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Toby returned to the west wing garden. Between the warm sun and dense prose, he dozed off again.
He stood up and walked over to the south-facing wall.
Off in the distance stood Lela’s tree.
Clouds drifted toward the east.
The wind lifted the tiny grass-like leaves growing from the tops of the spike trees.
A man drove his ox cart toward the Barrier.
A couple of Castle Guards sprinted at him, waving their arms.
The man saw them and whipped his oxen faster.
Toby wanted to shout, but the man wouldn’t hear anything from this distance. Toby thought about helping the guards.
“See something?” Lela asked.
He pointed, “That man is heading for the Barrier.”
She looked out. “Uh-huh,” and started her stretches.
“He’s going to cross.”
The oxen crossed the barrier. One animal staggered but kept going.
She kept stretching.
“I don’t understand.”
“Where do you think the food comes from?”
“But you...” Had he misunderstood something?
“What?”
“Food is scarce because we can’t farm outside the Barrier.”
“That’s not what I said.” She continued stretching.
“But-”
“We don’t have enough farmland inside the Barrier. The One lets most of them through. He doesn’t want dead subjects, just obedient ones.”
“But... something out there attacked Raymond.”
“That’s a good question - for Fatha.” She continued her stretching routine. She propped one leg up on the edge of the fountain. As she stretched, her curves formed long straight lines, only to become gentle curves as she relaxed.
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Stretches.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He started some slow stretches, but he was still sore from their earlier sessions.
Lela jogged in place. “Ready?”
As they ran, Lela ran beside him. She wore that perfume again.
“Fatha should be givin’ ye the first test soon.”
He didn’t answer.
She stopped. “He already did and ye can’t talk about it.”
He shrugged.
She squinted. “Something went wrong.”
He tried not to react.
“He can’t let ye take it over, so yer not done yet.”
***
After their exercises, they worked on sword skills, but she let him handle his sword, well balanced but heavy. She took him through one drill, and he had to catch his breath.
“Let’s move on.”
She turned and walked across the rooftop garden with fluid grace; Toby could not stop staring. She picked up a crossbow, and with a quick flip, she tossed it at him.
Luckily, he didn’t drop it.
She picked up the other crossbow.
“These are light crossbows, so ye don’t need a winch to set the string.”
She placed her foot in a metal loop and pulled the string up to the catch.
“Do it.”
He placed his foot and grabbed the bowstring. His blistered fingers screamed in protest. She tossed him a piece of cloth, and he finally secured the string.
“Now set the bolt.”
He looked at the stock. “I only see wood screws.”
She rolled her eyes and picked up two short projectiles, thicker than arrows, with wooden vanes.
The first one had a square tip. “This is a quarrel. The word comes from the French word carré, meaning square. Used against armor.”
He realized she meant knights.
She picked up one with a sharp point. “This is a bolt, from the German word bolzen, meaning arrow. Used against everything else.”
She placed the bolt in a groove and set the nock against the string.
She shouldered the weapon, aimed at a target set on the far side of the green space, and put the bolt in the yellow center.
“Yer turn.”
He loaded the bolt, sighted the target with his right eye, and yanked the trigger.
His shot dug into the dirt to the right of the target.
“Again.”
He grabbed the string with his blistered finders and pulled.
The second bolt arched over the mark and splintered against the backstop.
“Sorry.”
She put down her crossbow and stood behind him. “Load.”
With a grunt, he set the string and placed the bolt.
“Aim.”
He shouldered the weapon and centered the tip of the bolt on the target. She stepped closer and put her hands on his hips, forcing him to turn his left side more to the target.
Her warmth pressed against his back. Her lips were millimeters from his ear.
That perfume commanded his attention.
She whispered, “Breath.”
Goosebumps.
“Keep both eyes open and line up the shot along the length of the stock.”
He forced his concentration on the target, but who was he kidding?
“Focus on the target. Still see the tip of the bolt?”
“Two of them.”
“Place the left one on target. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.” Her words flowed like molasses. “Gently squeeze the trigger.” She slowly applied pressure to his hands.
The weapon jumped and his bolt hit to the right of the center ring.
“Nice,” she whispered.
She seemed to linger.
Then stepped away.
After he fired about thirty more “Time for dinner.”
She led him down a fresh set of passages, some lined with armor and one with various tapestries of dead Barons or something.
Several people looked at him, smiled, and nodded.
One grandmother stopped him, touched his cheek, and looked like she might cry.
They sat at a small table in the main dining hall, away from the crowd.
She told about growing up here.
He told her a funny story, worked not to blow the punchline, and she laughed.
The candlelight played across her eyes.
“Does the Keeper always eat with the Messenger candidates?”
“No.” She held his gaze, then said, “Ye have some work to do?”
He did?
Oh. Teacher’s assignment.
If he failed this, he’d be home tomorrow. He folded his hands on the table and stared into the candle flame.
She reached across the table and lightly ran one delicate finger across the top of his hand.
“Good luck.”
***
He walked toward his room.
“Good evening, Candidate,” said a smiling young woman working in the kitchens.
“Evening, Candidate,” said an older man working on a crack in a wall.
“Good evening.” Toby stood straighter; his head held higher. The reassuring warmth of the Amulet rubbed against his chest.
Something was different.
He’s always been the outsider; he belonged nowhere because they stayed nowhere for long.
But he was important to these people, and for the first time, someone other than Mom, Dad, and Chase was important to him.
But becoming Messenger?
Still too weird. Mom counted on him to give it his best shot, and Dad was right: failure is not the worst thing.
***
He settled in his room, sat at a small table with a single sooty candle, and opened the book on the Levitation Amulet.
He re-read Reginald’s story and repeated the message several times.
He copied the words on the top of his parchment. He looked in his book bag for his pen.
Instead of finding his plastic pencil bag, he pulled out a small cloth sack with a leather tie. Inside was a bottle filled with black liquid and a small ornate object that looked like an animal horn, tipped with a gold point. He’d seen fountain pens before, but this didn’t hold ink. He stuck the tip to the bottom of the bottle, pulled up, and made a mess.
After several more tries, he figured out how to dip the pen far enough without dripping.
Given Teacher’s plethora of anal tendencies, neatness counted.
He wrote, ‘Savior of people, man of stone, in the darkness, you’re not alone.’
The messages usually rhymed, but sometimes not: was that significant?
‘Savior of people’: was that the Messenger?
‘Man of stone’: reference to the boulder?
‘In the darkness’: no hidden meaning there.
‘You are not alone.’ Was it a warning? He was alone in that cave, wasn’t he? He thought he was in the belly of some beast, but that was his claustrophobia talking.
He stood up and paced for a few minutes. Thoughts raced across his mind, from bad to worse, stupid to ridiculous.
He put pen to parchment and spent the next hour reshaping his thoughts. In the end, he let the ink dry, rolled up the parchment, washed up for the night.
He crawled into his ‘bed’ and tried to get some sleep, at least until The One began his nightly show.