Snippets

Chapter 5

"Yeoww oww oww owww!" she squirmed, attempting to relieve the pressure on her arm by hopping up and down on a foot.

Biting my tongue to keep from chuckling at her antics, I released the pressure and pushed her forward, my hand still tight around her wrist.

She blessed me with silence for, well, not long enough. I suppose I should have been grateful.

"Where are we going, Future? I like to know about it ahead of time. Normally, I don't have an escort you know–" It appeared that my silence had finally paid off and she wasn't expecting a reply, but that didn't stop her from enjoying the extra pair of ears. "–but since unusual circumstances with this whole new 'future' idea allow for such wastes of time," I snorted internally at that, "I suppose I'll make do."

Since she was facing away, I allowed myself an eye-roll. I may not be a body builder, but I could handle myself, and others, out here in the land of lawlessness. She'd soon figure it out, I hoped. In fact, I hoped in the most outrageous way possible: an attack by the mysterious figures in safari-map colored robes who had assaulted me on my first journey when I had made the mistake of moving alone across the landscape in pub-wear. But that was doubtful, I had never seen them again...Meanwhile, Shaf's enthusiasm for chatter had not ceased...

"–and it was simply marvelous, Future. I mean, who wouldn't want to be greeted at a new job with a letter from your school principal saying you've been excused for the rest of the year. That doesn't happen. Ever. But it happened to me!! How did she do it? Do you know?" She managed to whip her head around for a moment, intense curiosity in her eyes before she moved on, facing the open road once more, "She's awfully strange. I never did find out what actually happened to my parents. An accident, she had called it. What is that? We don't have cars, or anything besides feet for movement anymore. Not even donkeys."

Yes, you would think that. I thought to myself, You wouldn't want to know the other modes of transportation though. I glanced at her sharply again. What if she was referring to that? Did this girl know more than any of the others? Did she know what future was coming? Then why wasn't she fighting me? Perhaps she would tell me, though I was sure it wouldn't be because she had intended to. Listen between the words, I told myself, paying close attention to what she was now jabbering about.

"–by now I've held at least eight different positions over the last seven years. Do you realize how many disgusting people I have worked for? And she tells me I'm supposed to be the PERFECT employee. She might as well have told me I'd have to bow and scrape every other time, those people are so ready to look out for themselves and not a soul more. How crude is that?"

Haha! She thought the selfish ones were the ones outside of the room with the black curtain? How incredibly unobservant.

"That's not even the worst of it! I don't even know why I'm doing it except that it has to do with information gathering for... something. Maybe I should have asked." She appeared to ponder this for a moment before moving on, "Not like she would have answered. That's the thing, Future. She'd never say a word about anything! I never could get any more info about my parents. Doesn't she have her own good in mind? Or does she think that just because I'm such a perfect worker for all of those people she sends me after, that I'll be a perfect worker for her too? Not like I have much choice..."

She was into full-fledged ranting by now, her voice rising and falling with passion, and her pace rapidly growing faster until I was forced to walk beside her to keep from stepping on her feet, my hand still holding her arm behind her back as I bit my lip to keep from smiling. The voice to all my thoughts (at some point) walked beside me, spouting them to any of the red rocks lining the highway that would listen. Maybe they wouldn't, but I sure couldn't help it.

"...but she still expects me to get along with people like Hawkins! Of course he wasn't the most disagreeable boss ever, but what he said the other night! Then she called me in the next day like she knew. Creepy, don't you think? Coincidence I suppose. But what a shudderingly odd coincidence!"

She paused here again, as if contemplating that thought, and her furious pace slowed almost imperceptibly before rushing on, her tongue joining the fast pace of her feet once more, "What he said though! About how I was a traitor to my kind. Humans? How am I any more of a traitor than anyone else? Don't we all cast ourselves away at some point? Besides, Hawkins himself is a traitor to himself, the way he sits around doing nothing but breeding ill spirits in the rest of us and his customers! He was lucky he had me to call his wares and at least bring in the strangers to his bazaar!

"Then what does he do but turn around and call me a traitor to our own kind and say I'm going to get all of us killed. Of course I laughed him off! And then he hissed back at me in his menacing, bad breath that I didn't understand! Of course I don't understand some donkey yapping about what has to be another mind trick he's had played on himself. Lucky for me he was interrupted by someone else... but sometimes I wish he had stuck around so I could have at least gotten an explanation. Now I suppose I'll have to walk all the way back to that ill-lit bazaar and drug him with a case of beer before the answer will come spilling out of his foul mouth."

She huffed, and I took the moment to update her on Hawkins' most current situation, "He's dead." I don't know if it was the fact that I spoke, or what I had said that startled her so badly, but she almost ended up on her face again. After I had helped her regain her balance, she looked at me as if I was the weirdest dream she'd ever had, personified, and then she walked on, albeit hardly walking, the pace was so slow. Had I been wrong to tell her? I really shouldn't have opened my mouth, but--No, I soothed myself, She had a right to know. It was her last boss, afterall.

We stopped and ate some stale bread and dried grapes at the next town. In silence. There was still a lot of daylight left, but by the absent expression that had transfixed itself onto Shaf's face, I knew she wouldn't have the heart to continue.

Besides, Mother hadn't given me a deadline. She had only given me a destination. We had time.

I booked a hostel for the night and left Shaf there while I perused the town for something to lift the girls shattered spirit.