Fervor (8 page)

Sam was starting to understand how poor Royce felt. He had been convinced that the small glimpses he had gotten on occasion from the others, the ones that they had been hoping would remain secret, were something that had given him an edge, but he’d had to be particularly attentive and listen very carefully to pick up on those inner most thoughts. He also had to be extra careful when considering those thoughts, or others in turn would know that he had heard them. From the sounds of it, the other Little in his house-family could access these secreted ideas much more easily than he could. Then again, Sarah had always felt that much stronger than him.

“
Like I said, you were distracted, either looking for Nathan and Fiona, or being interfered with by Royce,”
she assured him.
“I’ve noticed how it works. If you are panicky, or focussed on something that takes extra concentration, then you can’t hear the mind whispers over your own louder thoughts. Once everyone has their walls set up properly, we probably won’t be able to hear them at all anymore.”

Suddenly she went quiet. After a few seconds of feeling around in the connection to see if the others were awake, and finding nothing, Sam realised that something was wrong. He had felt a slight vibration in the ground upon which he lay.

Sam opened his eyes. Royce was standing over him, and was giving him a menacing glare. It intimidated Sam as much as Royce had intended it to and Sam reached out and mentally nudged Nathan, who stirred almost immediately. The Watcher sat up, rubbing at his eyes.

“
G-go back to b-bed, Royce,” the broad-shouldered boy muttered quietly. Sam saw the black-haired boy’s lips move, but had no idea what he had said in response. He was grateful, however, to see Royce return to the place where he had been sleeping.

Sarah touched Sam’s mind one last time before returning to sleep. It was a sad whisper.

“
Royce said he thought he heard a rat.”

Sam shuddered, and was ready to try to fight off his anxiety and attempt sleep again himself, when he noticed some movement. Nathan rose and shifted much closer to him, on the side opposite to Sarah. Sandwiched between the two of them, Sam felt surprisingly secure, despite the fact that Royce lay only a few feet away. Exhaling softly, and brushing both of their minds with the gentleness of a feather, he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

New Routines

The house was not anything special, in Sam’s opinion. It was much like any other house on Fervor, dull-coloured and featureless, only three times bigger than what he was used to. There was no disputing who got what room, since nobody really cared. They all settled in, got used to their surroundings, and eventually, they all fell into a routine, as per Francis’s directions.

Sarah tended to keep to the house, still unaccustomed to functioning with her blindness. If she wanted to go out she needed someone to accompany her, and mostly relied on Francis or Nathan to be her eyes. She would fix anything that was brought to her, for the most part items found by Sam or retrieved by Fiona, and she also fixed any injuries for the people in the house, more commonly Nathan than anyone else. His lack of sensory input from touch often led to small scrapes and cuts that he wasn’t aware of. And every time he returned from his outings, Sarah would have to check him over carefully to make sure that he had not done himself any serious damage that might result in infection if not fixed.

Sometimes Sam would observe these little fixing sessions and felt envious of the attention Nathan was receiving. Maria had been a fairly affectionate minder, prone to hugs and cuddles, and he missed that human contact more than anything else. Of course, he realized that Nathan was not actually feeling Sarah’s tiny hands brushing over his skin, so wishing that he could switch places was kind of pointless for Sam. The only thing that Nathan seemed to acknowledge was firm pressure. Besides, Sam had seen a couple of the more nasty gouges that Nathan had unwittingly come home with, and that much he did not want. Not being able to hear was not that bad in comparison.

Sometimes, Sarah would glance Sam’s way, aware that he was there even though she could not see him. She’d had more time to practice her skills with the connection, and she had been stronger than everyone else to begin with. A couple of months in, and her walls were almost as strong as Francis’s had been in the beginning. She was also getting much better at using other people’s images projected through the connection as her eyes.

As her confidence grew, and her feeling of purpose as a Fixer developed, her sadness in response to all of the changes was fading, although her timidity did not. She had not been as close to her minder as Sam had been to his. She had also been growing stronger bonds with the Bigs in the house than Sam had managed. Fiona saw her skills as useful, and for the most part Sarah kept out of the older girl’s hair, so the Keeper considered her more of a help than a hindrance. Francis was using Sarah’s assistance to strengthen his own connection tools since she was the most capable of the five of them to get around any blocks that he put up. Seeing if she could get past them was the best test that he had to check on how well that they were working. All but Royce was invested in some way in their Fixer – since she could not help him.

Fiona was also a bit of a homebody, but for different reasons. She was the only one of them who could make any of the more complex appliances work, and as much as she had seemed reluctant to do so in the beginning, she settled into a role similar to that of the minders after only a couple of weeks. Sam was starting to relate to the older girl better as well. She was often a necessary component in his finding if his searches took him to one of the abandoned buildings on the island. They would often talk on those occasions, and Sam thought he was starting to grow on Fiona. He would even have guessed that she was starting to consider him a friend.

Fiona fussed over Nathan much more than she ever did anyone else, but Sam attributed this to the same issues that prompted Sarah’s attentions, the fact that he often came home looking tattered around the edges. Nathan was fairly nonchalant about the whole thing. He was an easy going boy, and fairly pleasant natured. He tolerated her ministrations with his endearing lop-sided smile, despite the fact that if Royce were present he would tease Nathan about being “Keeper’s pet”, and if Francis were around he would give him a mocking stare.

Unlike her response to the Littles and Nathan, Fiona seemed to go out of her way to avoid Royce and Francis. Sam knew that it was because she still bore a grudge against the two older boys. They had known about the coming of the second exodus and the introduction of the remainder of the children of Fervor to the connection, and they had tolerated the fact that it would come as a traumatic surprise to everyone but the Tellers and the Controls.

Royce did not seem to care much that Fiona felt this way since he spent little time at the house and generally kept to himself when he was there. In fact, Royce did not seem to care much about anything at all. Francis, on the other hand, found her persistent disapproval disturbing. He spent as much time in their home as Fiona did and, much to his displeasure, he found himself resorting to having to order Fiona to do things more than he did with anyone else. Everything she did for Francis, she did begrudgingly, and Sam knew that this made the Teller very uncomfortable. In fact, the more she spurned him, the more Francis seemed to want to try to find some other way of pleasing her, like some forlorn puppy trying to please its master. Sam felt bad for the Teller. He knew that Francis always had good intentions, and felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. Sarah knew that, too, so they both tried to be extra nice to their Teller to make up for the way that Fiona treated him.

Francis was a secretive person, and while he did associate with the others much more than Royce did, he also spent a lot of his time avoiding them as well, particularly on those days when he came across as seeming more melancholic. He did occasionally leave the house for short stretches at a time, too, but he did not head out on daily outings like Sam, Nathan and Royce. Francis had meetings with the other Tellers once every few months.

Sam hated those times the most, because that left Royce in charge of the house. The smaller boy made a point of following Nathan on his rounds on those days, when he could. Sometimes it was difficult to do if his own obligations to the house-family took him in a completely different direction. After all, it was up to the Finder to make sure they had enough food, clothing, and any other supplies that they happened to need. If there were nothing specific that he was required to look for, he was expected to see if he could find something that would in some way improve their current lifestyle.

That was something that Sam actually liked about his gift. His life was now something of an adventure; his searches taking him to places he had never been before on Fervor. It let him lead a fairly solitary existence, and Sam was quite happy with that. If he had not been directed to find something specific, he would often spend his days scouring the beach or tracking through the backwoods, looking for anything new and spectacular that he might be able to bring home to his house-family. On those days, he often came home empty-handed and somewhat disappointed. But on other rare days, he would stumble upon something unanticipated, like a small cabin filled with canned goods that offered more variety than the storehouses’ usual fare, and he would become the temporary hero, once Fiona had helped him retrieve his find and everyone was in the process of enjoying it.

He liked those days best, when they would be sitting around their kitchen happily and talking like a real family – not that Sam had ever known what a real family was like. Nathan would reach over and muss his hair, Sarah and Fiona would smile in his general direction, and Francis would give him the occasional approving look. Even Royce seemed to hate him a little less on those days.

Aside from that, the Control’s antagonism towards him had not seemed to ease off at all as Sam hoped that it might with time. If anything, it appeared to get worse as the days passed. On a better note, Sam did not have to tolerate his cold hard stares and occasional, although no doubt purposeful, jostling as often as he used to. Royce made himself scarce on a regular basis, and Sam had to wonder why and where the black-haired boy was going. Then again, Sam was not clear on what the Control’s full purpose was exactly. There had been no reason so far for him to step in and mediate between Francis and any of the others.

Francis was in no way heavy handed, and as far as Sam could tell, the Teller had not made any attempt to abuse his power. He seemed to respect everyone, and if anything, he appeared to dislike the sway that he had over the others. He certainly was loath to use it, and Sam could tell that Francis felt guilty, or perhaps ashamed, when he was forced to actually tell someone to do something because they were hesitant to stick to the Directives. Sam was thankful that he had not found himself in the Teller’s shoes.

Of everyone in the house, Francis was the one who displayed the greatest sense of unhappiness because of his position. He had a natural charisma to him, which might have been why he had been chosen to be a Teller, if they had been selected partially based on personality, Sam surmised. But Francis also displayed the symptoms of a more fragile ego than his housemates – and a stronger tie to his conscience – which Sam assumed was why he seemed to sink into a quiet misery on a regular basis. Their situation appeared to be harder on Francis than on everyone else, when it should have perhaps been the easiest. He was missing almost nothing as far as sensory stimuli went, he had a link with the connection, unlike Royce, and he had an enviable gift. On top of it all, he had some idea of what exactly was going on, even though he could not share it.

By their third month together the six children had fallen into their new routines. There was no more school, but they had other obligations, and Francis spent part of the day teaching them what he could. On that particular morning, Royce and Nathan had already left. Sam was about to head out when Fiona informed him she needed supplies from the storehouse and that she wanted his help fetching them. With a shrug, the small boy agreed. They left Sarah with Francis and headed out together.

As they walked, Sam worked at his walls. He spent all of his free time trying to build on them, but they were still fairly weak and they fell easily to Sarah’s most powerful pushes. Fiona still had the courtesy to push gently before speaking to him since Francis had not yet instructed them on doors and knocking, giving the smaller boy the opportunity to drop them rather than have her push her way through them.