“You’re going to travel with us to sanctuary aren’t you?” Nikki asked. “It will be a blast.”
“I might,” he said evasively. “I need to talk with Ellen first though and I might be running later than usual. If I’m not around just take off without me and I’ll catch up with you.”
“What do you need to talk with Ellen about?” Nikki asked.
“She wants to know more about when my base camp got burned by rogues.” He evaded by giving a simple answer.
“I remember that,” Melanie exclaimed. “That’s when we found the waterfall by the lake and that weird abandoned gathering spot. Tell her she can talk to me too if she wants. Say, have you ever gone back there like you said you were going to?”
“That’s one of the things I’m going to talk with Ellen about,” Tobal said. It’s pretty bad weather to go there now though. To easy to get snowed in.”
“Maybe we can all go there this spring some time,” Becca said. “I love swimming and there isn’t a really good swimming spot around here.”
“That’s a great idea!” Nikki said enthusiastically.
“Well just let me know so I can go with you,” Tobal said. “It might be dangerous and there should be enough of us going so no one will attack us.”
“Why would anyone want to attack us?” Nikki laughed. “You have something in mind handsome?”
The other two laughed and Tobal turned away with a dark shadow on his face. He couldn’t tell them the entire story or it would be all over camp and Ellen would have his head. It was better just to leave things the way they were for now. Misty was again High Priestess and did a nice job. Ellen was there and said she needed to talk with him later after circle. Angel was also helping out in the circle. There was a new High Priest too but Tobal didn’t remember his name.
Dirk was there along with Rafe on wood patrol keeping the fires going. There were several Journeymen Tobal recognized and many more he didn’t. This was the largest circle he had ever been too. Ox had even shown up for the party strutting three chevrons on his black tunic.
It was the end of the harvest cycle and the last time many of them would see each other until next spring so they were determined to have a good time. After the initiations the party really began. At drum circle the drumming and dancing went long into the night as people laughed leaping among the flames individually and together.
The festivities lasted three days with the last two days reminding Tobal of a flea market and county fair. People brought items to sell or trade especially beautiful hand crafted garments and tools. The most interesting were winter garments that made Tobal’s efforts seem crude in comparison. He examined them carefully and took mental notes so he could duplicate the work later. He did the same with other tools and items that caught his interest.
This was the time clan members would show off their creativity and individual talents. There was music, hand made stringed instruments and wooden flutes. There were of course the drums that beat out a steady rhythm deep into the night for all the dancers.
The second day was reserved for games and competitions. He was not surprised when Melanie won a knife throwing contest but he gaped in envy at the prize. It was a hand forged axe one of the third degree members had somehow created. With an axe like that work would go much more quickly than with stone axes and knives. It would help not only with firewood but also in the creation of bigger and more permanent shelters like log cabins.
It was also on the second day when female clan members got their annual birth control shot to prevent pregnancies. There were lots of sexual jokes going round the camp and open invitations. Tobal wondered more about this and asked one of the medics. The medic told him the city felt it was too dangerous to have children or raise children under these harsh survival conditions. People were free to have children once they became citizens but not before.
This was a rule that was strictly enforced and medics would fly their air sleds out to those females that had not attended this gathering. If they refused the shot, they were disqualified. This did happen, the medic told him. There were always 2nd degree couples content living as they were and wanting to raise families out here in the wilderness. In fact, there were enough of them that they had formed their own family type gathering spot two hundred miles to the West.
When Tobal tried asking more questions the medic shut up like he had already said too much and that he needed to be going. There was certainly a lot Tobal didn’t understand. He wondered if the dead camp at the lake had been a family one. He hoped not because the thought of dead children lying in that cairn made him feel sick. Still, in his heart he knew it had been a family camp because his own hospital bracelet proved he had been there just as Adam Gardner had said. The old man had talked about other children that had been murdered too. There were secrets out there, secrets he intended to find out.
It was on the last day the medics handed out special supplies and medicines like salt, wine, vitamins and medical gear scavenged from old med kits. Needles, hair brushes, combs, string and things like that were very welcome. So were scissors and razors, not to mention tooth brushes and other items that could be gotten at sanctuary.
“Ok, let’s hear it,” Rafe said cornering him on the last night. “You’ve been blowing me off all month, what’s up? Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”
They were sitting near the central fire in an area that was relatively empty of all but dancers.
“I see you’ve got some type of necklace,” he observed.
Tobal sighed and took it off his head handing it to Rafe. “It’s my mother’s necklace.”
“How do you know that?”
Tobal showed him the hospital tags.
Rafe looked carefully at the two tags and slowly handed them back along with the necklace. “I guess they are,” he commented. “What else did you find?”
Tobal slid the necklace back over his head and put the plastic tags back into his medicine bag before he unsheathed the dagger and handed it to Rafe.
Rafe examined the golden dagger wordlessly and turned it so he could examine the initials better. “Your father?” He asked quietly and gave it back to Tobal.
Tobal just nodded, blinking back some tears and a lump in his throat.
“Is there anything else?”
Tobal nodded and stood up. “Let’s walk a bit. We have to get away from camp first.”
Together they walked out into the woods where they had been hauling wood for the last month. It was about a half mile from camp and Tobal figured it was reasonably safe.
“Watch,” he pulled out the wand and pointed it at a nearby boulder they had sat on for lunch a few days ago. A bright red light showed briefly on the boulder and then vanished as Tobal pressed the fifth button.
“So what!” Rafe said. “It’s a little laser light. I used to play with them when I was a kid. I used to tease the cat with it.”
“Not like this,” Tobal said. “Come over and look.” He went over to the boulder and pointed at the small hole that went straight into the boulder and came out the other side.
“Damn!” Rafe whispered, running his fingers over the hole. “It’s not even hot.”
Tobal pointed the wand in the general direction of where they had been working the other day and pressed the second button briefly. Instantly the area fifteen feet in front of them was clear of snow and there was steam rising from the ground in the moon light.
“Holy shit!” Rafe exclaimed. “Put that damn thing away and let’s get out of here! What are you trying to do? Get us killed?”
Tobal put the wand back into the sheath on his left leg and they hurried back to camp in the moonlight retracing their steps in the snow.
“I found a secret cave,” he said. “It is where my parents used to meet secretly with a few others. It must have been the place Sarah’s father told me about. I found my parent’s things there and I also found the wand there. I couldn’t stay very long and explore so I left right away. I knew the air sleds would be looking for me and I wanted to be as far away as possible when they did.
“They found me about one half hour later,” he said. “Lucky for me it was Ellen and she was really pissed at me. At least she was at first. She made me take off my med-alert bracelet and did all kinds of tests on it to see if it was working right. Then she asked me what I had been doing by the waterfall. That’s when I told her I was coming back to where my old camp had been destroyed. She didn’t believe me at first but she took me to my old burned out site and I showed it to her. She wondered why I hadn’t told anyone about it. I said I had told you and that you had said it was not a good place to build.
“That’s when she told me it was a ‘forbidden’ site and I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was dangerous especially near the waterfall. I guess there have been lots of rogue attacks in that area.
“Now it gets weird,” he whispered to Rafe, looking around to see if anyone was listening. “She told me to get back to sanctuary and get a new med-alert bracelet as soon as possible so I did. I felt strange though like someone was following me so I slept in caves at night where my med-alert bracelet would not work and went as fast as I could during the day toward sanctuary.”
“There was someone following me,” He said. “I got to sanctuary and hid my stuff before going in to process. While I was processing three rogues searched through all my stuff and would have attacked me if I hadn’t broken my old med-alert bracelet.”
“Whoa, Wait up,” Rafe said. “How could anyone track you except the medics and why did you break your old med-alert bracelet?”
“When I got to Sanctuary and went into processing I took off my med-alert bracelet and smashed it. When I took it off an alarm sounded for the medics that said I needed help. When I smashed it, there was no signal at all so they sent three medics out to find me. When they got to sanctuary they saw three rogues dressed in black running out of sanctuary and into the woods. The rogues not only tracked me to sanctuary by my med-alert bracelet, they could also tell medics were coming and got away before they could get caught. Somehow they were able to track the med-alert bracelets.”
“That’s why Ellen thought it might be a good idea for me to just hang around with you guys getting up wood the rest of the month,” Tobal finished.
“It’s also why I didn’t want to say much of anything while Dirk was there.”
“I understand now,” Rafe said. “Does Ellen know about the things you found?”
Tobal flushed, “She doesn’t know about the wand yet. But she does know about everything else. I wanted a chance to examine it myself before I let anyone else see it.”
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