The Sphere (The Magi Series #2) (39 page)

“Gross!” Becca said.  “I hope that squirrel has the plague.”

“Well then you shouldn’t eat it,” said Paul.

“Did you at least
look
for fruit or other food
besides animals?” Becca asked.

“Oh sure,” Paul said sarcastically, “but the berry bushes
were too fast for my crossbow!  Of course I didn’t look for anything else!  Did
you?”

Becca rolled her eyes.  “Just wash your face please.”

“Why?  Am I spoiling your appetite?”

“Yes.”

“How about a big kiss for the barbarian who brought you your
dinner?”  Paul puckered his lips and leaned in close enough to Becca that she
smacked him across the face, leaving her hand sticky with the squirrel’s blood. 
She immediately stormed off to the waterfall to wash her hands.  “Looks like
you’ve got the plague now too!” Paul called after her.

Hannah smiled and rolled her eyes.  “Geez, you two.  Why
don’t you just ask her out already?”

Paul looked like he had been smacked again.

“Say what?!?”

“Nothing,” Hannah said.  “Let’s cook these things.”

“Sorry it’s not much,” Paul said.  “It’s all I could find,
and it was getting dark up there with all those trees blocking the sunlight.  I
saw a goat, though, so we might be eating real well soon.”

Paul took out one of the knives Isaac packed and handed it
to Hannah.  Then he took out another one and gave it to Isaac.  Hannah and
Isaac carefully prepared the animals to be cooked while Paul and Elijah started
a fire.  It was a bit tricky to get the fire going with the damp conditions. 
Elijah worked on draining as much water out of the damp wood as he could get. 
He held out his hands and concentrated on the ride he took just earlier that
week with Hannah holding onto him.  He remembered how calm he felt while riding
with her behind him, and that was just the trigger he needed to access the
water element.  Then, he thought about the water saturating the wood.  He
carefully organized his thoughts and focused on what he wanted the water to do,
which was collect outside of the wood instead of inside.  It took a few tries
to get a system going, but soon, he gathered small amounts of water at a time
into a blob outside of the wood.  Being careful to keep the water in the wood from
spreading, he focused on the water inside while at the same time he threw the
water he had just collected away from the area.  He did this over and over. 
Paul watched him with amazement.

“How the heck are you doing that?” Paul asked.

“Oh.  This?  Yeah.  I have a pretty good talent for water.”

“Well keep it up,” Paul said, “because I can’t get a fire
going if the wood’s full of water.”

Elijah grinned but remained focused on his task.  It took
him twenty minutes to dry out enough wood to make a fire.  Once he did, Paul
had an easier time lighting it, even though it still took him a surprisingly
long time.

The squirrel and rabbit didn’t quite fill them, but they
each felt more satisfied than before.  All except Isaac, who continued to ask
if Paul wanted to go back to look for more in case some of the others were
still hungry.

By the time they finished and decided on a course for the
journey, it had gotten too dark to travel.  A low set of clouds moved in
quickly from the mountains, looking like foam spilling out over the rim of a
mug after being filled too high.  The clouds dropped the temperature
significantly, and soon, all six of them were racing to get the camping gear
set up.  They used the face of the mountain and nearby trees to create a
lean-to, tying one of their ropes between two trees and draping their tarp over
it.  Thankfully, their gear provided the warmth they needed throughout the
night as their shelter kept out some of the moisture brought on by the rolling
clouds.

Elijah woke up the minute the light began making gray
streaks across the sky.  The thick clouds that had surrounded them during the
night were thinned out, but the fog was still dense.  Visibility was only about
thirty feet.  Everything felt wet to Elijah, especially his face.  He looked
around at everyone else sleeping, but only counted four.  Someone was missing. 
His friends were hard to tell apart all huddled together for warmth and
sleeping on their stomachs.  Except for Isaac.  He was on his back separated
from the others and snoring so loudly, he scared off a few birds who had come
by to investigate the new visitors.

The fire was still surprisingly warm.  Elijah draped his
overcloak over his head and walked around the area, looking for whoever was not
in the tent.  He eventually found Paul, bundled up in a blanket and his
overcloak, sitting by the edge of the water with his hands apart, staring at a
small piece of wood.

“You okay?” Elijah asked.

Paul was startled.  “Me?  Yeah, sure.  I was just…”  He
looked back at the wood and then Elijah.

“How long have you been up?” Elijah asked.

“I didn’t sleep much,” Paul admitted.  “I kept the fire
going so we would stay warm.”  Elijah considered Paul.  It was rare to catch
Paul with his guard down, but for some reason at this moment, he seemed almost
gentle and calm.  Paul looked back at the log and then put his hands together,
stared transfixed at the wood, and moved his hands apart.  Elijah watched him
curiously.  He knew Paul was trying to do what Elijah did earlier, but he
didn’t know why.  Paul peeked back at the wood from time to time and eventually
let his hands flop down in disappointment and then threw the wood into the
water.

Elijah reached over and grabbed another piece of wood nearby
and gently placed it in front of Paul.  “Try closing your eyes,” he said.  “It
helped me at first.”

Paul looked at Elijah.  “How will I know if I did it right?”

“You’ll know,” Elijah said.  “It’ll be like feeling half of
your body weight melt away.  Haven’t you ever felt it like that with any of the
other elements?”

Paul looked down at the ground and poked at it.  “No,” he
said finally.

“What about fire?” Elijah asked.  “You started the fire last
night.  Don’t you get that intense feeling of energy and aggression for just a
moment when you do that?”

Paul shook his head, looking ashamed.  “Don’t tell anyone,
okay?  But that’s about all I can really do.  I can start a fire, sure.  I just
get as mad as I can by thinking about my dad who left and, I dunno, it just
happens.”

Elijah tossed the wood aside.  “Here,” he said.  “Look at
the waterfall.  What do you feel?”

“Nothing,” Paul said dryly.

Elijah huffed.  “Being aloof isn’t going to help you, Paul.”

“Fine, fine,” Paul said.  “I really don’t know.  I feel like
it’s a loud waterfall.  Why?  Am I supposed to feel moved or something by it?”

“No,” Elijah said.  “I was just trying to start somewhere. 
Moving the elements requires you to feel something.  You have to experience an
emotion.  I thought if you looked at the water you would feel calm.”

“Well, I don’t,” Paul barked.  Elijah wondered if he was
better off leaving Paul to sulk on his own.  He got up to leave.  “No, wait. 
Sit down,” Paul said.  “Help me.”

Elijah sighed and thought about the best way to help Paul
experience an emotion.

“Talk about your father,” Elijah said.

“No way!” Paul snapped.  “You’re trying to get me to think
about something calm, not angry.”

“But that’s just the point,” Elijah said.  “You use your
father to get an angry emotion, and you’re able to access fire, right?  Tell me
how you do that.”

Paul furrowed his brow.  “I just think about how the jerk
left my sister and my mom and me and left for Malpetra.”

“Give me specifics.  What do you see?”

Paul turned away.  For a moment, Elijah thought Paul was
going to ignore him, but then he began talking in a low, very soft voice.  “This
one day he walked in and had this look like he was going to kill us all,” Paul
said.  “I was scared.  My sister was too.  But my mom stood her ground and told
him to get out.  I didn’t understand most of it then other than he just had
this look in his eye.  Like he was possessed or something.  It comes in flashes
really.  I remember them just standing there staring at each other for more
than a minute.  Then, he left.  And that was it.  I think of that moment, I
guess.  The moment I felt like I could really hurt my father for making my
mother cry like that.”  Paul stopped talking for a moment and cleared his
throat.  “That’s how I get fire to work.”

Elijah had no idea how to respond to Paul.  He never knew
feelings like that toward his family.  Paul hung his head and looked as
vulnerable as a child.  Elijah did then what he felt was the only thing to do. 
He reached over and gave Paul a short hug.  And surprisingly, Paul returned it.

“I shouldn’t be complaining to you about it, though,” Paul
said.  “At least I still have my mom.  I can’t imagine the memories you must
have of losing all your family.”

“And that’s where I get
my
angry experience from,”
Elijah said.

Paul nodded.  They listened to the waterfall drowning out
the rest of the world for a while before Elijah tried again.

“Can you think of nothing like that to make you calm?” he
asked.  “What you just explained to me is exactly the thing that helps me. 
Except I think of something that makes me feel at peace.  Something I want to
experience.”

Paul looked down at the piece of wood in front of him for a
long time.  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and raised his hand.  A
small, awkward smile crept across his face, and suddenly, a few small droplets
of water emerged.  Elijah grinned from ear to ear as he watched Paul, who knew
he was succeeding.  The drops hovered for a second before Paul broke his
concentration and they splattered onto the ground.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he looked over at Elijah with
such a big, goofy smile that Elijah had to laugh.  “Did you see it?  How much
did I get out?”  His blue eyes radiated.

“It was good!” Elijah said.  “What did you think about?”

Paul’s electric smile faded and turned into a pleasant
grin.  “Maybe one day I’ll tell you.  But not now.”  He stood up and hugged
Elijah again, this time out of joy.  “Thanks, man.  That was way cool.”

“Of course,” Elijah said.  “C’mon.  We need to wake up the
others.  It’s gonna be a long day today.”

“You go on ahead.  I want to practice more,” Paul said.

Elijah left Paul alone and walked back to the camp feeling
proud of Paul and happy with himself.  When he arrived at the camp he found
that everyone but Isaac was already stirring.  Hannah was tidying her area plus
Paul and Elijah’s.  Becca was up looking at the maps and making little marks on
them.  Adam was at the fire stoking the embers into flames.  Isaac was still
snoring louder than ever.

“Where’s Paul?” Becca asked when she noticed Elijah through
the fog.

“He’s fine,” Elijah said.  “He’s over by the waterfall
washing his face.”

“I think we need to go through the pass here,” Becca said,
motioning Elijah over to the map.  “If we head just a tad northeast, we should
be in a direct path to where Orphea’s supposed to be.  But we’ll have to follow
the little river here.  See?”

Elijah looked at the map more closely.  On the edge of the
park was a river that ran toward a large lake and jutted off into many smaller
rivers toward the west.  Orphea looked to be along one of the river runoffs,
just before the large lake.  They would have to either count how many rivers to
cross based on a map, or they would have to go all the way to the lake and then
work their way back.  And this was all after a six mile hike inside the
mountains with no likely trails.

“Well let’s get going,” Elijah said.  “Looks like we’ve got
a long trip.”

Shortly after Becca and Elijah plotted out the course for
the day, Paul joined the group, looking quite cheerful, and helped pack the
tent and other supplies into the communal pack.  He even whistled merrily as he
worked to take down the camp.  It wasn’t until every single thing was packed,
including Isaac’s things, that they actually woke Isaac up, who was all alone
in the fetal position shivering on the dirt.  He woke up to all of them
standing over him.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Paul said.  “Either get up now or
we’re throwing you into the stream over there.”  Isaac scrambled up, and soon
they were off.

The first two miles of their journey were fairly easy.  Even
though it was uphill, and their calves and quadriceps burned as they walked,
they kept up a steady pace and made good time.  Once they began their third
mile, however, the terrain became cruel.  They followed one of the rivers closely
to keep their bearings, but soon, the banks of the river disappeared, and they
had to begin climbing over rocks and crossing the river multiple times to
continue to keep course.

To make matters worse, the rocks became very slippery from
the cold weather and the winter moisture.  Everyone slipped at least once as
they crossed the river.  Then, when they thought the travel couldn’t get any
tougher, the mountains began to close in on them, creating a very narrow pass,
and they were soon forced to either wade through the freezing river or turn
around and find another route.

“I’m not sure there’s another way but to go through the
narrows!” Elijah shouted over the loud river.  “We may never find our way if we
go back!”

“We could also die trying to get there!” Becca shouted back.

“I say we go for it!” Paul said.  “You only live once! 
Anyone not want to keep going this way?”

Isaac raised his hand.

“Besides Isaac,” Paul said.  Isaac put his hand down. 
Everyone else looked at each other, but no one spoke up.  Becca shrugged her
shoulders.  “Then let’s do it!” Paul said excitedly.

Elijah looked at the course he was guiding his friends
through.  The river had a strong current and the mountains towered above them
on each side, suffocating the sky.  Elijah wondered if his decision to move along
was safe.  He didn’t know what was ahead, but he thought it was best to
continue.  It was his lead.  His decision.  So he forged on ahead, hoping it
was the right one.