Away

CHAPTER 11





THE CAMP WAS not packed up. The bedrolls were out and there was even a small fire. Fisher looked as confused as Rachel felt; they had been expecting to find the rest of the group ready to run for it as soon as they arrived.

“They’ll be bringing more with them when they come back—shouldn’t we be getting out of here?” Fisher took in the sight of grain mush warming over the fire with an incredulous look.

“Daniel needs rest before he tries to move.” Indigo spoke quietly, though not quietly enough for Rachel’s liking. She felt like the darkness was listening.

“Looks like you’ve been hurt too, Fisher.” Indigo inspected the field dressing on Fisher’s arm. “So we’ll rest tonight, and head back home in the morning.”

“They’ll be coming, though.” Fisher couldn’t help repeating himself.

“They won’t come until first light, I think. They might not come at all.”

“What? Why would they wait until light to attack? They know we’re here, they know they wounded one of us, they . . . they’ll know we’re having a nice meal soon enough, from the smell of the grain and the smoke from the fire.” Fisher sounded flabbergasted.

“They also know Indigo is here. They won’t come in the dark.” Nandy exchanged a look with Indigo.

“Are you sure they heard?” Indigo sounded a bit worried.

“They heard. They were licking their wounds in the dark beyond the bushes until they heard me say your name. Then they ran away. I heard them go.”

Indigo nodded. He took Fisher’s arm in his hands and began to unwrap the field dressing. “Leave it for now,” he said, when Fisher began to protest again. “I’ll explain later.” He turned to Rachel. “You should go to your father.”

Her father. Rachel saw him, lying near the fire, with his head propped up by a bedroll. Pathik was cleaning his face, gently wiping away blood and dirt. Peter was cutting away Daniel’s pant leg, in order to get a better look at a wound. Daniel was oblivious to all the activity—he was either asleep or unconscious.

“He’s exhausted,” said Pathik as she sat down next to him. “No killing wounds, so that’s good. Saidon can help him heal when we get home.” He shook his head. “They wanted him alive.”

“He’s just sleeping, right?” Rachel stared at Daniel’s face, trying to find the smiling man from the digims her mother used to show her. She couldn’t.

“Yes.” Pathik brushed some dirt off of Rachel’s sleeve. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m all right. A few scratches, but nothing else.” The image of the Roberts man raising his knife above her flickered in her mind.

“They were going to trade him.” Peter spoke, directing his words to Rachel. “He told us before he passed out, Rachel. They were going to trade him to the government.”

Rachel looked at Pathik for confirmation.

“Yes.” He nodded. “According to Daniel they have big plans. And he’s not the first they’ve taken. But we’ll talk about it later.” Pathik tilted his head, eyes soft upon her. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I am.”

“He knows you’re his daughter.” Peter spoke again. “He asked me before he passed . . . before he fell asleep. It’s Rachel, isn’t it? he said. I told him you and Vivian were fine.”

Rachel shot Peter a look. She didn’t feel fine. And for some reason she didn’t like the idea that he had told her father anything about herself or her mother. She was about to say something to that effect when Indigo walked up to them. He held two wooden bowls of the grain mush, warm and fragrant. He handed one of them to Rachel. Nandy, Malgam, and Fisher followed with more bowls. Fisher still looked unhappy at the idea that they were staying. When those with extra bowls had passed them on, they settled down around Daniel to eat. He slept on, breathing steadily, obviously exhausted.

“Fisher.” Indigo spoke quietly. “You asked why the Roberts won’t come attack us in the dark. They won’t come in the dark because it’s a part of their superstition. They think everything evil is stronger in the dark. And they believe that I am evil.”

“You? How would they even know of you? They haven’t been near our camp in generations.” Fisher looked skeptical.

“Three generations.” Indigo’s gaze took in his son, Malgam, and his grandson, Pathik, before he bowed his head. “They know of me because of something that happened many years ago, when I was just a boy. It was something I did—an accident.” His next words were barely audible. “It was a horrible thing. It’s the reason they haven’t bothered our camp in so long.”

Fisher looked at Nandy. “Is that why you shouted his name to the woods?”

Nandy was watching Indigo, her eyes shining with empathy for him. She nodded. “We knew it might be necessary to use their fear to keep them away from us. Especially if Daniel was hurt, as he is, and unable to travel quickly.”

Fisher looked at the others, one at a time, before he spoke again. “It seems some of us here know more than others about the Roberts. Or at least about why the Roberts never bother our camp.” He allowed his words to hang in the air.

“Some things aren’t for your ears.” Malgam sounded impatient, as usual.

“Ahh.” Indigo raised a hand. “He should know. As should all of our people. Maybe they would understand the purpose of Usage better. Maybe they would understand why the council has always been so strict about our gifts, why I’ve always been so strict.” He considered Fisher. “Your gift is to . . . well, I’ve always thought of your gift as a talent for asking the right question, or making the right observation, in just the right way.” Indigo smiled. “As you just did when you said some of us knew more than others; you didn’t press, or act outraged. You only observed, in a way that might inspire confidence sharing, as opposed to guilt or shame. You opened up an opportunity for me to tell you what you want to know, instead of making me feel like I should hide it from you.”

Rachel frowned. “I thought you were good at catching fish.”

The rest of them laughed, even Fisher.

“I am good at fishing. For information.” He gave a modest shrug.

“I call it being nosy.” Malgam was only half joking.

“It’s a useful skill, regardless of what you call it, Malgam.” Indigo chided gently with his tone. “But that’s a discussion for another night. Tonight we need to talk about the Roberts, and about why they never bother our camp.” He looked at the fire for a moment.

“Many years ago, when I was just a child, I discovered I had a gift.” Indigo shook his head slowly, almost imperceptibly. “If you can call my talent a gift.”

Rachel and Fisher were the only two who seemed surprised.

“You were never named,” said Fisher.

“No, I kept my birth name, Indigo. Given to me for the color of my eyes.” Indigo smiled, but the smile faded quickly. “I never told anyone about my gift. So there was no naming ceremony for me, because nobody knew. And when a few did find out, they kept my gift from the rest of our people. For many reasons, all of them good. In the years that followed, I shared the nature of my gift with my family. But I have never told the rest of our people.

“I was about seven.” Indigo returned his gaze to the fire, as though the flames held flickering images from that long-ago time. “I was sent for fire-starters—twigs and pinecones and the like. I wandered too far.” He took a deep breath.

“There were three of them. Men from the Roberts camp. One of them grabbed me from behind, clamped his hand over my mouth. Another grabbed my legs and they carried me away from camp. When we were far enough away to risk stopping for a bit, they gagged me, so I couldn’t make any noise, and tied my hands and feet. Then they dropped me on the ground as though I were already a corpse, tied me to a stump, and proceeded to have a snack. They talked about how they might use me to bargain for food stores from our camp, or whether it would be better to take me back to the Roberts camp as a slave.”

Indigo looked at Pathik and Fisher. “You two don’t remember a time when our camp was ever plagued by Roberts men. Neither do your parents.” He glanced in Malgam’s direction. “But there was a time. A time when they were many, and we were few, when we lived in fear of their attacks. They came at night to steal our women, or snatched our children from us in broad daylight. Those they took were never seen again, at least alive. Those who didn’t hide their gifts were killed immediately; those without gifts, those who knew enough to hide them when they were caught, were taken as slaves. Often, their bodies were dumped on the edge of our camp when the Roberts were through with them, as a sort of warning. The bodies were always ruined; testaments to horrible suffering.

“That day, when they took me, I knew they were going to hurt me, maybe for a long time, and then kill me.” Indigo paused. “I killed them instead.”

There were gasps. Rachel looked around the campfire. Nandy, Malgam, and Pathik all had their heads bowed. It was clear they already knew the story. The gasps had come from Fisher and Peter. Fisher was staring at Indigo, his face a mask of shock. Peter was staring too, with something more like curiosity.

“That’s your gift?” Fisher sounded horrified. “To kill?”

“As I said, I’m not certain it can be called a gift.” Indigo raised his eyes to Fisher’s. “I didn’t know I could do it until I did. I was so afraid, lying there, listening to their plans for me. I was already farther from camp than I had ever been, and I thought I would never see my family again. I began to cry so hard that I almost choked—the gag in my mouth made it hard to breathe. One of them got up and walked over to me. I thought he might help me, remove the gag at least, but he just kicked me, hard, and told me to shut up. The other two laughed. And my fear kept building and building until . . . something happened.

“I could see a picture in my mind, a picture of a tube. And there was liquid flowing, pulsing, really, through the tube, and it scared me, because the fluid was blood. The blood of one of the men. I knew that, somehow. I also knew that if I could puncture that tube, I would be safe. So I tried, in my mind, to poke the tube, to make a hole in it and let all the liquid out. But I couldn’t. All I could do was make the wall of the tube thinner, in one tiny place. So while the Roberts men laughed and ate, and I lay shivering in the dirt, I worked on that. It was hard. I scraped and scraped at that one place with my mind, until it got so thin it began to bulge, from the pressure of the blood flowing through. It got bigger and bigger, like a bubble. And finally, it burst, and all of the blood that was pulsing through the tube exploded outward.”

Indigo had stopped seeing Fisher, or anyone else, while he told his story. He had gone to some inner vista, where that day he was captured was clear and vivid. Now his eyes refocused, and he was once again aware of the people around him.

“When that bubble burst, one of the Roberts men fell where he sat. There wasn’t a mark on him, but it was obvious he was dead. The other two were confused and afraid—they didn’t know what had happened to their companion. But soon enough their eyes fell on me; they started toward me and I knew they were going to kill me.” Indigo shook his head. “I killed one of them too, before I even really knew what I was doing. The third Roberts man ran—and when he reached his camp he told them about the killer boy with deep blue eyes.

“My father found me there just before nightfall, bound and gagged and sobbing, with two cooling bodies for company. He’d come looking as soon as the alarm was sent round that I was missing. I remember his face, one moment so filled with joy at the sight of me alive, the next filled with horror. I knew he understood, right away, that I had killed them.”

There was silence. Nandy placed a hand on Indigo’s shoulder.

“That’s why the Roberts won’t come here at night, why they may not come at all. It’s why they haven’t come near our camp for decades. They believe evil thrives at night; they believe I am evil.

“My father and the elders of our camp made sure the Roberts thought I could kill them all. They dragged the bodies of the Roberts men to the edge of their camp. They shouted to them. They told them the time had come for all of them to die; that the child was born who would do it, a child named Indigo. They told them their only hope was to leave us alone—that they might be spared if they kept away.

“They went further, even than that, to ensure our camp’s safety.

“My father told me on his deathbed that the council at that time knew they had to take action against the Roberts. When I killed those men I gave the elders something they could use to frighten the Roberts. In order to leverage that fear, the council did something even more horrible than what I did. My killings were an accident; I had no way to know what I was doing. But the council men, my father included, snuck into the Roberts camp at night in twos and threes and killed people. They killed people who were sleeping, or who had stepped away from the safety of the main camp to relieve themselves. They strangled them, so that it might seem as though they died the same way the men who abducted me did. And then they drew blue eyes on the bodies, and left them to be found. They did this for weeks. They left the bodies as warnings. And it worked. The Roberts stayed away from our camp. At least they did, until lately. But what a stain on our history.” Indigo looked sad.

“From your description, it sounds as though you were somehow able to cause aneurisms in those men, aneurisms that killed them almost instantly. No wonder the government wants to get their hands on subjects. I had no idea that your powers went that far.” Peter looked fascinated.

“What do you mean by ‘subjects’? And how do you know what the government wants? Unless you’re working with them.” Rachel glared at Peter.

“I’m on your side, Rachel.”

“What about them? Are you on their side too?” Rachel gestured toward the Others.

Peter just shook his head.

“Enough of this,” said Nandy. “Right now we all need to rest, if we can.” She eyed Peter. “There will be time to uncover the truth about things when we’re safe back at camp. I’m taking first watch.” She looked worried.

“Nandy’s right.” Malgam stood. “We get as much rest as we can tonight and at first light we head for home.”

Nandy strode to the edge of the firelight. She took out her knife and turned toward the darkness. The others settled into their bedrolls around the fire and tried to ignore the night sounds.