Recruits (Keeper of the Water Book 2) (17 page)

“Something’s wrong,” I tell Celeste. “I
know
she’s in some kind of trouble. We should try to find a way back to her, steal a car if we have to.”

“Don’t you want to ask your new… friend?” she asks.

I don’t miss her insinuation but I’m not going to waste my breath arguing. Besides, after Jack’s attack on me – whether it was as innocent as he made it seem or not – I can’t say I fully trust him the way I did before.

“He has somewhere else to go. We shouldn’t waste more of his time,” I say, not wanting to admit that she might’ve been right to doubt him.

“We shouldn’t waste
any
of our times,” she says. “Katina probably isn’t in as much trouble as you fear. And if she
is
for some reason, we can’t risk Cassie seeing anything else that might give her clues about the past. Besides, Katina isn’t your
real
mother anyway.”

“Why the hell do you care about Cassie then?” I snap back. “She’s not your
real
daughter.”

Before any more harsh words can be exchanged, the payphone rings. The anger disappears from Celeste’s face and the two of us look at each other.

“Don’t answer,” she tells me.

But I don’t even consider ignoring it. I pick up before the second ring finishes.

“Hello?” I ask tentatively.

A voice whispers so quietly on the other end that I can’t make out any of the words being said. Still, I recognize my mother and she sounds deathly afraid.

“Where are you, Mom? What’s wrong?” I ask.

She whispers a little louder though I still strain to hear her.

“I’m being followed.”

My stomach sinks, my mind racing in a hundred different directions.

“By who? Is it one of John’s soldiers?” I ask, the icy hand of panic squeezing my spine.

I saw both of the hulking men die but it wouldn’t be the first time I was tricked into thinking they were dead and gone.

“I don’t know,” my mom whispers. “I can sense them out there watching me, I can feel it, but I haven’t been able to see who it is. By the time I do find out, whoever it is will kill me to keep me quiet.”

Celeste turns her palms up and shrugs, her silent way of asking what’s going on. But I turn away from her and close my eyes, concentrating solely on making certain I hear my mother’s frantic whispers.

“Tell me where you are,” I say. “I can help you.”

“Please, Nia, save yourself. It’ll be the last thing I can do for my daughter,” Mom whispers. “If I keep them focused on me long enough, the three of you can get farther away.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I say, near tears. “I
remember
who I am and what I’m capable of doing. Now
tell me where you are!
”

“I’m holed up at the Big Boulder Inn. It’s a small motel just beyond Pocono Pines,” Mom tells me. “It’s out of the way from our house but pretty far into the woods so the police haven’t discovered my jeep yet. I have the lights off in my room but I
know
somebody’s out there. I’ve heard them shuffling by my door, seen their breath fogging up my window.”

“Call the police,” I tell her.

“Don’t do that,” Celeste interrupts though she ignores me when I hold up my hand. “Tell her to go outside and fight. It’s her only chance.”

“I can’t, I’m no fighter,” Mom whispers. “I’m not like the three of you. But I don’t want to be taken again.”

“Taken where? By who?” I ask, a bad time to be inquiring about the past.

“You need to hang up, we have to go,” Celeste hisses. “Someone might be tracing her calls. People can do things like that these days.”

“Mom, listen to me, you need to leave that motel,” I implore her. “If you stay there, you’re a sitting target.”

“I know but I… I can’t,” Mom says, fear and desperation heavy in her whispers. “Whoever is out there will get me and I might not be so lucky this time.”

“But you have to
try
,” I tell her. “You have to get away from there and come find us. We’ll wait for you here. We’re at – ”

Celeste snatches the phone out of my hand before I can say another word. I try to grab it back but she’s quicker than me.

“We can’t tell her anything,” she tells me. “If she’s caught, we can’t take the chance of her captor knowing our locations.”

“Give me the phone
now!
” I yell at Celeste.

The idea that my mom thinks I’m abandoning her enrages me and I become more physical in my attempt to get the phone, though Celeste pushes away my advances. I don’t even care that Cassie and Jack have noticed our altercation and are pointing at us from across the parking lot.

“I’m sorry, Katina, but we have to go now,” Celeste says quickly into the receiver. “Good luck!”

I finally push Celeste hard enough to knock her to the ground and she loses her grip on the phone. I snatch it out of mid-air and quickly put it to my ear.

“Mom, don’t go anywhere, I’m coming for – ”

Click
! I fumble around for more quarters and call back despite Celeste’s pleas. But the phone doesn’t ring and puts me straight into Mom’s voicemail. I slam the phone so hard that the 2 and 6 buttons pop right off. I’m pissed at Celeste and afraid what I’ll do to my former Keeper so I turn and march back toward the car.

“We can’t go after her,” Celeste says, rushing to keep up. She tries to sound authoritative but Mother Nature Herself wouldn’t change my mind right now. I understand Celeste’s reasoning for wanting to let my mother fend for herself but logic takes a backseat to decency. My mind is already made up and I quickly form a plan of action.

“
We
can’t go after Mom,” I say, agreeing with Celeste. “But
I am
.”

“You most certainly are not,” Celeste says.

Despite the anger I feel toward her, my natural instinct is to do as she says, to obey my Keeper. But I’m through living in the past. Katina may not be my real mother but she
is
my real granddaughter, though several generations removed, the only family I’ve got left, which makes it even more important to help her.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going,” I say, stalking back toward the parking lot.

“And how do you plan to get all the way back there? We’ve been driving away from there for hours,” Celeste says.

“I’ll figure it out,” I say, searching for the fastest-looking car in the lot.

I’m so energized by fear and worry that only God could help the person who tries to stop me from taking their car. I’m not afraid to fight whoever is stalking my mother but I
am
afraid of getting there too late. I’m sure most people would feel hopeless in this situation but I’m not most people. In fact, I realize there’s
no
car that can move quicker than my own two legs when I’m properly motivated.

“Is everything okay?” Jack asks.

I barely noticed him or Cassie as I head toward the northbound side of the highway. It takes all of my willpower not to bust into a sprint and blow their minds with my impression of the Flash.

“You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong with her,” Celeste snaps at him.

But Jack ignores her and rushes to catch up with me. I can’t ignore him since he seems so genuinely concerned. Any doubt I might’ve had about him is washed away when I see how truly worried he looks.

“My mother is in serious danger. I need to go help her,” I answer honestly, albeit vaguely.

A part of me is surprised when Jack doesn’t offer to help right away. I think of my father, who would’ve walked into traffic if it meant helping my mom. But I have to keep reminding myself that Jack isn’t my dad, that he was just a stranger until yesterday. He’s already gone above and beyond to help us but I’m not surprised that he has limits to his kindness.

“Please, Nia, think about what you’re doing,” Celeste says. “You’ve faced enough danger the last two days.”

“She’s right, you shouldn’t go if there’s a chance someone could hurt you,” Jack agrees, an unexpected ally of my Keeper.

“Where’s your fight and when?” I ask him.

He looks confused for a moment and is slow to respond. “Fort Lauderdale in two days.”

“Take Celeste and Cassie with you to the fight,” I say. “When I rescue my mother, I’ll meet the three of you there.”

I’m in a rush but can see that Jack looks hesitant. I
can’t
rush off to find my mother without knowing where to find Celeste and Cassie once I’m finished.

“Please,” I say desperately.

I couldn’t blame Jack if he told me to shove off – that he wants nothing to do with my craziness – but he nods his head and agrees. If circumstances were different, I might want to kiss him for his kindness. Instead, a force the smallest of smiles and nod my head.

“Nia, wait,” Celeste says, rushing over to me.

I sigh. There’s little time to waste if I’m going to travel so far on my own.

“You aren’t talking me out of this so don’t waste your breath,” I say.

“I know, I’m not trying to,” she says.

Without a worry for what Cassie or Jack will think, Celeste takes out another small firework from her pocket, lights the fuse and launches it into the sky, where it explodes in a burst of color. Before I look away from the sudden light show, Celeste already holds out another firework and a pack of matches to me.

“When you see or hear another low-flying plane, set that one off,” she says.

“The pilot?” I ask.

Celeste heads back toward Cassie and the car.

“She’s always out there, somewhere,” she says.

For a moment, I look back at the three people I’m leaving behind. Jack watches me with concern while Celeste appears irritated, Cassie indifferent. The way things have been going the last few days, I can’t help fearing that not all of us will survive until the next time we meet. I watch them pile into Jack’s old clunker and drive south while I head north, starting at a walk until the car disappears on the horizon. I begin to run, quickly building up speed even as the heavy tingling of warning grows stronger as I get farther away from Celeste and Cassie…

I sprint for hours, never tiring, never slowing, running faster than any car on the highway. I might appear as little more than an unrecognizable blur to unrefined human eyes but that doesn’t mean I blatantly run out in the open where anyone could catch a glimpse. Trees line both sides of the highway for long stretches and I run among them, feeling more comfortable in nature anyway.

Not that I feel
too
comfortable. I wish the mental stress on my mind were as easy to deal with as the physical stress on my body. With hundreds of miles left to go, my anxiety levels are at an all-time high. I’m unable to stop myself from imagining every terrible scenario for what I’m going to find at the motel –
if
I’ll find anything at all. For all I know, whoever’s stalking my mother will have gotten to her
long
before I do and leave nothing behind for me to find…

My only temporary refuge from mental anguish arrives in the form of more memories from my past. I remember rejoining the Amazons with Mary by my side, the difficulties involved in the long journey south. Crossing choppy seas in rickety little boats, hacking our way through thick jungle, encountering hostile native tribes – all obstacles that threatened every one of us and especially the water. The jungle wildlife might’ve been more hazardous to us had the Keeper not had an inexplicable calming influence that kept them back.

But Mary remained tough throughout the journey and the tribe eventually imbedded deep within the jungle, finding a tiny spring within the smallest of clearings. Though the isolated environment was the most dangerous any Amazon had ever seen, it was also safest for the water, despite several battles we had with attacking tribes early on. The locals learned quickly that the strange band of women were not to be taken lightly. Our jungle existence might’ve been far more peaceful had one particular tribe of aggressive natives not constantly stalked us even though their attacks never proved successful.

The greatest hardship was dealing with the constant complaints of Cassie and the rest of her Queen Clan. Though the water was safer than it had been in hundreds of years, the former queens hated the jungle, hated the untamed wilderness they had never seen at such an extreme, hated the rain that never seemed to cease. As I think back to those first few years in the jungle, I remember that the Queen Clan’s misery was one of the only things that helped me through those difficult times, especially since I was still a newer Amazon myself without a proper mentor.

Recruiting trips helped too, though my journeys to recruit Florence and Harriet were also more arduous by the great distances I had to travel. I spent hours running in solitude, not unlike what I’m doing now to reach my mother. Like those long runs in the past, I put my mind on cruise control and allow instinct to guide my legs. I still worry for my mother’s safety but another memory returns to me and I allow it to control my thoughts…

-
- - - - - - - - - - -

The Keeper remains on the edge of the spring’s bright blue water, the rest of the Amazons circled closely around. The women are usually calm or emotionally indifferent to the day-to-day doldrums of camp existence but this moment is different. I stand next to the Keeper near the water and all eyes are on me,
excited
eyes. Cassie showed up in camp minutes after my arrival; her allies undoubtedly alerted her to my arrival. She looks annoyed as usual but even some of her fellow queens watch me with anticipation. I’m tired and dirty and sweaty from a long journey but the attention of my sisters-in-the-water – whom I haven’t seen in several years – fuels me to continue my story.

“Machines called automobiles have replaced horses as the main mode of transportation but I’ve shown you photographs of those after my last trip,” I explain.

“Photographs? Those are the detailed paintings also done by machines?” asks one of the women.

I nod. “Cameras, but they’re not actually paint. These machines have also improved over the years. But these are
nothing
compared to the newest creation made by man.
That
invention is called an airplane.”

I let the word sink in, though the other women aren’t as awed as I expect them to be. But why would they be? For all they know, I could be making up the word. I saw these airplanes with my own two eyes, watched as they evolved from flying death traps to much safer modes of transportation. I also watched as international heroes were made from these flying machines, though I haven’t yet been brave enough to step foot in one. Still, I figure that day is coming.

“You gonna tell us what this airplane is or not?” a familiar voice asks.

The voice is full of attitude and my heart plunges at the thought that I was away too long, that my allies turned on me in my absence. But when I look into the dark face of my last recruit, Harriet, I see that her warm smile belies the sound of her voice. She’s flanked by Mary and Flo, far away from Cassie and the rest of the queens. I’m glad to see that my recruits are getting along with the Queen Clan as well as I expected.

“Airplanes are great metal vehicles with wings that fly people in the sky like birds,” I say.

Many a jaw drops and even the Keeper looks stunned, which shouldn’t be surprising since she’s been away from human civilization the longest. But not surprisingly, there’s one Amazon who shakes her head in disbelief – in
argumentative
disbelief.

“Do you really expect us to believe in something like a
flying machine?
” Cassie asks, her first words to me in years. It’s comforting to see that some things haven’t changed.

I don’t bother to argue. I figured there would be some resistance to my tales so I came prepared with plenty of pictures, regaling the tribe with the history of aviation from the Wright Brothers to the Red Baron to Charles Lindbergh. Cassie still looks uninterested as I talk but by the time the pictures circulate the tribe and reach her, she studies them as closely as the others did.

“These airflyers will never last,” Cassie finally deduces. “They sound far too dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain,” I say. “Men have been perfecting the airplanes and their ability to fly them.”

“Exactly,
men
. This is all very interesting I’m sure but what does it have to do with us?” Cassie asks.

“You’re right about one thing: men
have
been the only ones piloting airplanes, at least so far. But there’s one particular brave woman who’s breaking down those barriers,” I explain. “Many airplanes don’t fly very far distances but this one woman has already flown across the Great Ocean to our east. Next, she will attempt to fly her airplane around the world.”

“Is that possible?” the Keeper asks.

“Nobody knows,” I say, shrugging. “People hope she will succeed but many pilots have died attempting far easier feats. Only a woman of the greatest bravery and strength would attempt something of this caliber.”

“Sounds foolish to me,” Cassie disagrees. “Maybe even too flashy. This woman sounds like she enjoys attention too much.”

I expected such a response from Cassie because I had the same thoughts about the aviatrix when I first heard about her. But after following her career – learning that she attempted such feats to create opportunities in aviation for other women – I learned what she’s really all about. Trying to convince Queen Cassie about
anything
is impossible though, so I turn to the one person that matters most.

“The pilot is very humble, my Keeper, and I think she’s mentally prepared to leave her life in the public eye. I recommend her for acceptance into our tribe,” I say, the formal request needed to start the process of recruitment. This is the fourth time I’ve asked permission to approach a new potential recruit. “Considering changes in the world, I think we’d be greatly benefited by a woman of her special skills.”

“And why would we need someone to operate one of those flying machines?” Cassie asks. “Does it look like we’ll be leaving this hellhole… this
jungle
any time soon?”

Another Amazon steps forward, the first time I’ve ever seen her do so in front of the entire group. For once the Queen Clan’s glares don’t fall squarely on me.

“You never know when we might need to leave here on short warning,” Jane says. Her hair is just as short and curly as the last time I saw her. I smile at my replacement mentor, who’s been very kind to me even though I’ve spent little time within the tribe through the years. “And Sacajawea’s other recruits have worked out so well that we should have full faith in her ability to select women of the highest esteem.”

I glance at my three recruits. Mary beams with pride by the compliment while Flo wipes a tear from her eye. Harriet, meanwhile, nods her head in agreement. I would expect nothing different from the three of them and I’m so filled with pride that my heart swells. Because I’m so disliked by the queens, leaving my recruits behind put the three in a very uncomfortable position without proper mentor guidance, which I was never exposed to either. At least they’re sticking together with Jane’s guidance.

“Her success in choosing recruits is debatable at best,” Cassie interrupts. “Jane is
clearly
a good storyteller if she believes a nurse and a pair of former servants have proven worthy selections when compared with some of the more experienced Amazons.”

My blood boils, becoming even hotter when I see the smug grins on the faces of her nodding queens. I’m certain Cassie could say
anything
and her followers would agree. But I force myself to remain calm and collected. The Keeper’s opinion still matters to me and I don’t want to get into public arguments with Cassie the way Anne once did.

“Please, my Keeper, I
know
this woman could become an asset to – ”

The Keeper holds up a hand. She’s made her decision so Cassie and I immediately cease stating our respective cases.

“I agree with Jane,” the Keeper says. “Sacajawea has shown a propensity to find strong women who’ve displayed true dedication to our cause: keeping the water of life in safe hands. I see no reason why I should doubt her judgement this time. You have my blessing to grace us with a new recruit when you deem the time is right. But I have one condition.”

“Yes, my Keeper, anything,” I say humbly.

“This will be your final recruiting trip,” she says.

“What?” I blurt out.

It’s the first time I’ve ever uttered
any
word in defiance to her. I would’ve felt more embarrassed and apologized profusely had I not heard the echo of my single word response. I turn to see that Cassie had the exact same reaction, though she doesn’t look as hesitant about questioning the Keeper. Cassie appears to be just as upset as I feel about the old woman’s order.

“I would like you around here more to begin learning the ways of the water,” the Keeper explains. “You’ve shown such a willingness to strengthen our tribe and spend so much time in the world that we’re ultimately trying to protect. But it’s dangerous for you when you’re away from the water, which keeps you young and strong. I don’t want to risk your life when I feel greatness is meant for you in this tribe.”

“Yes, my Keeper,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment.

I’m so distraught that I can’t even take pleasure in the dirty looks I receive from the Queen Clan. Now that I know I’ll be spending more time around here, their jealousy isn’t quite so humorous, and could possibly prove detrimental to my future. I’m ashamed to admit that the thought crosses my mind – if only for a brief moment – of leaving on this recruiting trip and never coming back. But the vow I made to the tribe – and especially to the Keeper – is one I would
never
abandon.

“If you want me back with the tribe so badly, then I’d better go after my recruit right away. Do I have permission to leave now?”

“You just came back but I know that won’t stop you. You could use some rest but I know
that
won’t stop you either. I can’t force you to do these things but I
can
help you in another way. You look older than the last time you were here. It has been many years since you’ve taken the water – since
anyone
has taken the water.”

As usual, the Keeper is right. I’ve been away for so long that I’ve put on more years than I have since first being accepted into the tribe. I glance at my reflection in the water and see that I look to be in my 30s instead of my early 20s. I’m still stronger and faster than any normal human on the planet but my powers
have
declined during the years spent away from the water. Looking around at the rest of the Amazons, I can see that none of the others appear to have turned younger recently either.

The Amazons fall in line behind Cassie, who joins the Keeper near the water’s edge. We line up in order of our acceptance into the tribe. I stand near the back, with only three women behind me. I’d love to have this time to catch up with my recruits but the women in line remain silent as the Keeper disperses the water, a small handful to each Amazon. It does not take long for the water to take effect; the years quickly melt away from my fellow sisters-in-water.