Preserving Hope (30 page)

Once he was certain the the two men were gone, Will dropped to his knees and held Eva, flooding her with Energy, amplifying the healing work the nanos were performing.
Stay with me, Eva. It’s not your time to go just yet.

I’m… so… tired… hurt… so… bad.

“Stay with me, Eva,” Will said. He kept the avalanche of Energy up, then glanced around him. The trees. The trees were buzzing with excessive Energy, left in a heightened state by the frequent interactions he and Elizabeth had with the living things of the forest. He sent secondary Energy streams to the trees, with what amounted to a plea: help me help her. Please.

The response was powerful: the influx of Energy poured into Eva’s body, and the oxygen levels in that clearing rose dramatically. Will felt it, but it was obvious that the greater oxygen was doing wonders for Eva. Her complexion deepened from the ghost-white pallor she showed only moments earlier, and her breathing stabilized.

I’m going to make it, Will. You’ve saved me.

Will choked up, and curled his arms under Eva, holding her tight. When her eyes opened a few moments later, the light in them was strong, and she looked at him with admiration.

“I… don’t know… how… you did… that… but… thank you.” It was still a strain to speak, but she did manage a faint smile.

He smiled back. “You’re welcome. I need to get you someplace safe, and I think I know just the spot. Ready to experienced something a bit strange?”

Her laughter was weak, and she winced. “I should be… dead, and now… I’m… alive. What… could be… stranger… than that?”

With his Energy stores replenished, and with his thanks sent to the trees, Will teleported them into the cave he and Elizabeth used for Energy training.

Eva’s eyes were wide with shock when Will set up Energy lights in the cave. “Elizabeth and I have come here to work on her Energy skills. I don’t think anyone will find it from the outside, so it should be a safe place for you to stay until you fully recover. I have to finish a few things and then go back to the village to deal with Arthur and Maynard.” His face fell. “That will include dealing with a young woman who will be devastated to learn of your death.”

Eva looked at him. “You aren’t going to tell her the truth?”

Will shook his head. “Not right away. She has to act in an expected manner, at least for now. And that will be best accomplished if what she hears about you remains true in her mind.”

“She’s going to hate you for this,” Eva said. She looked at him with compassionate sadness, a means of telling him that she didn’t disagree with his decision.

Will sighed. “I know. Right now, I need to keep her safe physically until she decides she’s ready to leave, and I don’t think that will happen if Arthur and others mention your death and she looks anything less than devastated. Arthur thinks she’s staying because he’s forbidden her to leave, but as soon as she’s ready? We’ll be gone.”

“You need to get going, Will. Take care of her. She knows that you care about her, and as much as your decision on telling her my actual status might sting in the short-term, in the long run she’ll understand it was for the best.”

“Thanks, Eva.” Will rose and teleported back to the spot he’d left earlier, wondering why it was that her statement about withholding information from someone he cared about for their own protection seemed so poignant.

He found a section of soft dirt, and using his hands — with an assist from his nanos — he dug a hole a few feet deep. He picked up a stone, tossed it in, and pushed the dirt back in. He found two sticks and used some vines to fashion a simple cross, which he pushed into the freshly dug dirt next to what he’d tell everyone was Eva’s grave. He stood, noted the blood staining his clothing and hands with a degree of grim satisfaction, and headed back to the community.

XXI

Fallout

Will entered the opened gate to the community, not certain what he’d see. Would it be business as usual? Would Arthur and Maynard be trying to spin what had happened after they’d left with Eva? Would they be trying to pretend
nothing
had happened? Would they be attempting to convince the community that Eva was dead and that Will was responsible?

Arthur was standing in front of the crowd, and from the looks on their faces, he’d at least told them that Eva was dead. “The criminal Will has been ordered to bury the dead woman, the woman that he murdered in cold blood. It is for us to decide his more permanent punishment.”

“You are perhaps discussing the murder of the Trader Eva using the sword that Maynard never allows another person to touch?” Will asked.

The crowd turned to him, and the looks were, to his comfort, confused. Were they looking at a murderer, or a wrongly-accused man?

“Will, there are two witnesses to your atrocity,” Arthur said, trying to sound bored, attempting to use the tone to convince the crowd of his truthfulness. “And those two witnesses have informed everyone that you took Maynard’s sword, stabbed Eva, and handed the sword back.”

Will laughed. “That’s interesting. So you expect these intelligent people to believe that one unarmed man took a sword away from our greatest warrior while you stood by and did nothing, stabbed a woman, and then handed the sword back?”

“We were caught by surprise.”

“In the forest? Where leaves and twigs announce every step? How could you claim to be surprised?”

“Do not ask me to explain the actions of a criminal, or how he manages to conceal himself until he is able to spring into action. You have blood on your hands, Will. What greater evidence is needed?”

Will arched an eyebrow. “There’s blood on the sword in Maynard’s hand. Should that not condemn him, rather than me?”

“As I’ve said, the sword was retrieved by Maynard after you used it to stab Eva. Do not blame him for your actions. That blood is on your hands, literally.”

“The sword was
retrieved
by Maynard? But I thought you said that I
handed
it to him?”

“The words mean the same thing, Will.”

“They most certainly do not. In the one case, you’re alleging that I gave him the sword. In the second case, you’re alleging that he had to act to get the sword back. Which is it?”

“Since your memory is so foggy, I will refresh it for you. Maynard had to remove it from you by force after you stabbed Eva. It took him very little effort. I was attempting to spare you your pride by saying that you handed it back to him. The lack of effort required by Maynard was truly a credit to his strength, and a condemnation of your weakness.”

Will paused. “If Maynard is so strong, and never lets his sword out of his grasp, and I’m so weak… how do you explain to this crowd that I’m supposed to have wrestled it away from him, and then controlled it long enough, without action on his part — or yours — to stab Eva?”

Arthur opened his mouth to speak, and then realized he was trapped. The murmuring of the crowd made it quite clear that they knew he’d manipulated them, that he was trying to blame something on Will.

“How did you get out?” Arthur asked, pivoting the conversation. “There was a guard posted by your room. He was still there when we returned, and said he’d not seen you leave.”

“Yes, you posted a guard by my door. I hadn’t been aware that I was under arrest, or had been charged with a crime. Why did you post a guard, Arthur? I’d been charged with nothing this morning. There was no purpose in posting a guard at all, and certainly nothing gives you the power to do so. Or perhaps you truly do believe yourself a monarch here, able to do whatever you wish?”

The crowd was noisier. And the angry looks were now being directed at Arthur and Maynard, not at Will.

“You have the abilities, don’t you?” Arthur shouted. “That’s how you got out! He’s been hiding information from us!” That at least got the crowd to pause.

Will shook his head. “I’ll show you how I got out,” he said, and watched the look of triumph vanish from Arthur’s face.

He led the crowd to his room, stepped past the surprised guard, and opening the door. He invited several of the villagers, including Silver the metal worker and Joseph the carpenter, to join him inside. Arthur and Maynard were left outside, buried behind the crowds near Will’s room.

Will showed them the hinge he’d built in the roof, using materials he’d been given back during the construction of the Wheel and the water distribution system, extras they’d not needed. “I like to sit on my roof at times and look up at the stars, so I made this door in my roof to let me climb out. When I was trapped earlier, I suspected that I was being kept prisoner to make sure I couldn’t follow Arthur and Maynard, and I worried that they intended to make Eva’s banishment something she never
could
overcome, even if she wanted to do so. So I crawled out on to my roof, onto the wall, and slid down. Then I ran in the direction I suspected they were heading, and found fresh tracks I could follow.”

“Show me,” Joseph said, indicating the hatch.

Will pushed the hatch open and grasped the roof, using his forearm to keep the hatch open. He crouched as low as he could on his bed, then sprang up with his legs while pulling with his arms, and popped out the top of the opening, just as he’d done earlier that day. He sat himself on the edge, nearest the cross beam, so that his weight didn’t damage the thatched roof. He then dropped back into his room, onto the cot, and let the spring pull the panel closed.

Joseph and Silver nodded to the crowd when they emerged. Will’s story checked out. A few others pushed inside, including Arthur and Maynard, and they gaped at the contraption.

“When I finally caught up to them, Arthur was trying to get Eva to say that some of the Traders had developed special abilities, and name names. She didn’t do so, of course, because she
couldn’t
. All of the Traders have been denied sufficient zirple to develop any type of skills. Arthur waved his hand and stopped his horse, causing Eva to stop walking. Maynard kept walking and stabbed her through the back from behind. I was enraged and attacked them, unarmed though I was, but the damage was done. I buried her in the ground where she fell, stabbed in the back by a coward of a man too frightened to face her, and a so-called leader who made the order against the wishes of those he wants to lead.”

The crowd was silent, and Arthur was sputtering, trying to find some way to regain his advantage. “I’m telling you, Will has abilities! He’s been hiding them from us!”

“How can that be, Arthur?” Will asked. “As I just said, you’ve made it a point to keep me — and all of the Traders — away from the zirple. Yet you accuse
us
of having abilities, and hiding things from you and the others? You, who
openly
deny us the ingredient we need to
develop
those abilities?”

“Roland!” Arthur shouted. Will, sensing what was to come, made sure his Shielding was up. “Roland, you are the most advanced in abilities here. You can tell if someone has these abilities, can’t you?”

“If they’re strong enough, yes,” Roland replied. “After a while, I could feel when I’d walk by someone in that remote village who had been using the zirple for a long time. I should be able to do that here as well.”

Arthur smiled. “Check him, Roland.”

Roland walked toward Will, and the crowd tensed. Roland leaned in closer to Will, seeming almost to sniff for a hint of what Will called Energy, a move that was highly uncomfortable for Will due to the invasion of personal space.

After a few moments, Roland turned to Arthur and shook his head. “Nothing. There’s nothing there, Arthur. He has no more ability than I did ten years ago.”

Arthur’s eyes flashed with anger. “This isn’t over, Will,” he snapped. He then walked away, back toward his home, with Maynard in tow.

The crowd gradually dispersed, with many of the residents stopping to offer their apologies to Will for doubting him. Roland promised to make sure that he got his zirple, but Will shook his head. “Eva was killed over the obsession with that plant and what it’s supposed to do for us. Taking it now, for me, would be an insult to her memory, as if her sacrifice was my payment to receive it. No, give my share to the other Traders, and especially Elizabeth.”

Joseph, the carpenter, was the last to walk by. “That was an impressive thing you did in there. The door in the roof. How did you think of it?”

Will shrugged. “We used the same idea to open a door and let water out of the ducts. I thought I could make a larger one that would fit me.”

Joseph laughed. “It seems to have worked.”

As the carpenter began to move away, Will put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “One moment, Joseph. Has anyone told Elizabeth about Eva yet?”

Joseph shook his head. “Not directly, Will. I was close to her room when Arthur told everyone, and I’m pretty sure I heard her crying. But I don’t think anyone has talked to her directly.”

Will took a deep breath. “That’s what I thought. I suppose I need to be the one to tell her.”

Joseph nodded. “I think that would be best. Eva was… Eva was like a mother to her. We all saw that. I wish we’d done a better job of acting more like Eva. I truly hope that her loss helps us all to become better people.”