Haven (War of the Princes) (2 page)

“Figures,” I huffed grumpily.

“And now moving on to more important things,” Professor Block said with renewed vigor. “The first settling of
Rivermarch
! How lucky are we to live in one of the first villages constructed?”

The classroom groaned together. We all knew the basic history of our hometown. I had a feeling Block’s rendition would take us to those agonizingly monotonous times.

The bell rang before I could fall asleep. My frustration dissolved any real relaxation I could have achieved anyway.

“Read up on ‘The Founding of
Rivermarch
and
Squaretower
Mill,’ I’ll be testing you on both before the week is over,” Professor Block called after us as we fled the classroom. I’m sure he thought he had bored me into disinterest. He was wrong.

I wasn’t going to give up that easily.

Chapter 3: Sunny, With A Chance Of Rain

“Finally!” Ruby exhaled as we wended through the busy corridor, avoiding teachers and dodging tossed paper-cranes. “That was the longest day of my life!”

“You say that every day,” I retorted,
loosing
my long braid to free my wavy black hair.

“Well maybe it’s true every day,” she said with a smirk.

 
          
“I can’t believe we don’t know what happened outside Haven,” I grumbled as we followed the other students out of the stone school building. “We have all this technology, but we don’t know what happened out there a few hundred years ago?”

“
Seven
hundred. Kat, seriously, who cares?” Ruby said, pushing up her glasses. “Please come back to the here and now where the rest of us live.”

The warmth of the three o’clock sunlight soaked us as we stepped out of the shade and under the clear blue sky. I sighed. The beauty of the day could always melt away my most frigid moods. The only thing that could have made me happier was rain.

“Oh, oh no, uh, good-gravity,” Ruby stammered suddenly losing her breath. “Look, Kat, its Sterling. Hey! Stop! Don’t look, stand right there so
I
can look at him.”

She pushed me into place, in line with Sterling, so she could ogle him over my shoulder. Ruby emitted a very girly, wistful sigh.

“He’s sitting against the statue playing guitar. I love it when he plays guitar,” Ruby smiled, flushing.

My lips pursed involuntarily. “Why don’t you take a picture?” I said in a gently sarcastic way.

She didn’t get it. “I would but, don’t you think that’d be kind of creepy?” Ruby asked genuinely, never breaking the lock of her eyes on Sterling.

“Yes,
Ru
, it would be very creepy,” I agreed and stepped out of the line of fire. She gasped at my leaving her exposed and huddled after me.

“So why don’t you just tell him he’s hotter than the sun, make out, get married and have loads of babies all over the place?” I said, watching her face grow redder and redder as my rant went on. By the last part, I had reduced her to a wordless fluster and she smacked me with a textbook.

“Look at him,” Ruby said, pushing her glasses higher on her nose again and sounding quite resigned. “He’s perfect. Everyone knows it. I’m sure he knows it too.”

She was looking at him again, this time sadly.

I glanced at him. She was right. He was undeniably gorgeous: tall, broad shouldered, well muscled, with sandy blond hair. His build would have made him look like a handsome thug, but his quiet demeanor and kind eyes saved him. And then there was the guitar, the one he always played but never sang with. I wasn’t
interested
in the guy, but it was impossible not to take note of him.

“Yeah,” I said finally, trying to make her feel better for being too shy to talk to him. “He’s probably a closet jerk. I’m betting he sits in his room and slaps kittens all day.”

“Kat! Don’t say that!” she exclaimed, hitting me with the textbook again. She was trying to sound outraged but her unwilling laughter betrayed her.

When we stopped giggling we just sort of stood there under a leafy green tree, looking in his direction and not saying anything. I could tell she really liked the guy. Hopefully, for her sake, something would work out.

An upside down head with a mop of brown curls suddenly swung down from the tree above us with a garbled roar. Lightning-struck out of her reverie, Ruby screamed in complete terror and dropped all of her books and papers.

I jumped and then laughed with the chuckling head.

“Kyle!” Ruby yelled, infuriated. “I’m going to
kill
you!”

It was an empty threat. No one killed anyone in Haven Valley. There was something endearing about seeing Ruby so mad though. I laughed harder, so did Kyle.

He was hanging upside down from a branch in the tree and swung down to land easily on his feet. Kyle was shorter and skinnier than Sterling, with a ready sense of humor with a lopsided grin to match. The two of them were about as different as guys could get.

“Hey ladies!” Kyle greeted us cheerfully.

“Hey,” I grinned. “You got us. It was fair.”

Ruby’s attention was gone again. Sterling had looked over when she screamed and now she was stuck, frozen like a frightened rabbit. She could have said something, waved, laughed at herself, anything- but she just stood there painfully still. It was awkward.

Picking up her stuff, I set off, with Kyle helpfully following my lead. Looping one of my arms around
hers
, I pulled her into motion across the landscaped lawn.

When we walked by Sterling, he was still looking at us with mild, passing curiosity.

“Hi Sterling,” I said with a light smile, and waved at him with Ruby’s limp hand. When she realized what I’d done, she yanked her arm away and blushed furiously.

Once we were out of earshot I chuckled again. “Jeez…
Ru
, it’s not like you haven’t had a boyfriend before.”

“That was different. Travis was human… Sterling is
ethereal
,” she half whispered.

Kyle was lolling his head backward making gagging sounds and rolling the whites of his eyes. Something had to be done or she’d scare him off. I liked Kyle, he was my friend too.

“You’re right. Sterling wasn’t born, he was constructed… with silk, cotton-candy and the tears of baby angels,” I said, making Kyle chuckle and Ruby smile. Mission accomplished: Three cheers for Katelyn, the Destroyer-of-Awkward-Situations!

“Speaking of… well never mind, this is a completely different subject,” Kyle said, looking more serious than I’d seen him in a while. “I was looking for you guys, because, oh man, you’re not going to like this.”

“What is it?” Ruby and I echoed each other.

“Calvin,” he said and trailed off.

My heart thrummed to a stop. “What about Calvin?”

Calvin was a boy I dated the previous year. It was nice; nothing crazy, just holding hands, kissing a few times. I’d really liked him. Call me naive for thinking things were going somewhere. Catching him with another girl changed my mind about him. Suffice it to say I dumped the cheating jerk on sight. But it had still hurt. These days I avoided him like a poisoned well, and butterflies crawled into my stomach whenever I heard his name. Maybe not butterflies… more like chew-your-stomach-flies.

“Um,” Kyle said shifting uncomfortably under the power of my stare. “Why do I have to be the one to tell you? Ugh… okay but don’t kill me. I’m telling you this for
your
sake. He’s been going around saying that you guys, well… like you guys… did certain things.”

“What things?” I snapped quietly.

“Intimate things?” Kyle said, shrinking in on himself.

Ruby and Kyle must have seen something awful in my expression they both looked very worried.

“Where is he?” I growled and stalked off without waiting for an answer. They hurried after me.

Anyone who knew me knew that I was good at finding things. Better than good: I
always
found what I was looking for. Sure, it’s an odd talent, but it was the one I was stuck with. If you’d ask me where something was, I couldn’t tell you. There was no absolute knowledge or visions of places or anything. I just started walking, and always picked the right way to go, the right place to look.

Calvin was in for it, and my friends knew it.

After a short, purposeful march, with my fists balled up at my sides, I found Calvin and his friends at Wendy (a nickname for a small, slow river with a lot of curves that ran beside the east side of the school).

Calvin noticed my approach and came over to meet me, leaving his jeering friends at the riverside. Ruby and Kyle hung back a bit.

“Kat,” Calvin said with a charming smile that broke my heart all over again. It made me feel even more sick and angry. “You never were any fun to play hide-and-seek with.”

“Is it true?” I asked through my teeth.

“Is what true?” he said making me follow him back toward the river, closer to his current pack of buddies.

“Are you telling people we had
sex
?” I demanded bluntly, barely containing my rage.

“Didn’t we?” he asked, blinking benignly.

“Of course we didn’t!” I shouted. “We kissed a few times.”

“Yes we did,” he grinned and agreed, making it all sound worse. His friends whistled and cheered.

“And that’s all!” I said, feeling the heat rise to my face. “Why are you doing this?”

“Honesty is the best policy,” he winked at me.

“And you’re
lying
!”

“We were doing more than that last year!” Calvin laughed.
 
I heard Kyle swear under his breath and Calvin’s friends cheer again. A small crowd was gathering a safe distance away from us.

“You’re so pretty when you’re mad. Should we get out of here and go for round two?” he mocked me.

Anger clouded my mind. There were people staring at us, and he was saying these terrible things… these lies. Gathering my strength, I rushed forward to hit his chest with the intention of pushing him into the water. It backfired. Moving quickly, he stepped to the side and pushed my back with enough force to pitch me into the shallows.

I felt the shock of hitting the river with a crack. Nothing hurt, the water wasn’t cold, it just slapped me like a cruel hand. Bobbing to the surface, I could vaguely hear laughing, the murmuring of an awestruck audience, and Kyle sloshing into the water saying, “Kat, are you okay?”

I didn’t need his help getting out of the water. My hands were shaking. He insisted.

On the shore I noticed Sterling standing with the other onlookers. Ruby was nearly beside him, looking very embarrassed for me.

“Hi Sterling.”

“…Hi Ruby.”

I had done it again. Katelyn Kestrel, the Amazing Icebreaker.

Chapter 4: The Storm of Change

           
I had only seen lightning once before.

           
It was when my mother left me and my father, more interested in her work than her husband and only daughter. The town she moved to was an eight day ride away, on the opposite side of Haven. The kindest thing she had to say to us, huddled in the rain as my father shouted after her was, “I’m finished wasting my time.”

           
The lightning and booming thunder was terrifying that night. White branches flashed overhead and the air trembled with the roar of their passing. My mother was leaving and I thought the sky was cracking open. I was six.

           
The old memory bubbled up to the surface of my mind when I saw the flashing sky again.

           
By the time I was changed into fresh clothes and bundled with a warm blanket the light had been subdued into an early dusk by heavy storm clouds. I’m sure my dad had seen it coming. He was a weatherman.

           
Kyle, Ruby and even Sterling had made sure I was cleaned up and whisked away to get my mind off my complete public humiliation. I kept wondering why Sterling had come along. Go figure my misfortune would be the link to get him and Ruby talking.
 

Kyle got permission to borrow his dad’s four seat coach for the evening. It was plain black and, like all carriages, partially mechanized to make things easier for the stocky bay mare pulling it. We listened to a new band on the carriage stereo that I hadn’t heard before. I half-heartedly admitted to myself that they were pretty good.

There were probably a number of reasons why they took me to the empty Harvest Fairgrounds. Ruby would have done anything short of selling her first born to keep Sterling around, Kyle wanted to cheer me up, and both of them knew I had a thing for disappearing whenever I felt like it.

They were keeping an eye on me this time. I’m sure it was out of concern, but it made me feel smothered. People couldn’t call me shy, by any means, but I didn’t like attention when I was upset. It was taking a serious effort to hold myself together in front of them. Disappearing wasn’t supposed to involve three other people.