When he opened his front door he was surprised to find Lex's younger sister Katia pacing inside. He
frowned and made his way to the kitchen, where Chambri stood next to Levi. The boy was perched on the
counter, his eyes were red and raw. Chambri lifted a cold cloth off the angry cut on Levi's knee and began to
bandage it up. Ion turned to Katia, who had followed him in like a shadow.
"Your brother's a poor teacher."
"Yep!" She agreed, grinning from ear to ear. Katia looked a perfect mimiature of Lex: Straight
blonde hair, big green eyes and even bigger smile.
"Shut up, you two!" Lex shouted from the corner. Katia covered her giggle with a tiny hand and
scurried back into the hall. "There was a bump in the sidewalk! A bump! Not my fault! It's not..." At the
group silence Lex turned to Chambri. "It's my fault, isn't it?"
"Yes!" Levi answered for her. They all laughed as Lex and Levi wore matching pouts.
When Lex and Katia left, Chambri offered to take Levi home. Ion followed silently. Quinn already had Levi's
dinner ready. She fussed over his scraped knee perfectly and messed his curly blond hair. He sulked,
muttering about her doing embarrasing things in front of Ion.
On the way home the road had changed. The edges of the concrete had become cracked and
rocky. The trees had grown up over the ditch, making their way onto the road. Chambri frowned but gave
no vocal indication that she noticed. After all, what could they do about it? It had nothing to do with them.
Archer Oracle looked much the way he did when he found Ion. A few more lines of laughter and
exhaustion decorated his face. Age had given his hair natural highlights but his eyes remained bright as ever as
he slurped strong coffee across the table from Ion. Ingred prefered to sip Chambri's rose, glancing up at her
son from under a curtain of dark red hair. Neither of them had seen the forest consume the road so quickly
either.
Suddenly, with a speed no one could have imagined, Archer grabbed Ions arm and peeled his
fingers away from his palm. Two full-sized adult leaves were now etched in black ink across Ions hand.
"Did you change it?"
"It changed without my help... Itches like crazy."
"So I see." Archer frowned at the shallow scratches on the younger mans palm, obviously dug by his
own, short fingernails. "Stop scratching... It'll get infected." Ion shifted his weight and pulled away from his
father.
"Like Chambri would let me get an infection." he gave a shallow, humorless laugh.
"Ion... that place I took you... five years ago... go back there... soon. Maybe you'll find something
the team and I missed. And take this..." From inside the knife drawer Archer pulled out a secret \
compartment. The drawer had a false bottom. Beneith it was a small, brown paper package. Ion frowned
but took it from his fathers hand.
"What is it?"
"After you went to the hospital...that night, the squad and I returned to where I found you. 23
bodies of children were found in that hollow trunk. All were barely pre-pubescent. All of them had been
there for different amounts of time... generations, some of them. None of the bodies were ever I.D.'d. Under
the last one we found this. I suppose it belongs to you as much as anyone else."
Ion slowly unwrapped the crackling paper to find an old coin. It was made from stone, rather than
metal and bore a carving in the exact image of the leafy thorns that had been growing under Ions skin.
Archer smiled with an aching sadness at his only son.
"Don't know Where that will lead you, but no matter who you meet: You're my son, and this is
your home."
The walk back to the appartment was silent. The roads had continued to return to nature since
they had passed them earlier. After the Archers door closed behind them Chambri muttered "That was
ominous." and neither sibling said anything else. What else was there to say, really?
No comments:
Post a Comment