“This is Sabia Muirín,” Reagan said showing Cas and Blythe the small infant he held. “She lost her family in an accident in the Western Sea. I think it would be easier for her if she just grew up thinking she was born into this family. I don’t want to hear either of you telling her she was found or adopted, do you understand?”
The boys nodded their heads wide-eyed. Blythe felt a sense of déjà vu in what his father said. The look in his eyes was familiar as well. Ever since the day he met Margaret, almost a year ago, they would ask da for details about the night mom died. He always gave oblique answers and got a look in his eyes that told the boys to stop pushing. Once, when Blythe asked specifically if he and Cas shared the same mother, that look had become so withering Blythe almost ran out of the room.
Reagan’s words indeed had been said around Blythe before, although it was a faint memory. Or had it been a dream? Blythe could not say for sure.
The boys had gotten off the bus and come home to their father in the front room. He was holding a small bundle, rocking and bouncing while he paced the room. He had a face that looked both excited and nervous. When the door shut, he introduced the two boys to the new addition to the family.
“A new baby?” Margaret asked, “So you have a little sister now, but no mom, and your father hadn’t mentioned anything to you before just coming home with another kid? That is too strange!”
“I mean, it’s not like we have to be consulted Mags.” Blythe replied, “He’s the adult here, and she has no family. It sounds like they were all on a ship from Uwhal that went down off the coast. She was lucky enough to make it out alive. Da said she was found screaming in a boat, not a living thing in sight. Since they think she was born in Ustan waters, she is being considered an Ustan-born citizen.”
Blythe shuddered to think about what the outcome would have been if Ustani border guards believed the child old enough to have been born in international or, Akien forbid, Uwhali waters. Ustan laws were very strict on anyone, regardless of age, entering the country without cause. This is why Uwhali refugees, a growing population in the West end of the country, had to land their ships at Uwhali Embassy ports to seek asylum. At least once a month, especially in the stormy seasons, there were reports of massive arrests and deportations of refugees whose lifeboats washed up on coasts when their ships were wrecked en route to Somo-Doma-Na; often miles off-course from the communities within the Embassy ports consisting of stacked apartments or tent towns Uwhali could live in until their cases could be considered by Ustan officials.
There were not too many Uwhali children deported for illegal entry. Often, they were orphaned, separated from their families, and placed in state-run institutions. Children who passed through the Vansket-Te Ni-hem-Te either entered Ustan citizenship through military service or were deported to Uwhal if they were unable or unwilling to serve. Most VN “graduates” chose service and did so with a patriotic fervor no Ustan-born child ever held. Most of Blythe’s classmates gossiped that VN attendees were beaten daily until they were broken. Others said they were forced to fight wild animals for their meals or watch recordings of Uwhali war crimes. Blythe was happy to have a sister if it saved her from that fate.
Life with a baby turned out to be messier than Blythe had expected. Sabia never seemed to stop crying and the two brothers and their father had to keep a seemingly steady stream of supplemental milk going into the poor child’s mouth. Every cloth in the house was stained with patches of white where spit up from burping had splattered the wearer. Reagan had hired a nanny to help when he was at work, which is how the three learned a few tricks for burping and diaper changes. They weren’t foolproof, however, and Blythe was amazed at the aim of this small child during the almost hourly diaper changes. Sleep was at a premium and nerves were stretched so tense, that a butterknife could have snapped them. But when that sweet child smiled, hearts melted, and tensions eased... for a short while.
Blythe had been having more dreams like the one he’d had a year ago. Reagan seemed to think the increased frequency of Blythe’s dreams may have been due to the stresses of his newest sibling. Some had faceless terrors chasing him, while in others he was pursued by what looked to him like Ustani soldiers. The soldier dreams were almost always the same; he is protecting a small child from men and women dressed in comfortable, utilitarian uniforms. The soldiers wield slick, cylindrical devices of varying lengths. Some devices are made with metals of varying lusters, others appear to be some kind of smooth stone. Most are solid; however, a few have smooth bores of almost uniform gauges.
Blythe recognizes a few of the gauged devices as elemental projectors, military-grade Manipulative technology that allow the user to use elemental Manipulation to cause varying levels of destruction. The other devices seem to do something to affect the psyche of those the user wielded them against. The soldiers raise their weapons toward Blythe and the child, who almost always appears to be Uwhali, and activate their devices. The smooth-bored Elemental Projectors launch missiles of stone, fire, water, and air. The child shrinks to the ground, crying out as Blythe leaps in front of the child as if to block the incoming projectiles. As his feet touch the ground, Blythe drives a fist toward the ground and scoops low with the other, open hand while dropping into a slight squat. He then strains to lift his body, which feels as if it has been burdened with invisible weights. As he stands, hands palm up in front of his waist as if lifting a heavy and bulky item, stone and earth rise between him and the oncoming projectiles. As the Elemental Missiles strike and break on the rocky shield Blythe called up, waves of emotions bombard Blythe and the child. Only a few Emotional Waves, mostly dread, make it through before Blythe unconsciously sends waves of his own at the soldier’s devices, Suppressing them. He then would wake up as the soldiers can be heard cursing and scrambling up the other side of the rock wall.
Blythe asked his father once what these dreams could mean. Reagan had told him it was just his brain finding a way to entertain itself while his body rested. When asked about the nightmares, his father said that some people find scary things entertaining. Either way, he certainly couldn’t do most of the things he could in his dreams. He had tried once after a particularly vivid dream where he was chased through the path in the woods towards a strange building he knew was not where it was in the dream.
He had run against a wall and, like in the soldier dream, called a wall of stone of his own to stop the faceless terror that pursued him. That was the night he could have sworn he’d woken up to a stone flying through his window. The next morning, he’d tried creating a wall in the backyard by stamping the ground, punching the air above the ground, and squat-lifting air.
When nothing happened and his father asked what he was doing, he said, “just an aerobic exercise. I had a dream that we needed to do these funny squats in gym class, and I was wondering if they’d do anything.” He dejectedly added, “they don’t do anything but make me feel silly.”
Reagan laughed, and Blythe joined him in laughing. It did seem like a pretty good joke after all, even though he wished it had done something.
Blythe was running from a terror, but it was not a dream this time. It wasn’t actually his terror, but Margaret’s. Mags, as Blythe had taken to calling her, was a very charismatic girl as Blythe had learned over the few years that he’d known her, and a lot of people liked her for it. Blythe thought his name was Arthur, but he wasn’t entirely sure. This large tyrant of a boy seemed to be one of the exceptions to the rule. He had come across Blythe and Margaret walking together to class and decided that was a little too bold of the two young teens. At first, he had seemed congenial, walking up to Blythe with a wide grin on his pudgy face and swiping back his greasy brown hair. He threw a tree trunk-sized arm about Blythe’s slight shoulders, causing him to dip down and forward under the blow.
“Hey!” He said looking at Margaret, “you’re that city girl, right? Was it Marge?” The laugh that erupted from the boy shook his heavy frame and jostled Blythe so much he almost lost balance.
Margaret’s face went dark. “Yes, I’m the ‘city girl.’” She growled, “there isn’t anyone else who can claim that in about 50 miles. My name is Margaret and if you were smart Arthur Erikson, you’d stop hanging out with Betty. She’s more trouble than even you’re worth.”
Blythe realized that was where he’d seen this boy. He was always swooning over Betty Bergstrom and her flock of chittering airheaded girls. The ones who had been giving Mags so much grief from her first day in the community.
Arthur’s face melted from its jovial mask into its underlying irate normal appearance. His eyes changed from calculated cheer to unmitigated offense. Blythe tried to duck out of the larger boy’s grasp. As he did, a plump vice of a hand closed over the grab handle of Blythe’s backpack and pulled. Blythe let go of the shoulder straps and let gravity and Arthur’s hand lay claim to his scholarly possessions. Blythe picked up his pace to catch up to Margaret, who had increased her stride to avoid Arthur’s questing hand. As he stepped away from Arthur, Blythe noticed a strange sensation emanating from the girl he’d caught up to. Waves were emanating from behind that seemed the opposite of the ones coming from his friend. Where the two waves seemed to collide, Blythe felt a ripple that rebounded toward the two individuals.
Margaret jumped nearly imperceptibly as soon as Blythe began to feel the tides that he suspected were the two teen’s emotions, and a quick swell emanated from her towards Blythe. He realized that he had experienced something similar – in his dreams. Experimentally, he thought of a wall between himself and the other two. He then thought of the wall pressing against the waves when he noticed the sensation of current felt like it was suddenly lapping against a barrier. This time, Margaret’s surprise was less subtle. She glanced at Arthur and then Blythe as if sizing the two up. She grabbed Blythe’s hand as Arthur’s usually blotchy face turned a deep red. Blythe was pulled along at first, then Arthur let out a confused, angry huff. The boy then began to pursue the smaller teens with an irrational fire in his eyes. Torrents pummeled the wall Blythe had imagined in place that seemed to follow keeping pace with them. They rounded corners in the hall, making their way to their class, Talvion History. As they neared the door, and the safety of an adult-occupied room, Blythe felt a hand brush the back of his shirt.
Without thinking, he blew towards his free hand and swept it behind him in a quick, graceful motion. A moment later, Arthur cursed and fell as if tripped by some invisible wire. He did a clumsy somersault and hit a locker on the right side of the hallway with a dull thunk. Blythe and Margaret were through the door of the classroom a second later. The teacher looked at the two panting teens and then to Arthur, who was not in her class and would not be for another year due to poor grades in the previous year’s Theories of Æfelan, a course Blythe’s father said was more a religion class than a scholarly one. Blythe had enjoyed learning about Akien and his Children. Blythe had trouble understanding how anyone could fail a class that was more about metaphysics than anything else, but he could also see Arthur struggling with memorizing the names of the Children and what each could do. It would not surprise him if Arthur was stuck trying to learn about the Dreamer until he aged out of education.
Indeed, when they had the class together the year before, the large boy had baffled Blythe. How could anyone mix up the fact that Anord influenced toxic people while Anscor influenced natural disasters? it could have had something to do with the teacher using the word “destructive” in reference to both, but “destructive people” are very different from “destructive comets” in Blythe’s estimation. Often, he guessed that Betty and her followers, including Arthur, were secretly acolytes of Anord. They had learned so far in Talvion History that there had been such cults at some point, although these had mostly been eliminated six generations ago.
The teacher, a slight woman with graying hair and pallid skin named Ms. Lehr, walked to the door. Grasping the edge of the door, she said, “young man! You need to go to class! Stop harassing my students before you need to change your weekend plans.” Huffing, she shut the door and turned to face the pair of teens still puffing in the front of the classroom. “What in the Dream was that boy chasing you for?”
Blythe and Margaret, thankful that they were no longer being chased, relayed the events from between classes. When they finished, the rest of the class had come into the room, and Ms. Lehr asked the two to take their seats. “I assure you, I will take care of Mr. Erikson,” she said as they went to their seats. “And Mr. Wood, I don’t think anyone in this school is in a ‘cult of Anord.’ It seems Mrs. Færin is teaching more religion than theory in her class. That would not have been the case had you taken the class when I was teaching Theories of Æfelan.”
It was halfway through class before Blythe’s belongings were returned to him. A tanned woman whom Blythe recognized as Mrs. Færin carried it into the classroom apologizing to Ms. Lehr for interrupting. “Arthur had this when he came into my classroom. He seemed too embarrassed to admit he’d taken it from you, but I recognized it from last year.”
As soon as the backpack was placed under his desk, Blythe lost the now-familiar sensations of waves lapping against him from his classmates. He felt both relief and loss from the change. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Mag’s expression was one of revelation. He had seen that look before when pieces fell into place for a problem that puzzled her to the point of frustration. What did you learn Mags?
