Forbidden (The Seeker Saga, #2) (37 page)

 “It’s near winter. The land isn’t arable right now,” John said.  “I’m sure there are people we’ll meet closer to the village.”

“I hope so,” I said.  “It feels a little creepy.  I mean, it’s not every day these people have a plane touch down on their lake, is it?”

“Perhaps things have changed since Arthur’s father last visited,” John noted.  “And ours wasn’t the only plane on the water.  One might be enough to bring them running, two makes it seem ordinary.”

“Maybe,” I said, but I still wasn’t convinced.  Something about this place felt…
off
.

We continued on, walking down the main road toward the village.  As we got closer, and more of the village came into view, my suspicion about the place grew.  I expected to see children playing, neighbors talking, and people working. But, instead… instead, there was nothing.  The only thing I could hear were the sounds of our own party.

“Something’s wrong,” I said, as we neared the entrance.

“I feel it too,” Ashley confirmed.  She looked back at me nervously from her place at the front of the group.  Liz, who was trotting beside John, was looking around, wide-eyed.  Arthur and Rob, on either side of me, wore stony expressions.  Eve was the only one who looked unperturbed, but then again, there wasn’t much that fazed that girl.

We came to the edge of the village.  A thick, stone fence no higher than my hip curled around the outside, and parted only for the entrance.  It was old, but well-maintained, and stood sturdy.  It didn’t seem to be there to keep anything out as much as simply marking the perimeter of the settlement. 

The town was in good repair.  The buildings that looked small from a distance turned out to be generously sized close up.  None were over two stories, but they had a stony bulk that spoke of master craftsmanship.  The light brown thatch that made up their roofs reminded me of fresh hay.  Everything was neat and well-maintained.  Wooden porches jutted out from the fronts of the buildings, and stools and benches stood on the verandas.  There were no power lines or cables, no sewer ducts or street lamps.  Everything felt pure, untouched by the progress of time, locked away into a simple age that existed long ago.  It felt a little like stepping back into the middle ages.

But then there was the flipside.  Even though the hard-packed dirt streets showed the imprints of recent footsteps, there were no people
anywhere
.  It looked like the village had been hastily abandoned.  In fact, it was as quiet here as it had been on the walk from the lake.  As I looked around, I saw some doors and windows open. I could even smell some baking aromas wafting from one of the buildings.  There had been people here recently, it was clear.  But not anymore.  Things were eerily quiet.

“Where… is everybody?” I asked.  A gust of wind momentarily rustled the grass behind us.

“It feels like a ghost town,” Rob said.  “Arthur?  Are we at the right place?”

“It matches the coordinates given,” John offered.  “And it fits the description his father gave.”

“There’s nothing else around here for a hundred miles,” Arthur said.  “We would have seen it from the air otherwise.  This must be it.”

“But where are the people?” Madison asked.  “It looks like they just got up and left!”

“Look!” I exclaimed, trying to lift my arm to point.  It dangled uselessly across Arthur’s shoulder instead.  “Over there.  On the porch.”  I turned my head instead.  “Isn’t that a jacket?”

Liz and John walked there.  While Liz went to look at the garment, John came and knocked on the door.  “Hello?” he hollered.  “Is anybody there?”  There was no answer. 

Liz examined the cloth for a moment, and then picked it up and held it open.  Sure enough, the form of a coat fell open in her hands.  She brought it to us.   I saw that it was made of stout brown wool – nothing fancy, but nothing to throw away, either.  Something bulged from one of the pockets.  I pointed it out, and Liz reached in to take it out.

“A pipe,” she said curiously.  “And it’s still warm.  Feel.”  She held it out for me, then, realizing I could not, colored in chagrin.  Rob took it from her, though, and confirmed what she said. 

“That means the owner of the jacket was here recently,” Madison observed. 

“But the question is,” John offered, “where did they go?  I peered inside the window to the house.  All the furnishings are still there.  This is not an abandoned community.”

“Then where is everyone?” Liz repeated.

“It’s like they went into hiding,” Eve said.

“Call it a hunch,” Arthur offered, “but I’d say it has something to do with that other plane.  My father told us nobody knew about this place except him.  I believe him.  That wasn’t completely accurate though. Other people did know.  The ones from his research group.  Outside of that circle, I’m sure, it wasn’t shared.  Otherwise, this place would have been exploited a hundred times over.  It would have been much easier for the government to come to the source of the crystals than spend money on my father’s research.  And yet the town is still just like he described it.  Untouched by the outside world.”

“Except for that plane,” Madison noted.

“Yes.  Except for the plane.  I don’t know what it brought, but maybe the villagers are conferring at some sort of town meeting.”

“That makes—”
sense
, I was going to say, but I never had the chance to finish.  A piercing shriek shot through the village. Our heads whipped toward the source.  It came from somewhere in the heart of town.  Silence filled the air afterward, a deafening silence. It taunted us with its serenity.

“What was that?” Eve demanded.

“Somebody’s in trouble,” Rob said.  “We have to go!”

“Wait!” John stepped in front of Rob, who was already running with me on his shoulder whether or not Arthur followed.  “We don’t know this place.  We don’t know who’s here.  We have to be careful.”

Suddenly, the shriek came again—more desperate this time.  There was no doubting whoever made the sound was in trouble.

“We have to go
now
!” Rob urged.

John looked from Rob to the rest of us.  The girls looked a little scared, but all wore a mask of sheer determination.  “Right,” John nodded.  “I agree.  But keep together!”  He stepped forward to take the lead.  “Keep your eyes sharp, and your wits about you!  We have to be ready for anything.”

John went quickly at first, but slowed when it became apparent I couldn’t keep up if I was hopping on one leg between Arthur and Rob.  I was sure we didn’t want to rush headfirst into something we weren’t ready to face, either.  We walked down the abandoned street, listening, watching, trying to find the source of the scream.  But the sound did not come again.  There
was
no sound again.  Everything was silent.  There was nothing to guide us anymore.

We made our way through the village, staying to the middle of the street, and keeping wide on corners to avoid anything unexpected.  Every house we passed, however, was empty.  Every alleyway was devoid of people.

We turned a corner and froze.  There was a small girl in the middle of the street, about to turn the corner too.  She looked like she had been running.  Her cheeks were stained with tear trails, and her yellow braids were a tattered mess.  Her face was dirty, as if she’d been rolling on the ground.  She looked shocked to see us.  With a wordless cry, she spun and ran the other way.

“Wait!” Liz cried out, but the girl kept going.  Without a second’s hesitation Liz raced after her.  Liz was fast, and overtook the girl easily.  She grabbed her arm.  The small girl struggled against Liz’s grip.  “We’re friends,” Liz said quickly, trying to calm her down.  “We’re friends.  You don’t need to run.  What’s wrong?  Where is everybody?”

“…Friends?” the girl asked uncertainly.  She looked on the verge of tears.  As I limped closer, supported by Rob and Arthur, I saw that she couldn’t have been older than ten.

“Yes,” Liz said gently, releasing her arm.  “See?  We won’t hurt you.  What is your name?”

“Kelly,” the girl answered shyly.

“Kelly,” Liz repeated.  “I’m Elizabeth.  These are my friends, too.”   She swept her arm back to take us all in.  “Don’t be scared.  Can you tell us where everybody is?”

The girl looked behind her unsteadily, almost as if debating to make a run for it.  But then she turned back and let everything out in a rush.  “Two men came,” she said quickly.  “In a…
plane
.” She struggled over the word as if it were new to her.  “They demanded to meet the Village Council.  The rest of us came to see what they wanted to.  Everybody went to Town Hall.  When the Village Council came… the men struck one of them down and said they’ll hurt her more unless everyone did what they said!”

Liz looked back at us, worriedly.  “Two men?” she asked.  “What did they want?”

“I don’t know.  They… they made everybody crowd into a nearby farm.”

“How did you get away?”

“My mom made me slip through a gap in the wall.  She told me to run.  Before I left, I saw the men tie the village councilors together.  They started asking them questions.  I don’t know anything else.  That was all I saw.”

“How can two men command an entire village?” Rob demanded.  His tone was harsh, uncompromising.  When he spoke, Kelly looked ready to burst into tears.  Liz and I glared at him angrily.  He didn’t seem to notice.  Luckily, Kelly found her resolve once more, swallowed, and answered.

“One of them had a…
gun
,” she said.  Again, she struggled over the word.  “I’d never seen anything like it!  He said he could use it to hurt people.  When the councilors saw it, they said it was true.  They told us to listen so we wouldn’t be hurt.  Nobody hurts anybody here. 
Nobody
!”  This time, she did break down, and started sobbing in Liz’s arms.  “Nobody!”

“There, there,” Liz comforted her.  “Shh.  Nobody’s going to hurt you with us around.  We can help you.”

“You… can?”  Kelly sniffled.  She looked up at Liz, and her eyes shone in the light.

“Of course we can.  And we will.  But we need your help.  Kelly, can you show us where your Town Hall is?”

The young girl nodded vigorously, and wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.  “Yes.  It’s this way!”  She started to run. Eve quickly stepped forward to catch her arm.

“Not yet,” Eve said.  She bent to one knee to speak directly to the girl.  “Kelly,” she added gently, “you have to tell us: Is the Village Council very important to your village?”

“Oh, yes!” the girl exclaimed.  “They know
everything. 
They take care of
everyone
.  When somebody has a problem, they go to them.  They heal the sick.  They resolve arguments.  They help us farm and take care of the crops.”

“These council members,” Eve continued, shooting a suspecting glance at us, “do they go by any other name?”

“Some people call them the elders,” Kelly answered, chewing her lip.

“Anything else?”

“Um…” she looked around, as if scared someone might overhear, and lowered her voice.  “Sometimes… sometimes they call themselves
the seekers
.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. That was all the confirmation I needed.  Two men asking for the seekers?  There were only two possible suspects in my mind.  It
had
to be Chris and his dad.  But… how did they find this place?

“Kelly,” Rob asked, easing me onto Arthur to kneel beside her himself, “can you tell us how many council members there are?”

“Sixteen,” she said without missing a beat.

“Sixteen.  And how many people live in this village?”

“There are… about ten families,” she said, although she sounded less sure this time.

Rob nodded, and looked back at us.  “That’s at least twenty, thirty people.  Kelly, you said
everybody
went to Town Hall?”

“Yes!” she insisted.

“Alright.  Alright.  That’s good to know.”  Rob stood back up, and raked a hand through his hair.  “How could two men capture an entire village?” he wondered again.  “Why did nobody fight back?”

“They do not have the means to resist,” Arthur said.  “They’re not used to visitors, or outside threats.”

“But the Village Council, wouldn’t they have the crys—” Rob glanced down at Kelly, and changed what he was going to say.  “Don’t they have
means
to protect themselves?”

I frowned.  Rob was right.  The seekers were the ones Arthur’s dad learned about the crystals from.  Surely, they could use the crystals to defend themselves!

“Maybe they did not want to risk it, not with so many people around,” Arthur said.  “We saw firsthand how… unpredictable… things can get.”  He looked at me when he said that.  “No matter what the reason, we have to be careful.”

“Right,” John agreed.  “We don’t want to run headfirst into a bear trap.  And we have to be aware of the fact that the two men know we’re here.  They must have heard the plane.  Alright.  Here’s what we’re going to do.  Tracy, you stay here with Kelly—”