Orion (11 page)

I stood, ready and threw a blow to his arm as
he returned it.  We parried back and forth again.  I stepped up and closed the distance but ended up watching him lock on my feet.  I threw a blow upwards missing my mark to his shoulder.  He reached to grab and missed when I stepped back.  Saved.

I chanced a step up.  Beside him now, elbows ready, and down.   Down I fell landing on top, again.  His arms around my waist and catching the brunt of the fall, I stared into his two laughing full moon eyes.  Unaware of the fact that I was laying too still, I felt him moved slightly.  That brought me to my senses.  How long did I lay there?  It was so sudden and I never saw it coming. 

“Go ahead.”  I dreaded it.

“What you need is…” he paused.  His mouth moved close enough to my ear, I felt the heat, “…is a pattern that isn
’t predictable.  Your new name.  Miss Find a New Weapon.”

“I predict…” 
Move,
I told myself.  I scarcely moved off of him as he released me, I could tell, very reluctantly.  I was untaught in many things about male and female ways, but I knew this feeling.  I’d seen it in the couples around the court.  I wanted it.  Wanted to feel wanted. My eyes closed on their own accord.

He stood, faced me, and was completely composed again.  With an audience, he was good to be even faced so quickly.  But I could tell.

“Your suggestion sir teacher,” I asked with a smile brewing with pure sarcasm to hide my recklessness and slackening pace.

He took it and ran with it all the way.  “
You can’t get that close to your enemy.  I know you’re thinking close the distance to counter the brute force, but you can’t win that way.  Sink or swim, you need the surprise attacks more than anything.  You’ve got the
moves
, you just need to be less predictable.”  He dragged out the word moves way to long.

“Example?” I asked.

He brought my arm up.  Luckily the armor shielded the skin on skin but his eyes jumped at the touch like it did.  I cocked my head sideways and gave him the look clearly asking if something happened.  He didn’t indicate it did.

“When you pull your arm up above your head, you
’re telling the enemy your move.  I know your build requires the action to give the force you need, but pulling to the side can do the same trick.  You need more fakes to throw your enemy off his game.”

“Or hers!”

He nodded out of respect.

I pulled back to the side to go left, knowing he
’d assume I’d go left.  I swung back, began the swing, and turned a 360 around to hit right.  He went for the left.  Score! 

“Very nice.” 

“Let me introduce myself’” I bowed, “I’m Miss Eat Dagger and Die.  Swords are not my style.”

We practiced for the remainder of class with more unspoken messages between them than actual words.   I felt like my eyes spoke volumes of what secrets I held now worried he could see through me.

I went to my room instead of lunch leaving the window cracked for fresh air and knowing I brought little with me to have stolen.  After a really fast shower, I was sitting on my bed ready to call Kassie and father.  I had a sudden feeling like I shouldn’t talk freely in the room and headed to the outside bench behind the gym where Calum and I talked for the first time on my first day.

I called Kassie first.  She had the information I needed. I hoped.

“There are rumors, a prophecy of sort that a Hunter will “converge” with another species.  And there are others involved somehow, but I couldn’t find much else.  Like fire and electricity and stuff.  All powerful and all.  Like warriors of a sort.   It was more of a folktale.  Several told, but they acted like it was a secret that the teachers would punish us for telling.  Did you read about it ever?”

What to say that gives reason for asking?  “Yeah, in Lit class here at the school.  That
’s why I’m curious.  Just wanted to talk to you more I guess.”  A lie.

“Then maybe you know that it says that when she finds the one, if she chooses, she creates an alliance.   An “alliance to join them all.” 
Meaning we’d answer to one.  It is total and utter folklore.  Like a story in the gods and goddesses. But at least the goddess rules.   Why do you want to know all this?”

How did I never hear the stories?  Oh yeah, private tutoring.

“Where does the electric current come in?”  I heard something in the woods moving around.  My stomach started to explode. Something like fire moved up and down my length.   I felt fear.  I looked in that direction, but could only find a rabbit moving about. 
Why do I feel it?  I’ve never sensed an animal's fear!

I sighed heavily
and refocused as Kassie read off more of what she found.  “She, the Hunter, and some other will know that the winds will change because she will “ease his mind and fill him with a surge beyond physical comfort“ but yet there isn’t any clear note of how it all is supposed to have ended.  I’ve never heard the story, and I can’t find anything else.”

“Anything else?”

“Why do you want to know so much about this?”

“Just curious.  I am with a bunch of Hunters, remember?”  I mustered a laugh.   I was now scared to death about the Hunter boy alarmed with how I feel so drawn to him.
  I didn’t feel particulary unattracted to him, but it wasn’t that I
liked
him, liked him.  I liked the attention.

“Well, it did say that the she mate would bear the mark of Orion.  Like the constellation.   That she was a warrior.  Crazy stuff.”

I was trembling now.  If anyone could read my distress, it was screaming at them.  I was on the ground now feeling the fear permeating in the air again from somewhere else, not from me.

“Stace, you there?”

Answer! 

Did Kassie say that?
 
I looked around like it might help me though I was on the phone. It sounded more male.   "Yes!" my voice cracked.

The bushes moved again.  I stared in that direction.  Nothing.  “Any marks on the other?”

“How did you guess?”

I felt the breath leaving me.  If I didn
’t get off the phone soon and find air, I would fall out right here.  But, I had to know one more thing.  “Does it say what marks?”

“No!”

“Tha
nk you, Kassie.  You are the best friend of the world.”  I was breathing in to get oxygen to my brain in hopes of slowing the process of another fainting spell.  No one was here to catch me.

“You too.  You sound like this mission is taking a toll on you.  Are you okay?”

“Of course,” I countered my voice to sound as normal as need be, “I’m closer to being home.  I made headway today, in fact.”

“Good.  Well, call me sometime later this week.  We
’ll talk and give you that good ole homesick feeling.  Oh wait, if you’re researching this stuff, you’ll want to know that he has the mark too.”

“What do you mean, you just said that?”  I was trembling again.

“They all have a mark.  Several do, I mean.  Something about the mark of the sun and other things about the sky.”

“But that
’s nothing to do with Orion,” I mumbled more to myself.  “Okay.  Thank you.  Bye, Kassie.”

“Bye chic-a-dee.”  Click. 

I wanted to throw up.  I had no food in me though.  No breakfast.  No lunch. I still had one more call to make. 

“Father?” I droned.

“No names.”

“Both doctors are in it together.  Princess is secure in their eyes.  The son is in a place called “the rack.”  They will reveal something soon.  Three months wait.  They are meeting again.  Location unknown.”

When I didn’t continue, I heard the click.  He was gone.  Never one for words, much less sentiment, I was a tool.  That is all!

I pondered the location the two docs might meet up with while heading to chemistry class.  I need to
find “the rack” too.  And why the rescue would be predicted involving me?  I’m great at what I do, but not so great yet that some legendary skills would successfully find my brother and stop the Were’s from something greater.  Or could I?

I knew the Were's threatened attack upon those who
took my brother, whomever that was, to make an in with my faction.  My father reasoned aloud to me that it was more than just a kidnapping, but a Segway into something else.  He wasn’t opposed to the Were’s, just the undying will to settle everything with warlike treaty talk.  I’d heard the new leader refused to talk to us unless it involved me.  I didn’t know why and had yet to sneak in a peek at who the guy is.  I wanted to know why he wanted me there.  I didn’t know who the enemy was in this game I’m currently in.  So involving other factions seemed dishonorable.

I put the other conversation
s at the back of my mind until it slammed into me at the precise moment I entered the classroom.  Literally.  I walked into Calum as he was exiting the room.  Our skin brushed, arm against arm, an encounter that made me gasp audibly and jump what felt like two feet in the air. 

“Hello, missed your sassy butt at lunch.”  He studied my face with an odd expression.  “You okay?”  For the short time I
’ve known him he was way too perceptive of my state of mind.  His hand brushed my cheek, more clinically than intimate.   I managed a smile
wondering if he testing out our voltage.  I couldn’t think about this at all right now. 

Just then, Dr. Quinn walked in behind us, trilled an “excuse me,” to let him by and we shuffled to our lab table.   Dr. Quinn eyed us both as Calum never received his answer.  I composed the biggest fake smile of all earthly time and delved into the day
’s work. 

Calum mentioned the library study "date" after classes.  He was asking whether I wanted to meet right after or later.  I was still pondering the word “date” and missed most of what he said.  Now, he was staring at me waiting for an answer I didn
’t know I was supposed to be giving.

“Earth to Stace.”  He waved a hand in front of my face.

“Liz mentioned something about a dating being a thing around here.  What is this?  Studying together?”  I thought that sounded nice, not too sassbuttish.  It seems kind of like the same thing in my tutoring back home except none of my tutors ever looked like Calum.  Either way, I sounded lame.

“You
’ve never been on a date?”  His face widened stretching his mouth wide.

“No, what
’s it to you?” My heart pendant given to me by my dad fell forward in my awkwardness.  It belonged to my mom.  When it fell out of my shirt, Calum watched me tuck it back in.

“Well, um, when a boy and a girl go somewhere, usually alone, and hang out.  Like going to the movies, eating out, a picnic under the stars, things like that.” 

“So the studying is a date too?”  His description matched the girls had at least.  I just wanted him to say it whether I knew now or not.

“No, not really.  That was just my attempt at hoping you would catch on to the fact that I would…like to go out with you…on a date.”

The two girls in front of us started to snicker hearing the whole conversation. He swallowed hard in obvious discomfort.

“So like, you want to take me somewhere, alone, without a chaperone?” Yes, my thinking is innocent!   Yes, I knew about dating!  No, I have never been on a date so to be asked about it was making me spout stupidity!

His face showed true anxiety.  “Um, yeah.  Your father must be a tyrant.”

“You
’ve no idea.”

“So you
’ve never really been on a date?”

“I answered this alr
eady, Hyde!” I nodded this time along with my apprehension.

“So, do you want to go on...a date…with me?”

I peeked at the gaggle of girls watching our every move.  It may get me answers about what Kallie said. “Oh, I suppose maybe I could give up a couple of hours.” I smiled.  And no chaperone.  This could be lovely.

“I appreciate your sacrifice.”  He smiled, but chuckled a nervous laugh and returned to clean up the lab.

The girls in front of me kept sneaking glances at me.  Guessing they’d been on many dates, I smiled at them and wondered where they’d gone on dates and who with.  Had they been on dates with him?  Where will Calum take me?

More pressing, how do I tell him I found something out about the current zapping that sent the two of us into a frenzy every time we touched?  And that it
’s all a folktale.  And I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.  And that I’m not a Hunter.  And that there is some great prophecy that describes the two of us in its entirety.  Why was I kidding myself?  As soon as he finds out I’m Valkyrie, and a spy, nonetheless, he’ll hate me.  Secrets, I will keep.  But they seemed to grow with each new day.

He carried my two books to my next class, said a “see ya in the library” and hurried off to
his class across the grounds without sarcasm this time.

  I watched him go enjoying the thought of it all,
but also saddened by the idea of how many secrets I was keeping from this devil of goodness.  But was he really?   Didn’t he meet me under the false pretense he was some kind of bad boy Hunter who couldn’t be outdone? And if he was the Hunter in the not so fake folk tale.

A hand waved in front of my face.  This was happening a lot.  My zoning out and the waving of hands. 

“Close your mouth before the drool spills and burns a whole in the floor.”  This was an angry Liz.

“Sorry.  Who ate your Wheaties?” I barked back quoting one of my movies.

“I mean it.  Date first.  Hanky-panky later.  Give him something to work for.”

“We have a date.  Unchaparoned, too.”   I was starting to figure out some of the off phrases the students used for various things.  It wasn
’t hard to figure out what hanky-panky meant by the way her eyebrows wiggled up and down, for sure.  However, Liz’s face showed the same confusion Calum’s did when I spoke the way I knew.

She just shook her head and walked off to her class next door.