The Caravan

Chapter Six, Summer 2037

“Marshall,” Jewel was shaking him awake. His vision was still darkness, but he sensed significant movement a few hundred yards off. “Marshall, wake up,” She whispered.

He moved his head up. “Mmmh?”

“Look.” She was pointing.

“Good one,” he said and laid his head back down.

“Marshall,” she said through a smile. “There’s the caravan of Cavaliers.”

Marshall put his hands under him and pushed to a seated position. He listened.

Horses, yes. Wheeled vehicles of some kind; they sounded wooden. People muttering as they walked alongside the rolling carts and whatever else they were toting. Marshall couldn’t sense specifics, but he guessed there was a troupe of fraisers giving off that strong fraiser scent.

“Are they going to Stablefield?” Marshall wanted to confirm.

“They’re headed in that direction,” Jewel said.

“We gotta get ahead of them.” Marshall started rising.

“Stay low; they might spot us from over there.”

“They seem pretty far away.”

“They are, but let’s wait until they’re actually past. Then we’ll move. I can see the end of the caravan from here,” Jewel said. “We’ll travel at least twice as fast, especially if we take the trees.”

Ten long minutes stretched by before Marshall and Jewel rose silently, the only thing to hear being the trees being rustled by the wind. They left the mobile campsite and headed into the forest without eating. 

Marshall said, “Is there even time to eat? We gotta make sure we make it to the city without being spotted by them. And what if the caravan runs into some of my friends on the way?”

“The caravan is slow. We’ll be able to overtake them, but we have to stay far out of their sight.”

“I wonder if they stopped at the outpost I killed… those Cavs take my eyes-” Marshall barely managed that last word. Why would he have trouble talking about something that happened to him? Marshall quieted, letting the pang of memories fade once again into the recesses of his mind.

The two fraisers bushwhacked for a while alongside the caravan, giving the Cavaliers a quarter-mile berth. Eventually, Marshall noticed. “Wait, it sounds like they’re gathering.”

The Cavaliers had stopped and Marshall and Jewel stopped as well. Jewel was looking in their general direction, but couldn’t hear as well as Marshall.

Marshall looked at the ground and then knelt. He felt the ground and on its touch he could hear the caravan even better. Footsteps, and the voices of those sitting down. The words were smeared into the rest of the sounds, but hoofbeats and the tacking down of tent pegs were distinct. 

“I can hear them. Kind of,” Marshall said.

“What are they saying?”

“Can’t hear them that well. But they’re pitching tents.”

“I wonder why? It’s so early and they’re so close to Stablefield,” Jewel said.

“I hear a couple… of pairs of feet. I think it’s just two guys. But they’re walking on the path… maybe they’re walking with some kind of sticks. But they didn’t stop with the rest of them.”

“Scouts?”

“Maybe. They sound full-grown.”

Jewel said. “We should tail them. Lucky they don’t have a prophet with them, otherwise they would probably sense us.”

“Sense us how?”

“Prophets can detect everything hidden around them. From what I know, there are some cases that allow them to actually predict the future or glimpse it, but their powers can only sense the stuff around them. I don’t know of any cases where the prophet actually predicted the future, aside from your friend Myles. C’mon, lead the way to the two Cavs.”

“And Mariah,” Marshall said, starting toward the path. “She was the other half of those predictions. I thought that was like their main thing. They are prophets after all, so with a name like that, you’d think they’d predict a lot of stuff.”

“I’ve heard prophets are difficult to fight because they can detect what your next move will be, so I guess there is that form of prediction, right?” Jewel said.

“I need to find Myles and Mariah and ask them all this. We’re going to intercept these guys and take them by surprise, okay?”

“We don’t need to fight them, Marshall. We just need to follow them and see where they’re going.” Jewel had hushed her voice.

“Okay,” Marshall matched his tone with hers.

They sneaked until they were forty feet from the main path which was wide enough to let two horse-drawn carts pass one another. The two fraisers each chose a thick tree and put their back against it. A few minutes later, they could hear the two Cavaliers’ mutterings:

“-and I didn’t,” one voice finally became distinct. “One was already burned, the second still had nails in it, so someone must have blown it out. I’m always punctual when it comes to those, so it wasn’t me. So I tell both of them that. ‘If the candle was still burning, I would have heard the nails plink and would have remembered he needed to be fed.’ There’s no way the wind did it since the candle itself was inside the living room of the house. If I had one of those electric or battery-powered timers, I would never be late for or forget anything. Apparently, everything was portable and electric before this, or it was plugged into the wall, right?”

Another voice picked up the conversation: “Yeah, there was a standard socket for everything. Everything was built to be plugged into a wall or plugged into something with a standardized plug-in port, like a USB.”

Marshall could sense Jewel’s heartbeat growing stronger. Or was that his own?

“Maybe I’ll find one once we reach the city. What’re you looking for?” Voice One said.

Marshall froze at those words. Did they see or hear us?

“Boots. And to get this dent out of this part. I’ve started getting a callus on my chest where this dent is,” Voice Two answered.

Marshall exhaled noiselessly. They weren’t looking for fraisers in the woods. By now, they had passed without any knowledge of two kids tailing them just a few feet behind.

“What made that dent?”

“Fuckin’ cage. They were stacked on one another and as me and Will were moving them, it fell and the corner jabbed it.”

“Sucks,” Voice One said.

“We hammered it as best we could, but it’s still ugly as hell,” Voice Two said.

“Ugly as hell. There’s gotta be a better way to describe it.”

“Ugly as you?”

“Ugly as you,” Voice One returned.

“Ugly as… that one guy… that leather worker. Who fixed Kim’s satchel’s strap?”

“I know who you’re talking about.”

“Fat old bastard, but he knew how to work leather.”

“Didn’t he have that one-eyed son?”

“Yeah,” Voice Two said. “Had that eyepatch. No way that kid was a prophet or anything special.”

“I’d say hush or hanger. If any.”

“They all wind up becoming one.”

“Think there have ever been two fraises mixed in? Like… a hush that could also fly?”

“No.”

“Why’s that?”

“Anda said it had something to do with each fraiser being born a certain way.”

That seemed to end the conversation. The men walked in silence and the fraiser became even quieter in their following. 

They know Anda, Marshall thought. Well, they used to know him.

The two Cavs eventually came to the lip of the forest and stopped. Before them was the expanse before the city; the area where all of the trees had been cleared and only saplings and stumps lay before them.

After a few seconds, Voice Two said: “I don’t see the compass.”

“He’ll be docking right over there if he does,” Voice One said.

“That still gives us all of tonight. Don’t gotta spend money to stay anywhere if we just camp out in the woods.”

“We’re good to head back?”

Marshall guessed Voice Two nodded since both feet started walking back to the campsite. The fraisers let them go and stayed hidden near the edge of the woods.

“What compass were they talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Jewel answered. “But they said someone was docking there. If there is someone docking, they’re referring to a boat which means they must be trading fraisers for something. Maybe the Compass is the person they’re trading with?”

“That would make sense,” Marshall said. “All of those kids are gonna get traded or sold like slaves, though? What can we do to free them?”

“‘Free them’? With just two of us?” Jewel said. “If we had your friends, we might be able to do something, but Cavaliers are dangerous, even if we have dexterity.”

“That’s a big word; I’m surprised you know it.”

“Ripley taught me all kinds of words just by the way he talked. I had to ask him about their definitions, otherwise I wouldn’t understand him.”

“So, what do we do? We’re here waiting for the Astronomers who we think will be coming this way. Is this the only way to Stablefield?”

Jewel shook her head. “I don’t know how many paths lead to Stablefield, but it’s not just this one.”

“But we would see them if they were heading into the city from one of the paths?”

“There’s enough foliage that we may not be able to.”

“We… well, you, have a shitty view from here; if we were in a tree we would have a better chance… wait, what if they walk right into the Cavalier’s campsite?”

“You said a couple of your friends were prophets and if that’s true, they’ll sense the danger before they walk into the Cavaliers camp,” Jewel said. “You said a couple of the Astronomers were already at Stablefield. I thought we would be looking for them? The more of us there are, the less we’ll have to worry about Cavaliers.”

“Is this the most popular road to Stablefield?”

Jewel shrugged. “I don’t know the Hook very well.”

“How many other paths are there?”

Jewel shrugged again and looked out at the field of saplings and stumps. “We could travel along the side of the forest and count?”

“Hell, we don’t have anything better to do,” Marshall said. “Once we find one that we think… well, what if they are on the road with the Cavs? Then we would want to help them.”

“There’s too much we don’t know to make that decision I think. I say we explore and count on your friends’ own survival skills to keep them out of harm’s way.”

Marshall disliked his choices of ‘bad’ and ‘slightly less bad’, but he agreed with Jewel. “Should we head left of the city or right?”

“Left because I’m left-handed.”

“Left it is.” Marshall started leading the way, crossing the path and heading back into the woods. “You’re left-handed?”

“I’m guessing you aren’t?” Jewel said.

“Nope.”

“I draw pictures with my left, but I throw knives with my right.”

They keep walking through the forest and reach another path. It’s worth making a description of what they’re feeling and thinking here.

Marshall and Jewel finally made it to a different path. “This one is even wider,” Marshall sensed. “And more used. Lot of potholes.”

“Someone’s coming.” Jewel was looking up the path away from the city.

“Shit,” Marshall said as the fraisers whisked off the path and each climbed a different tree. Marshall lowered his head and listened to the footsteps as they approached. “You didn’t tell me it was just one guy,” he said, slowly lowering from the tree.

“Marshall, he could be dangerous still,” Color said. “If he’s brave enough to travel alone, he’s either desperate or dangerous, which makes him dangerous either way.”

“Please, it’s one guy and there’s two of us, literal superheroes with swords.”

“The odds are with us that we could overpower him, but it’d be smarter to stay out of it.” Jewel lowered herself from her tree as well.

Marshall and Jewel stayed off of the trail until the figure was close enough and they walked onto the path, facing him.

The man slowed, but continued toward them. At fifteen feet away, he stopped, considering the children: a girl with a katana and a boy with full ninja attire, daisho, and a blindfold. The situation was too mysterious to be taken lightly.

“Hello,” the man said. “May I pass?”

“Is this the busiest road to Stablefield?” Marshall asked.

“One of them. Most popular one is about a mile right of the city,” he said.

“You got a lot of weapons on you,” Marshall said. “Don’t try lying; I can smell them from here.” They smelled less pure than his own swords, but there were enough of them inside the man’s packs and jacket that

“Seeing as I’m looking to sell them in Stablefield because I’m a blacksmith, yes, I do have a lot of weapons. And in making them, I’ve had a lot of practice using them as well. Was that the only question you had for me? Or am I free to pass?”

“What kind of weapons?” Jewel asked.

“Mostly knives, but a few shortswords that are popular with the Cavaliers. They would be quite annoyed if their shipment didn’t make it to them on time,” the man said.

“I’m Marshall and this Jewel.” Marshall gestured to each of them.

“Nice to meet you,” the man said. “May I go?”

“Well, we were actually in the market for a few throwing knives,” Marshall said.

The man drew a sharp breath in. “They’re expensive. I don’t sell bad knives.”

“I would be willing to trade this sword.” Jewel removed her katana gently and held it by the case with the handle facing the man.

The man took a few slow steps toward the fraisers. “Where did you get it?”

“I found it,” Marshall said. “Smelled it under a pile a rubble. We don’t mean any harm by the way; we’re just looking for some information and her knives were broken fighting some barrygangs, so we really are looking for some new knives.”

“If I’m able to throw them, that’s even better,” Jewel added as the man accepted the katana.

He removed it from its case and studied it. “This is a pre-rise weapon. Incredible. The folded steel… I don’t have the equipment to do that, but if I could…” He looked back to the fraisers and lowered a few of his packs to the ground. They didn’t clank around as Marshall expected them to, but they fell heavily.

“My name is Jared,” he said. “And I lied about having many weapons to sell, but I do have knives which I would be happy to sell to you. Or trade for this sword, in your case.” He removed several packets of blankets and began rolling them out.

“What do you see?” Marshall had to ask.

“It’s forks and knives and spoons… the table kind,” Jewel said. “Some are knives used to cut twigs and string, and to whittle, but there aren’t any throwing knives.”

Jared shrugged. “I do have two of my own survival knives which I could trade you for that katana.”

“Oh,” Marshall smelled several other pieces of metal on Jared, one with drying blood on it. Marshall had no trouble identifying that smell; he had a few feelings rush through him: The feel of flesh’s resistance as you stab a knife into it. Like a mixture of jello made of sand. He had to swallow quickly and force his rising gorge back.

Jared removed two somethings. “What are they?” Marshall asked Jewel.

She answered, “One is a foldable knife and the other is a solid blade that doesn’t fold. You can’t throw either of these knives.”

“So you would rather keep the sword?” Marshall said, wondering about the bloodied knife Jared hadn’t removed yet.

“Yes.” Jewel took a few steps back.

“None of this silverware appeals to you? Some of these are pre-rise pieces. This spoon set is almost complete. And metal chopsticks?” Marshall heard two metalic clicks. “Reusable and horribly handy for the road,” Jared said.

“What about that bloodied knife you haven’t shown us yet?”

Marshall thought he felt Jared’s face look at him. “That’s my knife,” Jared said.

“How about letting her see it anyway? That’s not the safest, you know. Keeping a knife hidden like that. Makes us kind of suspicious.” Marshall loosened his shorter shoto.

Jared removed the knife, but kept it in his hand. “Here.”

“It’s another bigger knife, but it isn’t great for throwing either,” Jewel said.

“How about those three knives for the sword?” Marshall asked Jewel.

“I’d rather keep my sword.”

“Well, Jared, thanks anyway.”

Jared rolled up his packs carefully and put them back in his bag. “Thank you as well. I’ll be on my way.” And the salesman walked on toward the city.

As he left them about twenty feet behind and headed into the field before the city, Marshall shouted: “How about pretending you never saw us? It would mean a lot!”

Jared raised a hand in response. Not a word.

The two fraisers watched him for a few minutes longer and eventually turned to each other.

“We should head to that other path, then,” Marshall said. “If Myles or Pretty or Blink landed somewhere else on the Hook, they aren’t going to wind up on this trail; they’ll land on that one that Jared mentioned.”

“You don’t think he may have been lying?” Jewel said.

“He didn’t have a reason to. He was wanting to stay on our good side that whole time. He was probably happy we didn’t just kill him and take his stuff right then,” Marshall could hardly believe the way he was thinking so naturally now.

Jewel was nodding in understanding.

“Guess we’re heading back the way we came?”

“Guess so,” Jewel said, walking with him into the woods.

They trundled along the woods and since they were focused on navigating the woods and foliage, they didn’t speak.

Marshall’s mind bounced visions of home around in his head. He wondered if he would ever see home at all?

“Where did you live before all of this, Jewel?” Marshall asked after a while.

“I grew up in a village and was an ordinary fraiser, like all the other fraisers,” Jewel said. “Then we were raided, so me and my brother Mikey stayed in the woods; we knew how to live off of the woods. Then more Cavaliers eventually found and captured us, but Mikey and I were able to escape the cages they had us in and we were looking to escape this little dungeon they were holding us inside of, but we were discovered and we panicked. So we ran to hide; Mikey hid me in this room and distracted them and in this room there was a wight who was locked up behind a silver chain.

“He and I talked for a little bit; he told me he was locked up because he said the truth that people didn’t want to hear. He convinced me to free him from the cage and in return he would help me escape the dungeon. When he stepped out from the chain curtain, I saw that he was a skeleton and I ran in fear. I was almost caught by the Cavaliers who were still looking for me, but Ripley killed them all.

“We couldn’t save Mikey in time. He was dead when we found him; Ripley killed the men who had killed him. Then I stayed with Ripley and he showed me many things. He bought me my dragon jacket.”

All the talk about guardians got Marshall thinking about his Mom. He would need to get back home soon; she would be worried about him, wouldn’t she? Then again, if fifty years had passed, his mom would be an old lady. Maybe a grandmother. “Oh, Jeez…” He involuntarily stopped walking to think. His mom lived her whole life, which meant she’d moved on without him for all of those years. And without his dad.

“Oh, man…” he said. “My mom probably forgot all about me.”

Jewel had stopped with him and was standing just a few feet away. “Did she love you?”

“Yes.” Marshall’s response was instant.

“Then she didn’t forget you.”

“She lived all of those years without me,” Marshall said as his stomach panged and writhed with a concoction of loss and disconnect. “She must have at least partially forgotten me.”

“Well, you’re not dead,” Jewel said. “Even if you weren’t around for fifty years. Mikey was killed in front of me almost six years ago and I still love him and have never forgotten him.”

Marshall didn’t realize just how much emotion was waiting to break to the surface by telling someone who cared about him. “Fuck.” His voice broke on the word. There wasn’t a family for him to return to anymore; he was on his own on this strange planet with a stranger talking about strange things and his friends were somewhere far away. He put his hand against a tree to prop himself up since his footing seemed stupid.

“Everything is just… so big, Jewel. The whole world; I’ve never felt so small.”

Once she saw him lean against the tree, Jewel had taken enough steps toward him that Marshall could feel her breath.

“I’m so tiny, like I’m nothing,” Marshall said.

Jewel listened.

Marshall’s jaw clenched and his shoulders started to shake. “Shit.” His stomach felt similar to that gut-wrenching feeling, but this stomach-feeling was darker, like it spat out all of the emotion. He lowered himself to the ground, dazedly aware of Jewel matching his action. Quickly swallowing his spit showed him how swollen his adam’s apple felt. He raised a hand up and could feel it shake. “Jesus, look at this shit. What the fuck is happening to me? What is this?”

“Marshall, I don’t know; you’re scaring me. What’s happening? Are you sick?”

“Fuck, fuck, I don’t know. Fuck, I’m so scared right now,” Marshall said. He hugged his knees and started tapping his foot. “FUCK.” He stood up again, but could only stand up hunched. And standing made him feel nauseous and dizzy. Jewel had started to stand with him, but found herself shrieking, “Marshall!” as he fell onto his side and gripped his knees in a fetal position, his sheathed daisho digging into his left side as they were pinned under him.

Jewel kneeled next to him and put her hands on his side. “Marshall, you’re okay. You’re okay, Marshall. You’re just scared, but you’re going to be okay.”

His mouth was trembling so badly now that he struggled to speak. “I’m… I’m fuckkking scared. I’m… fucking shakinggg.”

He couldn’t sense anything around him again; his hearing dulled and his skin only felt clammy. His sense of smell was as acute as a mannequin’s. Then he felt warmth wrapping around him: Two snaky coils from either side of him wrapping around him and raising him to a seated position. Then he felt the snaky ropes draw him close to an underdeveloped bosom and his head was locked neatly under a small chin. Under his bottom, he felt two legs about the size of his own.

Jewel rocked him, nothing but a ball of Marshall, in her lap. “Did you know that you’re safe?”

The trembling persisted, but his concentration seemed to focus for a second. “Hm?”

“The world was always this big and you were given a lot all at once; I remember it being put this way: moments like these don’t make you stronger, rather they show you how strong you already were,” Jewel said.

Marshall’s mind seemed to chew on those words and he reached out in the darkness behind his eyes and grasped a coherent thought:

“My english teacher used to go on these weird rants,” Marshall started, feeling some of the shaking going away, “And once he told a story about a student asking questions to a teacher about english. The student asked, ‘what’s good grammar?’ to which the teacher said, ‘words in the right order.’ Then the student asked, ‘so what’s the difference between that and prose?’ The teacher said, ‘Prose is the right words in the right order.’”

Jewel’s arms were feeling warmer, not just around him, but inside of him. There was a power in this embrace. There was love that he could feel being transferred to him. Genuine care.

“What made you say that?” Jewel asked.

Marshall shrugged, noticing he had control over his shaking shoulders again. He tried not to think about it, fearing he may break the delicate calm. “What you said earlier. If prose is just the right words in the right order, or maybe at the right time, I’d say you just spoke some prose.”

“You have so much,” Jewel said. “And I for one am glad that you’re here.”

“I’m terrified, Jewel. I’ve never been this scared,” Marshall said as he started shaking again. Shaking in his ninja boots, he thought. “I’ve also never had a girl I don’t know hug me like this.”

“Lot of firsts for you, huh?” Jewel said.

“Yeah.”

“We can find your friends if we keep moving.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“I think you can. I really do.”

Marshall didn’t. “I’ve never had a girl hug me like this.”

“You already said that.”

“I’m not letting this bullshit get the better of me,” he said, starting to rise. As he stood, he felt that tuck in his stomach; his intestines were folding up like lawn chairs. Before he could even look back to ask Jewel for more help through this, she grabbed his right hand with her left.

“Ripley’s hand was just bones. He had to walk me places all the time and sometimes he would be wearing gloves, but it’s nice to be holding a human hand again,” Jewel said.

“Uh huh,” Marshall said, shoulders eased into a twitch. Standing up had helped, but he was tempted to just lie on the ground and try to shake himself to sleep or something. At last, a thought needling its way throughout the whole endeavor, punched through his mind’s innocence like a nail through plywood: It would be nice to die.

Then he said, “Fuck.”

“Take a quick deep breath in and let it out as slow as you can,” Jewel said and showed him how.

He mimicked her, but the urge to heave breaths overwhelmed the first breath. The second was better. By the fifth breath, he had control.

“Keep doing that until you feel like talking,” Jewel said and started walking, pulling him along by his right hand. He focused on breathing and walking. Her fingers interlocked with his. “And by golly, keep up. Your friends are waiting.”

They’re waiting. The Astronomers are waiting for him. Breath in quick and out slowwww. He noticed his heartbeat had dwindled from a racehorse after a quarter-mile sprint to a dumpy panda’s after an evening meal of bamboo.

A thought occurred to him. “Jewel?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you like to join the Astronomy Club?”

Jewel tilted her head; the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind, but she started to nod and said, “Yes!”

Marshall smiled and faced her to make it look like he was looking at her. “In Winton we had a whole initiation on bikes and in the arcade, but I think all the stuff we’ve been through has been initiation enough. Welcome, our latest Astronomer.”

“Aw, shucks,” Jewel giggled and let her gaze fall to her feet. “Do I get a cool name like yours? You were the Guru, right?”

“Yeah. I’m impressed you remembered that. We gotta come up with one for you. The ‘Dragon’ because of the dragon on your jacket, maybe?”

Jewel shook her head. “We’ll figure that out later I guess.”

“I guess so. Where’d you learn all of those breathing tricks?” Marshall said.

“Ripley taught me the breathing one after a few months of travel. I taught myself to try not to use the words ‘not’ and ‘never’. It takes practice; you’d be surprised at how hard it is to stay away from those words.”

Marshall felt silly holding her hand and let go. “What about the singing?”

“I find that singing works best for me personally.”

“What’s one that I haven’t heard yet?”

Well, as a child I mostly spoke inside my head,
Had conversations with the clouds, the dogs, the dead,
And they thought me broken, that my tonguewas coated lead,
But I just couldn’t make my words make sense to them,
If you only listen with your ears… I can’t get in,

And I spent my evenings pullin’ stars outta the skye,
An’ I’d arrange ‘em on the lawn where I would lie,,,
An’ in the wind, I’d taste the dreams ofdistant lives,
And I would dress my-self up in them through the night,
While my folks’d sleep in separate baeds… and wondered why,

And through them days I was a ghost atop my chair,
My dad considered me a cross he had to bear,
And in my head I’d sing apologies and stare,
As my mom would hang the clothes across the line,
And she would try to keep the empty… from her eyes,

So, then one afternoon I dressed myself alone,
I packed my pillowcase with everything I owned,
And in my head I said “goodbye, ” then I was gone,
And I set out on the heels of the unknown,
So my folks could have a new life of their own,
And then maybe I could find someone,
Who could hear the only words that I’d known,

After those last words, they didn’t speak; Marshall could only think about finding the Astronomers and about Jewel. He felt called to say something to her, but the vortex of thoughts whisking around him about her mixed with his situation muddled his coherency and he allowed his mouth to say: “Jewel, you’re great.”

“Thank you, Marshall,” she said.

They said nothing until they reached the path Jared the silverware-peddler had recommended.