Crow - The Awakening (30 page)

"Excellent," Charley said as he coiled up ropes and got ready to pack up the camp and head back to Seattle. "How do you think you did?"

"Oh, pretty well, I guess. I passed, of course." Steven didn't want to have to explain his goal of maintaining average scores to not stand out from the rest of the class. He really wanted to tell Sally and Jonah that he completed the finals but that was impossible currently. Sighing, he shut the testing software down. His godparents would get a notice of it in the mail anyway, so it wouldn't be like they're totally out of the loop. He hoped that would ease their disappointment with his computer exploits. At least he didn't blow that off after so much work over the past two years.

Taking the tests online out in the forest was a bit awkward. Normally there wouldn't be any connectivity out there in the hills, but he was able to bridge through the other network he found and use that instead. Of course, that wasn't the awkward part. Sarah and Charley were very curious about his connectivity. His hosts decided he was using a satellite connection. He let them assume that.

He helped where he could in striking camp, but there were a few things that Sarah and Charley wanted to attend to themselves. They insisted he do his exams and get them out of the way while he waited rather than take them later. It would seem that they were no stranger to the curse of procrastination and the inevitable circumstances that seemed to raise roadblocks later, so he didn't feel guilty about sitting there working while they rushed back and forth getting ready to leave. He found it interesting how they took an almost familial interest in him and what he was doing, but he didn't mind.

While he waited for Sarah and Charley to wrap up the last final details, he pulled up his searches to see if anything else had turned up. He had several databases that thousands of remote servers and computers were crunching, some to crack their security and others to sift their contents to try to find anything and everything that might help him in his search for his parents. So far his parents may as well be ghosts, except for a few security video files. He couldn't understand how someone could operate so thoroughly under the radar. He couldn't even find the hospital where he was born or any records of them actually being his parents. He was listed as orphaned and adopted by the Crow family and that was the extent of it.

Frustrated by the lack of results, he shut his laptop down and put it back in his backpack and tossed that on the bench beside him. When he got to Seattle he would have to revisit his search strategy. There must be some sort of trail somewhere. The videos didn't lie. His parents were there.

Sarah walked up from the river with a crate of freshly rinsed off dishes and put them in the RV. She looked at Steven for a moment then sat next to him as Charley closed things up, sat in the driver's seat, and started the RV up. It burst to life and Steven noticed an odd smell.

"The power of hemp fuel," Charley gushed, proud of the alternative fuel he had filled the tanks with. Sarah grinned and made a face at him as he winked at her in the mirror. Then she sat back and looked at Steven, trying to figure him out.

"That bear didn't bother you, did it?" Sarah stated as much as asked, trying to make sense of it.

"Not at all." Steven thought she was referring to last night.

"It walked right by you and knocked you over and you looked annoyed but not scared." She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh. Well, it was annoying to be pushed over," Steven admitted, realizing that she was talking about the evening before. "He was being silly, that's all." Sarah shook her head, bemused.

"And you're walking through the forest barefoot." She looked. He had his moccasins on currently, mainly because he didn't like how floors felt.

Steven looked quizzical. "What's wrong with that?" He had never once given second thought to romping through the forest barefoot and no one had noticed that before. He never had to use the light moccasins that were tied to his belt before. The result was the soles on his feet could double as shoes themselves. The only time he wore footwear habitually in the forest was during the winter to keep the snow off his feet.

"Well, nothing I guess." Sarah still found it odd. "And you preferred sleeping in the forest to sleeping in a bed." She crossed her arms, looking at him.

"I didn't want to impose." That was about the only response Steven could think of that wouldn't raise even more questions as he gave her his most innocent look.

She sniffed, and didn't look satisfied. "You weren't raised by wolves or anything, where you?" Sarah smirked at him.

Steven grinned and shook his head. "No. They could never master the diaper thing and sent me back."

Sarah laughed, shaking her head.

"So, what do you do?" Steven asked, hoping to change the direction of the discussion. Sarah looked at him for a moment then gave him a lopsided smile. She was on to him.

"Well, I'm an artist. I paint," she responded, much to Steven's relief. "Charley is a columnist."

Steven nodded, trying to keep that part of the discussion going. "Sounds like fun."

"It's a hoot," Sarah responded almost sarcastically, realizing she probably wouldn't get much more out of this peculiar boy.

"What are you going to do in Seattle?" Sarah pulled a couple of bottles of filtered river water from the cooler and gave one to Steven.

"Well, a friend of mine has offered me a summer internship at a computer company, so I figured since I'm through with school I'd hit that up." Steven hoped against hope that the position was still available. Bret had been very insistent and persistent, except for the past couple of years when he and the chef had stopped coming for some reason. The restaurant had his honey shipped to them after that and he didn't hear a thing from them. It was curious, but there was enough to keep his mind distracted for him not to dwell on it. Perhaps he would ask Bret about that when he got to town.

"That's really neat!" Sarah was impressed. "From what I've seen of that laptop of yours, I'm sure you'll do great." She still found it amazing that he had fabricated the computer nearly from scratch. The mystery that was the boy deepened. A nature boy who walked through the woods barefoot, slept in the woods, wasn't afraid of bears, collected mushrooms, finished college early and is planning to work for a computer firm really piqued her interest.

"The song you taught us last night..." Sarah stopped and sang a stanza. Steven's heart jumped. That rendering sounded so much like Asherah that he hurt inside all of a sudden. He gulped, looking away.

"What is it about?" Sarah asked.

"It's a love ballad," Steven answered quickly, fiddling with his bottle of water. "It's about love lost and love found through adversity." He hoped Sarah didn't know any Gaelic or she'd see right through his lie about the original language of the song. Trying to explain an imaginary language to her would be rather awkward.

"It's a beautiful song, Steven. Could you translate it for me?" Sarah pulled out a sketch pad from beside her. Steven raised an eyebrow as she handed it to him. It wasn't his and he was a little confused as to why she would have a sketch pad. Then he remembered. She was an artist.

"Uhm, sure. It sounds different in English, though." He picked up a pencil and started writing as she looked over his shoulder. As awkward as the subject was to him, it felt really good to have her sitting next to him. It reminded him of Sally. However, he had to focus to concentrate and not be distracted by the memory of Sally's crying. That was the last thing he remembered of her before leaving and he sorely wished he could picture her in happier times without the pain he had caused her.

"Are you okay?" Sarah looked down at him. Steven didn't realize he had been crying as he wrote the song.

"Oh. Uh, sorry about that." He wiped his eyes. He wasn't used to being homesick. And Sally crying, even the thought of it, always made him cry. Sarah put her arm around him and squeezed his shoulders as he continued writing. He finished and looked at it. The English didn't do the song justice, but it was as close as he could come.

"That's beautiful," Sarah said as she read it. He could tell she was working the words to fit the music they were playing last night. "I think I can do something with that."

"Cool." Steven grinned sheepishly as he grabbed a bottle of water.

"So, let's see here. You walk barefoot alone in the forest, sleep in the forest, aren't afraid of bears even when they knock you over, speak other languages, draw, play music, and write songs. And you want to be a computer geek?" Sarah looked sideways at him.

Steven nodded and fidgeted from the attention, hiding behind the bottle of water as he took a longer than needed drink. For some reason he still instinctively sought to keep a low profile. Leading such a secretive life for so long is no doubt part of why. So many things he couldn't talk about for so many years, and much that he still couldn't talk about. It all compounded and added a peculiar stress to his life. But he enjoyed the company of this couple. Their curiosity was nothing unusual and they were really nice.

"Draw?" he said, recalling something Sarah said. He didn't remember telling her about that.

"I saw your sketchpad. And how you handled that pencil." Sarah winked at him. "May I?" She slid his sketchpad out of the backpack. Steven resisted the urge to push it back in. After all, he didn't need to hide anymore, and she wouldn't know any of the story behind the drawings anyway.

"Oh my goodness." Her eyes got wide as she flipped through the pages. She held them up to the sunlight coming in the window behind them and looked closely at the drawings. "Wow. They could be photographs." She angled the drawing in the light, examining the pencil and color strokes. They were almost imperceptible, and she marveled at the quality. She even touched one of the pages on the drawing to convince herself that it was actually a drawing.

Steven gave her a lopsided smile, not sure how to react. The art had been primarily for his own private need to process what he saw and how he saw it in his head and he had never seriously considered showing it to others, so he felt nervous all of a sudden.

"No, really. This is incredible." Sarah shook her head and turned the page. "Oh, my. She is gorgeous." Sarah looked at a drawing of Asherah. "The texture, that's fur?" She pulled back. "You gave her fur. Wow, but she looks really good with fur." Sarah grinned at Steven and winked. "Exotic."

"Uh, yeah." Steven suddenly really wanted to put the sketchbook away. That was a chapter of his life he had been wanting to put behind him. But he still couldn't bring himself to discard the drawings of his imaginary girlfriend.

"Wow, her eyes." She flipped to another drawing of Asherah. "What do you call her?"

"Asherah." He sighed. He really hadn't looked in the sketchbook in a long time and only put it in his backpack out of habit. Come to think of it, he had not really drawn anything for the past couple of years.

"Is that Gaelic too?" She looked at him.

"No, that's Elvish," Steven said without thinking. "Uhm... yeah. That." He couldn't unsay that now and hoped desperately that she didn't pursue that little tidbit of information.

She held the drawing up, looking at it then at Steven. "You two would make a cute couple."

Steven fidgeted and looked away, fighting the pain that tried to well up in his heart. Sarah saw that he was uncomfortable and mussed his hair and embraced him. "Hey. I'm just kidding, Steven."

He stared at his bottle of water, trying to think other thoughts. What he was going to do when he first arrived in Seattle was something that he focused on, going over the options in his mind while the threads of Asherah's memory receded back into the dark corners, out of view. He desperately wanted a glass of his medicinal tea and wondered how he would be able to cope without it.

Sarah continued looking through the sketchbook, enthralled by the drawings. There were many of his parents. "They look so sad."

Steven looked over at the drawing she was staring at. "Yeah, I guess they do."

"And you want to be a computer engineer?" She shook her head. "This is stuff that most artists spend their entire lives trying to achieve. I feel like I could reach in there and touch her hair."

Steven shrugged. "It was just some doodling."

Sarah frowned. "I'm serious, Steven. I'm an abstract artist, personally. But I have been to years of school and have a lifetime of art. I know art. And I could never even dream of drawing anything like this." She got to the last drawing, of the meadow and gasped at the exquisite detail. "Such imagination." She closed the sketchbook, exasperated at the talent that was being hidden away. "Well, if you don't make it in the computer field, you definitely have a future in art if you decide to go down that rabbit hole." Sarah slid the sketchpad back into his backpack and looked at him critically. Steven wished he could tell her it was his imagination that he was trying to avoid right now. But that was a bit too personal at the moment. He looked at her, trying to find some suitable response, when it hit him again how much like Sally she was.

Even frowning, Sarah was very pretty, like his godmother. A dirty blond with naturally curly locks of hair that she kept tied back out of her face, excepting a few strays. Charley wasn't darker like his Native American godfather, but was a rather fair skinned redhead. But he had similarities to Jonah too, such as an affinity for wild mushrooms and they liked playing music. Also, both were naturalists, enjoying as much time in the forest as they could squeeze from their time, something they also shared with Sally and Jonah.

Steven caught himself comparing Sarah and Charley to his godparents and missed them enormously. Sarah noticed him in deep melancholic thought and shoulder bumped him, smiling. Steven grinned sheepishly and watched the forest fly by outside as they turned onto a main road and headed north as Sarah put her arm back around his shoulders. He could think of worse ways to get to Seattle.

The relatively new business park was devoid of trees, even after a couple of years. There were beds where trees and bushes would go but they were still filled with construction sand. Lots of new construction as the park expanded resulted in a lot of bare ground everywhere, too.It was a vast complex comprised of many offices and distribution centers for a variety of businesses. But that was where Bret's technical campus was located, so Steven tried to ignore his disappointment over the lack of life. His main experience with Seattle was his college classes and they at least had a few trees and a decent park that Steven would retreat to between classes to recover. He found the lack of life in the big cities positively smothering and Steven could feel a distinct haze of depression where the concrete, parking lots and vast complexes had replaced forest and grasslands. But he had little choice if he was to find his parents.