Fervor (12 page)

Sarah on the other hand, not only touched his mind, but seemed to hold on to him there.

“
What do you see, Sam? Show me what you see.”

The small boy whipped his head around and flashed the image of Royce and his cohorts bearing down on him to his Fixer. Nathan was still nowhere in sight. In fact, Sam was sure that his Watcher still had some distance to clear. If he didn’t do something soon, Sam knew that Royce would reach him long before Nathan would arrive, and the black-haired boy looked like he had murder in his eyes.

“
Can you swim, Sam? Can you swim? Francis told me once in passing that Royce couldn’t swim. He won’t follow you very far into the water. I don’t know about the others, but you’ll be safe from him there,”
she offered. He could tell that she was feeling just as desperate as he was.

Sam shuddered. The truth was that, while he could swim, he was a very weak swimmer. Given the choice of confronting Royce directly, and facing the chance that he might drown, however, the drowning sounded like the more pleasant way to go. Gritting his teeth, he veered towards the ocean and splashed his way into the water.

His charge into the waves did not deter the larger boy at first. Royce plunged in after him, until the water was waist deep for the Big. Sam struggled against the pull of the tide. The water was excruciatingly cold, and by the time Royce had stopped following him, the small boy was treading water. Sam felt his hands and feet going numb and he soon realized that he had no control over which direction he was heading. The choppy waves, still a little wild from the residual effects of the storm, lapped at his face and occasionally sloshed into his mouth and up his nose. As the taste of salt trickled into his windpipe, he began to gag and choke. Sam felt himself start to panic.

“
Sam!”
He heard Sarah loud and clear in his head.
“What’s going on? Nathan’s almost there and we won’t be far behind him. Are you okay? Did you get away from Royce? You still seem so scared...”

“
I’m sorry, Sarah. I did what you suggested, but the water’s so cold and I’m feeling so tired.”

It was hard for him to concentrate as he struggled for breath. At the same time, he didn’t want his last few thoughts to be shared with the rest of the connection. Anything he was going to tell her was to remain just between him and her. He stopped fighting the waves as fiercely, and steeled the link with Sarah.

“
Royce was talking with others in secret – other Bigs that I didn’t recognize. I don’t think that they wanted anybody to see them, and that’s why he came after me. I found something…a container. I know that it’s something special. I think that it’s still safe in my pocket. When they drag my body out, make sure you get that before they take me away.”

“
Your body? Sam – no!”
Her push was so forceful that it gave Sam a headache.
“Nathan’s just about there. Don’t give up!”

As much as he wanted to listen to her, it was at that very moment that a sizeable wave washed over his head and with little ability left to lift his face above water again, Sam began to sink.

“
Sam! Sam!”

He could hear the cries faintly in his head as his vision blurred and the greyness fell over him. He wasn’t sure who exactly it was calling to him, his ability to identify the person who spoke fading along with his consciousness. As the blackness overtook him, he thought that he felt something make contact with his forearm, and he could have sworn that he heard, just barely,
“Gotcha.”

* - * - *

“
Sam? I think he’s coming around.”

The voice was a hazy one inside his head, but one that he would always recognize, and he knew it was attached to the small hand that rested on his chest, a chest that felt painfully constricted and water-logged. With a few coughing gags, Sam weakly turned onto his side and spewed saltwater onto the damp sand next to him. That was when he noticed that there was still a firm grip on his arm as well. Nathan was there, too.

“
Dammit, little buddy, you scared us to death. Don’t you ever do that again, you hear?”
He felt the thick fingers by his elbow tighten their grasp a little – one brief and reassuring squeeze.

“
What were you doing so far away from home?”
Fiona demanded. She knelt beside Sarah, looking equally concerned.
“How do you expect Nathan to keep you safe if you don’t stay where he can easily get to you?”

“
Fiona,”
Sarah protested.
“Give him a chance to recover before you start nagging at him. I’m sure that he didn’t mean any harm.”

“
Finding,”
Sam said shakily, as Nathan helped him to sit up. That was when the smaller boy noticed that Francis was on the beach as well. He stood a few feet away, his arms crossed and his expression grim. Royce has not that far away either, past the Teller. The other Bigs that had been with the black-haired boy were nowhere in sight
. “I was finding. I couldn’t help it. There was something there, but then I saw Royce and...”

Now it was Nathan’s turn to respond unhappily.

“
I heard Royce and Francis talking while Sarah was trying to revive you. Royce claimed that he was just doing what Francis had asked, giving you a bit of a scare so that I had to come help you. They said that it had something to do with testing my talent, whatever that meant. It sounds like they planned this, and Royce had suggested that he wasn’t really going to hurt you,”
the broad-shouldered Big reported.

Sam reached out his mind and touched Sarah’s. They both knew that Royce may have been telling the truth about Francis asking for his assistance in order to test Nathan’s gift, but otherwise he was lying through his teeth. It was clear that he could in no way be trusted.

“
Come on, little buddy,”
Nathan murmured, lifting Sam out of the sand.
“Let’s get you home and rested. The finding can wait for another day.”

With that, he carried the smaller boy back to the house, Fiona and Sarah by his side. Francis, with his familiar melancholic expression, followed a few feet behind them, and Royce stood quietly watching them go, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

Messages

Sam spent more than a full day recuperating from his close call, with Sarah and Fiona checking in on him at regular intervals. Nathan stopped in a couple of times as well, but there was no sign of Francis at first. In fact, the Teller avoided the house altogether for a couple of days, realizing that he was in the proverbial doghouse for involving Royce in orchestrating the Watcher’s test, and placing Sam at risk. The grazed knee while testing Sarah had been bad enough and Sam started to wonder if Francis had something that he kept hidden well behind his walls that would suggest that he were out to get the smaller boy as much as Royce was. He also didn’t think that the strange Bigs that he had spotted with Royce had anything to do with Nathan’s test, and that part still worried Sam.

When he was finally feeling a little more like his usual self, Sam pulled the small orange container out of his pocket and had Fiona and Sarah join him in his room. He displayed his find to them, placing it in the palm of his outstretched hand. He also offered a visual image for Sarah through the connection as she reached out to touch it.

“
What is it?”
Fiona asked, eying the strange box warily.

“
Something special,”
Sam insisted.
“Something that I’m sure that I was supposed to find.”

“
Okay, but what is it?”
she repeated.

“
I think that it’s some sort of package,”
Sarah suggested.
“We need to get it open, to see what’s inside.”
She brushed her hand over its surface.
“It’s smooth and slightly soft. Someone sealed it in wax, like they were trying to make sure that it was waterproof. I think that they did that because they intended it to pass through the water. What if someone sent it on purpose? What if someone actually used the storm to get it to us on Fervor?”

“
Why would anyone do that?”
Fiona scoffed
. “It was probably something that was being stored somewhere by the shore, and they waterproofed it to protect it in case there were some sort of tidal surge. Although I must say, I am curious to see what’s inside of it. How do you get it open?”

Sam shrugged.

“
We have to break the seal somehow,”
Sarah offered.
“But carefully. We don’t know what’s inside, and it could be breakable.”

“
We could try heating it, and melting the wax away,
” Sam responded, watching Sarah run her fingers along its edges.

“
We’d still have to be careful,”
the petite girl insisted.
“Whatever’s in here might be flammable as well. We have no idea.”

Fiona disappeared into the kitchen, searching through the various magically fueled implements in order to find something that could help them safely break through the seal. She returned with a tool that generated a small flame and they set about carefully working their way into the container. When the casing finally yielded to their efforts, Sam gently pried it open. There was a roll of paper inside.

“
Paper?”
Fiona questioned.

“
Like a message in a bottle,”
the smaller of the two girls laughed.
“Is there writing on it?”

Sam both nodded and confirmed this through the connection, giving Sarah a visual flash of the note.

“
Can I see?”
Fiona requested. Sam passed her the paper

“
Read it for me,”
Sarah asked.

“
On the outside it says ‘for Fiona.’ It’s for me...”
the older girl looked startled and almost dropped Sam’s unusual find.

“
Go on, go on,”
Sarah stated excitedly.
“What else does it say?”

“
I hope that this makes its way to your Finder and then to you okay. I heard you recently and I know that you are aware of some of the things going on. I don’t think any of the others suspect, not the others on Fervor, and not anyone here either.”
She hesitated
. “Here? Where’s here?”

“
Maybe it says further along – keep reading,”
Sam said, eager to proceed..

“
I intend on keeping your secret. I want you to know that I never agreed with the way that they decided to do this. The scholars insisted on it. I’m only a technician, but I know the difference between right and wrong – and this is wrong. You are people, not animals, and deserve compassion and fair treatment. I can’t stop things at the moment, and it may be a while before I can come to your assistance, but I have a few ideas, and hopefully I‘ll be able to act on them. The Coming isn’t planned for many years, and I warned them what sort of havoc that this might wreak on your systems, but they won’t heed my advice. Thankfully, they don’t suspect that I’m a latent, so they don’t know that I’m trying to find a way to get around them. I’ll keep you posted when I get the chance. I pray that this reaches the right hands. It will if your Finder is a strong one. Take care of each other and don’t give up hope.”
Fiona paused, glancing over at Sam.
“It’s only signed ‘E’”

“
Maybe whoever sent this was worried that it might not end up where it was supposed to go, and if he or she gave us a full name, it would get traced back to them, and that would be an end to that,”
Sarah suggested.
“Whoever it is needed to protect themselves while they are trying to help us. It just makes me feel really happy, knowing that we have an ally out there, somewhere other than Fervor.”