Winged (Aetharian Narratives) (23 page)

“Make sure they’re all nice and tight.” I hear a woman’s voice that I have never heard before. “She’s going to do a lot of squirming when she wakes so we want to make sure no part of her will move too much. That will only put her in more pain…”

I let the voice float away. I don’t want to know why it is saying these things.

* * *

“Emma, I am going to break a lot rules showing you what I’m going to,” Oak said. He looked out of the tent again. “There are going to be a lot of angry people and probably some panic, but I really think I’m doing the right thing.”

I nodded. “I’ll try to help make it as easy as possible.”

“Thanks,” Oak said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I was amazed how comforted I was by the small gesture.

“The most important thing is that you stay quiet and calm.” He looked at me. “Your presence can go unnoticed with any hope. Do you have anything to … put over your hair?”

I pulled the scarf Dresden made me wear every morning in the market out of my pocket and wrapped my head in it once more.

“Great,” Oak said, watching me tuck in the last strands around my face.

“I’m sorry I’m not the most discrete person.”

“That isn’t something you need to apologize for," he said. “That is something to be celebrated.” He looked out the tent once more. “All right, let’s get going.”

He held out his hand to help me off the ground. He pulled me up, took one more look around outside, and then ran out of the tent.

Things had gotten much quieter during the time we were in the tent. Everyone seemed to be congregated closer to the back of the campsite. I realized they were probably at my tent looking for me. Things would get very nasty once they realized I was nowhere to be found. Oak and I weaved our way to the front of the campsite ducking behind as many tents as we could to stay out of the line of sight. The atmosphere started to grow louder no matter how much closer to the front of the site we got.

When we got to the front I could see that the entrance to the gate was ajar. Oak stepped forward and looked around. A small flash of light illuminated his face for a second. Oak turned to me, pointed to the ground, and pulled me forward through the gate. I looked down and saw the two guards that were supposed to be watching the entrance passed out on the ground. Once again I saw a flash of light penetrate the darkness between the trees lining the right side of the road. As soon as we cleared the guards we ran to the source of it.

“Glad you two could finally make it,” a man’s voice said when we approached the trees.

“We’re here now,” Oak said. “So let’s get moving.”

I could see the outlines of two people standing in front of us. I was alarmed when I saw something else that didn’t have a person’s silhouette a little further into the trees.

“Yes,” said a female voice, “let’s go before they realize their savior is gone and come smashing out of the gates after us.”

They turned and walked to whatever was making the strange profiles. Oak put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a small push in their direction. The man climbed on top of the object then helped the woman climb on behind him. A long head with pointed ears rose from the ground and the object separated into two. I realized that they were two horses. Oak climbed onto the second horse and helped me on behind him.

“Hold on,” he said.

The horses started to move away from the campsite. Everything started normally. That was until we were about five minutes into the ride and then the sound of the horses’ hooves disappeared. I thought my ears had clogged so I swallowed to clear them, but it did nothing. There was no sound while we picked up speed and galloped through the trees.

“Hey, Oak?” I said, but nothing came out of my mouth.

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Oak?” I said as loud I could.

Again I heard nothing. There was a small burst of light from the horse in front of us. The woman on the back of the horse lit up then dimmed. A few seconds later I caught sight of another horse from the corner of my eye. I turned my head and could see it to the side and a little behind our horse. I couldn’t see who or how many were on the horse. A few more seconds went by and yet another horse and rider joined the one in front of us. From this angle I could see that it was just one person. I glimpsed the whole group for only a few moments before all three of the horses and their riders disappeared. I looked around to see where they had gone, but all I could see were the tall, dark trees as we rode past them.

Oak didn’t seem disturbed by anything that had taken place, so I figured that the strange occurrences had to be planned. I calmed myself and we rode on. It was impossible to tell how much time was passing on our impromptu journey. The night only seemed to get darker. The few stars that I could see through the tops of the trees shone brighter while the time went by. There weren’t any clouds in the sky from what I could tell. It made me happy to know that we wouldn’t be caught in the snow.

My eyes became heavy watching the trees fly by us and I could feel myself drifting to sleep. I laid the side of my head on Oak’s back and thought that it wouldn’t hurt to close my eyes for a few seconds. They flew open again when I felt a falling sensation and realized I was slipping off the side of the horse. Oak realized what was happening too and reached an arm back to steady me before I fell completely off. I regained my grip and slid myself upright again. He took something out of his pocket and wrapped it tightly around my wrists. It kept my arms tightly wrapped around him. He looked back at me and nodded his head when he was done. I tried to moved my arms and found that they didn’t budge. I put my head on his back knowing that I wouldn’t be in danger of slipping again. Relaxing was much harder than it had been before the shock of almost falling and being trampled by a horse.

I noticed the trees started growing further apart while the time ticked away. It wasn’t a sudden change, but the trees were definitely spreading away from each other. The number of surrounding trees grew fewer until the horse burst out of the forest and entered a field. Not having to watch passing trees calmed my nerves even more. My eyes drooped during our ride through the tall, frosted grass. I thought I saw mountains in the distance but found it extremely hard to focus on them to see if I was right. Once more I closed my eyes and let myself drift to sleep.

* * *

Light flooded through my eyelids. My head swam while I was dragged back to consciousness. I blinked them open and saw a log ceiling come into focus above me. They were very faint, but I could make out voices coming from a distance.

I sat up and looked at the plush blankets spread on top of me. As warm as I was, I pushed myself off the bed and stood on the cold, hardwood floor. The whole room, as well as the furniture, was made out of wood. I walked to the door and pulled it open just enough to have a look out. The voices in the other room didn’t sound happy. I looked down an unlit hallway. It looked like the room, only it was lined with closed doors. I seemed to be in the room that the hall dead ended into. Directly opposite of me was another room that wasn’t enclosed by a door.

“…I just never expected this from you, Oak,” a woman’s voice said. “Perhaps from Caden but never from you.”

“I understand why you’re angry; we did this behind your back,” said Oak’s voice. “But you know I wouldn’t have done something like this if I hadn’t given it a lot of thought and known it would work.”

“We’re going to be in so much trouble,” the woman said. “You didn’t do this behind only my back but behind everyone else’s, too. The Council’s going to be furious.”

“We’re part of the Council so all we need to do is explain our plan,” Oak said.

“
You
will have to explain
your
plan,” the woman snapped. “I have nothing to do with any of this.”

“Kaia, please,” he said. “You have to see our side of this.”

I heard the woman sigh deeply and stomp around.

“She can help us,” Oak said. “Just talk to her and hear what she has to say—”

“I don’t need to talk to her to know what she has to say. She’s one of them. She will want to gather them up and throw them into Northern cages.”

“No, she’s different,” he said. “She’s not one of them. You don’t understand.”

“What do you mean she’s not one of them?”

“You will need to see and listen to her to understand why I say she’s not one of them,” Oak said. “Caden, tell her. You were there when she was Enlightened.”

“I—I’d rather you guys worked this out on your own,” said the male voice from the night before.

“Did you say
Enlightened
?” the woman asked.

“Arrgh,” Oak growled. He stomped around a little, too.

I had heard enough. I stepped out of the room and walked down the hall. I smoothed out my clothes as best I could and patted my hair. I felt the loosened scarf, pulled it off my head and stuffed it in my pocket.

“What do you mean
Enlightened
?” the woman said, just as I stepped into the sunlit room.

I had entered a kitchen. Oak was standing in front of a stove, the man I now recognized as the one sitting at Oak’s stand while I ate dinner was leaning against the counter, and there was a woman standing in the middle of the room near a table with food on it. Her back was to me when I entered but as soon as she saw their eyes, she turned.

“Oh, my.” She stared at me in disbelief.

Her face moved from a state of shock to that of anger. She turned to face Oak again. The man against the counter edged further away from her glare.

“Is this what you meant by her not being one of them?” the woman all but shrieked at them. “She’s not even an Aetherian?”

“No, no,” Oak said, taking the few steps to me and grabbing my hand. He pulled me further into the room. “She is Aetherian.”

“Are you kidding me?” she said, keeping her voice just as loud. “Look at her hair. Look at those eyes.”

“She’s the
Dragonfly
,” Oak said.

He put so much emphasis on the last word I thought we’d see it explode right before our eyes. The woman seemed to stop breathing.

“She isn’t,” she said in a voice that was barely audible.

“She is,” the man against the counter said.

He edged his way back to the group now that the woman had calmed down.

“I hadn’t heard that they had found her,” she said.

She pulled out the closest chair from the table and sat in it.

“They pulled her out of the water three nights ago,” Oak said.

She put her elbows on her knees and held her head in her hands. A few moments passed in silence.

“Well, she can’t stay here,” the woman said to the floor. “No,” she looked up again and rose out of her chair. “They’re going to go even more ballistic looking for her if she is who you say she is.”

“That’s why we need to move fast,” Oak said. He pulled out the chair closest to me and gestured for me to sit in it. “She’s Enlightened and they want her to take up a military post and lead them into war.”

I had a seat. The woman sank back down into her chair.

“So war it truly is then?”

“Not if we can help it,” Oak said. He sat in the chair across from her. “With her here she can see. She can help us.”

“Which is what I want to do,” I said.

They looked at me.

“I don’t want to go to war any more than you do.”

Oak looked at the woman again. “Kaia, if she sees what we have here, if we explain what we want to do, she can have a hand in it. They’ll listen to her. She can help us accomplish what we would never be able to on our own.”

She looked at him then back at me. “You’re really the Enlightened Dragonfly?”

I nodded my head. She inhaled a lungful of air then exhaled.

“Okay,” she said.

On her face I could see that she was wondering how much she was going to regret her decision.

“Okay," she said again. "Let’s see what we can do about all of this.”

“Thank you, Kaia,” Oak said. “We didn’t like keeping you in the dark about this. With you here things may go much more smoothly.”

“Fine,” she said. “So let’s get things started already. Exactly what did you guys have planned?”

Oak motioned for me to help myself to the food on the table. I picked up a bunch of grapes while making sure to listen carefully.

“We really didn’t have much of a plan,” Oak said. “I met Emma only two days ago while working at the campsite. I was skeptical at first, but I found that she is exactly the kind of person we need. I talked it over with Caden and he said that if I believed she could help then we needed to start taking action.”

“Was all of this in talks before she was Enlightened?” Kaia said, giving me a sideways look. “All your judgment was made before you knew the person she would become?”

“It wasn’t a matter of who she would become,” Oak said with a wave of his hand. “I knew the kind of person she was and would continue to be when I met her.”

I smiled at him.

“Right,” Caden said, having a seat at the table with us. “It was pretty much dumb luck that she walked up to us in the middle of discussing our plan and had her Enlightenment right before our eyes.”

“And what do we do now?” Kaia said.

“We figured we’d show her what we have going on here,” Oak said. “And explain why we are doing these things.”

“Show her
everything
?” she said.

“Show her everything that the South is today,” he said. “She was given a brief history run-through so she knows how things have been. But things are changing.” My ears perked at that word. “And she needs to know what they are becoming.”

“Ms. Riley and Professor Elias said that things were changing,” I said. “Or at least they said that things needed to change.”

“See?” Oak said. “She needs to see what things are evolving into, who we are now, and why the old way of life is no longer pertinent.”

Kaia sighed again. I could see the war raging within her.

“All right then. Let’s start making some introductions.”

* * *

“This place is huge,” I said during the tour they gave me.