Eryl never wakes me up to change shifts.
When I finally do wake up myself, (judging by the light it's around midnight) he's gone. Well, not completely, but he is a few yards off, looking pretty engaged in whatever he's doing. I rise up onto my knees and peer out over the lip of stone. The wind hits me dead on and the adrenaline rush from running refuses to keep me warm any longer.
The battleground is entirely void of life. Both groups have cleared out to recuperate. Who knows when they'll be back. At least they had been deployed to a well-supplied area, unlike the other Wards. But I'm not ignorant to the fact that there are battles going on in other places, too. Probably all over the Dominion. And innocent people I know and innocent people I don't are dying for equally terrible causes.
I dust myself off and tighten the straps on my backpack. I feel like I should make noise, announce myself in some way, but I don't want to. I move quietly in behind Eryl and peer over his shoulder. In front of him is an uprooted and overturned shrub, the small base of which had been sawed off. Wood shavings cover the ground, and Eryl holds a smooth, oval pebble in his hands. A wooden pebble, and on it he had carved my name.
"It's so I don't forget," he says. I jump, startled by the deep voice that shatters the already unsettling silence around us. I lower myself down to crouch beside him
"What do you mean?"
"I was born in 2020," he says quietly. My eyes widen. "I've been sent through time more than any other turner has - before or since then. Being sent through time like I was... it messes with your head. Bad," he rises to his feet, barely wavering on his bad leg, and I get a glimpse of how tall he really is. He reminds me a lot of Blayke, in the way he acts and even his looks. He has caramel hair and green eyes and very different features, but he looks to be the same build and roughly the same height, and he has a ruggedness to him, but also a softness. He looks like he was built for survival on rough terrain, with rough hands and a natural sense of... well, everything.
He's never wrong and he's always honest. And he doesn't think he's extraordinary but he's perfectly comfortable being himself.
I turn away from Eryl because I don't want him to see the tears. I shouldn't be crying. I know Blayke is out there, after all. I'm on my way to find him. But he's been gone for so long. Really it's only been three years, but with all my turning it feels like much longer.
"Has it ever happened to you?" Eryl asks, saving me from drowning in my own reverie.
"What?" I ask, wiping the tears from my face and pretending to be itching at it.
"It's kind of like... every version of something blurs together in a loop. Like when I look at you-" he pauses to turn my face toward him. "You're just you. But then you're a little girl missing her two front teeth. And then you're a little older and you look terrified. And then you're you again, and it just keeps shifting."
"How long has it been since you've been to the Society?"
"Forty-eight years," he answers instantly, as if he keeps count of every second he spends in this war.
"Well we have a name for it, when all of time blurs together like that. It's called a Haze," I tell him. "And we have medicine for it now."
"I know about the medicine," Eryl scoffs. "But it doesn't work. Not on me, anyways. Just imagine that - a Haze - every second of every day. And imagine never knowing which reality you're actually staring at because what you see first isn't always true. And imagine knowing someone will die soon because you never see them past the age they are now. That's what it's like for me. Every single day. And it makes it very difficult to remember some things - mostly people. So when I want to be sure to remember someone, I carve them a stone." he holds up the one with my name on it, then slides it into his pocket and nods toward the remnants of Ward One.
"We should head through the city, to the rail."
"The rail is still working?" I stand beside him, feeling completely dwarfed, standing at only (barely) 5"2'.
"Of course. It's how they send troops in," he begins walking, barely even limping even though he must be in pain. The injury isn't really that bad from what I've seen of it, but it still can't be comfortable.
"So where does the rail take us?" I've only ever used the rail to travel between cities with my parents when I was young. I can't imagine Eryl wants to stick around Ward One, not if he's trying to find a place away from the Dominion and Society.
"To the Ward Border." he says simply, in a tone that implies no more questions should be asked.
"I'm not just running," I blurt. "I'm looking for someone. His name is Blayke Parker. Do you know him?"
"Know him? No. But I know of him,"
"How so?"
"He's practically a legend. His power is completely beyond any Extra I've ever met. But he doesn't seem much interested in using it," I frown deeply. Blayke is a turner, a damn good one too, but I'm not sure that makes him legendary.
"What are you talking about? I mean, he's a great turner and all but-"
"It's not just how he turns. It's the rest of his powers, too. He can bring people back from the dead like a Necromancer, he can move things with his mind like a telekinetic. He can set fires with his mind, too. It's like he's a hybrid of all these different Extras. I've never seen anything like it," I fight the urge to deny everything he's saying. First of all, Necromancers can not bring people back from the dead. And second of all, Blayke couldn't do any of those things back home. Why would he be able to do any of them now? I turn the basketball coin at my neck around and around between my fingers.
"We must be talking about different Blaykes," I mumble.
"I'm not so sure. He doesn't play for either team - the Society or the Dominion. He lives with this outcast group somewhere not even the Dominion has control over yet. Somewhere over the East Oceans," that doesn't prove anything. I'm sure there are plenty of Blaykes that refuse the rule of both Dominion and Society.
"If you're looking for the guy, why don't you want this Blayke to be him?"
"I know it isn't. My Blayke can't do all of those things. He's extraordinary, but... not that way." I keep my eyes on the ground and keep walking when he stops. I know my way to the rail from here; I don't need Eryl's help.
"Hey!" he jogs to catch up with me. "Maybe he just didn't tell you,"
"He would have told me."
"Ah, so he was a boyfriend. Well we don't tell our girlfriends everything, Evaline. Sorry to be the one to tell you,"
"Well Blayke would have." I snapped. Eryl stayed quiet for a while.
"Maybe he didn't tell anyone," he says after his silence. "Maybe he didn't even know it. But there's only one Blayke Parker I've ever heard of, and the odds of you coming along looking for a different one don't seem very good. It won't be easy to get to him, but I know some people on the Border who can help. Do you want to try and find him? Or not?" I hesitate too long before I answer.
"There's nothing over the East Seas. Both the Society and the Dominion have always told us that,"
"Well both of them are liars. It was called Europe, before the Dominion went and blew it to pieces. I don't know what it's called now, or how much of it has been repopulated. But I do know there's something there. I've heard way too many stories for there to not be,"
Stories. He's basing this all off of stories.
~ ~ ~ ~
The sun is just starting to peek up over the jagged tops of the broken skyscrapers when the train pulls up. It's eerily quiet in the city, and it makes me nervous. Eryl hasn't spoken to me since our conversation about Blayke. Well, actually, it was more like I hadn't spoken to him.
What he said did make a lot of sense. It's entirely possible Blayke hadn't told anyone about his amazing powers, had instead chosen to keep them a secret. And it's equally as possible that he just didn't know. I've heard of lots of Extras, mostly Necromancers, who didn't realize they had any sort of gifts until their parents told them.
But still, it doesn't sound like Blayke. Nothing Eryl said sounds like the Blayke I know. He doesn't like the spotlight and the crowds; he prefers to just mold into the background of things and stay there.
Eryl motions for me to board the train first. Admittedly, I'm a little cautious to do so. With civil war breaking out all over the country, where had anybody found the resources to keep the trains running? It made good sense to send troops in this way, but to give rides to passengers like it was any ordinary day was kind of odd.
That was when I realized that the front of the train, the control center, wasn't manned. It was completely empty.
"A ghost train?"
"Yeah. This one runs every day at six from here to Outer Field,"
"I thought we were going to the Border?"
"Did you think we would get there before nightfall? No, arriving at the Border in darkness is definitely not a smart move," Eryl sat down, sifting through his bag for something
"Is Outer Field safe? Like, are there battles going on there?"
"Not really,"
"Not really safe? Or not really any battles?" I press. Eryl doesn't answer me, and I get an uneasy feeling in my gut. Should I be trusting this guy? Just how badly had all of the Traveling messed up his head? I stare out the train window and think about Blayke. Run;
A. Trust. It's starting.
I look over at Eryl, who has two of his wooden pebbles in his hands and is inspecting them closely.
Trust.