing that kind of looks like a

wetsuit but not quite. On his back is what Zoë thinks is a set

of wooden air tanks, but she thinks she's never heard of

wooden air tanks before. How could they even hold the

necessary air pressure? She's heard about this stuff like this

from television.

The man says, "Griselda, I've got your package for

you like you requested."

Griselda lopes side to side over to the man who rides

in the mouths of killer whales. Zoë pinches herself to really

make sure she is awake, and yes, the pinch hurts, and no, she

doesn't wake up. Griselda takes a small wooden chest from

the man, opens the box, and takes out something mechanical.

Griselda says, "Thank you, this is just what I was

looking for. You haven't let me down."

The man nods, turns, steps back into the whale's

mouth, crouches down, takes a huge in-breath, the killer

whale slowly closes its mouth, and the whale slips backwards

into the water.

Griselda, visibly satisfied, turns back to them, and

says, "Are you hungry? Would you like to go to my place

and eat a little something?" Zoë wonders what a little

something is for a large monkey but bites her tongue instead

of saying anything.

Connor asks Isak, "Is our ship safe here? Do you

think anyone will take her?"

Isak says, "You have nothing to worry about; no one

will tamper with the Chirimoya while you are gone."

Zoë shrugs when Connor looks at her, and the three of

them follow the orangish monkey off of the dock and onto

the dirt path. On their left is the town that is composed of

brick buildings and on their right is the jungle. They walk for

five minutes and then Griselda stops before a tall and

gargantuan palm tree that stretches up and up, taller than any

other tree that is around them.

Connor mutters to himself, "Now what?" and he looks

at Zoë with suspicion written all over his face. Zoë smiles to

herself thinking that Connor never ever trusts anybody unless

they give him ample proof that they are worth his trust, and it

seems that a talking orangutan doesn’t fit into his category of

people to trust on sight.

Griselda says, "My home is up here," as she points

her red hand up into the air at the palm fronds waving in the

slightly humid wind. Zoë sees that there is a rope ladder at

the base of the large trunk.

Isak turns to her, and says, "Ladies first," motioning

for her to climb first.

Zoë barks, "I don't think so, I'm wearing a dress thank

you very much."

Isak blushes, and says, "Oh right, I'm sorry, how

about you Connor?"

"Sure," Connor says as he reluctantly goes and grabs

the rope ladder. Griselda is at the top of the tree already,

looking down at them, waving. It hurts Zoë’s neck to crane

her head up all that way up there.

Connor steps up and up with confidence. Isak looks

backs at Zoë, and then Isak is climbing up the rope ladder.

Zoë, not a huge fan of climbing, loathes that she has to do

this, but is hungry and wants to see what Griselda's home is

like up there. She imagines stacks and stacks of rotting

banana peels. Zoë grabs the rope ladder on either side, steps

on the first rung, this isn't so bad she thinks, and she steps

higher and higher, but she hears a tiny voice in her head say,

"Don't look down sweetie, that's the last thing that you want

to do, because if you look down then you will see how high

up you really are and then you won't be able to move and

then where will you be, huh?"

So Zoë takes the annoying little voice's advice and

forces herself to not look down, and before she knows it, she

is at the top of the ladder and climbing into the tree house.

Instantly, Zoë has an overwhelming feeling that this was a

bad idea; being up here has provided them with no tangible

escape route, if Griselda or Isla turns on them. What do they

really know about theses two? They seem nice enough, but

anyone is capable of putting on a good act.

Reluctantly, Zoë straightens all the way up and sees

that there are not the piles and piles of bananas that she

thought there would be here, instead, there are piles of metal

objects, and it kind of looks like the first days of the

Industrial Revolution up here. There are work benches all

around and projects strewn about with metal tubing, motors,

and wires, but nothing is in one complete solid discernable

unit, well, Zoë isn't an engineer, so maybe some of these

things are complete and she just doesn't know it, but she

doubts it.

"Wow, this is awesome," Connor says, as he is at the

edge of the tree fort, looking through a gap in the palm tree

fronds. Denali can be seen below, and Zoë goes over to look

at the town with him. There are probably twenty brick

buildings that all have red roofs, and in the middle of the

buildings is a large open area with benches that must be some

kind of theater Zoë thinks. There is a verdant green hill to

right of Denali and to the left is the sea that is bordered by a

cobblestone walkway that skirts the village.

Griselda asks them, "Would you want some tea?"

Zoë who has probably had tea one time in her life,

tries to hide a frown, because if she were being offered a soda

then shouldn't bat an eye, but because she doesn't want to

offend the inhumanely strong orangutan, Zoë says, "Sure, I

would love a cup." And then Griselda rummages through a

cabinet and pulls out a fine china tea set that she sets on a

small table that has four chairs around it that resides in a

corner of the tree house. Then Griselda is banging around

with some contraption, brings it over, and out of it comes

steaming water that she pours into the tea pot.

Zoë sits down at one of the chairs, as do Connor and

Isak, while Griselda goes to yet another cabinet and comes

back with a basket that she sets on the table.

"The tea should be ready now," says Griselda as she

pours tea into four cups, and Zoë can't help but think how

ridiculous this is, because Griselda with her huge primate

hands is handling the dainty fragile tea cups, when instead,

she would probably be much more comfortable using big

carafes or jugs of tea. "Take whatever you want to eat," the

orangutan says. In the basket there are apples, oranges, pears,

mangos, peaches, apricots, but no sign of anything not picked

from a tree.

Zoë takes a big juicy crunch out of a green apple and

the sourness of it hits her. Connor has a peach, Isak an

orange, and Griselda swallows half an apricot in one bite.

Zoë thinks this is innocent enough; Griselda doesn't seem to

have any ulterior motive here, so she relaxes.

Griselda says, "So where are you two really from?

Everyone in Acadia has seen the whale riders in their killer

whales before. You should have seen your faces; you looked

like you thought you were about to be eaten." Isak laughs

with Griselda.

Griselda sees their hesitation and says, "It is okay,

you can tell me. I mean you no harm," and Isak nods his head

in acquiescence, who was, after all, the one who told them

not to tell anyone else that they were from Minneapolis.

Connor, wiping peach juice off the side of his face,

says, "You're right we aren't from Acadia. We are from a

place called Minneapolis and we came here on the

Chirimoya."

Griselda says, "I always wondered about that Arvid

Xavier; there was always a little something mysterious about

him. You must know him well I take it?"

Zoë says, "No, we don't."

Connor says, "I only saw him once and only for

twenty minutes. He wanted me to watch his ship while he

was going to be gone somewhere. So we don't really know

anything about him at all."

Isak says, "That is curious. We Acadians have always

wondered what is beyond the sea, for Acadia is all we know.

Acadia is an island that is sixty miles long and forty miles

wide, which seems kind of big, but once you've been on it for

seven hundred years it seems tiny. So we have sent out

expeditions into the sea that is all around us, but no one has

ever found any other land. Our sailors can sail for months

and months and they can never find anywhere else; the

Acadian sea is infinite."

Griselda says, "So you can see that we are very

interested in this Minneapolis that you speak of, but it is also

plain that you are as interested in us as we are in you."

Connor says, "Oh yes, very much. We didn't even

know Acadia existed until this morning. It was an accident

that we came here at all. We were on a lake back home, Zoë

untied the Chirimoya from her moorings, and then suddenly,

poof, we were on the Acadian sea with Denali in the

distance."

Griselda ponderously rubs her red haired chin with

her hand, and she asks, "You two don't know how to get back

home, do you?"

Zoë says desperately, "No, we don't. Do any of you

have any idea how we can get back?"

Griselda says, "I would venture a guess that if you

take the Chirimoya back to the part of the Acadian sea from

where you entered then you will exit back to Minneapolis."

Zoë, who is talking with an orangutan and a seven

hundred year old boy, says, "That makes sense to me."

Connor says, "We should probably get going. What

time is it, Zoë?"

She looks at her watch and says, "It is one o'clock.

We should go," and Zoë sees the expression on their hosts

faces that are mingled with sadness and hopeful expectation,

and Zoë says, "But we'll come back for sure."

Connor says, "You bet we will. Tomorrow even."

Zoë says, "Yeah, tomorrow, that means of course, that

we have to be able to get home first."

Connor looking forlorn says, "True," and he must be

thinking of the familiar comforts of home.

"We'll walk you back to the ship," says Isak

plaintively.

Zoë is the first one to climb down and at first she is

spooked, but then as she starts putting one foot down and

then the next, she finds she isn't as scared as when she was

climbing up. Maybe it is because she is thinking about

whether or not going back to the sea will really get them back

home. Zoë thinks it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world,

if they had to stay here, but what does she really know about

this place?

They are all down, and Zoë and Connor answer

questions about what Minneapolis is like until they arrive at

the Chirimoya. Zoë climbs onto the ship after Connor, and

they turn to Isak and Griselda.

Griselda says, "Don't worry, you will make it home,"

and Zoë feels her confidence bolstered with these words.

Connor says, "We'll come back tomorrow."

Isak says, "See you then."

Zoë says, "Goodbye," and then they all say it.

Zoë unties the Chirimoya, their new friends walk

away, Connor is at the wheel, he turns the wheel, and he

says, "Take us backwards," the ship's sail pops out from the

mast and away from the dock they go.

Connor asks, "Do you remember exactly where we

came in at?"

Zoë says doubtfully, "We were kind of diagonal to

Denali, but as to how far out we were, maybe it will just feel

right when we are out there."

Connor says, "I think you're right; we'll just know."

Zoë doesn't tell him of her fear, which is that it could

take them forever to go around and around the exit point with

it always being, teasingly, mere feet away from where the

ship, and the worst part would be that they would never even

know it.

As they sail towards the exit they have some time to

kill, and Zoë asks, "If we were to stay here do you think that

we would be eleven forever?"

Connor says, "If they don't age I don't see why we

would."

Zoë says, "I don't know that I would like that. I

wouldn't want to be like Isak; I want to at least grow up to be

an adult. I can't imagine being stuck with a small short body

all of my life."

Connor says, "Me neither, but once I was all grown

up I would have no problem with living for seven hundred

years."

Zoë says, "It is hard to imagine what that would be

like."

Then they are out in the Acadian sea where Zoë feels

like this is where they came into Acadia. Denali is diagonal

from them and the waves out here gently rock the ship up and

down.

"Do you think it matters which way the ship is

facing?" asks Connor.

Zoë answers, "I don't think it matters. Does this seem

right to you, where we are?"

Connor says, "We must be really close to the exit."

Zoë looks down at her watch and sees that it is now

two o'clock. She squints up into the sky as some seagulls fly

over them, and Zoë can hear their squawking cries. She feels

her chest rise and fall as she worries about finding the exit,

and simultaneously, she tries to take this all in, because she

doesn't know if they will ever be able to come back to

Acadia. What if this was a one time deal?

Zoë blinks and sees the shore of Lake Nokomis, and

Connor screams, "We did it! We're home."

Zoë ties up the Chirimoya, and as she looks up she

sees something that is greatly disturbing. At the boat landing

is the same couple pushing their ugly green boat into the

water, which doesn't make any sense, because that is what

they were doing at eleven o'clock and now it is two o'clock.

She looks again to see if maybe they are pulling the boat in,

but no, they are pushing the boat into the water.

Zoë looks at her watch and sees the hands tell her that

it is eleven o'clock, and she says, "What? This can't be

happening."

Connor asks, "What can't be happening?"

"Time stopped here when we were in Acadia."

"How do you know that?" Connor asks.

Zoë says, "Right when we left here, at eleven o'clock,

those people were putting their boat in, and when we left

Acadia it was two o'clock. Look at my watch."

Connor goes over to her, sees that it says eleven

o'clock, and says, "I don't believe it. I do, but I just don't get

it." He runs his hand over the Chirimoya like it is a dog

worthy of respect as if it just defended him from a pack of

wolves.

"This ship is amazing," says Zoë.

Connor says, "And it is just sitting here on Lake

Nokomis and no one knows what it can do."

Zoë says, "Let's try and keep it that way. Let's not tell

anyone."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want anyone to steal the

Chirimoya," says Connor.

"I'm going to change," says Zoë. She goes down

below, puts her suit on, balls up her shoes and The Curtain

into her dress, goes back up, and they go into the water. The

water is cold at first but then Zoë warms up as she swims

back to the dock on her back, holding up her dress bundle in

the air.

When Zoë gets onto the dock she shivers because she

has no towel to dry off with, and Zoë thinks she wouldn't be

this cold in Acadia if she had just come out of the Acadian

sea. It is so much warmer there. Then Connor is next to her,

and he asks, "We didn't just imagine that did we?"

Zoë says, "No. It happened."

Connor says, "Yeah, it did!"

They go over to the trees that their bikes are tied to,

they unlock their bikes, and they begin to bike back to the

orphanage, and Zoë thinks how surreal it is to be back home.

Checkout Time



Lemond woke and he knew he was making them late. The light was all wrong; he had slept in later than he thought, but how much control do you really have to wake yourself up?

"Get up, little brother, it's almost check-out time for Sir Marlbrant," says Razzel, who looks to Lemond like he has been up for an hour at least. He looks fresh and clean, which is no surprise, because Razzel's fiancé will be there at the inn, so will Sir Marlbrant, muses Lemond.

"I'm awake; I'm awake," he blinks his eyes like an owl and asks, "What is for breakfast?"

Razzel glares at him, "You say that like there's going to be something different for breakfast unlike the thousands of other breakfasts that we've had that were all the same. Oats and be glad for them."

Lemond says, "I'm not hungry."

Razzel says, "You better eat; you never know how much of a fight Sir Marlbrant is going to give."

Lemond relents, "Fine," and gets out of bed, crosses the cabin over to the kitchen, and rummages for the all too familiar oats that he mixes with water.

Razzel joins his brother at the table as Lemond eats. Lemond thinks Razzel looks dreamily lost in thought.

Lemond asks, "Who are you thinking about? Katria?"

Razzel makes a tisk noise and says, "What's it to you? And for all you know I could be thinking of how we're going to get Sir Marlbrant to check out."

Lemond says, "But I know better. You're probably thinking of what you're going to say to Katria. Something about how she looks today. I know you think about that stuff. I caught you once talking into the mirror, practicing, when you thought I was asleep."

Razzel, nonplussed, says, "When you were in bed? That could have been anytime, because you're always sleeping. You sleep more than a bear in winter."

Lemond mocks, "Oh Katria how your skin shines like alabaster on this fine morning with the sun all a-glow-"

Razzel punches Lemond on the arm, knocking the spoon out of Lemond's hand.

Lemond says, "Hey, just because you're bigger doesn't give you the right to be a bully."

Razzel says, "Doesn't it?" but he doesn't mean it. There are too few people in their lives for them to terrorize the other unduly.

Lemond finishes getting ready while his brother waits impatiently.

The two brothers leave their one room cabin and their farm. On the way out the chickens dart this way and that, cows moo, and the sheep contentedly eat the grass. Lemond closes the gate behind him and they walk the thin dirt path to the wide county road that all travelers going through the region walk or ride through. The land is slightly hilly with an even mix of open spaces and stands of trees that float like islands in a sea.

Even though it is early, Lemond feels sweat forming on him brow and his skin starts to feel clammy against his clothes. It is the middle of summer. They walk the county road for an hour before they arrive at the inn, which is alongside the county road with trees all around it.

Lemond squints and says, "Something’s not right here."

Razzel stiffens and says, "All those horses. And look at the way they are laden with all those satchels. What normal traveler would need to carry so much?"

Lemond sighs and says, "Thieves."

Razzel says, "Outlaws," and Lemond feels a tinge of fear, because in a time of war outlaws go unchecked and do things they wouldn’t dare to do in times of peace. Lemond and Razzel’s father is off in the war. The lord of the land called his vassals who had to follow. The common men went too, not that they were required to, but the promise of the spoils of war are often too great to pass up, and it didn’t help that last year’s crops had been bad ones and Lemond and Razzel’s father was desperate for gold, and the money they would have gotten for the fall harvest wouldn’t come in time to hold them over, so he had gone with the others to war.

Lemond says, "Six horses."

Razzel whispers, "Katria."

Lemond says, "Good thing Sir Marlbrant hasn’t checked out," and both laugh at the thought of the large older knight, but their laughter doesn’t really cut the tension that they both feel. Lemond, even though he’s only twelve, knows that they are about to most likely be faced with an impossible situation. Razzel is older, but he’s only sixteen, and they are only two, and there are six outlaws in the inn who are up to no good, but the brothers can’t just walk away, because Razzel’s fiancé is probably being roughly handled.

Lemond asks, "Do you have a plan?"

Razzel answers, "Let’s be squirrels."

Lemond says, "You mean draw them out of the inn and have them chase us."

Razzel says, "Do you see another way?"

Lemond says, "No, but they need to see us though. Both of us."

Razzel glares down at his little brother.

Lemond answers the glare by saying, "I’ll be in danger either way, so who cares if they see me or not."

Razzel blows out the breath that he was holding and says, "Are you going to use it?"

Lemond measures up his older brother and says, "I suppose this is why I have it: for times like these."

Razzel grunts and walks towards the inn; Lemond trails after him, but Lemond thinks they are close enough and he bellows out loudly with a screech, "A woo uh ugh. A woooo uhhh ugh."

Razzel spins on him and barks, "Too soon," but he turns back as the inn door slams open. Two men amble out, looking annoyed and bothered, longing to be anywhere but outside in the open where there isn’t food, drink, and a chair.

The two men see the boys. The men stop and gawk at them. Razzel draws out a sword and Lemond pulls out a dagger. They both hold their weapons up for the outlaws to see. One of the outlaws, turns, and yells back into the inn, "We have some locals out here."

Two more men come outside and they form a line. The men start walking towards the boys.

Razzel says, "I think it’s time we were going now."

Lemond, feeling bold and wanting them to follow, yells, "Catch us if you can," and the two brothers run into the trees. The four men give chase. The men all have swords and assorted pieces of armor that they must have stolen off of better men. Lemond tries to think like a squirrel. What would a squirrel do? Run, leap, climb, hide, run, but keep moving, quicker than any larger animal.

Razzel abruptly comes to a stop, picks up some rocks, Lemond does the same, and they resume running again. They stop and throw rocks as far to their left as they possibly can. They have a lead on the men and Lemond hopes that the men split up to investigate the noise that the landing rocks are making.

Lemond says, "Let’s climb."

Razzel grunts for an answer and they begin to climb a huge, sprawling, and branch filled tree. They are half way up when Lemond hears a succession of snapping twigs, and Lemond looks down to see two men. Internally, Lemond rejoices; the men split up.

Razzel whispers, "Do it."

Lemond nods and one of the men says, "There they are up there, like two song birds." The men approach the tree and both wear menacing grins.

Razzel says at a normal speaking voice, and with urgency, "Do it."

Lemond tries to relax the best he can as he straddles a massive tree limb. He concentrates and one of the men slowly rises up off the ground as if he were on the end of invisible strings, pulling him upwards. The man howls some unintelligible string of words in protest. The other man stops to watch, slack jawed.

The man in the air is brought up higher and higher until he is level with Lemond and Razzel, the man looks at them beseechingly, but the man continues to keep rising up and up. It’s not like the men would give mercy to the boys if they looked at the outlaws the way this man is with his wide imploring eyes that are full of fear and dread.

It has been a long time since Lemond has used his gift around other people. He had only showed it to one other person in the last seven years and that was six months ago. The hunters, or poachers, as some called the rag tag band of dirty nomads, had been passing through on the county road. They typically stay a week until the natives tire of the hunters squatting on their lands.

There had been an eleven year old girl who took a liking to Lemond and Lemond to her. Lemond had taken her on walks through the woods to show her the secrets of the land, but when he ran out of mysteries to show her he showed her his gift.

At first he lifted rocks to her amazement and then he lifted a rabbit into the air, and then the girl had asked Lemond to lift her. He had never lifted another person before, but he knew it wouldn’t be any different than lifting anything else that he had easily lifted with his concentrated mind.

The girl rose up with delight and screamed, "I’m flying; I’m flying. Make me move," and Lemond had moved her through the air, and the girl kept saying, "I’m flying; I’m flying," until she grew tired of it and Lemond set her down.

The girl had kissed him on the cheek for the flight and she had held his hand as they walked back to where her people were camped. Her hand was dirty like she was, and like all the hunters were, but Lemond hadn’t cared, because he had never held a girl’s hand before. The next day the hunters had left.

Now the outlaw is ten feet above Razzel and Lemond. The boys are fifteen feet up in the air. Razzel hisses, "That’s high enough," and Lemond hesitates and the man floats stationary in the air. Lemond doesn’t want to do what he knows he has to do, but the outlaw wouldn’t show him any mercy if the position were reversed, so Lemond does it. Lemond stops concentrating and the man speedily drops down the twenty-five feet to the ground.

The man howls in pain upon impact and says, "My leg, my leg, it’s broken. My leg," he says piteously.

Even from up here Lemond can see the other outlaw’s eyes are bulging from what just happened in a matter of thirty seconds. The outlaw turns away and runs.

Razzel hisses at Lemond, "Quick, use your gift again. Those screams are going to bring the other two down upon us any minutes now, and I would rather face two instead of three."

Lemond looks at the man moaning on the ground, pushes down the pity he feels for the man, and Lemond looks at the outlaw running away. Lemond concentrates and the man is kicking his legs in the air as if he could run on the wind.

This comical flailing in the air reminds Lemond of being by the lake. No one else was around. He swam under the surface of the water, looking for fish. Lemond had seen a fish and he made it fly out of the water and up into the air. He had stood up and tried to grab hold of the wet and slippery fish. The fish had wriggled in his hands in its protest, but Lemond was able to drag the fish onto the shore.

The fish hadn’t belonged in the air and neither does this man. The outlaw kicks his feet and whips his arms; he is trying to hold onto a branch but he can’t get a grip. The man is going higher and higher; he has to know what is about to happen, and then it does. He plummets to the ground, but he doesn’t scream or move.

Razzel says, "Let’s get down from here before the other two get here."

And so the two scramble down the tree. Lemond keeps looking back and forth between the two men on the forest floor. One isn’t moving and the other is moaning. When Lemond went to bed last night he thought it would be a simple matter to force Sir Marlbrant to check out of the inn; he never could have imagined that he would have to hurt men in order to prevent them from harming him.

Lemond is down from the tree and he walks over to the man who isn’t moving. Lemond bends down and checks for a pulse and he finds one. Razzel yanks him away by pulling roughly on his sleeve.

"We have to get out of here. They are going to be here any minute," rasps Razzel.

Lemond comes to his senses, realizes their dire predicament, and he starts to follow his brother who is running.

Now running, Lemond hears something from behind, "There they are," and Lemond pumps his legs faster with fear giving him a rush of adrenaline.

Razzel stops at the head of a long and wide stand of thorn bushes. He smiles and slowly enters through the valley of thorns. Lemond follows and is repeatedly stuck by the thorns and he does his best to ignore the sharp pricks pulling on his clothes and on his exposed skin: his face, his arms, his neck, and his hands.

Razzel says, "Here they are. Get behind me and use your gift on one of them. Quick."

Lemond moves behind his older brother. The men are at the beginning of the thorn bushes. Lemond forces himself to relax. One breath and another and now he is centered. One of the outlaws rises up into the air.

He yells, "What the? How’s this happening?"

The other man doesn’t move towards the brothers; he stands, open mouthed, watching his compatriot go up and up in the air. Eventually the man comes to the point where Lemond had dropped the other two, but his conscious is weighing him down, and he decides not to drop this one. Instead, Lemond deposits the man on the tops of a tall tree; the limbs rock back and forth, barely able to hold the man’s weight; and the man doesn’t dare to move.

The other man is holding his sword up and he elbows his way through the thorns, coming at the brothers. There isn’t time for Lemond to calm himself and use his gift on the advancing outlaw. Razzel’s sword and the man’s sword clang, metal on metal, as they slash at one another. The man is stronger, but Razzel is younger and quicker, and Razzel gets behind the man.

The outlaw roars in frustration and Razzel cuts a stroke down at the man’s ankles. The man goes to turn towards Razzel, and in doing so, falls to the ground, grasping his left ankle.

Lemond goes past the prone man with a quizzical look on his face.

Razzel says, "The Achilles tendon. He won’t be able to walk on it."

Lemond nods his head and looks up at the other outlaw at the top of the tree who isn’t moving but darts his head left and right, looking for safe way down, but Lemond knows the man won’t be able to find one, because if he dares move then the thin branches will give way and send him on his way down to the ground.

Lemond is numb from all of this. Acts like these are not supposed to be experienced by twelve year olds. Sure this world is a rough one, but he’s not even a teenager and he’s facing horrors that some never have to face.

Razzel says, "Come on. Katria is with the other two. We have to get to her."

They run back towards the inn and on the way Lemond asks, "Why didn’t the other two come with these four?"

Razzel shrugs the best he can while running, but Lemond has a feeling that he knows why. These two men are the masters of the rest and that must mean that they are the powerful members of the group who lead the weaker ones that they just faced.

Lemond can’t believe that this is happening. The part that he can’t believe is that Razzel really asked him to use his gift. Razzel of all people? Their mother had had the same gift, but she loathed it, and rarely used it. She saw that Lemond had it and she repeatedly warned him not to use it.

"Don’t use it, honey, it is a thing of evil," she would say and he could barely understand how something so fun to use could be evil. So Lemond tried his best to keep his practices with his gift secret, but his mother would catch him and berate him.

Then their mother had died and afterwards when Razzel caught his little brother using his gift; Razzel would pick a fight with Lemond and Lemond never won. Lemond got the message and dared not use his gift anywhere near his older brother, and now, today, Razzel asked him to use his gift.

Lemond can see the inn and there is a man out front, sitting on a rocking chair. He sees them but doesn’t get up. Razzel and Lemond get closer and closer and the man leisurely stands up and leans against the wooden building.

The outlaw pulls out his sword and says, "Well, I don’t know how you two boys were able to outsmart my companions, but this is where your success story comes to an end I’m afraid."

Lemond watches the man swing his sword in easy and graceful loops and Lemond knows that this man is deadly with a sword and that Razzel has no chance against this warrior. Lemond relaxes, concentrates, and hurtles the rocking chair at the man’s head. The sound of breaking wood fills the air and the outlaw falls to the ground unconscious and bloody.

Razzel, smiling, says, "One more to go."

Lemond says, "The leader."

Razzel says, "With you and your gift we could take on an army."

Again Lemond is amazed at Razzel’s acknowledgement of his gift. His brother hadn’t done so since before their mother died, and it all came rushing back to Lemond. Seven years ago Lemond hadn’t locked the fence and a cow had gotten out. Their mother had gone out, in the rain, to fetch the cow. She had come back drenched from the cold rain; she had come down with pneumonia and she died.

Razzel had blamed Lemond for her death. Countless times he had said, "If you had closed that gate, then she would still be alive. It’s your fault she’s dead."

And that isn’t something that anyone wants to hear or bare, but as time went on Razzel said that less and less until he stopped saying it. Before their mother’s death Razzel used to enjoy seeing what Lemond could do with his gift, but then their mother had died and Razzel took up his mother’s mantle and tried to prevent Lemond from using his gift.

One evening, crying, Razzel had told Lemond, "Don’t you know why I don’t want you to use your gift? She had the same gift and every time I see you use it I am reminded of her and how she’s not with us, and how you are the reason she’s dead, but I also see that she is more in you than she is in me, like I am some unworthy piece of her that she didn’t care enough about to give her gift to. What I see in you is what I see lacking in myself," and he trailed off.

But all that is behind them and they are here now, about to face some outlaw chieftain. Lemond fears for what he will see when they enter through the inn’s door. Will Katria be safe? Katria is sixteen, four years older than Lemond, and she had always been like a big sister to him.

Razzel, with sword drawn, opens the door. For show Lemond has his dagger out, but he is well aware what his real weapon is.

The boys enter the inn and the scene is grizzly. Lemond sees the same open space, which he’s seen a thousand times, which has a couple rows of long tables with thick chairs up against them, the fireplace, and the bar. The goings on of today are not the norm. Sir Marlbrant is tied up to a chair; his head is sloped down and resting on his chest. Katria is visibly uncomfortable sitting on the lap of a thin man who seems to be enjoying Katria’s discomfort. He sees Razzel and Lemond and the man’s amusement fades away.

The outlaw chieftain says softly, "Up now," and Katria vaults off of the man and goes behind him, and against the far wall.

The thin man stands and says, "Well, well, what do we have here? Two local boys pretending to be men; and if you stand here then you must have found a way to dispatch all of my men. Impressive I must say. With such skill as you boys have it’s too bad that you didn’t go with the men to the war."

Every time the man says, "Boys," Lemond loathes the man more and more, because when he says, "Boys," the man says it so scornfully, like he is talking to beetles or some ants.

The outlaw chieftain continues, "And you can imagine that I find myself to be a little curious as to how you did it. No don’t tell me. Let me guess. One of you has the gift. I can’t fathom what kind of gift you might have, but it’s one strong enough that it can fell five men who are by far your betters."

Razzel hisses, "Men who rob, burn, and kill aren’t our betters."

The outlaw laughs, "I see my reputation precedes me. Ah, but I see you two are anxious to rid this inn of the likes of me. However, you should know, and I’m not even sure why I’m giving you this little warning, but I too have the gift."

At that Lemond’s eyes bulge. There are all kinds of gifts in this wide world he knows, and the longer you live, the more practice, and the better a person becomes with anything they do, including fine tuning their gift. Lemond knows that he has gained more and more control over his gift as he gotten older. Lemond is more apprehensive about this confrontation than any of the others he just had with the other outlaws.

The outlaw chuckles, "Little one, you just gave yourself away. It’s you with the gift," and the next thing Lemond knows is that his head feels like it has just exploded. He’s had headaches before but nothing like this. The only thing that he can do is fall to his knees and clutch his head.

Lemond hears Razzel say, "What have you done?"

The pain is so strong that Lemond closes his eyes and he moans. Lemond forgets about everything else and everyone else and tries to block out the pain or make it go away, but it isn’t like stepping on a nail, because he can’t simply yank out the source of his agony. Time doesn’t exist, just the ceaseless throbbing.

Then his eyes open; the pain is gone; Razzel is sword fighting with the outlaw chieftain. Lemond realizes the reason his agony is gone is because the outlaw can’t use his gift while he is distracted with fighting his brother.

Katria screams, "Razzel," in alarm as the outlaw slashes Razzels’ left arm. Almost instantly Lemond sees blood on Razzel’s shirt sleeve.

Lemond also sees that Razzel is no match for this outlaw and that Razzel is going to get hurt even more, or worse, if he doesn’t do something about it.

Lemond remains on his knees. He concentrates deeply and focuses the best that he can. The outlaw rises up off of the ground and he is launched at the ceiling. It happens so quickly that it seems to happen in the blink of an eye. One second the outlaw was on ground sword fighting and the next second he is thrown against the ceiling where his head is bashed hard against the unyielding wood. The outlaw falls to the ground limply, unconscious, and no longer a threat.

Lemond gets up and he sees that Razzel and Katria are hugging one another. It’s over. They did it. All six of the outlaws can’t hurt any of them anymore. Lemond feels numb and he feels like crying, but he won’t let himself do that.

Lemond has a deep desperate wish that his mother were still alive, so he could ask her about the gift and how he is supposed to live with it. But she would probably only say, "Don’t use it," but what a huge waste that would be. No, he won’t be like her and run from her gift; he will find a way to make use of his gift, and no one is going to stop him from using his gift, not his brother and not the ghost of his mother in his head. Not anymore.

Razzel who is there, helping his brother stand up, says, "Lemond, we did it. You did it."

Katria is there too, puzzled, she looks at Lemond quizzically, and she asks, "You did that? How?"

Lemond says, "You wouldn’t believe me if I told you."