

Entropic Quest

by Tom and Johnny Lichtenberg

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Tom Lichtenberg

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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One

Baudry was notified by squirrel, on what was otherwise just another boring day. He knew he should have been out hunting goals. He was, after all, a Goal Hunter, but he was sick of it. He'd hunted down goals for so long already and the game was going on forever. Of course, it was meant to. That was the whole point of the game - to be endless. Didn't they have all the time in the world? That was another problem.

He'd found himself sitting on the roots of an old gnarled oak tree, staring at the vast green canopy above. He'd been sitting there for hours, with nothing in his mind. He felt the cool breeze on his skin as occasional sunlight filtered through the dense forest. He smelled the dusty duff beneath his feet and heard the chattering of the squirrel before he saw its twitching mouth. It sounded like the usual cluck-cluck-clucking at first and then, as the creature dropped to the ground at his feet, he heard it speaking in his own language.

"The Hidden One calls you to order," the squirrel declared.

"Excuse me?" Baudry blinked a few times, startled but not yet believing his ears. The squirrel remained squatting before him, its large black eyes clearly peering at his own, its whiskers twitching with impatience.

"The Hidden One," the squirrel repeated with impatience in his tone. "Calls you to order."

"What does that even mean?" Baudry asked the beast, though he was pretty sure he already knew. The squirrel began clucking again and, with a distinct sniff, whisked its head about and scampered away.

"To order," Baudry repeated to himself. "It can only be one thing, and yet," he mused, The Hidden One had never yet called anyone to order, as far as he knew. It was only a rumor, a vague superstition that there even was such a being as The Hidden One, and that when she called someone to order, the lucky recipient of that invitation had better make haste and report immediately to The Particular Tree in the center of the Canopus Forest. It would be a bit of a journey, Baudry reflected, casually mapping the entire trip in his mind. He knew the forest as well as anyone, probably as well as anyone could. He'd been hunting goals in it for years by now. Too many years. Far too many in fact. Baudry rose to his feet and decided he might as well begin right away. There was nothing else he had to do. No one he had to inform, and he might even pick out a few goals along the way.

The game had many names - the most popular was Mind Ball, but it was typically referred to merely as 'the game' - and was currently in its seventh season. This number was purely arbitrary. A season ended more or less by accident, when enough participants decided that it would. There were no official winners. Some Strikers scored more points than others. Some Saviors prevented more from being scored. There were varying degrees of success among the more modest ranks of Smackers, Goal Hunters and Ball Gatherers. The Flower Pickers were supposed to run out of petals, signifying a victory, but often the flowers selected had so many petals it was practically impossible to pluck them all.

Teams were formed by happenstance during the inter-season sessions of drawing up sides. There were moments of excitement, certainly, especially when Strikers struck and Saviors saved, but considering that a season could last for years, and games within it endured for weeks or months, you could never say it was much of a spectator sport. In truth, there were no fans, only players. There was no field of play except the forest, and a goal could be anywhere at any time. A ball, likewise, might be any thing. It was the duty of the Goal Hunter to discern what might be an actual goal and the job of the Ball Gatherer to determine the other. Once those objects had been decided, it was up to the higher ranks to carry out the efforts of accumulating or denying points. It was only rarely a contact sport. Often, team members did not even see each other for days at a time, as they went about their various assignments and since it was no one's job to keep track, it was never quite clear what the state of the game or the season actually was, at any given moment. The whole enterprise tended toward chaos, and that was just fine. The players had nothing to gain, and nothing to lose. All of them were in the same boat, or, to put it more plainly, in the same eternal exile.

They were literally exiles, all of them, cast out by society, forbidden to ever escape from these woods. Those who tried to leave discovered there was simply no way to get out or even to see the containment field alleged to be erected all around the wide forest. They weren't criminals. They had done nothing wrong, as anyone would confess, but their kind could not be tolerated within the world of civilization. Every one of them shared a common curse. All of them had been cured of death. No one still living was even sure how it ever had happened. Legends persisted of a witch and a potion, of a mad scientist and experiments, of a nasty God and His revenge, but whatever truth there was to any of it was lost in the weeds of history. Every so often another one was detected. Hide as they might try to, they could not stay hidden forever. Sooner or later their secret was rooted out, they were exposed and, as soon as found they were delivered to this forest, cast in and left to be forgotten by the world outside. There were those who would say it had been going on for centuries but the truth was known by none for sure. Baudry was one of the cursed.

No one knew when precisely when this accident happened first, and no one knew why it operated as it did. Those who were afflicted would continue to age normally until the next binary value and then they would stop maturing, forever. If it struck when you were a baby, you would grow to be eight, and then grow no more, ever. Those a little older would mature until sixteen, and then stop. So it was there were for all practical purposes only four ages in the Canopus Forest: 8, 16, 32 and 64. Although The Hidden One was rumored to be 128 or even 256, no one really believed in it. No one admitted to ever having seen her in person. There were no known cases of anyone hitting the curse past the age of 64. Baudry considered himself unfortunate. He'd been struck sometime in his mid-forties, he later came to believe, and then he hadn't realized it for another forty years or so. It wasn't obvious at all that he'd stopped changing at 64. He felt the same at 70 and that was not too unusual. When he felt exactly the same at 80, he did begin to wonder, and so did his neighbors. He'd been reported, anonymously, as possibly afflicted, turned in to the authorities and made to undergo their "testing". Even after being exiled he'd remained in denial, certain he would begin to decay and diminish all at once one fine day, absolutely sure he'd weaken and develop the customary aches and pains of elderly decrepitude, but it never occurred. He'd never once felt a day older, not since that time, so many years ago he could barely remember, when he'd been carted to the edge of the woods and was basically dumped within.

And now he'd been called to order. He almost wanted to laugh. He'd heard all the fairy tales, naturally. The Hidden One was said to be the first victim, the original subject of The Perpetrator's nasty scheme. Other rumors had it that The Hidden One was The Perpetrator herself, an old woman who hadn't wanted to die and so had invented the cure and became her own guinea pig. Neither of these stories had any basis in fact, or really made any sense. Why was the curse still happening? Why were people still being brought to the woods, people who were obviously afflicted, seeing as they could never die, or even get sick, or even change in any single way after the moment they reached their sticking point. Even their hair stopped growing. How could it still be happening if it was some particular potion or program or substance or drug? Why would it happen seemingly at random, to all different kinds of people at different times in their lives? No one understood it and in time the mortal people stopped caring. They grew frustrated with their futile attempts to figure it out and eventually only wanted not to be bothered, not to have these mutants in their midst, these creatures whose existence only reminded them of their own meager mortality and rather than continue to abuse and mistreat these specimens (as they'd originally done, during the bad old days), they preferred to quietly remove them from their lives, deposit them in this wilderness containment, and pretend that they didn't exist. Easy for them. They could go on changing and dying like normal. It wasn't so easy for Baudry and his fellow outcasts.

They had to live in those dark, damp woods, surrounded continually by trees and rocks and sediment. Some had taken to living up high in the branches. Others built huts out of sticks, while still others preferred to dig holes in the ground and live there. The weather wasn't so wonderful, either. It was often quite chilly at night, and rained more often than not. The forest was long since divested of predators, but there was very little meat to sustain them, mostly the occasional squirrel or bird could be captured and roasted. The people lived mainly on berries and tubers and nuts. In time, like anything else, they got used to it and no longer minded their living conditions. As a 64 year old forever, Baudry did mind. He never came to like being cold and he felt he was cold all the time. This was one of the reasons he was generally a sour type person. He didn't want to be always complaining, but inside his mind was a constant refrain of complaint. He didn't like this. He didn't like that. He didn't like trees, or dirt, or even birds, and he especially didn't like hunting for goals. He didn't have many friends. The other "old people" were too much like himself. The "young" ones were simply too different. And there wasn't ever much to talk about. The weather? The trees? The gossip? No, Baudry didn't have much to say, at least not to anyone else. He did have some news, though, that others might be interested in, now that he'd been "called to order", called by a squirrel.

"Called by a squirrel?" he stopped himself in mid-stride. "Now I know for sure I've gone nuts." He sat right down on a rock and shook his head.

"What am I doing?" he asked himself out loud. "I'm talking to squirrels?"

"It did say The Hidden One," he reminded himself, "and you never believed in that stuff."

"That's definitely true," he had to agree. "It's not something that I would make up."

"Unless you have gone out of your mind," he countered. "It's been known to happen."

"No," he disagreed, "that's only more stories. You'd think it would happen to us, but it can't. Nothing can happen like that. We never can change, remember?"

"You've got me again," he relented. "So I guess that leaves us with the squirrel."

"The squirrel has spoken," he repeated. "We might as well go."

"Might as well," he gave in. "Why not? It's not like we have anything better to do."

"Stop saying 'we'", he scolded himself as he stood up to continue his journey.

"Whatever you say," he replied.

Two

Edeline was informed by crow, and had no idea what it was talking about. The crow, perched on top of an ancient rotting tree stump, cocked its head and gave her a beady stare.

"You're new here, aren't you?", it inquired.

The crow was even closer to the truth that it imagined. She was not only new, she was brand new, having been dumped into the forest less than half an hour previously. She'd spent that entire time on the verge of tears, and would have been weeping for sure if she had been able to believe that this was even happening to her. It seemed like only moments before that she was getting out of bed, preparing to begin another normal day.

She'd had ordinary plans. It was a Tuesday, a work day. She had meetings to attend, papers to present, decisions to make. She remembered thinking about pastries, for some reason, although she had none in the kitchen. Marvin would like an almond treat, she had told herself, making a mental note to pick some up at the bakery on her way home that evening. She'd looked down at his still-sleeping form, a half smile working its way across his face as he dreamed about who knows what. Edeline had gone through her customary routines, carefully applying the face cream, arranging stray hairs in her eyebrows, scrubbing her face and hands, preparing for her morning exercises. She had only just spread out the yoga mat and turned on the instructor's video when the knock came at the front door.

She had considered not responding. After all, she was only wearing her pink terrycloth tights and top and hardly looked presentable, in her opinion. Nevertheless, it was her own home, so whoever it was deserved whatever sight they beheld, so she did open the door. If she'd only known who was there, she would have fled out the window instead.

"Yes?" she asked politely of the two rather large, stupefied men who stood there gaping at her body.

"Ma'am?" one of them managed to stutter while the other one blinked and turned his head away in an effort to avert his eyes.

"Can I help you?" Edeline prompted him.

"Edeline Wills?" he fairly mumbled. This great bulk of a man was beginning to sweat in quantity. His eyes became bleary as he grabbed a handkerchief from his back pocket and began to mop his face.

"What's all this about?" Edeline asked as the second man, blubbery and stinky as well, raised his hand to shield his face.

"A.I.D," the first officer told her. "You'll have to come with us."

"What?" Edeline was incredulous. "What are you talking about? A.I.D? That's ridiculous." She backed away from the door, and considered slamming it in their faces. She would have to think fast, but she couldn't. Another mistake. The officer seemed to read her mind and suddenly, without any indication that it was possible for him to move that quickly, he'd retrieved some handcuffs from somewhere and slammed them onto her wrists, and pulled her out into the apartment building hallway.

"Let me go!" Edeline shouted, but struggle as she might, the huge policeman easily dragged her down the hall and into the elevator, while his partner closed the apartment door and followed closely.

"If you don't be quiet I'll have to enforce you," the officer told her, once they were heading down toward the underground parking lot. Edeline knew what that meant. They would gag her, blindfold her, put her in a straitjacket, carry her if they had to, like a sack of potatoes. She had heard about this kind of thing. Who hadn't? What she wanted to know now was, why had they mistaken her for one of those creatures? The A.I.D. was not known to make mistakes, but clearly they had done so this time.

"No questions," the officer warned her, hustling her into the back of the patrol car. Both of the men seemed to breathe more freely once they did not have to look at her any longer. The second one drove while the first one tapped a memo into his device, transmitting their status and coordinates to headquarters.

"No questions?" Edeline repeated in her mind. She had a million questions. Well, only one that mattered. Was this really even happening? Maybe she was still in bed, asleep, having a nightmare. The car careened out into the street and sped off, as if it were an emergency. Officer Barge, the driver, was worried. Something like what he was thinking could cost him his entire career. Why had they sent him on this assignment? It was utterly against policy and he very well knew why. Generally, male officers were not allowed to bring in female immortals. Anything could happen and often did. They didn't call them 'mermaids' for nothing.

"Is it true?" he blurted out to his partner, Sergeant Rand, "that nothing can ever happen to them?"

"Silence!" Rand ordered. He did not want to get into it, especially not in the presence of the thing. Mermaids could not be harmed. It was true. No matter what you did to them, they could not be harmed and that was the very problem. You wanted to test that theory. You wanted to do things, just to see, and if you did, if you let down your guard and gave in ... Sergeant Rand had seen it happen before. Good men, helpless against themselves, utterly ruined because of these mutants. It was entirely their fault.

"Pretend it's not even there," he advised his colleague, and Barge did his best to do so. He thought about everything else instead. He thought about meatballs, and pigeons, and the way the clouds seemed to fall when it rained. He thought about moons and parades and pixie dust and the smell of varnish and dried fish. He thought about everything except the thing in his back seat now, and no one was more relieved, no one was happier than he when they finally arrived at HQ and were able to unload their cargo at the docking bay.

Edeline was taken to a small, windowless office in the basement of the large official A.I.D. building by two heavily armed female escorts, who again advised her not to speak or make any sudden motions. She was deposited alone in there, told to sit on one of the two cold metal folding chairs, the only furniture at all in there. The room itself was also cold. In only her terrycloth exercise outfit and slippers, Edeline was already uncomfortable. She was not alone for long. In a few minutes, a small, elderly man came into the room, closing and locking the door carefully behind him.

Captain Snig was long past retirement age, yet he was not allowed to retire. His unique skills and experience were still required, especially in cases like this. He'd been through the procedure many times, and was not disturbed any longer. Still, he wore large dark sunglasses to protect his mind. The glasses seemed to cover most of his face, leaving only a narrow nose and unusually tiny mouth exposed below, and a balding, spotted cranium above. He wore a uniform that might have fit him long ago, before his body had shrunk so. Now he was all hunched over, a mass of wrinkled blue cloth and that face of a bespectacled ancient turtle. He hobbled over to the other metal chair, facing Edeline, who cleared her throat and prepared her defense.

"It's no use," Snig told her. "You might as well save your breath."

"There's been" she began but he held up his hand to interrupt her.

"No mistake," he completed her sentence, but not in the way that she would have.

"How," she started again, and again he stopped her before she could finish.

"Retinal scan," he informed her. "The officer performed it the moment you opened your door. The image was relayed back here," he continued wearily, "and the officer was confirmed before you even said a word. We already knew."

"It's true," he told her, "whether you believe it or not."

"It can't be," she replied. "I would know, wouldn't I?"

"Sooner or later," he assented, nodding. "Perhaps it hasn't occurred to you yet, but I doubt it."

"It can't be," she shifted in her seat. Don't I have the wrinkles to prove it, she asked herself, convinced it was a fact.

"How old is your husband?" the Captain inquired, thinking 'of course the husband would never have reported her. He must have known for some time, but to continue to have such a beautiful woman, forever remaining as stunning as she was. No doubt someone else turned her in. A colleague, most likely, or a neighbor. A woman, in all probability, jealous for sure.'

"Fifty nine," she reported immediately.

"And how old was he when you married him?"

"Thirty," she replied. "We'll be celebrating our thirtieth anniversary this summer."

"And yet," Snig said, "your retinal scan shows your age to be thirty two, and exactly thirty two by the way. How would you explain that?"

"It's a mistake," Edeline said.

"Yet when you look in the mirror?"

"I work hard to stay in shape," she insisted. "I workout every day. I do yoga. I color my hair to keep out the gray."

"There is no gray," he informed her. "Never was, never will be. Miss Wills? Do you truly not know what you are?"

"I'm an ordinary person," she said. "I go to work every day. In fact, what time is it? I have a meeting at nine. It's very important."

"It will have to make do without you," said Snig with a sigh.

"But".

"It's no use, Miss Wills," he went on. "You do know the rules, I am sure. Everyone does. There's simply no place for those such as you in our world. Too much trouble, you know. It can't be allowed."

"Not the forest!" she exclaimed. She waited a moment for Snig to relent but when she saw that he didn't, she began finally to panic.

"No, please no," she begged him, but he only sat quietly. He knew what would come. The yelling, the crying, perhaps even a physical attack. He was old and decrepit. She could crumple him like paper if she chose. Anyone could, but his veneer of utter weakness was sufficient to deter most violence. In any event, officers were posted outside and would intervene at once if it were needed. Snig didn't worry. He would wait out the storm, but Edeline found she was incapable of making a scene, as much as she wanted to. She had always been way too polite and proper. There were ways of behaving oneself, and appearances must be upheld. She would not make a fool of herself (there was her mother again, lecturing once more in the back of her mind. Edeline! do NOT make a fool of yourself!)

So it was she was easily led, loaded into a van and driven out to the boundary. They would not let her take anything with her, not even a jacket. They refused to let her even change her outfit. She was compelled to go into exile exactly as they'd found her when she'd opened the door. They drove for hours to get there, then drove past the gate and up to the edge of the forest, which seemed to stretch on forever. She got out of the car on her own. The female escorts did not have to force her. They pointed the way down a narrow dirt path and told her "get walking and don't turn around". She did. At some point she must have passed through containment. She couldn't tell where that occurred, but when she finally did turn around, the world she had known had entirely vanished. All she could see was the forest.

She turned completely around to be sure, then she stood very still, and listened. She heard nothing at first but the pounding inside her own mind. Then there seemed to be a sound of leaves rustling in wind. Then suddenly a voice, very clear, very close.

"The Hidden One calls you to order," it said. She had no idea what it was talking about.

"You're new here, aren't you?" said the voice, and looking around, Edeline saw no one, only a very large, very black bird, hopping about on a tree stump in front of her.

"Excuse me?" Edeline said, expecting some man to appear, for it was a man's voice that she heard.

"Yes, it's me," said the crow, flapping its wings to attract her attention. "I know it's not exactly what you're expecting."

"Crows don't talk," Edeline said, fixing her gaze on the bird. "At least not where I come from. If you're some of ventriloquist," she called out loudly, "you can come out now. Game's over and I'm really not in the mood."

"I can only reach you this way at the moment," the bird told her. "Consider it an alternate means of communication."

"Right," Edeline snapped. "I'm out of here." She turned and began to walk away from the crow, but it took off and flew just above her.

"You might as well listen," the crow said.

"Leave me alone," Edeline shouted as she waved her arms above her head, hoping to fend the thing off, but it persisted in following her as she stumbled about in the woods. She didn't know where she was going, of course. The bird reminded her about that.

"What do you care?" she yelled at the bird.

"Listen!" she continued. "I'm having a really lousy day, okay? Come back tomorrow if you want. Just leave me alone." At that, Edeline finally broke down into tears, and stopped to lean against a tree trunk and weep. The bird settled down on a branch just above her, and waited. After her tears began to melt into sniffles, the crow spoke again, more gently this time.

"The Hidden One calls you to order," it repeated.

"I don't know about any hidden anything," Edeline mumbled.

"Then I'll tell you," the crow offered. "Come, sit down, and let's talk."

"Oh all right," Edeline relented. She looked around for somewhere to sit but finding nothing, she plopped down onto the ground. The crow flew down and ruffled its feathers, taking a position beside her.

"That's better," it said. "We have much to discuss."

Three

Ember got the news from a cricket that chirped it out in code.

"Call ME to order, will you?", she spat. "We'll see who calls who in the end!"

She leaped up from the boulder where she'd been hunched, and grabbed a hold of a branch above her head with both hands, and with a swing worthy of any trapeze artist, flung herself higher and higher, limb after limb, until she had soared to the top of the two hundred foot elm. There she perched, surveying the vast canopy surrounding her. From this vantage point there was no end to the forest in any direction, but she sensed this was somehow an illusion. She still remembered the outer world and knew it was there even now, though she could never see it, no matter where she roamed, and she was sure she had covered every inch of the territory by now.

Ember was an eight year old girl, but not quite your ordinary kind. Barely over four feet tall and weighing less than sixty pounds, she seemed to float however she moved. Her wavy light brown hair flew about her shoulders, and her small pale blue eyes matched the cloudless sky above. She scanned the horizon from the top of the tree like any worthy captor would. In the back of her mind she held a grid of her captive world and nearly everything in it, alive and breathing in real-time.

Ember was a Savior, and one of the best in the game. It was a Savior's gift to know the terrain, to sense it, to feel it, to see every goal and every ball in play, to spot every player, every Hunter, Gatherer, Smacker or Flower-Bearer. None could move without their intention and direction lighting up on her cranial screen. She would keep in the background, trying to free her mind to focus on the more important details, for the one gap in the Savior's map-ability was their Striker-blindness. They could never know when or where a Striker was or would be, and their entire performance depended on just that. The Savior's job was to stop the Striker from scoring, and to never know where a Striker was at any moment was maddening. It was stressful. It was the key to the entire tournament.

She was an eight year old girl, and had been for more than a century at least. One lost track of human time here in the forest. It didn't help that seasons barely seemed to occur in there. On the more deciduous trees, leaves would turn and drop but new leaves would be budding and forming simultaneously. The temperature fluctuated seemingly at random. The length of the days and the nights never seemed to vary by much. Everything about the place seemed un-genuine somehow. Ember, like the others, could never quite figure it out, given all the time in the world. At least it seemed like all the time in the world. She held her breath and closed her eyes as if that would help her better see if any Striker was on the move. It came to her sometimes. She didn't know how but she trusted her instincts, and more often than not they were right. But this moment it wasn't a Striker that caught her attention, but something new, somebody new had entered their world.

It happened. New blood came seeping in now and then. For years Ember had tried to foretell it somehow. There must be a pattern. From every newcomer's description she knew there was only one road, and only one gate that exiles were brought to, so when they entered the forest you would think they would arrive at the same location every time, but it just didn't work that way. They could appear anywhere and it always seemed they showed up in the middle. There were no visible edges, no boundaries or borders. Ember and the others all wanted to discover a seam, a way in or way out, but it was another maddening fact of life that no one could find such a thing. You could walk in a straight line for days, weeks or years and never come across an edge of the woods. Instead you would always find yourself somewhere familiar. It all seemed familiar. It was circumscribed somehow, infinite and impossible.

She would never resign herself though. Each newcomer might be a key, and at her sensing of this one, Ember scuttled down the tree and ran at top speed to where she knew it would be. Along the way she met no one, heard nothing but songbirds and the buzzing of bees. She dashed through the duff, leapt over trickling streams, and unerringly made her way to the clearing where Edeline sat on a rock, crying and listening to a crow.

"Scat!" Ember called, rushing up to the bird. She picked the thing up by its talons and hurled it into the air. The crow squawked loudly as Ember continued to threaten it with words, and when the bird saw the girl pick up a rock, it climbed higher and flew off. Ember threw the rock at it anyway.

"And never come back, do you hear?" she yelled at the crow.

Edeline stared at the tiny girl, who was wearing a sort of skirt made of thickly wound ivy, and a scant top of the same. Ember was likewise shocked by Edeline's outfit.

"What are you wearing? A napkin? What is that?" she asked, and without any sense of personal boundaries she reached over and started rubbing Edeline's terrycloth top.

"You'll sure get a lot of attention with that," Ember snickered, and then added, "of course you will anyway. New blood, and sexy too. Look at you! Yeah, you'll get a lot of attention in here."

"I'm lost," Edeline tried to shrug the girl's hand off her, but Ember kept touching until she was satisfied. Then she stood back a few paces and with a hand on her hips, delivered her verdict.

"What did you expect? You had to know what was coming."

"It's all a mistake," Edeline pleaded. "I don't belong here. I'm not one of them!"

Ember laughed, and with Ember laughter was usually cruel.

"You mean one of us, and you are. It's obvious."

"I'm not," Edeline insisted. "I'm an ordinary person. I was just getting ready for work. I have meetings. My husband. My life."

"That's all over," Ember declared. "You might as well get used to it."

"That's what he said," Edeline sniffed, recalling her interview with Captain Snig, and she told Ember everything that had happened that day. Ember stood listening impatiently. Sure, it was important to the woman, Ember thought, but she had been hearing such stories forever. The only detail of interest to her was the rapidity with which the woman had been processed. All that in just a few hours, she considered. They're getting more efficient these days. She already knew all about Snig. Edeline wasn't the first he'd dispatched to this place.

"Look on the bright side," Ember snarled when Edeline was finished and had resumed scrolling tears down the side of her face. "That Snig will be dead and long gone in no time, and you'll still be young and yourself and alive. Of course that's also the not-so-bright side," she added. "It'll be true for Snig's great-grandchildren too, and so on."

"And what about you?" Edeline asked.

"Me?" Ember said. "I'm hungry, that's what. I'll bet you are too. Come on, it's time to learn a new lesson."

Ember turned and trotted off into the trees, urging Edeline to follow. She did, finding it difficult to keep up. It didn't occur to the girl that the older one might not be as fast or as used to the ground as she was. Despite her vast age, Ember retained the brain structure of a child. She had accumulated much knowledge from all her experience, but certain developments would never occur in her mind, a greater sense of empathy being one of them.

"Over here," she shouted as she jumped straight off the ground and onto a branch ten feet high in the air. Edeline caught up and waited below as she watched Ember scurry aloft.

"Well, come on," Ember urged, but Edeline merely held up her hands.

"What?" she asked. "I can't get up there."

"You have to," Ember scolded. She was already several flights up, but seeing that Edeline remained adamantly earthbound, she relented, and hustled back down. She flew off the last branch, doing a back flip in mid-air, and landed beside the new blood.

"I'll give you a boost," she informed her, and before Edeline knew what was happening, the girl had somehow hoisted her half up the trunk with inconceivable strength in that miniature frame. Edeline grabbed onto the branch and pulled herself up the rest of the way. Getting her bearings, she felt a bit wobbly and decided not to look down. In the meantime, Ember had scurried back up and was quickly above her once more.

"Climb up!" she called back, and Edeline gingerly followed, slowly making her way, one branch at a time up what seemed to be a kind of pine tree. The bark was sticky enough that it helped her grab hold, but also made her hands feel dirty and gross. By the time she reached Ember, she'd managed to get a small tear in the leg of her pants, which were also smeared with splotches of the gooey brown tar.

Ember was holding out a vine which was covered with little black balls of some kind.

"Keriberi," she told Edeline. "It's a fruit."

"Oh," Edeline figured she ought to say something. The keriberis looked like deer droppings to her. She reached out and started to pull one off of the vine, but Ember smacked her hand away.

"Not like that," Ember said. "Do you want us to starve? No, you have to get them off in this particular way. Here, you'll see."

Ember placed her thumb and forefinger around one of the berries and began to twist it, slowly to the left.

"One turn," she said, "then another. Lefty loosey, right?"

On the third turn the berry came off.

'Now look," Ember said, pointing to the spot where she'd unfastened the thing. Already a new one was growing in its place.

"You take them off this way," Ember lectured, "and they replenish. Take them off any other way and the spot remains vacant forever. You see? This way we never run out."

"I get it." Edeline said, and when Ember gave her the berry, she popped into in her mouth and was about to crunch her teeth down when Ember gave another cry and shouted,

"No, no, don't bite it. Just let it rest on your tongue. You'll get more nutrition that way. No chewing, remember."

"Okay," Edeline mumbled, and kept her teeth up. She felt a little silly, sitting way up in a tree, sucking on a twist-off wild fruit like hard candy, constantly being scolded by this nasty little child. What a day, she sighed to herself. And that was before it started raining.

Four

With the rain came more tears, which only served to irritate Ember even more.

"Look," the girl snapped, "you don't know how lucky you are."

"Lucky?" sniffed Edeline. "Lucky?" she repeated, raising her voice and nearly losing her balance. It would have been a long drop to the ground, but at that moment Edeline didn't care. She was on the verge of just letting it all go. Ember read her thoughts through her eyes.

"It wouldn't do you any good," she snorted and shook her head. "You don't even know what you are, do you? Where have you been? Don't they talk about it anymore out there in the world? No, don't answer, because I know they do. You're not the only new blood to come in lately. We get them regular, a steady stream, but most of them at least have a clue. Most of them didn't have it so easy as you."

"What's so easy?" Edeline shouted, and she turned her back on Ember and began to pick her way down the tree. She'd had enough of the little snot and, without even thinking about it, had decided to make her own way. Ember was tempted to let her go, but there was something she'd wanted to ask.

"Wait up," Ember called, but didn't hesitate and dropped in three huge leaps to the ground, where she waited as Edeline slipped and groped and faltered and slid her way to the bottom. By the time she got down there, her outfit was essentially ruined, torn and smudged in a hundred places. She stood up, looked down at herself and shook with rage and frustration.

"Don't worry about that," Ember chided. "You'll be better off without them. We'll make you something like this," gesturing at her own adornment.

"Great, I get to walk around wearing a pile of leaves. What's next I wonder?" Edeline lamented.

"Actually, it's not just a pile of leaves," Ember informed her, patting her skirt. "It's rootless ivy. It's a living thing. Waterproof, comfortable, warm, sort of. Warm in its own way, I guess. You'll see."

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't," Edeline sniffed and looked around for an escape route. She wondered if the girl would ever leave her alone.

"I just want to know one thing," Ember asked, sensing again Edeline's intent.

"What was that crow telling you?" she continued.

"The crow?" Edeline had nearly forgotten about it in all the overwhelming confusion. She had to think hard to remember.

"Something about getting a call from someone, I think," she reported. "Oh, and something else about being a gatherer. I guess that was it."

"Oh, so now she's back in the game," Ember snapped. "Deciding who's who and what's what is she now? We'll see about that! Wait. You said 'getting a call'?"

"Or being called, I forget the exact words."

"The Hidden One has called you to order?"

"Yes!" Edeline jumped. "That's it. That's what the crow said. Do you know what it means?"

"She's calling a new blood? That's weird. Oh well, I guess you'll be coming with me," Ember sighed. "The Hidden One is calling me too."

"I give up," Edeline threw up her hands. "It's all nonsense to me."

"Come on," Ember said, "let's at least get you settled a bit, get you out of those rags. I'll explain it some more as we go."

"About me being so lucky?"

"Sure, and other things too," Ember told her. She turned, but this time didn't run off, but walked at a pace Edeline could keep up with. The rain fell steadily but not hard as it dripped through the thick foliage around them. At Ember's insistence, Edeline cast off her shoes and found the going more comfortable in bare feet. The paths were worn smooth and kept free of rocks. Ferns grew in abundance beside them. Edeline began to notice the beauty around her a bit as her tendency to burst into tears started waning.

"You said there were others?" she asked.

"Oh yeah, lots of us here," Ember told her, but looking around Edeline could see no one. Ember laughed, and added,

"Most of us stay up in the trees. Oh, there's some who live under the ground, and still others who live in the caves in the hills over that way." She waved her arm about. Edeline couldn't make out any hills. The whole place seemed utterly flat and had since the moment she'd arrived.

"As for you being lucky," Ember went on. "It used to be when they rounded us up they sent us off to be studied. You don't want to know what happened in there. You see, they were trying to figure us out. They knew there had to be something about us, but nobody knows what it is, even now after so many years. A lot of us never came out. Many of us still bear the marks. Those so-called doctors and scientists did everything they could possibly think of and more. Cut us to pieces. No stone unturned, but nobody knows. The same with the worms."

"The worms?" Edeline wasn't sure what Ember was talking about.

"Sure, the worms. Look, over here. It's what reminded me of them."

Ember stopped and stooped down to the ground where a tangle of worms had gathered in the dirt.

"Watch this," Ember said, and plucking a stem from a plant she reached out and touched the pile of worms with the point of a leaf. Instantly, the worms disengaged from each other and flew off into the air. Edeline gasped.

"Worms can't fly!" she stammered, but she was watching them do precisely that. Wiggling their way up they were flying and Ember pointed out their trail as they turned, like a flock of birds, and headed off in a V shaped pattern.

"Everything like that they just stick in here," Ember snickered. "Don't understand it? Cast it away. Pretend like it just didn't happen. Like they pretend that we're not still here. They don't talk about us anymore out there, do they?"

"Not really," Edeline said. "I mean, I knew that immortals used to go somewhere, but it's not supposed to happen anymore. It's supposed to all be in the past."

"That's what I thought," Ember nodded. "It's what they all say, been saying for a while now, whenever a new blood arrives. They're the only ones they've ever heard of, and most of them don't even believe it. Like you."

"I don't," Edeline agreed.

"But you'll see," Ember said. "Give it time. And boy, do you have plenty of that! But now, here we are, it's my home. Come on up."

Ember had stopped by a large redwood tree. The lowest branch seemed to be at least twenty feet off the ground, but notches were cut in the trunk, serving as hand-holds and foot-holds. Edeline had some trouble getting up. She was not used to climbing up trees, but she made it up to the first branch, then wondered where Ember had gone.

"Keep climbing," Ember called down. She was seventy feet up in the tree, sitting back in a hole she had carved out for herself. Edeline worked her way up and by the time she arrived, Ember was already fashioning a dress from a vine that was growing profusely around her.

"You'll need a lot of padding," Ember advised, "unless you want to be hanging out, if you know what I mean."

"No thank you," Edeline said, a little embarrassed.

"It's just a fact," Ember informed her. "You're a good looking woman and you'll stay just like this, like you have. People around here aren't shy. There's some of them gone pretty wild. You'll have to choose what you want to live like. Don't let anyone else tell you how."

Edeline couldn't begin to imagine what her life held in store for her now. As Ember showed her how to wear the contraption (and she had to go down to the ground to change into it, for fear of losing her balance), she wanted to laugh at herself.

"I've turned into some freak Jungle Woman," she thought. "What would my poor husband say?", and thinking of him, the tears returned to her eyes.

"It's no use," she blurted out loud. "Until I figure this out, I'm not going to cry anymore."

Five

Barque was told by snake, his own pet King snake, Princess. In all the years they'd been together, this was the first time he had ever heard her talk, yet somehow her voice was not very different from how he'd always imagined it would be. Princess herself seemed ashamed, and held a look in her eyes that expressed the notion that none of this was her idea, and that the words she spoke were not her choice. Barque realized this and patted her head gently.

"The Hidden One, you say? Aha! So she does exist! I thought so. Never believe anything anyone tells you, Princess. Take it from me and don't believe a word."

Barque sprang to his feet from a squatting position and leaped a few times into the air, vainly trying to snatch at the leaves of the Black Walnut tree above him.

"Adventure time!" he announced with glee, and wrapping the snake around his bare shoulders, he strode off with great speed, as if it was a matter of great urgency. It was his way. A sixteen year-old, and having been sixteen for a few decades already, Barque loved nothing more than to maximize his physical attributes. He was tall, lean, extraordinarily fit and full of far more energy than he could ever exhaust. Nothing moved fast enough for Barque, not the wind, not the swiftest bird, and certainly not the world itself. He often felt as if he could soar beyond existence if he could only find the path. He searched for it continually.

Barque was a Striker, and it was the only thing that kept him sane. He was driven to be the best, and for a few seasons in a row now, he was. No one amassed more points. No one was more dreaded by the Saviors, who secretly banded together in futile attempts to stop him. He knew all about their weaknesses, and realized they spied on him continually, either in person or through paid agents. He trusted no one. Even his own teammates might be controlled by this illegal gang of salvation artists. It didn't bother him at all. In fact, it merely boosted the sense of challenge and his already quite overgrown pride.

He had his followers too, some perpetual eight-year olds among them, but mostly a legion of sixteen year old girls and thirty-two year old women who competed for his attentions in a continuous carnival of temptation. Others called it 'The Barque Parade' when they saw these females lining his path when word spread of his appearance in the region. This season was yet another tour of triumph for the Striker. He had pounded home goals in every quadrant, against every competition, compiling a near perfect record. Only two times so far had his shot been thwarted, both times by his greatest nemesis, little Ember, or as he called her, 'The Dwarf'. Somehow she'd managed to spring from nowhere both times, at the very last second, to divert his ball from the goal.

He'd sworn his revenge, but secretly admired her while considering her compatriots with contempt. All he had in this world were enemies or groupies, with the exception of Princess, of course, and he was ready for a change. He had no doubt The Hidden One had selected him, and him alone, for a mission of critical importance, because obviously she would need the strongest, the fittest, the most talented, not to mention the best-looking immortal of the bunch. It did not occur to him that any mission might not call for any such qualities. No such task could be important enough to associate itself with the legendary Hidden One, she who had not been seen or heard from for what seemed like decades. Most people said there was no such creature, it was merely a fairy tale told to pass the time, like the legend of the Green Ripper, or the story of the Lone Grizzly who still wandered the forest, somehow eluding its hundreds of inhabitants. It was true that Barque also believed in the Grizzly, having seen some impressive footprints by the shores of Lake Thor. And he would not have been surprised if he happened to encounter the Ripper in person. He still remembered metal, and blades, though it had been a very long time since he'd seen them. Despite the sage advice he had recently given to Princess, Barque himself believed almost everything anyone told him.

This is how he knew he must go to the Particular Tree. It was a tree unlike any other, although any casual observer would have noticed upon arrival on those parts that this forest contained nearly every variety of tree that was known to the planet. It had in fact begun as a private arboretum, the property of a famous scientific institution which had specialized in experiments of genetic variation. The forest had expanded over time until one day an accident occurred in a lab on the campus, an error which ended up swallowing the institute's buildings entirely and creating a zone of disturbance unlike anything that had ever been seen. People who ventured inside were never known to come out. From the outside there was nothing unusual, but soon it was discovered that anything that went in there stayed in. It became a sort of handy disposal, a kind of infinite landfill. Initially the trash stowed in there were results of other failed science experiments, genetic mutations gone wrong and gone wild, but eventually anything at all undesirable was consigned to the black hole they called the Canopus.

Barque was an undesirable too. A star athlete since childhood, he'd found himself the adored quarterback and captain of the high school football team. He excelled to such an extent that his team made its way to the national finals. There he was recruited by colleges, and he went to the best, the most famous and, unfortunately for him, the most exposed. He was measured and inspected almost daily. It could not go unnoticed that his body didn't change. He didn't gain weight. He didn't build muscle. He was exactly the same at allegedly nineteen and then twenty. He won national championships and trophies for his college, but the rumors leaked out, the media picked up the story, and 'the boy who could do no wrong' became 'one of them'. The tables turned quickly on him, and he was suddenly just as reviled as he'd been previously worshiped. Now he was considered a cheater, a phony, a fraud. They suspected him of being much older in years than he was. In fact, he had only been sixteen for a few years by that time, but he was hauled in one day and sent to be "studied".

Barque was a willing participant at first. Always eager, ever optimistic, he was certain they'd find their mistake and set him back on his great path to glory. They didn't. The poked and they prodded and they took lots of samples. They twisted and bent and they drilled lots of holes. They took lots of notes. They kept him a prisoner for who knows how long. All he knew was the food wasn't good and the gym was quite insufficient. He spent most of his time doing jump rope or push-ups or running. He would run for at least twenty miles every day. Finally they simply gave up. Putting him down was considered, but he had such charisma and such were the times they decided to dump him instead. He was lucky at that. Most of his generation were disposed of quite differently. It was an era of "Ultimate Purging".

In the forest he fit in right away. He'd come into the game right away and soon became Striker. He'd found this world to his liking and in a short time had almost completely forgotten the other. Now he sped on his way toward the Particular tree.

"This is good," he said to himself. "It's about time we had something new".

Six

Baudry was in a quandary. In order to get to the Particular Tree, he could either go straight ahead, across the Wide Open Field, or skirt around the edges, which would set him back nearly an entire day. The Field deserved its name. It stretched far across in every direction, almost a perfect circle, and contained little more than low-growing weeds and grasses. It was sometimes used for public gatherings, though these were few and far between. There was no government in Canopus, no organized society of any kind, really. There were no laws, only unwritten rules and customs, which were fairly self-evident, such as 'do unto others' and 'leave well enough alone'. There was practically no one in the forest who still believed in any kind of god. Where there was no fear and no death, there wasn't much of a need for safety valves.

What worried Baudry about crossing the Field was exposure. Once you stepped out into the plain, you were visible and very much so. Peering in from the edges he could easily see that there was no one out there at all. People generally stayed off it, leaving it to the rabbits, snakes, moles and squirrels. It was a happy hunting ground for raptors, but kind of a trap for people. Literally, a people trap, because once you were out there, you were sure to attract not only attention, but company. There were those who remained perched high up in the canopy, waiting and watching for for someone to brave the field and when someone did, down they'd come. Baudry knew the risk, but decided to take it. He didn't want to lose any time, and, saying a brief prayer of sorts that he would make it through at least largely untrammeled, he stepped out onto the plain.

Three steps. All he took was three steps in the open and there she was.

"Oh no," Baudry sighed, but it was already too late. There was no turning back now, because any companion you picked up in the field could only be left on the field if you crossed. Otherwise you could be stuck with them indefinitely.

"Boddery!" she screeched as she swung down from the branch of an overgrown apple tree and flung herself into the field before he could even consider running. Baudry had to pause for a moment to acknowledge her. Anything else would be extremely rude, he understood, but after a brief greeting he picked up his pace and began walking as steadily and as rapidly as he could across the vast lawn.

"Gooshga," he murmured. "You haven't grown".

"Well of course I haven't grown, you silly man," Gooshga cackled as she grabbed a hold of his left elbow and pulled herself alongside him. She was also sixty-four, and had been so for many years, perhaps as many as Baudry. He had met her before on occasion, and prepared himself as best he could for the impending onslaught.

"It's been too long, my friend," she informed him, as he mentally responded that it hadn't been anywhere near long enough.

"Where's your flute?" she asked, peering into his shoulder bag. "I don't see it in here. Have you left it behind? We could go fetch it together. Yes, let's do that," and she tugged at him, but he was considerably stronger and held out, and soon she relented. If she had been able to pull him back into the trees at that point, she could have remained by his side for years and he wasn't going to let that happen, no matter what. He glanced down at the tiny, shriveled creature, her hair all a tangle of gray and white, her wrinkles innumerable. She looked much older than he did. She had not aged well in the outer world. Rumor had it she had lived on the streets, had suffered many hardships and struggled through a difficult incarnation. Now she was here she was happy all the time, and that was only part of the problem.

"We'll make you another flute," she decided after he had refused to respond.

"I've got my sticks, do you see?" she continued, and held out a hollowed out branchlet and a few twigs. "We could make beautiful music together, yes, beautiful, with me on my drums and you on your flute. We did it one time before, did we not? Oh yes, I believe that we did. I would remember such a thing, I certainly would."

Baudry remembered as well. It happened years before, in the days of his innocence, as he liked to express it, before he became fully aware of the implications of their plight. They would remain here forever. They wouldn't ever change, not really. Things might happen, things that would stick, but you'd better be careful what you wished for.

"I heard that the Still People found a new way," she whispered, as if there was somebody else within earshot.

"So I'm told," Baudry replied, and immediately cursed himself for speaking up.

"Yes, a new way," Gooshga went on. "They're making brandy now too, along with the wine. It was all in the straining, they say. Up in the hills they're cranking it out by the barrel. Yes, they have barrels! That's what's new. Someone named Cooper, I think, had figured it out. Why, I can't even make me a basket that holds, and up there, those people have barrels. It makes you wonder now, doesn't it?"

It didn't make him wonder. Not really. Well, maybe a little. Take modern day people and make them live in the stone age, with nothing but wood, plants and rocks, and what do you expect them to do? Of course they will learn how to make things the old way. Of course they'll revert and remember. Now the Still People, as Baudry knew well, liked to stay drunk all the time. It was their way, their solution, and they kept to themselves, didn't bother anyone. Baudry didn't like to go there. There was something indelibly sad about them.

Gazing ahead he could not see the far edge of the forest. It was going to be a very long afternoon. Gooshga would not stop talking. That was her way, the way of all leeches out here in the Field. There would be gossip, and rumors and no letting go. If he wasn't especially careful, he could easily end up saying the wrong words, words which might condemn him to her company even longer. There was a way, a right way, and a wrong way as well. Gooshga was wily. She was sure she could prompt him to say those wrong words.

"You want me to go on my merry way now?" she pestered him, but he knew better than to utter "I do". Best to say nothing, keep the mouth closed.

"Would you like to play with my buddy?" she asked, holding out a small, intricately carved and painted wooden figure of a person. Baudry scanned the object closely. It was very well made, he had to admit. It looked like the work of a master. There were a number of these in the forests, people who carved figurines which served as a kind of currency as well as a past-time. Others would collect them, trade them, play with them, make up stories about them. Some of the figures were mythical and were said to even have powers. A lot of nonsense was said in this place, he reflected.

"I call him my buddy," Gooshga went on, waving the toy in front of his face, "but he's much more than that. You know who he is, I can tell, and you're right. It's Frijana the Wild. Yes, yes. THE Frijana, the last of her kind. Her sisters were consigned to fire in the last great Freak Out, remember? When the Cave Dwellers came out and rampaged from across the lake. There was the big fire and they threw all her sisters in it. This is the very Frijana that made it out of there undamaged."

Gooshga examined the toy once again before thrusting it back into her skirt. Next she pulled out a stack of identical oak leaves.

"Twenty one," she declared. "All alike. It's not something you see every day."

Again Baudry looked but this time he wasn't intrigued. He'd almost believed the Frijana and wondered how she had got it. Such possessions were rare and not freely given, and stealing was very uncommon. Who would have ever given it to a gossip-demon like Gooshga? Then he'd noted the lack of one ear on the doll and realized it was only a fake. Frijanas always had both of their ears. The leaves were commonplace items, often used as playing cards. Baudry picked up his pace.

Gooshga kept up. She was not planning on letting him easily escape. She had all day, and a whole lot of tricks in her repertoire. She badgered and cajoled him, taunted and teased him, asked him and told him but Baudry managed to keep silent the rest of the way, and once he could see the edge of the woods in the distance, he knew he would make it. Gooshga didn't let up, but grew louder and more goading than ever.

"I can get you whatever you want," she attempted a bribe. "You know that I can. Is it girls? You old dog. I'll be you want girls but the Baudry I know is too shy to ask. I'll do the asking and no telling, I promise. It will just be our secret. No one will know. You whisper to me what you want and I'll get it."

Baudry merely plodded ahead.

"I know where the best sawdust lies," Gooshga insisted. "They grind it up special and smoke it, you know. Did you see there's a goal under there?"

She pointed toward a clump of stones to their left, and Baudry looked also. He had to pay attention to a possible goal. He considered taking a break from the journey to make a closer inspection, but just as his legs began to slow down he remembered just who he was talking to. She was dangerous. That was a narrow escape! If he'd stopped for a moment, he might have been lost.

"Keep it together," he reminded himself, and kept on. Gooshga began to sense her defeat and started to lag a little behind. She shouted louder and tried to inform him of various rumors she'd heard, but Baudry was stepping into the trees, and in moments he was free of the spell. With a huge, overwhelming sense of relief, he collapsed on the duff and, closing his eyes, took a very short nap.

Seven

Baudry did not sleep well, even for the few minutes his eyes were closed. His brain kept buzzing with the feeling that some pesky creature had attached itself to his arm hairs and was digging itself into his skin. He shook and he shivered and woke up clawing himself with his fingernails, but there was no critter and he quickly remembered that the forest was remarkably free of annoying insects.

"Vestiges," he muttered, wondering why certain memories could be retained after all of these years, recollections of childhood terrors even. He remembered as a youth being attacked by horseflies on a beach somewhere during a solar eclipse, or was he combining three events into one? He couldn't be sure. Names came to mind of people he hadn't seen or even thought of in decades. This tended to happen first thing on waking up, as if in his dreams he'd been reliving his old life. He could even smell the fresh bread from the bakery he walked past on his way to school in the first grade. Gremolino's? Something like that. When awake his old life felt distant, less clear. It was strange how sleep could be more vivid than life.

Rising to his feet, he looked around to get his bearings straight, a thought which made him chuckle for some reason. He knew where he was, precisely. Canopus was endless if you tried to escape it, but it was definitely finite, he knew. A group he had joined with had counted the trees, marking each with a notch so they wouldn't count twice. Forty five million, eight hundred seventy nine thousand, six hundred twenty two, more or less. Discussions with certain former scientists led him to the conclusion that this figure represented approximately one hundred square miles. Was that right? Was it possible? There were more than a thousand hapless immortals which meant only ten or so had to be inhabiting a square mile, but their density varied, with some banding together and some keeping apart.

So many trees, but right now he was heading for a particular tree, THE Particular Tree, as it were. This was the tree where The Hidden One was rumored to hide but of course it was only a rumor. Still, where else could he go? He was already close and after another hour of hiking it came into view. It was an interesting choice for The Hidden One. The Particular Tree was a dogwood, not especially large or conspicuous. It lay in a grove of rhododendrons, some larger than it was. It was not the kind of tree within which anyone could hide, but it would have made a great climbing tree for a child, with its rows of evenly spaced horizontal branches, the lowest ones being easily reached from the ground. Baudry inhaled deeply, enjoying the fragrance of the surrounding plants. It was a nice spot, a good place to pick if you had to pick out a place in that area.

He was a little tired from the journey, and seeing as there was no one around, he sat down on the ground with his back leaning against the Particular Tree, and started humming a tune, a composition he had originally made up back in his musician days, a time he had tried to leave behind but which he could never quite get rid of. The tune emerging from his lips now was the same tune that had been haunting him for months, even years. The patterns had etched themselves into his brain cells so indelibly there was no working them out, same as the thoughts that refused to stop drifting along within.

"What are YOU doing here?"

A loud voice disturbed his reverie and Baudry looked up to see the famous young Striker standing over him.

"Do you even hear me?" Barque queried impatiently, when Baudry hadn't answered quickly enough.

"I was called," Baudry blurted out before he realized what he was saying, but it was too late to take it back. He had been planning on not saying anything to anyone about it.

"What do you mean, called?" Barque barked. "Called by what? By who? For what? Come on, speak up, man. You're in my way!"

"I was called by The Hidden One," Baudry said, louder. Might as well let it all out, he'd decided. He gathered himself and rose to his feet, where he stood a full foot shorter than the youth.

"Ridiculous," Barque snapped. "What would The Hidden One call YOU for? You're lying. Why are you lying?"

"I'm not lying," Baudry managed to say. He was intimidated by the Striker. Most people were. He was, after all, the resident hero of the day, used to ordering people about and getting his way all the time. Such an attitude often passed for the quality of leadership, when it was merely rude bluster and arrogance.

"Why, you've hardly even sniffed out a decent goal this whole season," Barque declaimed. "You know the only reason you are ever selected for any team at all is that ludicrous rule that no one who wants to play can be rejected. As it is, you barely contribute at all."

It was true, and Baudry would be the first to admit it, but it wasn't important, at least not to him. The game didn't actually count, after all. It existed merely to pass time.

"I was called," Baudry insisted, "so here I am. What about you?"

"I'm the one who was called," Barque said proudly. "Of course I would be, you know. I didn't expect to find anyone else here. Have you seen The Hidden One? How long have you been here, anyway?"

"I only just arrived a few minutes ago," Baudry informed him. Barque reached out and with his hand to Baudry's shoulder, pushed the older man aside. He proceeded to circle the Particular Tree making a show of a meticulous inspection around the base.

"Have you been up yet?" he asked, then quickly added, "oh, never mind. It wouldn't matter anyway. I'll see for myself," and sprung up into the trees, climbing faster than Baudry could imagine ever doing. The old man watched from the ground as Barque disappeared up into the leaves. The kid wasn't gone very long, though. Moments later he leaped to the ground and announced there was no one and nothing up there.

"I suppose we'll have to wait," he said as if issuing orders. He even pointed to a rhododendron shrub where he apparently expected Baudry to go. Baudry ignored him, and sat back down on his spot by the trunk, to Barque's intense consternation.

"That is MY spot," he said, kicking at Baudry's legs. Baudry glanced up at him and sneered.

"Find another, sonny boy," he said snidely.

Barque could not believe his ears. The insolence! He was not used to being insulted or even talked back to. He didn't quite know what to do. He thought about kicking the old man again, but for some reason he changed his mind. It was possible, he considered, that The Hidden One was somewhere lurking about and possibly witnessing his actions. He didn't want to make a wrong move, so he determined to rewind his posture and take a different approach.

"Never mind, then," he said in a gentler tone. "It seems that we've both been called. I wonder if anyone else was?"

Barque sat down at right angles to Baudry, and leaned against a different side of the trunk. After a few minutes of silence he spoke up again.

"You don't happen to have any idea what all this is about, do you, old man?"

"Not a clue," Baudry said. "Do you?"

"Not at all," Barque admitted. "Not at all."

Eight

Edeline was tired. Her feet were tired, her back hurt, every bit of her, in fact, was either tired or in pain or both. She hadn't done this much walking since never, and had pretty much given up asking "are we there yet" after Ember's initially curt answers had turned into snarls and then finally silences. Ember had other things on her mind, such as the state of play and the surrounding participants. They were being followed and not inconspicuously. Someone high up in the trees was shadowing their moves and didn't mind if he was heard. She knew what he was and didn't worry.

Edeline was seeing things. She could have sworn just now there was a coffee shop up ahead, and inside that cafe there was probably a newspaper waiting. Edeline was addicted to her news and was already becoming agitated having gone this long without it. What would happen to that miracle baby? Had the situation improved in Guyana? Did the first lady settle on more appropriate attire? Edeline had been in the midst of all these developments and was left on the ledge in every case. Now she had to wonder if she would ever find out. She rubbed her eyes and on reopening them was dismayed to see that the coffee shop had been a mirage.

"Do you ever see things that aren't there?" she asked Ember as she trailed along, struggling to keep up with the rapidly striding child.

"All the time," Ember admitted. "It's called the Pyraeus Effect. We named it after one of our kind who had a special knack for it. Old Pyraeus only sees things that aren't actually there. He doesn't believe when we tell him about the trees. He insists there are none, only office buildings everywhere."

"Why does it happen?" Edeline ventured.

"Because of the change in our brains," Ember related. "At least that's the theory. Some people think that whatever it was that caused our condition is also the cause of Pyraeus. And the other abilities some people have, like Strikers."

"What do they do?" Edeline asked.

"Telekinesis," Ember replied. "They can move things with their minds."

"Wow," was all Edeline could think of to say. After a bit more trudging along in silence, she spoke up again.

"What kinds of things?" she asked. "Big things? Any thing?"

"Little things," Ember told her. "It's why they are good in the game. They can score from a distance without touching the ball. It makes my job hell, that's for sure."

Ember had turned around to say this, and looking at Edeline for the first time in a while she almost felt sorry for the gal. Her glance made Edeline feel uncomfortable, although she had to admit that the dress made of ivy was "growing on her" in more ways than one. The leaves wouldn't go where the sun didn't shine, relieving one of her initial concerns. Also they felt warm and snug, and even seemed to give her an energy boost. Her hair was a mess, though, and she hated to know what her face must have looked like by then. Ember was thinking the opposite, that the men were going to go crazy over this one. Edeline was probably the most beautiful woman that Ember had ever seen and the weird thing was that Edeline didn't seem to know it. She was awkward, clumsy, even goofy at times, like an eagle that thinks it's a pigeon.

"What's this?" Edeline asked, hoping to direct Ember's attention away from her person. She was pointing at a tall plant growing by the side of the path.

"Mugwort," Ember replied. She was especially proud of her knowledge of the plant life in the forest. She had studied with an old botanist, one of their own kind, for years, a sixty-four year old named Elwin who'd been blessed with a photographic memory to go along with his years in academia researching nature. It was thanks to him, and him alone, that the Canopus dwellers did not have to go around making up new names for everything in their world. They had no books, and no hope of ever having any. Their collective memories would have to suffice.

"It's good for dreams," Ember continued. "You put one under your head when you sleep and you get the craziest dreams. It's because of the smell."

Edeline pulled a leaf off the plant, held it up to her nose and inhaled. The mugwort had a very strong, very nice odor. She was about the tuck the leaf into one of the pouches her ivy-dress made when suddenly a small, hairy man landed beside her, reached up and gave her a soft slap on the side of her face, then grabbed the leaf out of her hand and leaped back up into the tree. He scurried off into the branches and was quickly gone from sight. Edeline put her hand to the cheek he'd hit and rubbed, although it hadn't hurt at all. At the sight of her startled face, Ember burst out laughing so hard she got a cramp in her side and bent over pressing her elbow against it.

"What was that?" Edeline was asking, befuddled.

"A Smacker!" Ember managed to gasp out between breaths. "You were smacked."

"I don't see what's so funny," Edeline pouted.

"It's part of the game," Ember told her when she'd recovered sufficiently to speak without pain. "You're a Ball Gatherer, remember? It's what The Hidden One told you."

"And I still have no idea what that means," Edeline responded with a serious look on her face. "Honestly, I think you're all nuts. Is this all I can expect? You get locked up in this, this place and they throw away the key, there's no way out and you just go crazy? And I'm supposed to believe it goes on forever as well? This is just great. Just great."

It looked like she was about to burst into tears once again, but Ember held out her hand and tapped Edeline on the shoulder.

"It gets better," she insisted. "Come on. We're almost there. Really, we are."

"Okay," Edeline begrudgingly replied and the two started walking again.

"You still haven't told me about Smackers," she said after a while.

"Part of the game," Ember said. "It's how the ball moves. A Gatherer finds one, a Smacker comes and takes it. Other Smackers follow it, trying to steal it. Most of the game is played between Smackers. A lot of it happens way up in the trees. Eventually a Smacker will get the ball to some place it can be used by the Striker on his team, and then it's up to the Striker to shoot it into one of the goals revealed by another team's Hunter. You see?"

"No, I don't see," Edeline grumbled. "I mean, what I see right now is a banana tree that's full of ripe yellow bananas. Is it just the Pyro Effect or whatever you call it?"

"Pyraeus," Ember reminded her, "and no. That's a banana tree all right, and I'm hungry. Are you?"

Ember pulled off a couple of very large fruits and handed one to Edeline, peeling the other herself and stuffing it into her mouth. Edeline took smaller bites of her own and had to admit it was tasty. There was an additional benefit, too. No sooner had the first bit gone down than she felt completely refreshed, from her head to her toes. From that point the journey seemed easy, Edeline's spirits were lifted, and she even made herself smile, thinking about how silly that little man Smacker had looked.

She was walking alongside of Ember, no longer following behind, when they reached the Particular tree.

"People!" Edeline declared, as Baudry and Barque looked up and then got their feet.

"Striker!" Ember cursed, and spat on the ground.

Nine

"Savior!" Barque snarled back. His voice rose in anger but he was approaching her with caution.

"Your timing's terrible," he continued. "If you think you're going to stop me again, you're mistaken. I'm not even thinking of striking right now."

"That's not why I'm here," Ember said, "and I'm really not interested in you anyway. I always know what you're up to."

"Sure," he scoffed, "that's why you're not at all surprised to see me here now. Face it, little one, you just got lucky last time."

"And the time before that, I suppose?" she countered, and he shrugged. Barque turned away as if he had conquered the contest, and Ember turned her attention to Baudry.

"What about you, old man? What's your excuse?"

"Nice to see you too, little one," Baudry bowed in reply. "I'm honored to even occupy space around you."

"So answer the question," she snapped, but Edeline interrupted her with another of her interminably ignorant questions.

"So this is that tree you were talking about?" she asked, pointing at the dogwood which Barque was now leaning against. As if on queue, Barque started forward with a sudden lurch. Who was this? he asked himself, noticing the newcomer for the first time. His interest was considerably aroused.

"Hello," he cooed, gallantly stepping forward. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

"You're always having the pleasure," Ember grunted, but as Barque took a step toward Edeline, Edeline took a step back. It was not just the sudden approach by the man, but also the snake that was coiled around him. Edeline was terrified of snakes. Her attempt to conceal herself behind the child was, however, doomed to failure. Barque kept on coming until he was standing by her side. Leaning over her shoulder he droned, in what he thought was a most romantic tone,

"My name's Barque. I'm the top player in the game. Ask anyone, they'll tell you."

"He's the biggest something all right," Ember remarked, and Baudry burst out laughing. Barque was not amused.

"She's spiteful," he said, winking at Edeline. "Some of us are more fortunate in our outcomes than others."

"Some of us," he continued, "remain in the peakest of peak conditions, and not just now, but for always. You are, I presume," he asked, "a thirty two? If I may be so bold."

"I'm fifty one years old," Edeline promptly replied, drawing guffaws from all three of the veterans.

"And they just found you out?" Barque could hardly believe it. "Why weren't you here a decade ago? Or five or six years ago at the least."

"You should be proud of yourself," Baudry agreed. "Were you holed up somewhere for those years? How did you get away with it?"

"I have no idea what any of you are talking about," Edeline sighed. "Are all of you always speaking in riddles? I was just living my life until first thing yesterday morning. Someone knocked on my door and the next thing I know I'm stuck here in cuckoo-land with nothing but nonsense around me."

Edeline backed away further from Barque, who seemed on the verge of grabbing her boobs. He was certainly staring at them most rudely, covered in vines as they were.

"You'll make a fine addition to the collection," he leered.

"That's not your decision," Ember reminded him, to which Barque only replied with another of his patented winks, as if to say, "wait until she samples the field. She'll come round."

"What are you doing here anyway?" Ember demanded to know.

"I was called," Barque told her, puffing out his chest in proud punctuation. Princess lifted her head too, as if to add exclamation.

"Me too," volunteered Baudry, conscious as he was of being completely ignored once again.

"Ridiculous," Ember snorted.

"That's what I said when this one told me," Barque replied, gesturing towards Baudry.

"So The Hidden One's calling idiots at random?" Ember queried to no one especially.

"If that's what you are," Barque retorted, "then what am I? No, wait."

"Just be quiet," Ember threw up her hands and began pacing back and forth in front of the tree.

"It doesn't make sense," she muttered out loud. "A burned out old flutist, a swaggering braggart, a rookie who doesn't know diddly, and a sagacious wise veteran who knows all the ways of this world. What could she possibly be thinking?"

"Sagacious?" Barque cackled, "sagacious? Really? Pugnacious more like it. Snotatious, if that's even a word."

"Does anyone ever listen to you?" Ember groaned.

"If they're winners," he tossed back, "or want to be, ever."

"Stupid game," Ember mumbled, "this one thinks it matters. Well, play by the rules, that's all you can do."

"Silence!"

The word was spoken in all of their minds simultaneously, and with it came a loud crash in their brains like a giant tree falling. Involuntarily, each of them jumped back one giant step and stared around at each other, trying to figure out who had been speaking.

"Now listen to me!" came the voice in their minds once again.

"The Hidden One!", Baudry exclaimed. "But where is she?"

"I'm right here," the voice said, "but you cannot see me. Do you understand why?"

"Um, because you are hidden?" Edeline guessed.

"Smart girl," the voice murmured softly. "You'll do after all."

By now the four callees had all looked around at every square inch of terrain, and not seeing anything resembling a person or even an animal, they all gathered at the base of the Particular Tree as if they had been silently commanded. Not knowing where to look, they shuffled in place, each one as uncertain as the others.

"Look over here, if you must focus somewhere," said the voice, and to all of them the sound seemed to come from one place, a large flowering rhododendron just off to the left.

"Now then," the voice continued, It was an old voice, of this they all later agreed, and a gentle one too. There was nothing unkind in its tenor.

"I know you're all wondering what this is about, so I will come to the point. Granddaughter?" she asked, and Ember stepped forward, obediently.

"Yes ma'am", she meekly replied, suddenly acting like the child she visibly resembled.

"My dear," The Hidden One said, "it's been a long time, for reasons which I believe you quite understand."

"I didn't know what to think," Ember said to the air. "Could it be true? One hundred and twenty eight years old?"

"I know, I know," The Hidden One said. "It was bad enough to catch it at seventy, and then not to know until my late eighties, when they rounded us up, you and I. We escaped for so long, but we couldn't evade them forever. They were brutal, I'm sure you remember. Ruthless, relentless and cruel, but we outlasted them all in the end. Since they didn't destroy us, they had to forsake us. I was already more than a hundred by then. I could barely stand up, There was no way for me, not here in the trees. And so I had to go underground, Under the ground's where I went, and under the ground's where I stayed, in this spot, in this very grove, and still I remain. Still I remain. No! Don't come closer!" her voice rose in anguish as Ember began to approach.

"You must not come near. It's not safe. Stay back and listen to what I must say."

Ember stepped back, and bowed her head slightly. She hadn't meant to upset the old woman. It was just that she'd loved her so much, and after all the two had been through together, still missed her, after all of these years.

"How long has it been?" Ember asked. "Fifty or sixty by now? I've lost count."

"There's no need to keep it, now, is there?" The Hidden One said, then went on.

"I've thought long and hard about everything that's happened to us, about who we are, what we are, and what we might do to return to the way that we were."

"Is it even possible?" Baudry blurted out.

"There might be a way," The Hidden One said. "But it all will depend upon you. I can't do it myself, and so I have summoned each one of you. The task requires you all."

At this the four all turned to each other and examined one another's faces with concern and alarm. Their thoughts, though different in detail, were essentially one and the same. "I need you, and you, and you? Oh, good grief! This will probably not turn out well."

"What must we do?" the smallest one asked.

"It has come to me in a vision," The Hidden One said. "This very world we reside in holds the key, for the same thing that caused this place to come into being is the one thing that created those such as us. Some would call it a virus. Others might call it mutation. What has been changed can change back, if only the inputs are set in reverse."

"Antidote," Ember breathed.

"It's been searched for before," Baudry added, remembering similar ideas from the past.

"Not quite," said the voice. "This will be something that will set in motion a process, not a cure, not a thing, but a sequence, an unraveling, resulting in a restoration of a natural order. What we need is to make the first move."

"I'm ready," Barque boldly declared, although he knew nothing about what was involved.

"Each of you must be," The Hidden One said, "Now I don't have much time to speak left. It's a labor for me and soon I must rest. Listen closely."

At this they all took a step forward and tilted their heads, as if this would help them absorb what she said.

"There is a tree," she declared, "a remarkable tree, and within that tree is a knothole. Inside of that hole, a thing must be placed, a remarkable thing, which must come from a remarkable place. Your task, my friends, is simply to find that place, retrieve that thing, take it to the tree, and place it in the hole. Once in the hole the thing shall be devoured by a certain squirrel. Then shall the process begin, That is all."

At this, the voice fell silent. The four persons who stood in front of the bush remained quiet for several long moments. Finally, it was Ember who spoke.

"Where is this remarkable place?" she asked, but this time there was no reply.

"What is the remarkable thing?" Baudry asked. "Or at least what kind of thing is it?" he added.

"Is it bigger than a breadbox?" Edeline pitched in, after another long interval of silence.

"Is it a pine cone?" she guessed, drawing an elbow in the thigh from Ember.

"Oh, this is good," Barque groaned, breaking away from the others and stomping around in a circle. "Priceless! Just great!"

"Hidden One?" Baudry called out in vain. "Oh, Hidden One?"

Again, there was not a reply.

"I guess she really is gone," Ember finally said.

"And you've finally said something that I can agree with," said Barque, throwing a fake punch at the trunk of the Particular Tree.

Ten

"Now what?" Edeline asked the question on everybody's mind. They all shrugged together.

"It's not like we have a lot to go on," Baudry offered, which wasn't helpful at all.

"More like nothing," Barque suggested. "I'm taking off," and started to walk away, with Princess wrapping herself tightly around him.

"Wait," Edeline called out, "wait a minute, please."

At that, Barque turned around and rejoined the group gathered around the dogwood tree. He reminded himself that he hadn't yet made his conquest of the new blood, something he very much wanted to do.

"We're supposed to all work together," Edeline said, but Barque was harsh in his reply.

"A Striker working with a Savior? Never!"

"Isn't that just a game?" Edeline queried. "Aren't you all actually people outside of that?"

"Some of us are," Baudry put in. "Others," he added, gesturing at Barque and Ember, "have lost themselves entirely within it."

"Not entirely," Ember protested, though weakly. She was at that moment considering the positions of several Smackers in the surrounding vicinity and realized she was far more entangled in the pursuit than she would readily admit.

"Wait a minute," Barque paced restlessly. "Didn't she call you her granddaughter? You're the hidden one's granddaughter?"

"Duh," was Ember's brief response.

"I get it, I get it," Barque said heatedly. "So this is all some kind of fancy setup, isn't it? It's how you think you'll be able to keep an eye on me, so you can stop me from scoring on you, which I most definitely will do. I'm not falling for this trap. Oh no. I am definitely out of here this time."

But he didn't go away. His eyes had unfortunately landed on Edeline's chest once again and there they remained, locked in place, in spite of his other intentions.

"Now then," Edeline spoke. "This isn't getting us anywhere. I propose we sit down and organize ourselves."

As the others somehow obeyed her and sat on the ground in a circle, Edeline began to realize that all those years of attending meetings might actually be paying off. She led off again.

"Let's review what we know. The Hidden One told us several things, some of them admittedly vague, I admit, but a few things seemed very clear."

"Such as?" Ember prompted her as Edeline paused.

"Such as," Edeline continued. "We have a task, but let's set that aside for a moment. She also told us that all of us together are needed to accomplish this task, and that she chose the four of us especially. She must have had a reason for that. Now, I don't know any of you, really, so I don't know what you bring to the matter or why she would have chosen you. I don't know even know how she knows me at all or what she thinks I can contribute, but if we take her at her word, then there must be a reason. I suggest we go around the circle and each of us take a stab at what we think The Hidden One might be wanting from us. Ember? You first?"

"Why her?" Barque demanded. "She's in on it, I'm sure. And what about you? You came with her, didn't you? Um, I mean," he went on, softening his tone, "I'd like to know more about you, so why don't you go first?"

"Yeah," Ember said, "After all, this is your idea."

"Okay," Edeline drew in her breath. "My name is Edeline, as you know. I'm fifty-one years old, but I'm supposed to believe I'm actually thirty two, and that I've been thirty two for nearly twenty years and will be thirty two forever, is that about right? "

The others nodded and murmured their agreement.

"Okay, never mind. I'm just trying to get my head around that. I'm a professional mediator. I spend my days meeting with groups of people who have grievances with each other and can find no other way to work out their problems. Each side tells me their story and signs a legally binding agreement to abide by my decision. It's interesting work and I'm pretty good at it. I can usually find a middle way that everyone can live with, even if no one's happy about it. Other than that, I'm happily married although I never had any children and always wished I did. My husband didn't want them, you see."

"You might have found a different husband," Ember said.

"I might have," Edeline said thoughtfully, "but I love him."

Barque involuntarily snorted at that but quickly covered his face with his hand and pretended to be having a coughing fit. He realized he was going to have to work on his seduction tactics.

"I'm a little girl," Ember huffed. "And I've been a little girl for more than a hundred years. None of you could possibly imagine," she glared at each one in turn. "I have the mind but I don't have the body. I've seen so much. Really, I must have seen it all by now, everything there is to know about humans and existence. I was there at the beginning of all this mess. My grandmother and I were among the first of us. What you don't even know!"

She stopped and there was silence for several long moments. Edeline got the meeting back on track.

"What would you say are your special abilities?" she prompted.

"I can track with the best of them," Ember said. "I know every inch of the territory. I know the special cases, the ins and outs."

"Right," Barque cracked, "you know everything, you can do everything. There's nothing you don't know and nothing you can't do. That's some special talent!"

"What about you?" Edeline turned to him, speaking as casually and calmly as she could.

"Me? I'm fast. I'm strong. I can move things with my mind. Watch!"

He directed his attention to a large pink rhododendron flower that had fallen to the ground. As he slowly lifted his chin, the flower rose off the ground, and as he turned his head the flower came hovering towards him. Closer and closer it came, almost as if it was willing itself to fly, and then, at the last moment, he shifted his eyes and the flower veered off and floated gently into Edeline's lap.

"I don't have to be anywhere near the thing," Barque clarified. "I can move anything that's anywhere."

"As long as it's small and insignificant," Ember snarled, "like a little flower. I don't you see moving any mountains any time, big boy. I don't see your power doing anything useful to anyone anywhere, ever."

"I'm a Striker," he declared. "You only stop me when you're lucky."

"I stop you because I'm good," she charged back. "And I will stop you every time."

"What do you want to bet?" he offered, but before Ember could raise the stakes, Edeline intervened once again.

"Baudry? That's your name, right? I wasn't sure. What about you?"

"Washed-out," Ember muttered.

"Loser," added Barque as the two of them shared their mutual admiration for the elder.

"I used to be an artist," Baudry told them. "Back in the old world. I was a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker and a writer. I was also a musician. I played in the Terminal Symphony. First row flute."

"The Terminal Symphony!" Edeline gasped. "That's the highest rank. They're the best in the world."

"I was pretty good," Baudry admitted, "at everything, if I may say so."

"Modest, too!" Ember joked.

"Just the truth," Baudry told her. "I had certain gifts but then, but then a change came over me. We all know what it was now, but at the time I had no idea. I thought I'd merely lost it. One day I woke up and my head was clear. I could see nothing, hear nothing, the way I used to see and hear. It felt like peace of mind and it ruined my life entirely. I lost my positions, my reputation, I became a sort of laughing stock out there. My so-called friends all turned on me, didn't want to know me anymore. I ended up pretty much nowhere, wandering the globe, trying to recapture any one of my arts, but it was all gone, or almost all gone."

"I've heard you play," Ember said as he fell silent. "You can still do that and very well too."

"I can play the notes, it's true," he admitted, "and I can draw most anything, and make the shapes. I still have all the skills but I don't have any, how to put it? I don't have any soul in it. The spirit fled, and left behind a hollow shell."

He stopped again. It was the most he had spoken in months.

"We make a fine team," Barque piped up. "Let's review, shall we? A mediator, an athlete, a superhero and a has-been artist. I can see how that would all make sense. Not."

Edeline shook her head.

"It isn't clear to me either," she admitted. "But now that I think of it, I have an idea."

"Yes?" Ember prompted, suddenly eager.

"She gave us four tasks, and there are four of us called," Edeline said. "Maybe each of us is supposed to do, or at least be in charge of, one of the tasks. To go somewhere, to find something, to take it somewhere and put it somewhere. Ember, you know all the places. Maybe that's where we could start."

"Maybe you're right," Ember said, "but I still don't see it."

"Me either," said Barque. Princess seemed to nod also.

"I'm afraid I have to agree with them," Baudry contributed. "The four of us don't seem to align with all of those tasks."

"I know," Edeline sighed. "I was just hoping that something would begin to make sense."

"Well," Ember declared, rising to her feet, "Like you said, we have to start somewhere. I vote we at least get the hell out of here. And I'm hungry."

"Me too," Barque agreed, also getting up. The other two followed as the group walked away from the Particular Tree.

Eleven

High above the called, an eight-year old boy named Squee was scampering among the trees, tracking their every move, and pausing now and then to scan their minds for scattered thoughts. He was only able to pick up pieces. The old man's transmissions were the clearest for him, but they hardly told a coherent story. The group was off wandering without direction. How could they know what 'remarkable' meant? This was something that Squee felt vibrating over and over again. The cluster he followed was puzzling over that word. It must be important. He might even get a gold star for this.

Squee kept well out of range, or so he believed. Ember knew he was there but didn't concern herself with him. She knew all about the Watchers, who had never caused any disturbance. They were out of the game but into their own, a network of spies vying for prizes from someone, she wasn't sure who, someone who kept himself even more hidden than her grandmother did. She had her suspicions about who he was, but so far she hadn't been able to prove it.

Squee knew, of course. Every Watcher knew the one who commissioned their actions, the one to whom they reported, the one who handed out stars. Squee's arms and sides were lined with gold stars. The silver and bronze he received he kept in a special reserve, but the gold he had stamped on his body. He loved the way they glittered in the water. Leaping about the highest limbs, he giggled with glee thinking about his next treasures. He clambered away from the group and made his way straight for the lakeside where the Spy master lived.

Bumbarta - the Spy master - knew he was coming but acted as if he did not. He remained in his hut, anticipating the news he'd receive. Usually the Watchers had nothing to tell him, nothing of any importance, but he kept them all at it for a day such as this. He clasped his hands tightly, nervous by the fire he kept burning inside of his hut. He liked to say that the heat was meant for his bones, which were old, cold and frail. His slender frame and narrow face, topped by a mop of silvery hair and a goatee of which he was proud, was bent by the flames when Squee scrambled inside.

"Master," Squee cried, "I brought you some news. Real news! Real news! I think you will like it."

"In a moment," said Bumbarta, feigning indifference, "I can't seem to make myself comfortable." He sat creakily down in the hollowed out stump he used for a chair. When at last he had settled himself, he looked up at the impatient child, who was hopping around on one foot, keeping himself entertained while the old man was busying himself.

"Now then, little one," Bumbarta said quietly, "you seem to be somewhat excited."

"Oh yes," Squee burst out, rushing up to the man. "You are not going to believe it. No, you are not."

"Maybe we'll see, if you tell me," Bumbarta said, smiling.

"There's four of them," Squee burst out in a jumble, "gathered together you'll never guess where."

"You're right," Bumbarta sighed. "I shall never guess, so I shall never try."

"Then I'll tell you," said Squee. Bumbarta did not hold his breath.

"The Particular Tree," Squee reported. "That's where they met. I was following the new one, the one who just came yesterday. Do you remember? I told you about her."

"The pretty one, yes," Bumbarta replied. "The one who was traveling with Ember."

"With Ember, yes, that one," Squee nearly snarled. Bumbarta pretended to yawn. He did not want to get into eight year olds' spites. Nearly all of the "children" had grievances among one another. It was quite complicated.

"They met up with two others," Squee told him. "The others were waiting, already there. Then they talked among each other. A lot of words going back and forth. They sat in a circle for a while. A whole lot of words spoken then. I only got bits, but one word a lot. 'Remarkable'. They said it and thought it a number of times. Remarkable this, remarkable that. They yelled at each other. Or some of them did. One of them we already know. That one Barque. The Striker, you know. He was there with his snake, that Princess. Princess he kept coiled up around him. She did not seem to be enjoying herself very much. I could hear Princess breathing a lot."

Squee paused to catch his breath. Bumbarta tried his best to hide his displeasure. He had sensed the four gathering and knew who they were. What he didn't know was what they were saying. For this he had Watchers. For this he needed their vigor and spirit, but most of all their proximity. Bumbarta wasn't able to travel, not much, and certainly couldn't go following like them.

There were perhaps a dozen of these Watchers, most of them eight, a couple sixteen. They weren't the cleverest people, but they did like to have fun. He'd found the first of them resigned to playing tag in the forest forever, Blajha and Creigh, the twins. They'd stumbled upon his retreat, Blajha hiding in his hut while Creigh circled suspiciously around. They'd been a definite nuisance, returning over and over again to play hide and seek in his dwelling, each knowing perfectly well where the other one was, all the while calling for them to come out. At last, Bumbarta lost patience, and suggested a different game they could play, called Watching. He assigned them a target and made them compete with reports. Whoever could bring back the most information would get a reward. Over time there came some refinements, along with some other recruits, until he finally settled on the system of stars. By then he had filled up on gossip, and knew practically everything about every other exile around.

Also by then, Bumbarta had already resolved to utterly destroy Canopus. He hated it, and even more hated the people who'd put him in there, and silently promised revenge. This was the real meaning of fire in his life. He kept himself hot to keep up his fury. Outside he seemed calm to all comers. To the Watchers he was even a benevolent presence. They loved him, in fact, and were happy to go along with his game. It also kept them busy and amused, and the Watchers enjoyed laughter more than anything else.

"Remarkable what, exactly," Bumbarta pressed Squee behind drawn lips.

"Places, I think," Squee frowned, trying to remember exactly, "Remarkable places and things, yes, I'm sure that was it."

"What does it mean?" the older man uttered, not meaning to say it out loud.

"I don't know, master," Squee shrugged. "Should I go back for more? Follow them again? I can pick up some words, I know that I can."

"Yes, yes," Bumbarta nodded. "That would be good, "And take Soma this time. She can get closer."

"Soma?" Squee asked as if hoping Bumbarta would relent.

"Yes, Soma," Bumbarta repeated. "Go find her now and take her along. I'll need you both. Yes, together you'll earn double stars. Come here now," he added, and as Squee approached he held out his hand, in which there lay a gold star.

"This one's for you now," Bumbarta said. "There'll be more when you and Soma report with more words. And directions as well. I want to know where they go, where they are."

"Yes, master," said Squee, gingerly taking the star from his hand, and then slapping it onto his forearm, where he pressed it and rubbed till it stuck. Squee let out a yelp of delight and rushed out of the hut. He jumped into the lake to moisten the sticker and held out his arm to inspect and enjoy it. After splashing around for a bit he came out, and without waiting to dry he ran off, back into the trees, to find his companion as ordered.

Bumbarta observed all of this from his seat in his hut, then returned his gaze to the fire. Four people gathered at the Particular Tree, meeting up there as if by assignment, then going off, all together, a Striker and Savior among them. It was curious, curious indeed. Strikers and Saviors were never together, except at a moment of strikeage, and certainly never so socially. The word Squee reported didn't interest him much. Remarkable. Such a vague term. Never mind that, he said to himself, but I must find out more about this group and what they are doing. Although, he sighed sadly, it's probably nothing at all.

Twelve

Squee found Soma sleeping in her nest, smiling very peacefully. This child hadn't been an eight-year old for very long, having been only recently and easily trapped and dispatched to the forest. Her parents, it seemed, hardly noticed her lack of growth after completing the fourth grade. They moved her on to fifth, and then to sixth, by which time it was becoming quite apparent that the girl was simply not developing. Her school friends took note before anyone else, and their cruel teasing and harassment led to teachers and other authorities becoming involved. Soma was brought in for questioning by the same Captain Snig who'd interrogated Edeline. It was a more difficult case for him, as he had little experience with children, and Soma especially charmed his petrified heart just a bit. He held her in his facilities for several months to observe her lack of growth first-hand, in the meantime playing checkers and go-fish with her daily. He became quite fond of the child, who had a sweet disposition and was always friendly to everyone. Old Snig considered keeping her hidden somehow, but in the end he could not bring himself to thwart the system. At the last there was nothing else he could do but send her off to Canopus.

Soma didn't seem to mind. She took to the woods right away, and found herself a playmate in Squee after only a few hours. He quickly filled her in on the rules, all of which seemed very sensible to her. You got to eat when you wanted, sleep where you wanted, play all day long and do whatever you felt like. This was not a bad deal, as far as she was concerned. It didn't take long for her to fall into the Watcher routine, and she set about charming Bumbarta the same as she'd done with the captain. By now whenever he wanted to be sure about anything a Watcher had told him, Bumbarta called upon Soma to verify.

She opened her bright eyes and clapped her hands when Squee reporter their mission.

"More words?" she exclaimed with excitement. "We'll get every one," she promised him, and Squee could already envision another gold star - maybe two - on his arm. Together they set off through the trees, catching up to the reluctant confederacy of the Called.

They were all bickering again and hadn't gone far. After strolling through the trees for a couple of hours, Barque had declared the mission absurd and was threatening again to go his own way. He demanded a decent suggestion, from anyone.

"There's no point in wandering nowhere at all," he insisted, and the others could only glumly agree. It was true they still had no plan but had simply walked on toward the near-setting sun.

"Why even west I don't know," he muttered. "Might as well be going east."

"Would it matter?" Ember replied, then she stopped, and the others did too.

"But you're right. There's no point."

They shuffled in place for several moments, each one looking anywhere except each other's faces. No one wanted to be the first to give up, but no one had any ideas, until Baudry suggested,

"Why don't we try the Map Makers?"

"Time Wasters, more like it," Barque snorted, as Princess open her mouth wide to stifle a yawn.

"They don't know this place any better than I do," Ember added, but Baudry went on.

"But they're making up names all the time," he said. "I don't even know what they would call this place we're in now."

"This place has a name?" Edeline asked. To her it was simply all trees, and she hadn't seen enough of Canopus yet to know about its variety.

"Of course," Baudry said. "Every place has a name."

"I was just calling it the forest," Edeline said.

"Well, the whole thing is called Canopus," Ember informed her. "I thought I already told you that."

"If you did, I don't remember," Edeline shrugged.

"But I meant this area we're going through now," Baudry said. "You see, the Map Makers have been at it for years, trying to figure it all out."

"Who are they?" Edeline asked.

"Two sisters," Baudry replied. "Raina and Pulee. You know how there's never an end to the forest, right?"

Edeline nodded. She didn't really know that but she didn't want to seem stupid.

"You keep going west, or east," he added, glancing at Barque, who was pretending not to be listening, "and you think you would come to an end, but you don't. Space-time is warped in this place. There's no edge, no perimeter. You find yourself moved, or everything else is but you, it's hard to explain. So the sisters, they thought they would give names to everything and build up a map of the place. To see if there's a pattern, you know."

"There's no pattern," Ember put in. "It's not like you go the same way twice and end up in the same destination. Uh-uh. It's different each time and you never know when it will turn. It might even split us all up any time."

"What do you mean?" Edeline asked, even more confused now than before.

"You and I could be walking together, hand in hand even, and then all at once we'd be miles apart, as if we'd been separate the whole time. We all have to watch out for that."

"Would it really make any difference?" Barque scoffed. "It's not like we're getting anywhere together like this."

"I still think we should ask them," said Baudry, "if they've heard of this so-called Remarkable place. Maybe it's a name they gave to somewhere."

"I suppose it is possible," Ember had to acknowledge. "Even though I think they're pathetic. No one even uses the names they make up."

"I do," countered Baudry. "And I know lots of others who do too. It's going to catch on even more," he continued. "They're becoming official."

"Just because somebody makes something up," Ember grumbled, "is no reason for others to listen."

But Soma and Squee were listening intently from high up above. Squee had picked up the idea of patterns and names and map makers, but if he had to report to Bumbarta, his account would not make any sense. Lucky for their leader, then, that he had also sent Soma along. She could relate the discussion verbatim, and did, when she returned to the lake. She even informed him where they were headed - to The Bend in the River, where the Map Makers lived.

Thirteen

The Watchers didn't need to worry about losing track of the group, for they had decided to call it a day and make camp for the night. Edeline was impressed with how expertly the others foraged for food in the forest, how willingly they shared it, and how tasty they managed to prepare a supper of fire-roasted tubers, bananas, berries, nuts and coconut milk. She had to admit her dinner was as good as any she could ever remember.

She had shifted her seat a few times, trying to keep her distance from Barque, who annoyed her, and Princess, who still frightened her, despite the snake's best intentions, which it tried to express by flicking its tongue and staring straight at her. Edeline finally got up and put Baudry between herself and that symbiant duo.

"I don't know what he wants," she confided in her campfire companion, who chuckled and replied,

"It ought to be fairly self-evident, if you'd consider it for a moment."

"I'm a middle-aged woman," she bristled at the thought, "and he is only a boy."

"I'm afraid that you're wrong on both counts," Baudry advised. "As for Barque, he's been in his arrested development for many years now, and he's gotten quite used to having his way with the women."

"Eew," Edeline muttered.

"And as for you," Baudry continued, "you'll find yourself feeling younger and younger as time goes on for you here. Eventually you will come to understand that you are literally as young as you are, and by that I mean the age of your cells. That's what makes us what we are."

"Our cells? I don't understand," she replied.

"Exactly," he told her. "It used to be - oh, a long time ago, that we didn't know so precisely. We recognized ourselves in the main groupings, of course, as children, as teens, as primesters (as we used to call people like you) and oldies (those like myself). Finally a scientist settled the matter when he developed a dating technique and discovered the age of our cells. Ever since then we've known about the binary blockage. My term."

"Binary blockage?"

"Yes," Baudry said, "we reach ages of powers of two when we stop. The next highest power of two. It's what makes us suspect there were computers involved. Some people think it's a virus. I tend to think it's more like a bug."

Edeline didn't reply as she chewed on his words. She had heard of these theories before, back when it didn't apply to her personally as far as she knew. The immortals were sometimes thought to be mutants of some rogue genetics experiment, and it was certainly possible. There were plenty of rumors of strange doings in top secret labs, government funding, attempts to create a more perfect specimen, for soldiers in particular. What if they could fight a war someday, a war in which no one could die or even be woumded? But what could possibly be the point of that? Wasn't war all about death?

"Do you feel your age?" she finally asked him, as Ember and Barque had wandered away to settle down for the night as far from each other as possible, yet remaining within the general confines of camp. Edeline and Baudry remained by the fire as it too prepared to wrap up for the night.

"The usual aches and pains, I suppose," he replied with a smile. "Not bad considering I'm well over a century old."

"But earlier you said something that made me quite sad," she put her hand on his arm to soften the query. "You said that you'd lost your artistic soul."

"Ah, yes," Baudry said. "I noticed your reaction to that. But it's true. One day I awoke to find it was gone, but I really don't miss it, you know. That me had its time, and after what happened, well, I don't want it back."

"What happened?" she pressed him.

"They had me," he told her, looking into her eyes. "Right there on a table, like all of the rest of us during my time. In those days they were operating with efficiency, removing our pieces, one at a time, to find out what made us, what held us together. When they cut out our hearts ..."

He stopped to observe her alarm as she gasped.

"Yes, they cut out our hearts and that was the end. It was the one thing that ended our lifespan. Nothing short of that can do it. The rest of our parts, well, I had my share of extractions, let's say. What they took, what they left, this is me. I was one of the fortunate ones. I was lucky."

"Ember said the same thing about me," Edeline said in a whisper. "I didn't believe her. I just didn't know."

"It's not talked about much anymore, I would guess," Baudry said. "Those people out there aren't proud of themselves. At least I hope that they're not. They think now they're doing us a favor, casting us out and into this Escher-like wonderland. Are you familiar with that artist? He drew scenarios of perspectives impossible to exist, until here, until now. Now we're living in it."

He grinned and spread his arms out.

"Welcome to infinity," he declared in a louder voice.

"Will you pipe down!" Ember demanded from somewhere behind them, and Baudry smiled at Edeline, and nodded.

"There are people who seek a way out," he told her more quietly. "They can seek all they want. They won't find it. There are others who want to destroy us. It's for our own good, they say, and maybe it is. Who knows for how long this life will go on? But the thing about life is, it just wants to live. It's really as simple as that. Even for us. The life force is strong."

"I want to live too," Edeline said.

"Then this mission we're on may not be at all what you want," Baudry said, rising to wish her a good night.

Fourteen

Edeline spent another cold night on the ground. She could not even fathom the idea of sleeping in a tree, and was amazed at how comfortable the others were at doing it. Baudry in particular seemed to her like an orangutan, sprawled belly-down on a not-too-steady-looking branch, arms dangling below it, head precariously perched to one side. Yet there he was, snoring away peacefully while she tossed and turned on the duff not too far away, yet far enough that in case he did tumble down, at least he wouldn't be landing on her. Her ivy dress clung to her tightly, as if it wanted to warm her up, but it didn't help much. The night air was chilly and the sounds of the forest were enough by themselves to keep her from sleeping well. She did sleep, though, in snatches here and there, but every waking was accompanied by shivering and what she considered to be quite rational fears of being bitten or attacked by terrifying nocturnal creatures. The only animals she heard or saw, however, were owls and possums and crickets, none of whom intended any harm.

She replayed in her mind a number of scenes from the previous two days, making an attempt to come to terms with what had befallen her. That her old life was gone she began to accept. Although it seemed impossible that there was no way out of the forest - more than impossible, it was ludicrous, and to accept it was to abandon all sense of reality - she had an easier time believing that there was no going back, even if she held out hope of getting out of the forest somehow. She understood that unless she began to visibly age, she would only get rounded up once again and shipped back in here in the unlikely event of escape. She was having a harder time undoing the habits of her physical self-image. All of those years when she thought she was aging, she actually wasn't. She was beginning to realize it now, as she felt her skin and examined her face with her fingers for wrinkles and found there were none. It just might be true, she thought, as she remembered with both sadness and fondness her husband's approving and lascivious glances at her through the years. He was always infatuated with her, and that feeling had grown ever stronger the longer the two were together. How many times had he told her, and she hadn't believed, how beautiful she was, how wonderful she looked, how it seemed that she'd never grow old. Had he known or suspected? He must have, she thought, but maybe he didn't. Maybe he was forgetful, like her, ignoring the stories they heard of immortals, pretending they didn't exist, because if they did, then terrible crimes had been done, and no one, hardly anyone that is, had come to their aid.

Edeline had other worries to keep her company throughout the cold night. She had assumed that the task given to them by The Hidden One had been meant to end their captivity. It was only when Baudry had hinted otherwise that she even considered that she might have been wrong about that. If she wanted to live, then the quest might not be what she wanted? Wasn't that what he'd said? But if not to live, then, what? To die? Why would anyone want that? The answer came trickling to her like drops of water slowly falling. Some of them were more than a hundred years old. Ember had been trapped as a little girl for what seemed forever to her. The Hidden One might be a hundred twenty eight, unable to move, barely able to speak very long. Even Barque, even Baudry, were much older than they seemed. And if there was no escape? The thought was astounding. Of course they'd been trying for years! They were trapped in some sort of a supernatural maze. Yes, she could see where they might want to end their ordeal.

It hardly seemed, though, like the task they were given could possibly accomplish that goal, or any other end, as far as she could imagine. To find a place where there was a 'thing' and take that 'thing' to some other place and put it somewhere so a squirrel could eat it? She very nearly burst out laughing with the realization of her situation's total absurdity, which came with the dawn, and the others beginning to awaken as well.

Somehow her insights gave her a lift, and it was cheerfully that she set about gathering berries for breakfast. Up until then she'd been only observing, but now she carefully applied what she'd learned, twisting the berries off in just the right way so they'd grow back immediately, and she smiled, admiring her newfound skills. She worried she might have collected too many as she returned to the camp with a whole raft of fruit, but Ember was happy to greet her and take some of the load off her hands.

"Very nice," Ember said. "You've done well, I can tell."

"Thanks," Edeline answered brightly.

Baudry came climbing down from his roost, and Barque appeared out of nowhere, with Princess in tow. He had brought a handful of some kind of shavings that tasted like licorice, and handed the pieces around.

"Map Makers, eh?" he queried to unanimous consent.

"And I suppose someone knows where to find them," he added, to which everyone shook their heads 'no'.

"Well, at least we know where we want to be going, even if we have no idea where to actually go," he said with a laugh.

"They're not in the game," Ember shrugged. "Otherwise I could see them. I can send out some feelers, however," and with that she closed her eyes and lapsed into deep concentration.

"What's she doing?" Edeline whispered to Baudry, who leaned over and replied very quietly,

"Reaching out with her mind. She can do that, you know."

"No I don't know," Edeline murmured, thinking "of course I don't know. I don't know anything about all you people."

Everyone was quiet for several minutes while Ember worked on her mission.

"They've been seen by the lake," she announced, opening her eyes.

"We could reach it today if we set a good pace," Baudry added.

"Then I say we're off," Barque concluded, and set on ahead while the others hustled to follow. Ember caught up to him rapidly, while Baudry and Edeline struggled to keep them in sight.

Fifteen

Soma and Squee scurried back with the news before the troop had even made it five miles. Somehow the two little ones were able to fly through the roof of the forest as if distance were merely illusion. It was their little known secret. Squee had stumbled across it by accident one morning when swinging on vines playing a game he called 'caveman'. The boy had made a hat out of leaves that resembled a brigadier general's, and carried with him an assortment of hollowed out sticks through which he could blow different notes. He'd swing and he'd whistle, lift his cap up and holler, and doing all this he was able to keep himself entertained. Most of the time he didn't even notice the trees that he swung from, or where he was going, but one day he slipped and fell quite a distance and realized, when he landed, he was not anywhere near where he'd factually fallen from. "Factually" was one of his top secret words.

"Factually," he related to Soma when he made her acquaintance, "there are keyholes sprinkled throughout here." He gestured at the forest around them.

"Keyholes?" Soma asked, understandably confused. She hadn't yet learned about Squee's sense of language, that words could mean whatever he wanted them to, even those words that did not exist.

"Phantalooms," he confided. "Nestled about."

"Okay," Soma told him, "when you want to speak normal I'm listening, okay?"

"Oh, all right," he relented, and explained himself better. "Air pockets," he said, "or something like that. You go through them and come out somewhere else. Sometimes they're sideways, like this," he said, gesturing horizontally. "And sometimes they go up and down," he added with appropriate hand motions.

"You might have to be small to fit through," he suggested, though he wasn't quite certain of this. "It's why you can never get out. They're invisible, you see? No one knows that they're there."

"But you do," Soma was dubious. She hadn't known him long, but what she did know wasn't terribly impressive. Oh, he was certainly fun to play with, but science? That was clearly out of his range.

"I'll prove it to you," he asserted, and challenged her to join him. She did. Nothing was too risky for Soma, not even when they climbed up to the top of one of the highest trees in the forest, and Squee stood up straight, spread his arms out, and dropped. Soma gasped as she watched him go down. She hesitated, frightened, then followed. A bet was a bet after all and he'd dared her. Down, down she went, somehow evading all branches and vines, and then, for a moment, before she passed out, she felt the air change, felt the temperature plummet, saw the color of the breeze shift in front of her eyes, and then she knew where she was and it was far from where she'd been.

"We were days from here!" she shouted as they landed quite softly on thickets of clover.

"Days on foot," he corrected her. "But only moments when you go through the keyhole."

"Can you go anywhere?" she asked him, excited.

"I've found maybe twenty," he counted out, unfurling nine fingers. "And I know where they are."

"Did you tell anybody?"

"Nobody but you," he replied. "And Bumbarta, but I don't think he believes me."

"Why wouldn't he?" Soma wanted to know.

"He thinks I'm an idiot," Squee confessed. "And maybe he's right, but I know what I know."

"He'd have to believe you," she said, "if you showed him."

"He won't leave the lake," Squee informed her. "He never goes anywhere. It's why he has Watchers. We go places for him. Listen and see."

'Listen and see' is what they did, and they dropped straight through one of the keyholes that led near the lake. Bumbarta was waiting for news, and the words that they brought were intriguing.

"The sisters?" he mused. "They're not here. Haven't been here for days. Sure, they wanted to go naming my lake but I told them it's already named. Lake Bumbarta!" he laughed a grim laugh, and his whole body shook with a joy.

"Lake Bumbarta!" Soma cried shrilly. "I love it. I love it."

"Me too!" echoed Squee.

"So the group's coming here," Bumbarta repeated, rubbing his cold hands together. "Then I'll ask them myself what they're after and why, and who sent them. So far I don't know enough."

"We've told you all we know," Squee reported dejectedly.

"Yes, yes," Bumbarta looked down at him coolly. "You've done very well, my good Watchers. Very well. I am pleased. No, sometimes you have to do more than just watch. Sometimes you have to ask questions, and that's what I'll do when they get here. Now go, and post yourselves in a good place so I can know when they arrive. Send for others as well. We might as well gather our forces."

Bumbarta watched the two running off and took himself outside of the hut to stand by his lake. He gazed over the water as if admiring its allegiance to him. He certainly did feel he owned it. After all, it was named after him.

Sixteen

Barque stepped up his pace as Ember reached his side.

"I know what you're thinking," he called back to her, as Princess coiled herself behind his back to add on an extra glare.

"But it's not going to work," he continued.

"You're wrong," Ember grunted, struggling to keep up.

"Then why are you trying to stick so close?" he countered.

Ember nearly stopped to let him continue by himself. She did slow a bit, asking herself why indeed was she hurrying to stay with him, rather than linger behind with the more compatible Edeline and Baudry. Maybe he was right, that she was more interested in following his movements up close, to get a feel for the way he moved and acted and reacted as he made his way through the trees. Her interactions with him in the past had been limited to last minute lunges, when she'd jumped on her intuitions and rushed to prevent him from scoring. She had to admit, to herself if not to anyone else, that there had been many more times when she'd done the same thing and he hadn't been there, nor had any other Striker. Her saves were well-known. Her false alarms were a secret.

It wasn't easy being a Savior, always having to guess where the action might come from, constantly scanning the field to account for the players, the goals and balls in play. Even now she was reviewing the scenes in her mind as she hastened along toward the lake. She let Barque go on but tried to keep him in sight, at the same time trying to remain accountable to the others. She'd attempted to get the team to agree on a series of signals, sounds they could make to keep each other informed of their movements and whereabouts. Baudry was in on the plan, but Barque had only grudgingly accepted the idea and she didn't believe he would ever follow through. She gave it a try, emitting a short bursty shout, and heard Baudry's response, but not Barque's. Fortunately she could still see him ahead in the scrub.

They were nearing the lake. Here the land was more given to small hills and valleys, the trees had thinned out so there were broader vistas of sky. Gurgling creeks could be heard and songbirds were plentiful nearby. Ember had been to the lake many times. It was a decent sized body of water, large enough that swimming across would be out of the question for most. An athlete like Barque might attempt it, but otherwise most people went out on rafts, or some on rough hand-made canoes. For some reason it seemed to rain all the time in that area, and so not many people decided to live there. It was more of a vacation-type spot. You might go to swim or paddle about and try to catch one of the very rare fish. Ember had seen a fish only once, and that was so long ago, back in the days when she and her grandmother traveled together, before The Hidden One could no longer move, and decided to plant herself underground.

Hearing Baudry's response, Ember knew she could count on him to keep up, so she ran up ahead and caught up to Barque once again. This time he didn't shake her off. There was something he wanted to ask her.

"What do you know about Watchers?" he said, to Ember's surprise.

"Watchers?" she asked.

"I thought so," he said. "You don't know everything, do you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Watchers," he repeated himself. "A small band of creatures - I suppose they are people - that follow and listen from high in the trees."

"Follow who?" Ember asked, "and listen to what? You mean demon-gossips?"

"No," Barque replied. "Not demon-gossips. Watchers, I told you. There are some of them now right above us, but you're blind to their presence, I'll bet."

"If they're not in the game," Ember shrugged, glancing up at the trees but not seeing anyone up there. She had been aware of their presence, but not their identity or purpose.

"What I want to know," Barque went on, "is what game they ARE in. It's somebody's game, I bet. I could catch one," he said with a smile, and with that he came to a stop, whispered something to Princess, who reluctantly slid down his side and coiled up in the ground. Then, with a sudden leap, Barque was up in the trees, scaling high without making a sound. Ember stood looking up as he vanished.

"He's a shifty one," she thought and for a moment was certain she heard Princess voicing agreement from behind her.

Less than a minute later, Barque dropped from the sky, carrying a small child over his shoulder. He hadn't caught Squee, but Soma, who hadn't reacted quickly enough to his warnings. Soma was struggling, trying to break free, but Barque held her fast, even as he landed and tumbled her onto the ground. He kept hold of her arms as she squirmed. The two little girls faced each other. Ember and Soma could have been twins, with their dirty blond hair and their pale blue eyes, their rough scabbed brown faces and slender fit forms. The main difference between them was the glitter that sparkled upon Soma's forehead and shoulders.

"You his boss?" Soma asked rudely to Barque's consternation.

"How come I don't know you?" Ember said. She hadn't meant it to come out like that.

"Why should you?" Soma scoffed. "I don't know you, either."

"What's her name?" Barque demanded of Soma, who, before she could help herself, blurted out,

"Ember."

"So you do know me?" Ember said, taking a step towards the girl, who squirmed even more.

"Let me go," she ordered Barque, who didn't reply but tightened his grip.

"Why are you following us?" Ember wanted to know.

"Just because," Soma said. She had hit on a plan, and relaxed just a bit. Soma remembered what Squee had once told her, if she ever got caught, what to say, that some people didn't like to be spied on.

"It's fun," she went on. "Me and my friends like to play it. We call ourselves Watchers."

"Fun?" Barque snickered. "More like sneaky."

"Sneaky is fun," Soma twisted her head to inform him. "We try to see who can do best."

"Guess you lose," Barque said snidely. Soma shrugged.

"It isn't important," she told him. "It's just a game."

"I don't believe you," Barque said. "Who is your leader?"

"Leader?" she replied. "Who needs one of those?"

"What's your name?" Ember put in, and Soma turned back to her.

"Soma," she told her the truth.

"How long have you been here?"

Soma shrugged. Time had no meaning for her. Ember and Soma stared at each other. Soma was no longer struggling, and Ember decided there was nothing to gain from further discussion.

"You were right," she told Barque. "I didn't know about Watchers." She gestured at him to let her go, and for a moment he seemed puzzled, then decided the same for himself. He released his grip on her arms, and in a flash, Soma was gone. Just then Baudry and Edeline caught up to the others.

"Who was that?" Baudry asked.

"A Watcher," Barque told him.

"Oh yes, little Soma," he said. "I thought that was her."

Barque and Ember gaped at the old man.

"You know her?" they both said in unison.

"Sure," Baudry said, "She's a good one. They aren't all good. Some of them like to play tricks, and some will do anything to get a gold star."

"What are you talking about?"

"What gold stars?"

"From their uncle Bumbarta," Baudry explained. "That's what they call him. I knew him as Gowdy back in the day."

"Gowdy the writer?" Ember asked.

"That's the one," Baudry said. "Goes by Bumbarta these days. The Watchers feed him stories. That's what I hear. They feel sorry for him. He can't make them up anymore for himself."

"Like you and your music?" Edeline asked. Baudry smiled shyly.

"Kind of," he admitted. "Maybe so," he continued, after a moment.

"Well, that's all very curious," Ember declared, "but it doesn't have anything to do with our task. Let's get going. We should be at the lake in an hour or so."

They set off again, after Princess had reclaimed her rightful position around Barque's neck. They couldn't have known that Soma would get there first, or that her 'uncle' would be anxiously awaiting their arrival.

Seventeen

Barque once again took the lead by himself, and this time Ember didn't bother trying to keep up. Instead, she stayed back with Baudry and Edeline and complained about him to them.

"He thinks I'm out to steal his secrets," she grumbled, "as if I need to, as if there's anything he can do to stop me. I know enough about him already, and anyway I don't work like that. It's not my nature."

"Maybe it's his," Baudry volunteered, "the whole act he puts on. Maybe this is just his way of playing the game. He needs to feel dominant."

Ember glanced up at him.

"You could be right." she emitted reluctantly. It was beginning to concern her that Baudry seemed to have insights she couldn't muster. Ember's way, she had to admit to herself, was not that different from Barque's, if what Baudry suggested were true. She had a sense of pre-eminence herself. A Savior had to feel invincible. She concentrated on the game in her mind as the group neared the lake. She saw they were collecting an audience vaguely surrounding them. Smackers were lining up as if they sensed a new ball was coming. Perhaps it was Edeline's attraction, she thought. That one Smacker had spread the word about her and others were coming to witness first-hand. Ember hadn't failed to notice that Barque was deliberately ignoring the new blood. He was playing hard to get now, she snorted. That wasn't going to work either, she was sure. Edeline was coming along nicely, adapting to her new situation. Looking at her now, Ember might not have guessed it was only the woman's third day. She carried herself with a sort of ease that gave the impression she'd been there a while.

Edeline herself was feeling quite cheerful. The air about the place was invigorating and the smell of the lake was drawing her in. They were descending into its valley now, and the walking was easy as the cover thinned out even more. She could see clearly above the low bushes and the water itself was sparkling and gleaming in the partly sunny sky. Beyond the lake rose a series of hills, each one darker than the other before it, enhancing a sense of vastness and eternity. Edeline breathed in deeply and smiled. Somehow the place seemed familiar, like a favorite resort she used to visit as a child. She knew that she had no such memory. She'd grown up in a city and the most she had ever experienced of the greater wild world was an occasional trip to the zoo. She'd never even been camping before.

"There," Baudry said, pointing down toward something.

"The Map Makers?" Ember asked hopefully. She hopped up on to her tiptoes to see whatever it was he was signaling.

"Gowdy," he said, and described the hut by the lake.

"We could start there," he advised, and Ember agreed. Moments later they caught up with Barque, who was waiting for them to arrive.

"I didn't see anyone," he informed them. Baudry told him their plan and Barque shrugged.

"Might as well," he muttered.

Soon they arrived and weren't surprised that Bumbarta seemed to expect them. They assumed he had heard them coming just then and he didn't let on he'd been waiting all day. He invited them in after brief introductions, and soon they were sitting inside, sipping sassafras tea from hollowed-out bowls and admiring his cozy confines.

"You've done a nice job with this place," Baudry said. The hut - it was more of a bungalow, was actually airtight if you didn't consider the doorway, which opened wide into a sort of long hall. You wound around that to enter the living space, which gave it a sense of enclosure. The whole house itself was nearly completely circular, like a nautilus shell with a fire pit right in the middle. A peaked roof opened up just enough for the smoke to escape. The interior walls were made up of ferns and bamboo, and the roofing was composed of layers and layers of banana leaves.

"It's never quite finished," Bumbarta said modestly, "I just keep adding and adding."

"Impressive," Barque noted. He was especially interested in what looked like cages built into the walls.

"You have pets?"

"Sometime guests," Bumbarta explained, gesturing with palms open that whatever creatures those units might house were all welcome to come and go as they pleased. Barque might have inquired further, and possibly learned about certain birds Bumbarta had trained in the hope they might lead to an exit. He had sent the birds out and some hadn't returned. He liked to believe at least one had found a way out of the forest, and would come back someday and show him how. Barque did want to ask some more questions, but Ember took over and got down to business.

"We're looking for the Map Makers," she told him. "Have you seen them?"

"The sisters? Yes," he replied.

"Where?" she asked anxiously. "Where can we find them?"

"Ah, they've gone on," he shook his head sadly. "Just a few days ago. They were here, but discovered they weren't required. The lake is already named."

"We all call it 'the lake'", Baudry said, but Bumbarta didn't respond.

"Where did they go? Did they say?" Ember wanted to know, and Bumbarta laughed and replied,

"Oh they mentioned some names. You know how they are. They go around making up names that no one will use, so nobody knows what they're talking about. Some day, they hope, at least some of the names will stick. I hear they've made up a stick figure replica of the forest where they've scratched out their names in the dirt. It's supposed to be quite a good show so I'm told."

"So you don't know where they've gone?" Ember was disappointed.

"I'm afraid not," Bumbarta informed her, then added, "may I ask why, if it isn't too rude? I don't mean to pry," he said, but of course, he did. It was Baudry who told him.

"We've been told to find a certain place," he said. "A remarkable place, but that's all we know. We were hoping it might ring a bell with the Map Makers. Maybe they've heard of a place called just that."

"A remarkable place?" Bumbarta echoed. He was surprised. He'd thought that Squee had gotten it wrong. It didn't make sense, a remarkable place. Why, the entire forest was remarkable, when you came to think about it, not that 'remarkable' was any big deal. The word didn't mean 'good' or 'bad', only something you might make a comment about. To his mind, anyway, that's what it meant. Bumbarta had a literal brain. Words were what they were and that's all.

"It could mean anything," he blurted out loud, then gathered himself.

"You said you were told to," he wondered. "Who told you? Again, if it isn't too much. I'd just like to know. I like to know things."

"I've read all your books," Baudry said to Bumbarta's surprise. "I liked them a lot."

He turned to the others to explain.

"Gowdy was famous, you know. His books were sold all over the world. He had a detective, what was his name? Forthright, I think. Yes, Inspective Forthright. All very good."

"Why, thanks," Bumbarta said, blushing. "It's been quite a while. Quite a while." He looked around the room, apparently nervous.

"I don't think up stories these days," he admitted.

"They say that you still like to hear them," said Baudry. Bumbarta studied him closely, as if trying to gauge how much this man knew, and wondering who were this 'they' he was talking about. He was curious what people said about him. What did they know? What did they think?

"We met one of your Watchers just now," Barque put in. "A little one. Soma, I think, was her name."

"Ah, little Soma," Bumbarta relaxed. If she was the 'they' then he didn't need to worry. He had faith in what she would say. "Yes, it's true. I like to hear stories. The little ones bring them to me. They go into the forest and tell me whatever they see. The mind of a child, you know, is always full of surprises."

Ember cleared her throat.

"Some children are younger than others," she clarified.

"Yes, yes, of course," Bumbarta said smoothly. "But I wonder, again, if you could tell me who told you about this remarkable place?"

"The Hidden One," Edeline spoke, but wished that she hadn't when she felt Ember's glance fall hotly upon her. Was it a secret? Were they not supposed to tell? If so, why hadn't they told her?

"The Hidden One?" Bumbarta was shocked and blinked in surprise. "There is such a thing after all? And it spoke? It spoke to you all?"

Baudry took over, to Edeline's relief, and related the entire story of their journey so far despite, or perhaps in spite of, Ember's furious frowns and grimaces. Baudry left out only one fact; Ember's relationship to The Hidden One, and for this, at least, she was grateful. Bumbarta had many questions. What was The Hidden One after? What was this process she hoped would begin? What was the outcome expected? But they couldn't give him the answers. Did they not know themselves, he wondered, or were they just being coy? Were they keeping things from him? Was there some kind of reward in the end? Could it mean, could it be, could it possibly lead to the way? Bumbarta was burning to know. He felt himself growing hotter inside, but he kept himself looking calm, looking old, looking peaceful. His guests couldn't know of his seething within. He didn't want them to know, didn't want it to show. One thing was certain. He'd be following them close. He'd want to know everything. The Hidden One was said to have been the first of them all. Maybe she knew the way out. This was his only concern, the question that burned in him, day after day – how to get out, and get his revenge.

Ember was growing restless. This old man was useless. He didn't know anything, not even where the Map Makers went. They were wasting their time, and why were they chattering away anyway? Who told Baudry and Edeline that this was all right? No wonder they had such lowly roles in the game! Such as them could never be Saviors. You don't just give things away. Ember didn't trust this old man. She thought he had something to hide. What were those cages exactly? Why was she stuck with these idiots?

"Calm yourself," she thought. "Calm yourself down. Nothing is gained but nothing is lost. We could tell the whole world about the remarkable place and it wouldn't even make any difference."

"We should be going," is what she said, loudly.

"We thank you for your courtesy," she said to Bumbarta as she stood up and bowed. The others stood too, including their host.

"I would very much like to know how it goes," he said. "It's an interesting story."

"We'd like to know too," Baudry laughed. "Right now it seems to go nowhere."

"There must have been something The Hidden One said," Bumbarta suggested, fishing for more information. "Some sort of hint, some kind of clue."

"We've told you all that we know," Baudry shrugged. "If you picked up a clue from all that, let us know."

"I'm afraid not," Bumbarta shook his head, following his guests as they wound their way out toward the door. "Except, maybe this."

They all stopped at his words and turned towards him.

"From what you have said," he spoke slowly, "I got the impression The Hidden One thought you would know it, whatever it is, when you see it. Just keep going. It's my only suggestion."

"Maybe you're right," Ember shrugged. That was no help, is what she was thinking.

Eighteen

After some final questioning by Ember, Bumbarta told them he thought the Map Makers had headed "north", meaning "up the lake" as he pointed. Barque didn't need to be told twice, and sprinted off in that direction. The others followed. No sooner were they out of sight than Bumbarta waved his arms around in the air, and within minutes was surrounded by his entire collection of watchers.

"Keep with them," he requested. "Take it in shifts or whatever works best, as long as at least one of you is tracking each one of them at all times. There can be no mistakes. This is what we've been waiting for all along."

The Watchers glanced at each other with eyebrows raised and shrugs. None of them had been waiting for anything that they knew of, other than the next game to play. Bumbarta had rambled into thoughtfulness but emerged with the realization he'd been talking to himself.

"Gold stars!" he recovered, remembering his audience. "Multiple stars for those who bring back the story I most want to hear. The way out!"

"Don't forget!" he shouted as they scrambled after the four. "Stay close, stay covered, stay alert. Gold stars! Real gold!"

"Well, maybe not real gold," he murmured to himself after the Watchers had gone. He often wondered how many of his Watchers were fooled by the shiny pebble bits he glued onto them with a paste of his own devising. Most of them weren't the sharpest, he knew, but little Soma? Maybe she was just playing along. It was likely. There were thoughts in that one's brain, at least.

And maybe there were, but Soma wasn't particularly interested in them. She was out for the joy of it, and she let her crew know that Ember was hers. The others could pick who they wanted, but she would stay close to her double. She'd been struck by the similarities at their earlier encounter, but even more by the differences. There was power, she felt, in that little one, power she thought she could maybe acquire. She was wondering just how she could get it as she swung herself into the trees. Squee went along with her. He was certain that he would get stars just by being there.

Ember, meanwhile, was studying the map in her mind. It was shifting in ways she was not thrilled about. Smackers were conglomerating out near the caves, an area they usually avoided. That region, not far from them now, lay deep in the hills past the opposite shore of the lake. Face Painters lived there, a clan that tried to frighten off others. They made weapons from branches and arrowheads carved out of rock, weapons that served no purpose at all. No one felt threatened by them. The Face Painters jumped up and shouted, and thought they were scary, but most people just turned away from annoyance. They had come up with their own way of talking as well, not quite a new language but a series of grunts and ridiculous sounds. There weren't many of them, maybe twenty in all. Ember wondered why Smackers would go there. It didn't seem right.

At the same time, Barque had slowed down. He wanted to ask something of Baudry.

"That man Gowdy," he asked, "were his books any good?"

"Sure," Baudry said, "if you like that sort of thing, where there's a detective who solves every case."

"I think I would like it," Barque considered, rubbing his chin. "It's just been so long since I read anything."

"I do miss books," Baudry nodded. "Maybe it's only a matter of time until we start making paper around here. We probably have the materials we need."

"I wouldn't know," Barque admitted. "Even so, would anyone bother?"

"To write, you mean?"

"Yeah. Why would they?" Barque really wanted to know, but Baudry didn't have an answer. He knew that people did stuff because, well, because people like to do stuff. Here in this world there was no money in it, no possible reward, no tangible goals. You'd just have to write for the fun of it. And then what? You could give it away, if anyone wanted it.

"I doubt it will happen," he said. They were walking ahead of the women and followed a path that led around a giant Sequoia. At that point, the men disappeared.

"Now where'd they go?" Edeline asked. She'd been only a few steps behind them, and was listening in on their talk. It hadn't occurred to her yet that there were no books in this place. She'd simply assumed that somehow, somewhere, there must be a house or a building where everything was just like it should be, with electricity, books, TV and radio, mattresses, blankets and ice cream. She'd come here with nothing, it's true, but surely not everyone did. Somebody must have had something!

"Who knows?" Ember grumbled, coming up last. She was tired of Barque's ways, his leaving them behind only to wait up whenever he needed them. It was like raising a teenager who only comes home to get money or ask for the keys to the car.

"Sixteen", she cursed, "rotten egg."

"They were right here in front of me," Edeline said, stopping in the middle of the path so that Ember would have to halt too.

"Baudry was talking about books," she went on. "They came around here and then poof. I thought I could hear him for a moment, then nothing."

Ember peered ahead down the path, which was straight and clear for a while. There was no sign of the men. She flopped down on the ground and raised her right hand, index finger pointing up.

"I'll check on the map," she declared. "I need silence for that."

Edeline sat down beside her and kept her mouth closed. She watched as Ember screwed up her face in a way that made her look wrinkled all over. She balled up her fists and her body began trembling and shaking. Edeline hadn't seen this act before. It looked like Ember was holding her breath now, and turning bright red. Edeline began to be worried. Was the girl epileptic, having a fit? What should she do? What could she do? Something about tongues being swallowed was all she could think of.

Suddenly Ember exhaled, and opened her eyes.

"They didn't go anywhere," Ember said. "We did."

Nineteen

"What are you talking about?" Edeline said. "We're right where we were."

"No, we're not," Ember replied, getting up to her feet, "Look around. It does look the same, at least the parts we can see, but come over here and I'll show you."

Ember dashed off down the path back the way they had come, and skidding to a halt some fifty feet on, she shouted "Aha!" and pointed out off in the distance.

"We're up by the caves, do you see?"

Edeline caught up to Ember and couldn't believe her own eyes. Yes, the path they were on, looking back, seemed the same, but the view from where they stood now was completely different from what it had been just a short time before. She could still see the lake, but from the wrong side. They were also much higher above it.

"How does this happen?" she stammered. "It just isn't possible."

"Not possible, eh?" Ember chuckled. "It happens, though, yes, it does happen. The men, by the way, are still over there."

She gestured toward the far side of the lake.

"I can see Baudry now in the map. They stopped where they were, probably looking for us. Neither of them have the sight so they'll never know."

"How long will it take to get back to them?" Edeline asked.

"That depends on whether we want to," Ember said slyly.

"We're supposed to all work together," Edeline reminded her.

"Who knows what the old lady meant," Ember shrugged. "All I know is I'm sick of that boy. I don't mind a day off without him."

"How long?" Edeline repeated her answer.

"If you're thinking of going alone," Ember said, "be my guest. Of course you'll get lost. You won't have any idea where you are."

"Am I anywhere, really?" Edeline shuddered. "What does it matter? I want to go home. You're walking along and the whole world changes? One moment you're here and the next you are not? I don't know how it can be."

"It's all in the mind," Ember said thoughtfully. "Something that's just in the brain. At least that's what most people think. Perceptions. We see things and then we believe in them. Like right now. We walked through a gateway, that's what I think, some kind of teleportation. Invisible. Can't smell it or feel it. It's like when you're walking and you keep your eyes closed, and then when you open them you see that you've moved. The only thing different is time. We were walking and our eyes weren't closed but we took some kind of a shortcut without knowing it. They've rigged up the whole place like that."

Edeline gritted her teeth, and said,

"That just isn't possible. Nobody knows how to do that. If they did, do you think they would just do it here? They'd make money on it. You'd see teleportation stations everywhere. They wouldn't still drive around in cars. Okay? Do you see you're not making sense? You've been trapped here too long, that's what I think!"

"Oh, you do, huh? Now you're an expert? Three days and now you know everything!"

Ember stomped off, leaving Edeline behind. Edeline looked over where Baudry and Barque were supposed to be now. Ember was not heading that way. For a long moment, Edeline was tempted to go on her own, but she wasn't ready yet. She hurried after Ember, but Ember had taken off running and it was hard to keep up. Edeline kept catching glimpses of her as she ran along the edge of the hill, streaking past large boulders and pines, stumbling now and then on loose gravel. Ember was keeping a strict distance between them. Edeline guessed it from the way the girl slowed whenever she came close to falling, and sped up as she recovered her footing. Edeline resented this game, but also she felt she deserved it, at least for a time. She was tiring, though. She was not used to running, and as she rounded an especially large rock she stopped to lean up against it. Suddenly, a giant man leaped onto the path in front of her, his face dripping with what looked to be blood. He was waving his arms in the air and shouting some noise very loudly. Edeline fainted.

When she opened her eyes moments later, she found she was lying on the ground staring up at the face of the giant. Ember was standing beside him.

"Is she hurt?" the giant was asking in a soft, quiet voice.

"She'll be fine," Ember was shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

"You okay?" she added, to Edeline.

"What is that?" Edeline wanted to know as she inspected her body for damage. There was blood on her hands and she stared at it.

"It's just paint," Ember informed her. "They do that around here."

"Paint?" Edeline didn't believe her. She struggled to sit up, refusing the huge paw that the giant reached down to offer.

"This is Ralph," Ember told her. "Ralph? Edeline."

"Please to meet you," said Ralph.

"Likewise, I'm sure," Edeline murmured. She got to her feet and wiped her hands off on the ivy, which soaked it all into its stems, and didn't change color at all.

"Ralph is a Face Painter," Ember related.

"No, really?" Edeline snapped.

"I'd invite you into my cave," Ralph said, "but I'm afraid that it's not allowed."

"Their very particular," Ember translated.

"Because of the nest," Ralph continued.

"What nest?" Edeline asked.

"I can't tell you," he said. "I'm sorry. Truly, I am."

"Right," Edeline sighed. "Well, goodbye then, I guess," and she started to walk in the direction they'd been going before.

"Hold on there," Ember called after her. "You can't go like that. You have to make it up to him now."

Edeline stopped in her tracks, and turning around, she said through clenched teeth,

"Make it up to HIM? Make WHAT up to him? I swear you people don't make any sense."

"You frightened him," Ember s told her. "Can't you see that? The poor man is suffering now. He's terrified, he's worried, and on top of all that, there's this nest thing going on too."

"Do you even have any idea what you're saying?" Edeline wanted to know. "I think you're just messing with me. You're just playing one of your games. Well, I've had enough for one day. Changing places. Running away. Face Painters popping up out of nowhere! Stupid incomprehensible nests!"

Edeline threw up her hands and walked off. She really had had enough. She was going to go back down this hill, back to the lake, find that man Gowdy and ask for directions. He seemed like a decent sort, unlike this Ralph thing. She hadn't gone very far, however, when Ember caught up to her, and blocked the path.

"Let me go," Edeline barked, trying to get past her. She almost said something insulting about people of certain sizes and ages, but gritted her teeth, remembering that Ember had treated her decently up until now.

"Look, it won't take a minute," Ember said. "And it's easy. All you have to do is go where he tells you and do what he asks."

"Are you serious?" Edeline could scarcely believe it. "And what is it you think he's going to ask?"

"Nothing bad," Ember said, tossing her curls. "Trust me. I know."

Edeline took a deep breath. The thing seemed important to Ember somehow, and if she was right, if it was easy and wouldn't take long, then they could be on their way.

"Oh, okay," she relented, and they turned back to where Ralph remained, standing, half bent, as if still concentrating on where Edeline had fallen.

"Here I am," Edeline announced. "Now what?"

"Would you please come see my cave?" Ralph was pleading. His big eyes looked sad behind the dripping red paint.

"Sure, but I thought that it wasn't allowed," Edeline said.

"Now allowed to go in," Ralph corrected her. "But you can see."

"All right then," she held out her hand. "Lead the way."

Ralph turned, but not toward the path. Instead, he lumbered straight up the hill behind the huge boulder. He scrambled up on hands and knees, and Ember and Edeline followed. The hillside was steep and covered in patches of brambles with small thorns that scratched and tore Edeline's skin in small stripes. The cuts healed quickly, however, and didn't hurt much. Rather, they tickled, and she had to keep herself from giggling, while at the same time panting and beginning to sweat. After what seemed like much more than "a minute", they came to rest on a narrow ledge formed of loose yellow rock that seemed extremely precarious. Above them the hill went up even steeper, impossibly so, it seemed to Edeline, nearly ninety degrees going straight up, like a cliff. There was no way they could possibly scale it.

"Now what?" Edeline asked. The three of them stood on the ledge looking out over the valley. The view was magnificent, she had to admit. It seemed they could see the whole forest from there. Below lay the shimmering lake, and beyond it the trees went to stretch on forever. To her right, Edeline saw more hills and valleys, and to the left an endless descent.

"This is my cave," Ralph said, turning around. Edeline looked, but didn't see anything cave-like.

"Where?" she asked, puzzled.

"Right here," he replied, and stuck his finger into a hole in the side of a slab. The hole was only as deep as his fingernail.

"That's a cave?" Ember too was bewildered.

"No one could fit into that," Edeline muttered. "Even if they were 'allowed' to."

"See the nest?" Ralph went on.

"No," Ember said.

"No," Edeline agreed.

"Ralph heaved a big sigh.

"That's the problem," he admitted. "Nobody sees it but me."

"Wait," Edeline said, "Let me have another look. Could you move over?"

"Okay," Ralph said, getting his hopes up. He stepped aside and Edeline gingerly made her way over to where he'd been standing, praying she didn't fall of the ledge and roll straight down that brambly hillside. When she got there, she stuck her left eye right up to the hole in the rock and studied the darkness closely.

"I see something blue," she said softly.

"Yes!" Ralph leaped up with excitement and when he landed the ledge crumbled a bit. For a moment he teetered and Edeline thought he might slip, but he didn't.

"Kind of a diamond-shape," Edeline continued.

"You see it," Ralph breathed, "You really do see it."

"I do," Edeline had to admit, and she wasn't making it up. There in the deepest recess of the crack, she did see a blue diamond shape. She wouldn't have called it a 'nest', but if that's what he wanted, well, hadn't she gone where he told her and done what he asked?

"Thank you," Ralph said. "Thank you so much. Now we go down."

He turned, and using his toes and his fingers like claws, he made his way backward the way they had come. Edeline and Ember did likewise. When they reached the path once again, Ralph bowed several times, thanking Edeline over and over again, until finally they made their escape.

Twenty

"When you said caves," Edeline teased Ember, "I thought you meant like, you know, actual caves?"

"Apparently Ralph has a different idea," Ember struck back, "and anyway, I did mean real caves. We're in Face Painters country now."

They were striding easily now through the gentle slopes that wound around the hills in those parts. Periodically they'd emerge from cover into a sunlit section of bare rock stuffed with overgrown weeds. They heard, rather than saw, small creatures dashing in and out of the shrubs, probably mice and lizards and snakes, Ember said. Occasional raptors soared overhead in the otherwise quiet and peaceful surroundings. The path here was wide and easily walked. Anyone observing the two women casually strolling and chatting would have had no idea they were on a mission, or had been separated from their companions.

Anyone, that is, who wasn't a Watcher. Soma had almost creeped out of the forest to get a better look at the Ralph misadventure, and was muttering furiously about the words she was missing. It might have been super-important and she would never be able to report about it. Squee tried explaining to her that anything involving a Face Painter was not going to be serious.

"They're all crazy, you know," he informed her.

"That doesn't matter," Soma retorted. "Even if they are, which I doubt very much. They must have a reason to do what they do. Everybody does."

"Yeah," Squee countered. "Because they're all crazy," he insisted.

"We can't tell about that," she snapped. "We have to get closer. We're missing it all."

"There's no way," Squee advised. "We have to stay under wraps."

"I know," Soma grumbled, "I know."

Her spirits rose after the women departed from Ralph, and when she overheard them joking about it, she realized Squee was right, that it wasn't a great loss to miss it. Something else began to bother her, though. She was beginning to sense the presence of Smackers. As a Watcher, she'd had run-ins with them many times. The two groups occupied similar space high up in the trees, though where Watchers were methodical and purposeful while on the job, Smackers were careless and reckless, and didn't pay attention to where they were going. Watchers considered them rude and considerably unprofessional, while Smackers didn't worry about them. To a Smacker, anyone else might as well be a squirrel, just creatures that got in the way. Many times they'd knocked over Watchers or stepped right on top of them, with no apologies given, no concern when a Watcher had fallen as a consequence of their unconscious action.

"What do they want?" Soma queried and Squee sniffed,

"Same thing as always. Their stupid game."

What made the game stupid, in Squee's educated opinion, was the rather odd fact that Smackers weren't strictly members of teams. Teams consisted of Strikers, Saviors, Gatherers and Hunters. The rest of the field was all one big Smackfest. They stole balls from the Gatherers, then robbed them many times, from one another, and eventually described them to Strikers, but their comings and goings were utterly random, and there was no way to trace a deliverance from its original theft. Strikers had to live on the edge of unknowing, for a ball, which could be anything, might be revealed to them any time, at which point the Striker would have to engage the ball with their mind and direct it toward a legitimate goal.

"Sometimes they smell it," Squee said with a serious look that made Soma laugh.

"It stinks?" she said jokingly.

"No, really," Squee lectured. "Right when a new ball comes into play, Smackers all go where they think it will be. Then there's a scrum where they all fight for possession. After that they roar through the forest, chasing each other, stealing and stealing it back. It gets wild. We want to stay out of their way."

"But they're everywhere now," Soma said, "This is going to make our job hard."

"I say we stick to the ground," Squee suggested, and Soma agreed. It would be more difficult tracking the women this way, but they managed. They did it so well that Ember and Edeline didn't know they were there. Ember, though, was aware of the gathering Smackers, and it troubled her too. Saviors usually stayed out of their way. It was a Gatherer's problem to worry about. Now that she was stuck with a Gatherer, however, it was also her problem, and Edeline being such a newcomer, it could even be a little bit dangerous.

Twilight was coming on fast, and they'd been traveling much longer than either had realized. Edeline suggested it was getting to be time to make camp, and Ember had pointed out a smooth clearing, where the ground was softer and not very dusty. She thought Edeline might be more comfortable there. They collected some apples from a nearby tree and settled down to enjoy them along with some clover that Edeline had saved from the morning. Both were feeling a tad weary, and sat on the ground, chewing in silence, when Ember perked up her ears, stopped eating, and listened. Edeline noticed and ceased chomping as well, but she didn't hear anything unusual, just the tweeting of birds and the chirping of a lone cricket.

It was the cricket that caught Ember's attention. She turned her head toward the sound and listened intently. The chirping diminished in volume, stopped for a moment, then started again further off. Ember jumped to her feet.

"Come with me," she ordered Edeline, who reluctantly rose and followed. Ember stepped into a hedge and came out on what looked like a definite path. The ground was settled as if it was raked, and the sides were lined with small stones, clearly set there on purpose. The path curled about several trees. Edeline wondered where they were going and why, but didn't say anything. Picking up speed ahead of her, Ember still wore a look of great concentration. Edeline hurried to keep up. As she turned the last corner she came to a halt. Ember stood staring at the sheer, flat gray wall of mountain that blocked them. The path simply came to an end. A sheer cliff was towering above them, a hundred feet high at least. Its surface was totally smooth. Not a root, not a stem, not a twig emerged from it. Curiously, the cliff was only about six feet wide, and uniformly so all the way up, a gigantic impossible rectangle of granite.

Edeline put her hand on the wall. It was warm to the touch, very warm, as if heated by some invisible source. Ember put her hand on it too, and then both hands, then pressed herself fully against it. The rock filled her body with warmth like a blanket. Ember held her cheek against it also, and Edeline followed suit.

"I could do this all day," Edeline purred. It felt unaccountably good. She realized she'd been cold, all over, non-stop for days. Even in the sun she'd felt chilly, but now, this cliff gave her strength, made her feel recovered and healed from the day.

"It's remarkable," Edeline murmured.

"What did you say?" Ember replied dreamily.

"Remarkable," Edeline repeated.

Twenty One

"If you said what I think you just said," Ember said, "then we're close. We're very, very close."

"I don't want to leave," Edeline answered. "If I could just sleep standing up then I would. I'd sleep where I'm standing right now."

"You have to look around," Ember told her, and gave her a nudge with her hand. "Look, I'm letting go too."

Ember pushed herself away from the slab, although every nerve in her body seemed to want to return, like a paper clip drawn to a magnet. Edeline also struggled to release herself from the grip of the rock.

"Look around where?" she said sleepily. The heat had been numbing her senses, making her drowsy. She shook her head quickly, trying to awaken.

"Anywhere," Ember replied, taking a step away from the cliff. "But stay on the path," she advised. "We're supposed to stay on the path, but not go, stay right here, but keep on the path and just look around."

"You're babbling," Edeline told her, but did as Ember instructed. The path was lined with the usual trees - always trees everywhere, Edeline thought, and the ground was the usual duff.

"Nothing to see here," Edeline reported. "Branches and leaves and twigs and stones, dust and dirt and oh, what is that?"

"What's what?" Ember asked, turning toward her.

"Over there," Edeline pointed at something that lay snugged on a branch near the trunk of a small sapling pine.

"Looks like a nest," Ember said. "Can you reach it from here, from the path?"

"I don't think so."

Edeline took a step toward it and reached.

"I could get it if I stepped off the path," she told Ember, who again warned her again not to do that.

"Well, okay," Edeline said, "then I guess that I won't," and retreated. Just then a very large bird came barreling down from the sky shrieking loud cries as it came. Edeline jumped out of the way as the crow rushed right to the little pine tree and landing, danced on the branch, seeming to curse out the women, guarding its brood. The crow flapped its wings and showed them its claws.

"All right," Edeline said, holding up her palms in a show of good faith. "I'm backing away now, okay? You don't have to come scratching my eyes out."

"He's talking to you!" Ember scolded. "Don't you know anything?"

"What?" Edeline turned toward the girl. "What is this? Make fun of the new girl day? Sheesh! It's just a bird protecting its nest."

"Oh really," Ember sighed, "and I suppose birds always give you their eggs?"

Edeline turned back to the tree as the crow held out its claw once again. Sure enough, it was clutching a very small egg and hopping up and down the branch toward her. Edeline walked up to the edge of the path once again and stretched out her arm, holding her palm up with her fingers extended. The crow made its way where she was and then, to Edeline's immense disbelief, the bird dropped the egg right into her hand. It hopped back, gave another great cry, and then took off up into the sky.

Edeline cradled the egg carefully and brought it up to her eyes. The growing darkness made it difficult to see but she could tell it was light blue and speckled. Edeline nearly stopped breathing as too many thoughts rushed into her head. She felt such a surging of love for the thing, unlike any sensation she'd ever experienced. This egg was her hope. It was her strength. The egg held the promise of endless fulfillment. She would tend for it, nurture it, care for it, mother it. All of her life from them on would be meant for the egg. All of these thoughts flashed in her mind for an instant. In the next instant, everything changed.

Figures dropped out of the trees from all sides. Voices were yelling, Edeline was jostled, knocked to the ground. She tried to hold on to the egg but then she was slapped in the face by a hand she couldn't see. Then it was gone. They were gone. Everything was just as it had been before the bird came, except that Edeline was lying on the path, her nose was bleeding, her face was scratched, and the egg had disappeared. She wanted to cry. She did cry. Edeline was weeping like never before and pounding the ground with her fists. Ember stood over her, waiting. She too had felt the power of the egg, but also knew Edeline was a Gatherer, the egg was the ball, and the Smackers had known it was coming. She could still hear the chase through the trees until all the Smackers were gone. Who had the egg now was anyone's guess. It would change hands a thousand more times, Ember thought, and then what?

"The goal!" Ember shouted out loud. "We have to get back to Baudry!"

Twenty Two

The pack of wild Smackers roared through the trees, some twenty or more of them keeping up the chase, pursuing the egg at every turn as they flung themselves impossibly from branch to branch to branch. They were astounding athletes, every one, performing moves which no circus acrobat would ever attempt. Many of them had years of experience under their ivy belts, while all of them exercised and experimented constantly, and for moments just such as this. Once a Gatherer picked a new ball, it was up to the Smackers to carry it forth. If there were rules in this part of the game, they were unwritten and unspoken at best, except for one and one only. Smackers knew best, and Smackers never told an outsider what really went on in these mad airborne scrums.

No one Smacker carried the ball very long. Instead, they passed it, threw it, chucked it, heaved and tossed it up in the air, leaving it up to the others to snag it as best as they could. Astoundingly, the small egg never got scratched, never got nicked, never got broken. Smackers pulled at each other, leaped at each other, clawed and dragged and tugged one another. Sometimes they fell. Sometimes they flew. Always they landed cleanly and safely. And all the while they made a huge noise, bellowing their way through the forest. One of their favorite routines was a call-and-response sing-song banter made of childhood poems passed down from the old days. Lucky witnesses below might hear a snatch or two of songs such as this one, where one Smacker went solo while a chorus responded in alternate lines:

Don't knock on the door

(I'm putting on my shoe)

Don't knock on the door

(There's nothing to do)

Don't knock on the door

(I'm putting on my sock)

Don't knock on the door

(Just please, don't knock!)

Or one of the many variations of this one:

You can call it San Francisco

(I will call it Sam's Clam Disco)

You can roll, in the grass

(I'll just sit here on my ass!)

And they'd laugh and they'd scream and they'd whoop and they'd holler, all the while covering great distances. The one and only hard and fast rule was this, the time limit. Smackers could only ferry the ball for exactly one segment. A segment, which was roughly an hour, was counted off by a designated Timer, a Smacker who followed the horde but didn't take part in the transfers. Periodically, the Timer called out the count so the others would know how much time remained. It was a great point of pride among Smackers to make a great distance during this interval, and another Smacker was assigned to mark ground. How this was done remained a great mystery, but the regular truth was that every new scrum set a new record. By now the ventures were legendary. They were said to cover hundreds of miles in the segment.

Of course, no one took any of this very seriously. The Smackers did what they did, and they loved it. No Smacker was known to have ever resigned from the game, and not every applicant could be accepted. Strict tests were installed to make sure the aspiring Smacker was up to the task. If not, well, they had to be Hunters or Gatherers and keep up their training for the next sign-up period, which was a suitably rare occurrence. The all-time great Smackers were heroes, but since they kept all their activities unto themselves, no one else knew even their names. It was practically a secret society.

In the end, the last Smacker holding the ball when the segment was up would just let it go. The Timer called out "TIME", and everyone stopped. No matter his or her placement or position, no matter the size or condition of the ball, no matter the time of day or night, the last Smacker holding would open their hand and let the thing drop. After that, it was up to the Strikers, all of whom were simultaneously mentally alerted to this event, with a flashing in their eyes and a ringing in their ears. This was the instant the Strikers lived for.

The Timer called "TIME" and the Holder let go. He was perched at the top of a very tall tree, perhaps a hundred feet high in the air. The tiny crow egg started to fall. The tree, an old elm, was quite thick with leaves. It was certain the egg would get stuck somewhere up there, likely the egg would get broken, but down it kept going, falling and falling, evading each branch and each leaf, picking up speed as it hurtled towards the gravelly ground below. At that moment, a snake was peacefully snoring, curled up snugly around the neck of its master. Maybe it heard the egg whistling. Maybe it felt the breeze of its impending arrival. Whatever alerted her, Princess stuck out her tongue and held it there, steadily, and the little crow egg landed softly between the two forks.

Twenty Three

With all the flashing and the ringing, it took Barque several moments to realize that the so-announced ball was actually right in front of his nose, as Princess raised it teasingly to his face.

"O-ho!" he shouted. "Great catch, my girl! What a great catch!"

He'd been merely standing there, consulting with Baudry about what to do next. The two had been ambling aimlessly since they noticed that the women had vanished. They never did have a clue where they thought they were going in any case, so without Ember to drive them on in her man-herding way, they were pretty much at a loss. They'd stopped for lunch, then stopped for a snack, then stopped just to stop as the day went along. They hadn't made it far from the lake. In fact, Barque kept hinting he'd like to go back, maybe go for a swim, or at least look around a bit more. The unspoken notion was that he really wanted to meet Gowdy again. Baudry had peaked his interest in the once-famous bestselling author. Barque had a weakness for fame. Since he considered himself to be one of that kind, he felt a kinship with others who had some renown, as if they were destined for friendship. Bumbarta would not have honored that sentiment, but Barque could hardly know better. Baudry had resisted the suggestion, and wanted to avoid a meeting that was bound to go badly for Barque. It wasn't that he particularly liked the Striker. He simply didn't like conflict.

Now that the ball was in Barque's hands, however, the idea of the lake was out of both of their minds. Instead, Barque had only one problem. He possessed the remarkable thing, and he instantly knew it to be what it was, but where was he supposed to be taking it?

"Baudry," he said, "Where's the goal?"

"The goal?" Baudry stalled. Uh-oh, he thought to himself. I guess this is where I'm supposed to come in. The truth was, he hadn't been paying attention the whole time. He could have imagined this part would be his. After all, there were four of them called by The Hidden One, and four parts to their task, and one of those parts was the remarkable tree, in which would be placed the remarkable thing. As a Goal Hunter, it should have been obvious to him.

"Maybe I could just pick a tree, any tree," he muttered, and looking around, thought 'eenie meenie miney moe' while glancing at random surrounding trunks. He sighed, however, realizing it couldn't be so easy. The Hidden One would probably find out and then he'd be in big trouble.

"Um, this way, I think," he said, louder, and started walking off, away from the lake.

"Okay," Barque said cheerfully, tagging along after him. Barque began whistling, carrying the egg gently in his palm, while Princess blinked in pride at her conquest. It didn't worry Barque that all the other Strikers would have received the alarm, and would come hurrying after the ball. Any one of them could arrive any minute, and then there might be a struggle. It didn't matter which one of them originally came into possession of a ball. It was always ripe for the taking until the goal was actually scored. Therefore, a Striker must be ready to fight, not only to get it, but to keep it until he could strike. Many battles had resulted in more than wounded pride, although no one was ever seriously injured. Barque himself had never been scratched. He was bigger and faster and stronger than most other Strikers, and also the most foolhardy. Others were wise to be wary of him, and some of them simply gave up the ball when they saw him approach.

Baudry was finding it hard to stay sane. For one thing, Barque was a terrible whistler, and as a formerly world-class musician, Baudry was sensitive to horrible noises. He was also becoming quite anxious. He'd never been very good at goal hunting. Barque had been right. The only reason that Baudry was even on a team was because of the rule that no one could be rejected. Up to this point, he had found exactly two goals in maybe seventeen years, and one of those didn't really count, because he'd gotten it from another Hunter, who'd felt sorry for him. There was really no way he was going to somehow come up with one now, under duress and with the pressure mounting every moment. He was finding it harder to breathe, harder to think, more difficult even to walk.

"Um, Baudry?" Barque stopped whistling to say. "It sure seems like we're going in circles."

"We are?" Baudry looked up. He hadn't been noticing where he was going.

"Yep," Barque said. "We keep going around this old tree. About three times now I think."

"Really," Baudry stopped, and turned to look at the tree. It was a maple tree. Some of its leaves were yellow, some red, some brown and already falling as if it were autumn, but only for that tree. Curiously, there were several low branches which had rotted off, leaving knotholes behind them. Out of one of these holes oozed a sticky red sap. Baudry reached up to touch it, and put the gooey liquid into his mouth.

"Mmmm," he said, "syrup," and put out his finger for more. Just then, though, a squirrel came scrambling down from above, clucking and jabbering at Baudry and showing his teeth. The squirrel stuck out its paw and shook it at him. Baudry withdrew his hand quickly in alarm. Squirrels were known to be dangerous.

"Guess it's HIS syrup," Barque chuckled at Baudry's quandary. Baudry took a step back, and, annoyed by Barque's laugh at his expense, said,

"Yep, that's the one. That's the goal."

"The goal?" Barque asked him, surprised.

"Yes," Baudry nodded. "That's it. There you go," and with that he started walking away. Let Barque deal with that creature, he thought.

"Okay," Barque said slowly, as the squirrel kept menacing them. He hesitated, not certain what he should do. He thought about finding a rock, and throwing it at the thing, hoping that would scare it away, or maybe find a big stick and take a few whacks at the thing. Instead, it was Princess who came to the rescue. She struck fast, darting straight at the squirrel, which shrieked, and hurried back up the tree. Princess retreated with a glow of success.

"Aha, then," Barque said. "Now this is going to be easy."

He held up his palm and gazed at the egg for a moment. He knew he could just reach out and place the egg into the knothole, but his Striker's pride wouldn't let him go easy. He focused his mind, and used his great power to levitate the egg and cause it to drift in the air toward the goal. Baudry had turned to watch, cringing with the fear that his choice would be wrong, that somehow the Striker would know it and turn to confront him. Barque narrowed his eyes and drove the egg steadily towards its target. Only a foot or so from the goal, a shout rang out from behind them. It was Gradge, another Striker, who'd only just now arrived.

"Leave off there!" Gradge cried, and Barque's concentration was momentarily broken. The egg remained in midair while he turned to gauge his opponent. Gradge was another sixteen, a tall, thin young man with bright long red hair and a face full of very bad acne. As soon as he saw it was Barque, he started trembling, but he forced himself to come forward.

"Leave off," he commanded uncertainly.

Barque frowned and took a step toward him. Gradge froze, his courage beginning to wane.

"Boo!" Barque shouted, and thrust out his arms. This was simply too much for Gradge, who quivered and shook for a moment, then fled. Barque returned his attention to his task. He pursed his lips and pushed the thing closer and closer. The crow egg was now at the tree.

"Now!" came a cry, and a small figure rushed onto the scene. It was a small girl and she practically flew off her feet and up to the egg, which she caught with one hand and then smashed it against the trunk of the tree, mere inches above the knothole.

"Ha!" Ember shouted in triumph as she let herself fall to the ground. Edeline came running behind her.

"What have you done?" Barque yelled. "What have you done?"

"Stopped you, for one thing," Ember panted, catching her breath. She had been going as fast as she could, traveling non-stop since the moment the Smackers had stolen the egg. All the way she'd kept Baudry's position in the front of her mind, and right near the end she'd gotten that feeling, that a Striker was just going to strike. As a Savior, Ember couldn't help herself. All of her being was drawn into stopping the score. Her role was too powerful, and kept her from even considering the matter. Now, as she lay on the ground below the remarkable tree, she started to realize the situation.

"That was the goal!" Barque was shouting at her. "I had the remarkable thing. I was putting it into the remarkable place! Just like The Hidden One wanted, and now look at you! You've gone and ruined it all."

"I did?" Ember blinked, looking around at the others. Baudry was shaking his head.

"It sure looks like it," he offered.

"Oh my goodness," Edeline added. She could think of nothing further to say.

"It can't be," said Ember.

"You just couldn't help it, could you?" Baudry wondered. "A Striker's got to strike, and a Savior's got to save."

"We were all doing our part," Barque complained. "Except you."

"But how could I know?" Ember cried, but of course she could know, and she knew that she could. In fact, she said to herself, I should have known. I did know. All along I did know. She chose me for a reason. Was it this? Was this what she wanted? Did she want me to ruin it all? No, it can't be. It doesn't make sense. I'm a Savior, so she had to know what I'd do. What does it mean?

"Enough!" Barque spat on the ground. "I've had enough. If I never see you again it'll be too soon."

Princess stuck out her tongue as the two made their departure. Baudry, Edeline and Ember watched him go. None of them called for him to return. For a long time, none of them said a word. Finally, it was Baudry's turn to leave.

"It feels like it's over," he shrugged. "We did what we could. If it wasn't what The Hidden One wanted, well, she could have just told us, you know. She didn't have to be so obscure."

"It's been interesting, though," he said, smiling, as he bowed to the women, then made his way in a different direction than Barque.

"I suppose you agree with those two," Ember said, getting up to her feet.

"What do I know?" Edeline shrugged. "I'm still pretty much in the dark."

"I think I'll go home," Ember said. "You can come if you want."

"Sure," Edeline said. "Why not?"

And the women walked off in yet another direction.

Twenty Four

Only one direction remained, back to the lake, and it was this way that Soma and Squee went. Both of them were exhausted. Ember had led them on quite a chase, traveling as fast as she did, and they having to keep themselves hidden. Many times they were on the verge of just giving up and dropping down to the path and following them in the open, but they had their professional pride to consider, and kept up pursuit through the trees. There was a lot to report, and Soma reviewed it all in her mind. Bumbarta would want to hear everything. He wasn't amused when he did. On the contrary, he was furious and was barely able to contain his rage.

"What do I care about eggs?" he stamped around the fire. "What's all this about warm rocks and talkative crows and stupid giants and a little girl smashing up things against trees? Where's my way out? Where's what's important?"

Soma and Squee stood nervously, eying the hall to the door. They had done all they could. The other Watchers who'd been on guard filed in, and ranged themselves along the wall. Bumbarta walked up to each one in turn and questioned them closely, hoping to uncover some hidden detail, a clue to what he was seeking. Those who'd accompanied Soma and Squee confirmed everything they ha said, although none were as accurate as Soma. Those who'd gone after Baudry and Barque added the details of squirrels and sap and walking around in circles.

"I don't care about any of that!" Bumbarta came close to shouting. All of the Watchers were alarmed to see their boss this angry. He was usually so calm, and smiling, but now those same white teeth which used to gleam in pleasure at their reports seemed wicked and scary instead, and those eyes were making them squirm. Bumbarta waved them away, and then, recovering himself somewhat, yelled a sort of apology after them.

"It's just a slight headache," he called. "Don't worry about anything." He felt overcome with emotion. For some reason he'd been so certain, so sure that this time he'd stumbled on something especially unusual, and the hope of it burned in his heart like a fire.

"Better not to get your hopes up," he reminded himself. "Better to plan, to take steps, to do for oneself, rather than rely on any external sources." So saying, he busied himself with his cages, plotting to capture new birds, to train them better next time, to have them take messages, even. Yes, that was an idea. All he would need was something to write on, and something to write with. It shouldn't be hard. He could scratch on some especially thin bark. How did paper get made anyhow?

"Ah well," he sighed and sat down on his chair. The idea of writing again made him weary. He'd tired of that kind of thing. He stared into the fire and tried to forget, tried to empty hid mind.

Outside of the hut, the Watchers had gathered around Soma, who did her best to reassure them.

"Our uncle just doesn't feel well," she told them. "I'm sure he'll be better tomorrow. In the meantime, I think he needs rest."

The Watchers drifted away, leaving Soma and Squee alone on the banks of the lake.

"What do you really think?" Squee asked.

"He's mad about something," Soma replied. "But he's not mad at us."

"That's good," Squee answered. "I just wish we could make him feel better."

Epilogue

"It's getting better already," The Hidden One whispered to no one. She was deep in her hole underground. She had waited until the team had disbanded before sending the squirrel back down the tree trunk. It paused, sniffing around the knothole. The egg shell had mostly peeled off and fallen onto the ground. The yolk was now dripping, making its way slowly into the hole, where it was mixing itself with the syrup. The squirrel took another step closer, lifting its paw when it felt the sticky mixture getting into its claws. It brought the paw up to its mouth, and licked it. The taste was delicious. The squirrel dipped its paw in for more.

"Mmmm," The Hidden One said, experiencing the flavor through the mind of the squirrel.

"It's delicious," The Hidden One said. Already she felt herself weakening. Her bones, long sore and accustomed to pain, were finally giving in to their ultimate fate, to return to the dust, where they truly belonged, where they ought to have rested decades before.

"This is it," The Hidden One smiled in her mind. "Finally, the cure. Just one thing remains," she murmured. She searched in the walls of her brain, reaching out to all the wide forest, locating her granddaughter, Ember, who was at that moment sitting on a tree stump, holding her head in her hands, trying her best to forget what she'd done. It had been a long day. She still could hardly believe she'd let her instinctive reactions get the better of her. What had she even been thinking, as she'd run down from the hill, keeping Baudry's location foremost in her mind. She knew she had to get to him. She knew he was going to discover a goal, and she knew that Barque would soon strike. Did she just want to be there to witness it? Is that what she thought she was doing? Did she think that the four of them must be together for the final event to occur as it should? Or had she even been thinking at all? She couldn't really remember. All she could think of was urgency. She hadn't even bothered to see whether Edeline was able to keep up. She'd only paid to heed to the map in her mind. Go, go, go, was the constant refrain in her brain, and so she had gone, as fast as she could, dashing through the trees, leaping over rocks and roots and creek crossings, flying past the lake, rushing into the woods once again, only to fail. That was it. Just to fail.

It was a crushing defeat, especially for one so sure of herself, one so experienced, so wise in the ways of this little world. Why did The Hidden One have to pick her? Was it just as Barque said, because she was family? Did The Hidden One feel sorry for her, want to give her a chance, to be a part of something inportant? And now she had ruined it. She'd smashed the egg, destroyed the ball, kept it from being scored as it should have been scored. Now the process, whatever it was, would never begin. Now they'd never know what might have been. Edeline was no help at this moment. She was sitting nearby, keeping vigil, waiting for Ember to snap out of her funk, to start giving her orders and be cranky again. She missed the old Ember, who was better than her, who knew all the ways of the wild. Edeline wasn't concerned about failing the quest. It never meant anything to her. As far as she could tell, it was all just a joke anyway, a trick that some shadow had been playing on them. She didn't believe in anyone being a hundred and twenty eight years old. It wasn't even possible. None of this was possible. She herself was merely a victim of misunderstanding, a part of her remained convinced. She was a fairly well-kept middle aged woman, that was all. But far from being distressed, as she'd been the previous day, she was beginning to grow more accustomed. The food wasn't bad. The scenery was gorgeous. The people she'd met were interesting enough, though mostly insane. She wanted to talk with Baudry again. She was even beginning to miss Princess and her haughty self-satisfied smirks.

Near the women sat a cricket on a tall blade of grass, a cricket whose chirping was not being noticed by them. The cricket kept trying to get their attention, coming closer, hopping and hopping, until finally it leaped onto Ember's left knee. It used an antenna to tickle her. She took a hand from her face and brought it down swiftly, trying to brush it away, but the cricket just jumped to the other knee, then back when she swatted again. Back and forth this went on several times, until Ember finally looked up and noticed the insect was staring right at her, and chirping its little heart out. It was only repeating one message, over and over again.

"Thank you, my child."

"Thank you, my child."

"Thank you, my child."

"What did you say?" Ember asked it.

"Thank you, my child," it chirped once again. Ember's face brightened as she began to realize what it meant, then she smiled through her tears. She had done the right thing after all!

"Of course! Ember said, jumping up, and dancing around as the cricket flew off satisfied.

"What is it?" Edeline asked.

"The Hidden One," Ember cried. "She's gone. She's actually gone. She is dead!"

"And that's good?" Edeline asked, now more confused than ever before.

"Good?" Ember shouted. "It's better than good. It's fantastic!"

Edeline shrugged. She couldn't know it, but everything in the world had changed.

The End.

Epic Fail, Book One

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