The Stakeout

Chapter Ten, Summer 2037

The road was nearly twice the size of the road the Cavaliers were traveling on and this one was actually paved with real asphalt, though it was deeply cracked down the center.

“This is the road?” Marshall said.

“Looks like it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

He heard Jewel mutter a small laugh and instinctively reach for her side. What now? Waiting? There was too much that was unknown to confidently wait for the rest of the Astronomers now. They said they’d meet in Stablefield, right? So what if they were already in the city waiting for Marshall and Jewel?

“What if the Astronomers are already in the city?” Marshall asked.

Jewel looked at the city’s wood frame, considering the Guru’s words. “I don’t know. I wasn’t in the dream that you had; what did they say?”

“They said we’d meet here, but we didn’t get into specifics. We didn’t designate a location aside from the whole city to meet. We didn’t even schedule a day.”

“If they said they’d meet at Stablefield then they’re probably in the city or are going to go into it when they get here. And if they do, they’ll be on the top level.”

“So we’ll have to sneak in somehow,” Marshall said.

“We’ll have to wait until it’s dark out.”

“It’s all the same to me.”

“Hilarious.”

“How long until nighttime?”

“Probably several hours,” Jewel said. “Then we won’t be seen from far away and the Cavs won’t care as much since it’s too hard to spot people from far away anyway.”

“That’s a long time to wait.”

“We can’t be on this road either. I’m particular to staying in trees and anywhere else that’s above ground.”

Marshall took in his surroundings with his other senses. There were several large trees with sturdy branches among a plethora of saplings and skinnier trees. “Which one looks like it would give us the best cover as well as the best seats?”

“I’ve been eying this one ever since we got here.” Jewel pointed toward the way they came.

Marshall sensed the branches, some about as thick as his thigh.

“Can you climb the whole thing without using your hands?” Jewel asked.

“Can I take off my weapons?”

“Nope.”

“How many tries do I get?”

“We go back and forth until one of us does it.”

“Isn’t this super dangerous?”

“Not if you’re good. We used to do it all the time for fun. Watching Ripley do this was always funny because he would never make it and tumble to the ground as a pile of bones and then reconnect. It always looked so funny.” As she said this, Jewel put her hands on her hips, considering the tree.

“You go first; show me how it’s done.”

Jewel straightened the katana on her back and took a few practice-running jumps against the tree’s trunk. “Alright, here’s the real try.”

She took four decisive bounds toward the tree and launched herself onto the lowest branch, as delicate as a breeze. She turned to him and held her hands up as proof. “Nothing.”

“Okay, you win,” Marshall let go of the breath he was holding.

“I’m not done! You gotta get to where we’re going to sit which is way higher.” Jewel looked up to aim at her next target and then at her feet to adjust her launch. Then she jumped onto the next branch and landed smoothly, muscles seeming to flow like suspended liquid.

“How high are you going?” Marshall asked.

“Maybe three more jumps?”

“I’ll never make that!”

“Well,” Jewel said as she made her next jump and landed, but had to steady herself with less grace than her last two jumps. “Don’t think about your footing because that will handle itself. What you need to worry about is your core. Do you know where your center of gravity is?”

“No.”

Jewel said, “It’s right behind your belly-button. Imagine you have to keep that part of your body steady all the time; your feet have to be under it and your head needs to be over it. Your center of gravity is the only thing you have to keep balanced, and once you have that, there’s less of a chance you’ll fall.”

“I’ll try it,” Marshall focused on balancing his stomach area. He was only going to attempt the same branches Jewel jumped on since he knew they were possible. He watched her, still jumping with the grace of the wind from branch to branch, until she sat after her fourth jump. “This is high enough, I think. C’mon, Marshall!”

“You didn’t use your hands, did you?”

“I got up here without using my hands, yes.”

“Not about to be shown up by a girl,” Marshall said.

“Careful,” Jewel said with legitimate concern. “You haven’t been a hush as long as I have.”

“You said this would be easy,” Marshall said as he took a running start and ran up the trunk, one step against it and the next landing on that first branch with his next. “Yeah, I got this.” His daisho tapped against the branch since his waist was lowered close to the wood.

“You used your hands!” Jewel commented, now straddling the branch, each foot swinging like rhythmic bells, one forward while one was back, only parallel as they passed each other. Her hands were straightening her sword again.

“I did?” Marshall said, noticing his hands were on the branch. “Okay. Do I get another try?”

Jewel looked down at the blindfolded kid, formulating a smart remark. Then a few seconds of memory crossed her mind. She was rocking his trembling body, pulling him against her heart, and decided against it as the words were rising to her lips. “…Sure.”

He hopped down, rolling into his landing and tried again. His next attempt landed him on the branch without the use of his hands.

“Nice!” Jewel said, lying facefirst on the branch with her arms and legs hanging off like moss. “Three to go.”

“Which one did you jump to?” Marshall asked, adjusting his footing and feeling the branch shake lightly.

“I forget. Which one feels right?”

“I’ll just guess,” Marshall said, springing toward another branch. He knew it was a bad jump the second his feet left the branch and he had to land with the help of his hands. “Okay, you win. I don’t mind losing this game as long as I can keep my head intact.” He thought he sensed Jewel grinning triumphantly, but he could have imagined it. He slowly climbed the rest of the tree and met Jewel on the branch. She made room for him and lay on the opposite side against the part of the branch where it split into two smaller branches. The katana lay on top of her.

Marshall settled himself against the tree’s trunk, one leg on either side. His head tilted down slightly; it helped him sense things better. “Now we wait, huh?”

Jewel looked down the branch toward Marshall. “’Till it gets dark, I guess. And maybe we’ll get lucky and catch the Astronomers before they reach the city.”

Marshall could feel the sun lightly sprinkling on his hands and face, the only two parts of his skin exposed. He rolled up his elastic sleeves and looked up to the forest canopy. There was plenty of space between him and the ground and for some reason, it felt freeing. Not as much could bother him up here with Jewel. And once it became dark, he would be reunited with the Astronomers. There was one more thing he realized he hadn’t had time to think about. How had he missed it?

“My dad died saving us,” Marshall spoke. It had been almost a month in that cage and he hadn’t told anyone about that. Jewel was more than just anyone to him now and he wanted her to know. He hadn’t talked this part of his mind through, but he had cried out the initial emotion that the event had brought on.

Jewel recognized this as another moment to listen. Another burst of emotion that was surfacing.

Marshall readied the words he had subconsciously been preparing. “He got killed by the novis, but not before he got a few good licks in. Shot him. My dad was a cop, by the way.”

Jewel sat up, her hands steadying the katana and then placing the strap on a nearby branch.

“He loved us. I think he knew about the novis; he had a whole box of files in our attic which was what led me to the House in the Woods and the novis in the first place. But if it wasn’t for that box, I wouldn’t have met the Astronomers and the novis probably would have killed me and my family. But he slowed the novis enough for us to escape. I’m going to miss him.” Marshall was surprised at how easily he was able to say this.

“Did you love him?” Jewel asked quietly.

Those few words seemed to hit the switch on his emotions and he burst into sobs, putting both hands on his face. His shoulders started shaking for the second time that day, but this time from sadness. After a few seconds he nodded to in response. He knew he felt loneliness and desperately wanted another hug; he scooted toward Jewel, reaching out his arms. She scooter forward as well, literally accepting him with open arms.

There was no trying to negotiate with the feeling of loss; there is no such thing as an emotional suture. The wounds open, the wounds slowly heal into scars, and they stay with you. Marshall felt even more shaken by talking about this than he did about losing his eyes. “Why’d this have to happen?” He asked Jewel.

“I don’t know, but I’m sorry that it did,” Jewel said, rubbing his back.

Marshall started to realize just how vulnerable and weak he must seem right now. He broke the embrace and shook his head. “Ugh.” The other Astronomers were probably a lot stronger with the loss. “I wonder if the other Astronomers cried at all?”

He couldn’t read her face, but Jewel said, “Most definitely.”

His words still shook like a bobblehead as he said, “Yo-you’re… y-y-you act-act like a… a grownup, not like a kid.”

“What happened to you… it’s something that makes you grow up fast. I had Ripley with me when Mikey died. Ripley wasn’t much comfort, but he did keep me safe.”

Marshall wiped away the liquid running from his nose and sniffed back the stuff that was way up in his nose so he wouldn’t have to wipe that in a few seconds. He faced Jewel again and tried to sense her as best he could; her heartbeat was easy to sense since she was sitting on the same branch. He couldn’t sense her hair, but he could smell the denim on her arms. He wondered what it would have been like without her; maybe he would have pulled on that little thread that emerged earlier: It would be nice to die.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said with a steadier voice, keeping the emotion and truth as raw as possible. Your heart is open, why not let it all out now? Maybe you won’t regret it like you keep telling yourself you will.

“The same to you,” she said. “I was once told it takes a lot of guts to admit something like that.”

“Sure felt like it did,” Marshall said. And while he was feeling bold, he said, “Jewel, if I asked you what you look like, what would you say?”

Somehow, Marshall could feel her eyes studying his face and his body-language. “Who’s the prettiest girl you know?”

“Lola Bunny from Space Jam,” Marshall said with a small smile. He wiped away the small drop of snot slipping from his nose. He was high in a tree with a girl who he was starting to deeply wonder about.

“Imagine someone twice as pretty and who has a sword.”

“Impossible; Nobody beats Lola.” What if I just touched your face to see what it’s like? “Touching?” He caught himself before he said more.

Jewel seemed to know what he was implying, partially because she had the same idea. “If you would like, I’ll let you touch my face and my face only. And my hair to see how long it is. But… you have a total of thirty seconds. I’ve only known you for a couple of days, after all.”

Marshall took a deep breath and let it out. He raised his right hand and said, “I accept the offer and promise I will be a gentleman as… I…uh, touch your face.” He swallowed.

Jewel put his hands in hers, with his facing up, and guided them to her face. “I’m going to put your thumbs on my eyes, okay? I think that will be a good starting pouighnt.” The last word was muffled as the base of his palms covered her mouth. She let her hands hover a few inches from his own. There was no way to consider the situation without feeling a deeper attraction to her. Someone who was being just as vulnerable with him and he was with her. As she lowered her hands, his mind accepted the fact: she trusted him. He ran his fingers over her eyes as gentle as a cotton ball, and ran them down her nose. Then to her lips. He started as she began to laugh. “What?” He asked. She answered: “You’re breathing so hard and fast.”

“Sorry. I’m new to this.” He put his hands over the sides of her face. “You kind of just feel like a face. I still can’t picture you very well.”

“My hair is pretty short. Maybe that will put it into perspective,” Jewel said.

“You’re enjoying my discomfort, aren’t you?”

“Partially; I wonder about boys sometimes. But I also understand that you must feel kind of lost without knowing what I look like.”

“Well, you aren’t fat. You’re almost as skinny as me.”

“Uh!” She said indignantly and he could feel her face frown. That was when he could picture her for just a second.

“Wait! Do that again. Make a mad face or something,” Marshall said. Then he started moving his hands around her hair; genuine curiosity took place of his attraction. What did she look like? He was palming her head like a basketball and then swishing his hands back and forth through the short locks like he was drying them off. “What color is your hair?”

“Brown, like yours, but mine is darker.”

“It’s thick. A lot thicker than mine,” he said as he moved his hands back to her face. “Okay, try smiling.”

She smiled and held it. She appeared as a a beautiful girl to him in his mind. “Whoa. Okay, now frown. Make a mad face.” When she did this, the image in his mind changed. Her defining factor changed from pretty to determined. “Okay, now try a sad face,” he said. With her said face, she seemed smaller in his mind and closed off. “Weird.” She reverted to a serious face and said, “What’s weird about it?” Now the image in his head seemed strong and he felt the same feeling in his stomach as when he’d drank that Tito’s with the Astronomers; a warmed, comfortable feeling.

“Nothing weird. It’s just weird in my mind. Me making all of this happen in my head. That’s what weird, not you.” He took his hands off of her face and subconsciously wiped them on his pants.

Jewel chuckled. “That’s how nasty my face was?”

Marshall smiled and shrugged. They were still sitting just a few inches from each other. The question leaped from his mouth: “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

Jewel put her hand on the back of his head and drew him into her face. They kissed for an electrifying four seconds before she released him and said, “Just this one kid Marshall.”

Marshall chuffed a breath and then a few more. He smiled wide and shook his head. “Well… I once kissed this girl Jewel.”

“Ripley would say you ‘got your emotions churning’ and it makes you think and do dumb things, like kiss. Good thing I’m here to slap you in the face.”

“Yeah, guess so-“ Marshall said as he was slapped in the face. He flailed his arms as he lost his balance on the branch and Jewel grabbed his arm, deftly pulling him back to safety. “SHIT,” he screamed. “Holy shit, I almost died.”

“Snap out of those emotions before I slap you again.”

“What the hell? You were the one-“ sLAP

“Okay!” Marshall saw that one coming and was able to roll with it. “Point taken.” He scooted back to his end of the branch and put his back against the trunk again.

After a few seconds, Marshall repeated: “Sorry.” This time he meant it. “You are so weird.”

“What?” Jewel sounded intense now. Were all girls this nuts?

“I mean, so am I,” Marshall said,

Jewel shrugged, didn’t answer, and moved her head away. Marshall could picture her short hair now and her serious face. Finally, she said: “It’s already been a long day.”

Marshall said nothing, but kept thinking that she was simply impossible to understand, straightening the center of his pants which had recently acquired an extrusion. He let those final words swirl by on the current of the wind. The forest around them whistled in so many voices: through the leaves, the foliage, the grass, over the asphalt, pushing the dust around. The wind shuffling the treetops sounded like a chorus of decks of cards, all floundering around and eventually back together. The limb underneath the fraisers swayed lightly and Marshall felt like this was what riding a horse would be like.

Jewel was looking down at the road thirty feet to her right. She could imagine people walking along making louder footsteps on the asphalt in their shoes or on there horses and carts. This vantage was safety and offered much more than hiding: They could escape in any direction from here. They could run through the treetops at this rate.

“I don’t suppose you’ve run through the treetops before, have you?” Jewel asked.

“Nope,” Marshall answered.

“It’s a wonderful feeling,” Jewel said.

“Mmh,” he grunted. “You know, I’ve been thinking about your Astronomy Club name. You’ve traveled more than any of the Astronomers, so what if we called you the Rambler or the Rover or something?”

“Hmm,” Jewel said. “I don’t know. But I like the idea of a traveler.”

“The Vagabond,” Marshall said.

“The Hitchhiker.”

“The… Hobo.”

Jewel laughed lightly and touched her broken rib. Then she looked back: “The Walker.”

“Ooo,” Marshall said. “I like that one.”

“I do too. That can be mine until we find a better one.”

“Works for me. The Walker.”

Jewel put her gaze back to the road, but her eye caught movement on the treeline and she tensed. Just as quickly as she tensed, she relaxed again.

“What is it?” Marshall asked, cocking his head and listening to his surroundings.

“A tozer a few miles off. I thought it may have been a boat.”

“What’s a tozer and what business does a boat have floating around?”

“Tozer is like a bunch of floating rocks in a column that swirl around and move slowly. Floating lakes move around like them too, but most tozers reach the ground from wherever they are. Then they slowly fall apart, stone by stone,” Jewel said.

“So it’s made up of a bunch of different rocks then?”

“It’s like a slow tornado of rocks. Do you know what a tornado is?”

Marshall scoffed. “Of course!”

“Okay, well, I didn’t until Ripley told me about them so I figured maybe you didn’t.”

“Hmm,” Marshall said. Didn’t know if I knew what a tornado was? “What about boats?”

“What about them?”

“Why would a boat be floating?” Marshall asked.

“All boats float.”

“Jewel,” Marshall said. “They float in the water, not… ohhhh. I guess… so are boats like small floating rocks big enough for people to stand on?”

“Minders usually make them fly around,” Jewel was nodding. “Most of them are just big enough to live on. Then people will travel about and live off of the bigger rocks and be able to travel to other larger lands. The Hook is just one of many, but it is one of the bigger and… tree-ier ones.”

“Foresty ones?” Marshall suggested.

“Is that a word?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anyway, that’s what the boats are that I’m talking about.” Jewel looked back toward the distance as conversation flatlined. She saw the tozer swirling the rocks slowly, like a patient and focused dust-devil, wandering as carelessly as a cow. The trees near the bottom of the tozer were being rustled and nudged, each of the trees taking turns being buffeted. Jewel continued watching the tozer move about the land which was just a few hundred feet lower than them and nearly two miles away. The floating rocks eventually grazed out of the trees and into a field. The great trunk of stone continued meandering about the field until it swayed and waned, lowering some of the rocks onto the ground. Then it returned to the dropped rocks and picked them up again as if it were absent-minded.

Jewel looked back at Marshall who had his head against the tree, nose upturned. She could see the fringe of burned flesh where the red-hot iron had grazed his skin since he didn’t hold perfectly still as Anda had advised when they were gouging his sight from his head. I wonder if he can still dream? Did he still have vision inside of his head? He must have since he could create a picture of her. His breath was steady now, stomach moving outward and straightening a few wrinkles on the chest of his ninja gear and on the exhalation, bringing them back. His daisho made the same tiny scrape along the tree branch with each breath as well.

The branch under her was uncomfortable at the moment and Jewel adjusted her position. The tips of the branch shook like rattlesnakes and went still as she found a new way to sit. There was more comfort in this position, but there wasn’t a way to balance like Marshall and fall asleep. Maybe it was for the better; one of them needed to stay awake in case someone came along. She looked back at the asphalt path with the two chipped, cracked, and faded yellow lines running down the center. As it approached Stablefield, it tapered to the right and dodged the city by a hundred feet. It was as the asphalt turned that the path continued in the dirt straight toward the city like the foot traffic didn’t realize the road turned and they collectively decided to ignore the asphalt’s direction.

An hour passed and Jewel felt herself dozing off even in her seated position. The sun on her clothes had warmed her to the perfect temperature and there was little wind today. Marshall had a light snore to his sleep with his nose tilted. It was interrupted as Jewel tapped his shoulder a few times.

“Mh?” The Guru took a deep breath and stretched his arms, straightening all of the wrinkles in the chest of his black garb as his ribs expanded forward. “I fell asleep?”

“It’s my turn. Your turn for lookout.”

“How long was I out?”

“An hour maybe?”

Marshall and Jewel took five minutes to switch positions. Jewel crossed her legs and put them on top of the large branch instead of on either side like Marshall who noticed her position.

“Won’t you fall if you sleep like that?”

She shook her head. “Used to sleep like this all the time when Mikey and I were traveling together. I think the fraise keeps hushes upright more than the other fraisers.”

“If you start falling, I’ll do my best to catch you. Again.”

“You did fine the first time,” Jewel said, tucking one hand against the broken ribs.

“How are your ribs?”

“They’ll heal. It’ll just feel like I’m constantly being pinched in my lungs for a while if I laugh too much.”

Marshall was trying as fast as he could to think of something that would make her laugh, but instead he heard footsteps. Light footsteps like his own. They were approaching through the woods. Then voices muttering back and forth. A girl and a boy, but wow, did the boy sound familiar. Once it came close enough, Marshall called down in a hiss:

“Willis?”

Myles and Colors’ gaze whipped up into the trees where the name had come from. In the trees were two kids; one was a boy wearing a blindfold, ninja gear, and a set of two japanese swords and the other was a girl in a denim jacket, hair slightly longer than Myles’s and a larger sword on her back. 

The boy with the blindfold was looking away, but Myles could tell he was studying them.

“Baker?” Myles’s legs felt weak as he said his friend’s last name.

“Am I speaking to the Sage?” Marshall started grinning.

“Why is the Guru wearing a blindfold like fuckin’…Cyclops?”

Marshall and Jewel trickled down the tree branches as smooth as water down a riverbed and landed a stone’s throw from Color and Myles. 

The Sage broke into a run toward the Guru.