Playing With Fire (5 page)

A
path was being carved through the black sea of Shadows until finally, a new
visitor arrived. To put it simply, an enormous bear burst into the center of
the sea with us. I kid you not. It charged straight for me and I ducked down as
close to the ground as I could manage. It was going so fast that it looked like
it had no chance of stopping, meaning I was about to be trampled by a thousand
pound power-house. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

I
dared to look up at the beast as it was an inch away from me. Its fur was thick
and deep brown. I braced for an impact—an impact that never came. As I looked
up again I saw the bear sailing over my head and was glad I had chosen to duck.

The
bear sailed right over me and onto Enzio. I looked up and expected the fight to
be done in seconds. Enzio was deadly but so was a massive bear on a rampage.

“Get
out of here!” a familiar voice yelled. I looked around trying to see who had
said it. I saw Vaze sprinting towards me with his wings spreading. I turned to
look at the bear expecting to see Enzio getting mauled, but instead saw the
bear facing its head towards me.

“Go!
Find your brothers and get somewhere safe. I’ll hold him off!” It had a human
voice. My mind went completely blank. I had seen its lips move and heard words
coming out of its mouth, but I couldn’t accept it. Animals did
not
talk.
When I was little I had tried for hours to get a squirrel I caught to talk but
it just stared at me until it passed out. Or maybe it had stopped breathing.
But the point is animals can’t talk!

I
stayed grounded in that spot, gapping at the bear as it turned away from me and
struggled to restrain Enzio. I hardly noticed when Vaze scooped me up off the
ground and into the air. I didn’t come back to my senses until Laetus was
behind us. I wished I hadn’t come back to my senses then. They only left me
again. I was staring out at Laetus thinking about how that was the only town I had
ever known, and suddenly, it was gone.

It
wasn’t dramatic like being sucked into the ground gone. It was just gone. Not
there anymore. It happened in the blink of an eye. Laetus was a big city too. Instead
of the town, now there was a dead valley. The ground was dry and cracked and
the only thing that seemed to grow was flowerless thorny rosebushes.

 I
was too shocked to speak. I didn’t know if it had affected our Warehouse,
though the forest was still there. My fears were quickly extinguished as the
ivy covered roof of my home peeked slightly out of the trees. Vaze slowly
floated closer to the top of the wooden roof.

He
landed silently, leaving only the sound of the rain pounding on the wooden
surface. He put me down, which wasn’t the best thing for me. I was so shaken I
almost lost my balance and fell off, and I felt a sting of embarrassment as
Vaze caught me by the arm. The roof wasn’t very steep, and I had been up there
plenty of times before, but under the circumstances I think any normal person
would do the same.

“What
just happened, Vaze?” I asked in the calmest voice I could manage, but it was
still a struggle to keep my voice from cracking. I looked into his eyes for
answers, but they were hollow.

“I’ll
explain when we’re all together,” was his solemn answer. He jumped towards the
ground and snapped out his wings at the last moment, landing silently. He
motioned for me to jump and held out his arms to catch me, but I only scowled
at him.

Jumping
to a nearby tree I grabbed one of its branches and tossed myself to the lower
branches until I was close enough to the ground to leap down. I stumbled a bit
upon landing, but despite my gracelessness I was satisfied that I had done it
without his help.

Vaze
just shrugged and walked towards the broken mess that I called home. None of
the windows were intact, and the only thing besides broken glass covering them
were shreds of clothes that were so worn or small we couldn’t wear them anymore.
The door was a tad pathetic. The building had giant wooden hangar doors with
rusted hinges, so we had to cut our own door. It was a small opening that was
also covered in cloth to help keep out the cold during the winter. The hangar
doors themselves were rotting. The whole place was a safety hazard. And since
it was mostly made of wood it was a fire hazard too. Ironic, isn’t it?

Vaze
entered and I was right behind him. The first thing I saw was Al. It wasn’t
that I was particularly looking for him; he was just waiting by the door and
decided to tackle me in a bear hug.

“Don’t
ever scare me like that!” He yelled in my ear with his voice cracking. “What
happened?”

“Isn’t
it kind of obvious?” I said while shoving him off of me. “I tried to stop an
idiot from being an idiot. It didn’t work out too well.” I gestured to Vaze’s
many cuts and bruises.  I realized that compared to him, I was hardly hurt at
all. All of his injuries were minor but there were a lot of them. They’d be
annoying, but he’d recover. After inspecting myself I found I had about ten
cuts on my arm and a small shallow bite mark on my ankle that hardly broke
skin. I’d say I was lucky.

“What
was Enzio talking about when he said all those things anyway?” I asked,
remembering everything Enzio had taunted Vaze with until he finally snapped.
Vaze looked at me, and if looks could kill, I’d probably have dropped dead then
and there.

“It’s
none of your business, and I’d advise you to forget about it,” he said defensively.

“You
don’t have to be a jerk, I was just asking!” I snapped back. There was no way I
was backing down. Apparently, neither was he.

Al
sensed what was about to happen first. He knew better than anyone how I get
into so many fights in the first place. He was always my voice of reason, and
my conscience. He got between Vaze and me before I had a chance to throw a
punch.

“Stop!”
Al interjected, and got in between us. “If we start fighting among ourselves
we’re dead meat. Mr. Hale said that those Shadow things and Enzio are probably
going to be the least of our problems. If we’re going to make it, we’ve got to
stick together. You two may not like it, but you’re going to have to work as a
team. Scarlet, Mr. Hale said that Vaze would be the only one who would know
where to go. Vaze, he also said that you and the survivors need Scarlet, and
you know it. So if you’re done acting like five year olds, can we please start
making a plan to get out of here?”

Vaze
looked surprised. I wasn’t. Speeches like this were normal for him, and though
I was used to them, they always had the same effect on me. It calmed me down,
and I always listened to what Al had to say. He may have only been a few months
older than me, but the gap between our wisdom was like an ocean. Al could
pretty much talk his way out of anything.

“Well
said Al,” Seth admitted, ruffling Al’s hair affecionately. He had always been
proud of Al. In a way he was just as smart as Seth. “So, Vaze, where are we
going? You can tell us what happened while we travel.” Vaze nodded and bit his
lip. I could tell he was racking his brain for safe places and routes.

“There’s
a camp of rebels where all the survivors from Moraj live. My father is the
leader there, since he was the king of Moraj. All those able are trained
warriors, so we should be safe there, but it’s far from here since we’ll be on
foot. The odds are we’ll run into bandits or worse.”

I
rolled my eyes. “Do we look like we’re the kind of people that would have
anything valuable?” I paused for a second, looking around at my home.

“Taking
valuables away aren’t the worst things bandits can do to you,” Vaze said, his
statement plainly directed at me. “There are creatures out there that won’t
care if you have money or not. Most of them would just as soon feast on your
flesh as take your money.”

While
that cheery thought settled in my head, Vaze turned to Jake. “It’s your
choice,” he said to my eldest brother. For a second, Jake looked unsure.

“I
don’t think we have any other choices,” Jake said soberly. “We can’t stay here,
or else they’ll find us.”

Vaze
nodded. “Follow me then.” And with that, he bolted out the door, leaving behind
five confused souls. Jake shrugged and bolted out after him followed by Seth
and Al, leaving Darren and I alone.

“He’s
a real piece a work, isn’t he?” Darren said with a sly smile on his face. I
laughed. Darren laid his hand on my head and ruffled my hair. “Let’s see who
catches up first… Midget.” He always called me that and I absolutely hated it.
He bolted out the door before I could sock him in the arm and I bolted out
right after him.

Vaze
hovered in the air, waiting for us, the stragglers to catch up. We dashed
through the trees straight towards him. The ground was slick and wet, making it
difficult to run without falling.

We
ran deeper into the forest with our only way of direction was when we’d see
Vaze through an occasional break in the trees. The sky was lightening up a little
bit as the rain subsided from an endless shower to a slight drizzle. It didn’t
take long to catch up, within minutes we arrived at the same clearing where I
had fought the Shadows for the first time. The ashes of the Shadows from the
night before had become murky black puddles slowly mixing in with the earth.      

 When
Vaze saw that we had arrived, he landed silently on the muddy ground as we
joined the rest of my family. For the first time, I had noticed an absence.

“Where’s
Bookworm?” I asked searching around. My brothers exchanged grave looks.

“He
went after you and Vaze. He told us that if he didn’t come back with you to
leave as soon as possible,” Jake said. “Didn’t you see him?”

A
fleeting thought of the talking bear flashed into my head and I looked at Vaze,
confused. He shook his head slightly and held a finger to his lips in a silent
shhhh. I got the message and shook my head to my oldest brother. Jake nodded
sadly and a tear formed by his eye, but he held it back. Out of all of us, he
was closest to the Bookworm, even more so than Seth.

“I
don’t like to admit it, but we’re going to have to go on without him,” Jake
said slowly. He turned to Vaze. “Which way do we go?”

“We
should start by going north,” he started. “We need to get to Ilam mountain
pass, and then it’s a straight shot to being home free.”

“Really,
it’s that easy?” I said in disbelief. The way he explained it made it sound
extremely simple.

Vaze
sighed.“Not exactly,” he said and paused. “For one thing we have no food, no
map, and the most time Enzio being trapped in a Convergence will buy us is about
four days.”

 “Most
of those things aren’t a problem Vaze,” Jake said. “We know how to catch or
steal food, and are used to being hungry, so we won’t complain much.”

“And
I can navigate by stars,” Seth cut in. Al, Darren and I looked at him in
disbelief. He shrugged and said, “You can learn a lot from books.”

“Then
what are we waiting for?” Darren asked. “If that guy is going to come after us
again and we have four days of safety from him, we better hurry the hell up,
right?”

Even
if the words where coming from an idiot, they were true. No one could, or
wanted to argue. Without further ado, we followed Vaze through the forest.

Then
next few hours we traveled in silence. After a while, the forest opened up into
a lush prairie field. The rain had dissipated by then and the clouds had rolled
away to reveal a deep blue sky along with the warm tingling rays from the sun.
The golden light highlighted the field and made it a breath taking sight.

A
sea of tall sage grass was dotted with bushes that bore all different colors of
flowers ranging from deep blue to ruby red and warm orange to dazzling purple.
They were all quite small on the bushes but were accentuated by the large
yellow lilies that popped up from time to time.

Far
across the beautiful field was another forest, but unlike the familiar forest
that hid our home, it had a menacing look to it, dark and foreboding. It looked
like it could swallow us whole. Beyond that were the snow covered caps of an
immense mountain range. With the three spectacles before us, it felt all the
more amazing, and all the more impossible.

Out
of all of us, I took the longest to recover from the sight, and I had also taken
the most in. It took me a while to notice that Vaze and my brothers were far ahead
of me in the field, and left me scrambling to catch up. I was about to do so,
when something caught my eye. A woman with golden hair was strolling through
the field, humming a tune that seemed oddly familiar to me, though no matter
how hard I tried to put my finger on it, I couldn’t. I looked to my brothers up
ahead to see if they had noticed her. All their eyes were focused on the forest
up ahead and I looked back to the woman, but to my surprise, she was gone.

I
scanned the area where she had been, looking for some evidence that she really had
been there, but when I found none, I ran to catch up to my brothers. I didn’t
mention the woman to them, and convinced myself I was imagining things.

While
we walked I started to see more signs of life. Small black bunnies occasionally
scampered in front of me without fear. They looked more curious than anything,
though whenever Al came over to look at them, they fled. It was as if they
didn’t know what to make of me, and wanted to examine me more closely.
Butterflies started flying across the field, and were more flamboyant than any
butterflies I had ever seen in my life. They were big and brightly colored,
just like the flowers.

My
brothers and I enjoyed the site, but Vaze hardly took notice of them. He was
headed straight for the forest with a stone hard determination. The trip
through the little field was like an oasis in a desert after the horrors I had
gone through in the last day, but it was short lived. Soon the last of the
butterflies pass us and field ended. The ominous forest was upon us. Its trees
were the biggest trees I had ever seen in my life, and made the path leading
into it look like night had suddenly fallen on this one remote forest. Vaze
turned to us as he reached the base of the forest.

“From
here on out it’s going to get extremely dangerous. I need to know that you will
listen to all my instructions, no matter what. I’ve been here before, and know
what can happen. The Shadows don’t come here, but that’s only because there are
much worse things living in this forest. Will you obey my instructions?” We all
nodded affirmatively. We didn’t need to be convinced.

“Good.”
With that, Vaze turned and was swallowed by the darkness of the forest. Jake,
Seth, and Darren went right in after him. Al looked at me uncertainly. I gave
him a smile of encouragement and offered my hand to him. He smiled back and
took it. With the comfort of knowing we would stay together, we allowed
ourselves to be overwhelmed by the darkness of the forest.

It
was a good thing Al and I were holding hands because the second we entered, all
light left us. Another hand brushed my free hand and grasped it.

“Stay
together for now,” Vaze’s voice said from beside me. “No one move until your
eyes adjust.”