TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (11 page)

“Impressive,” said Josh, as he watched Morgan speak to the girl too. I wasn’t quite sure what it was Josh was impressed by, but I only pretended to listen as the tutor at the front of the room started to speak. And, more than once, I tapped my chemical filled pen impatiently against my paper book while I waited for the class to come to an end.

As soon as the class was over, I picked up my books as hastily as I could, and I managed to time my exit so I met Morgan at the door on his way out of the room.

“I’ll show you to our next class if you like,” I offered, and he looked at me carefully.

“Okay,” he said, and I tried not to look too pleased as I walked with him along the hall.

“Hey man; it’s Josh. Livia said you live next door to her.”

Josh had appeared beside us and Morgan glanced at me. I looked back at him innocently and he pressed his lips together.

“Morgan,” he said to Josh reluctantly, and Josh grinned and told us he’d see us at lunch before he hurried past us to a different class. Morgan watched him go and frowned.

“Do you regularly make friends with the locals?” he asked me, when Josh was gone.

“No, not usually; do you?” I asked him bluntly, and he looked at me carefully again.

“Not unless I have to,” he said dryly.

I wanted to ask him why he’d spoken to the girl in our previous class, if that was the case….but, I didn’t. I decided to change the subject instead.

I told him about the tutor of the next class and I suggested we sit at the back of the room because she was known for asking anyone who sat in the front row to answer random questions without warning………

By the end of the day, Morgan had made friends with Josh too. He’d had to. Josh kept turning up beside me between classes and he sat with us at lunch as well. Morgan was suspicious of Josh as first, and he made that obvious, but Josh was stoically cheerful in any situation and his enthusiasm was universally infectious. It wasn’t long before Morgan was asking him about his experiments, and soon, Josh was telling him he thought there could definitely be life on other planets. When I came back from the girl’s bathroom though, and found Morgan and Josh laughing together while they looked at Josh’s computer, I wondered whether it had been a good idea to introduce them after all. They stifled their laughter quickly as soon as I sat down, and when Josh closed his computer and told me to hurry up and finish eating because he was hoping to leave the lunch room by the weekend, I looked at them both suspiciously and frowned. They were still trying not to laugh.

Unfortunately, because we’d been sitting with Josh, Morgan had been forced to eat his lunch quickly too. He knew it would look suspicious if we both ate in Aldirite style, so he’d had to bolt down his food in the same manner Josh did, and he wasn’t very happy about it. He complained to me after lunch that it was my fault he had indigestion and I looked at him apologetically and smiled nicely as I reminded him he only had to attend this school for a few days.

Morgan blended into the Synthetic Era school perfectly. Not only did he add just the right amount of local phrases to his perfectly accented Synthetic Era language, but he matched his pace to the students around him too. More than once, I had to almost run to keep up with him as I showed him the way to the rest of our classes. After that first class of the day though, Morgan didn’t speak to any more of the local girls. He spoke only to me and to Josh, and I didn’t stop to think too much about why I was very pleased about that.

After school, Morgan walked home with me at a more Aldirite pace and, on the way, he asked me if I’d told Josh I wasn’t coming back to school after the holidays. I shook my head, but I didn’t want to talk about Josh. Instead, I asked Morgan if he’d heard anything about what we’d be doing at our quest finals orientation this weekend. He nodded.

“About a turn ago, when I was still in group training, our group was in the Discovery Era on a physical challenge climbing exercise. We were half way up the mountain when we came across a team of questers gathering mountain variety textile seeds for sewing in Aldiris in the spring. It looked like boring, painstaking work, so the questers were happy to take a break and talk to us. I asked them about quest finals, and one of the questers told me the orientation is designed to introduce us to our team and to our Quest master or mistress. He said, on our orientation weekend, we’ll be sent to a Quest house which will be the base where we’ll live between challenges, and where we’ll keep our weapons and packs,” said Morgan, and I felt a tremor of excitement at his words. Orientation was only a day away now.

“What kind of quests do you want to be included in?” I asked Morgan curiously.

“Anything that doesn’t require the individual gathering of hundreds of tiny seeds,” he said with feeling, before he asked me which quests I wanted to join.

“Discovery,” I said straight away, and Morgan smiled and nodded slowly. He didn’t look surprised, as most of my tutors had, when I’d told them of my desire.

It took no time at all this afternoon to reach my front gate, and it was too soon when I wished Morgan ‘good set’ and left him, reluctantly, to go into my house.

Mirren wasn’t home and I paused for a moment and leant against the back of the front door. Mirren’s rooms were on this level to my left and, to my right, was an open plan area popular in the house designs of this time segment. I walked through it and passed the dining table and an open kitchen before heading up the stairs to my rooms.

I’d taken off my school blazer and washed my face and hands under the running water taps in my bathroom before I heard the sound. Today, I knew it was the sound of a ball hitting the back wall of the house next door. The repetitive, dull thud was the same sound I’d heard yesterday, and I had to control myself so I didn’t give in to temptation and glance out the window. Obviously, the glare from the afternoon sun
didn’t
render me invisible, and I didn’t intend to embarrass myself again. I sat on the end of my bed instead and I folded my arms restlessly while the ball continued to hit the back of Morgan’s house with rhythmical consistently. When the ball hit my window pane instead of the wall though, I got such a fright, it felt like my heart stopped. The loud bang was enough to rattle the pane in its frame, and I was surprised the thin layer of glass didn’t shatter with the impact. I stood up and went straight to my window with my arms still folded. What on earth was he doing?

Morgan stood in his back garden and he was grinning up at me. He still wore his uniform, but he’d removed his school blazer and tie, and he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves. He started making hand signals to me, and he held the ball in his hand as he gestured to me. I frowned. He wanted me to come down to join him in his garden, and when I leant my hands against the window sill, he pointed towards the street and beckoned to me again.

I was scheduled to have a tutoring session soon and I wondered what he was supposed to be doing right now. I was pretty sure playing games in the back garden didn’t usually feature in a quester’s demanding schedule.

I pointed to the street too and left my window to run downstairs. Of course, I was going next door, despite my approaching tutoring session, but I told myself I was going because I needed to spend as much time as possible with my new partner. It was important for us to get to know each other in the short time we had left before the finals.

Morgan was waiting at his front gate when I opened mine, and he grinned at me as he let me into his house. I smiled at him too and followed him into his back garden. There was a wrought iron chair by the back door and we walked past it to stand on a square patch of grass. Morgan immediately pointed to markings in the bricks on the back wall of his house but, when he started to tell me where certain scoring zones ended and began, I was forced to interrupt him.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never played this game before,” I said awkwardly. Morgan stopped mid-sentence and stared at me in surprise.

“Never?” he asked me in astonishment, and I shook my head apologetically. He looked at me for a moment. “Are you sure you’re from Aldiris?” he asked me, and he was teasing me now; I could tell. I smiled apologetically and he looked at the ball in his hand.

“Alright, we’ll start with catching,” he said cheerfully, and he told me to catch the ball with one hand only. He threw the ball against the wall with less force than he’d been throwing it the previous afternoon and I automatically caught it with my right hand. He told me straight away I was a natural and I laughed and rolled my eyes. All I’d done was catch a ball.

As it turned out though, I was much better at catching the ball than I was at throwing it. The ball was made of a soft fibrous material that made its flight difficult to control and I had trouble hitting the section of wall I was supposed to. Morgan, however, could hit it consistently at any pace and with any hand. He had to keep reminding me he’d been playing this game his whole life so I wouldn’t get discouraged. When I improved a little, he suggested we play a simple version of the game with only one scoring area instead of three. He also said I could use both hands to throw and catch, but he decided he’d play with his weaker hand only.  

Morgan could have beaten me easily, even with both hands tied behind his back, but he deliberately kept the game close, and he let me win in the very last round which, by then, I didn’t appreciate. I put my hands on my hips and shook my head.

“You let me win,” I said accusingly.

“No, I didn’t,” he said smoothly. I shook my head again.

“I can tell when you’re lying,” I said, and he looked at me for a moment and shook his own head then, before he let out his breath.

“I let you win the last round,” he conceded reluctantly. I smiled.

“And half the other points as well,” I added. He grinned.

“It was more than half,” he said, and we were laughing when I realised we were being watched.

I glanced up at my house. Mirren was standing at my bedroom window and she was watching us with her arms folded. Morgan followed my gaze.

“What is it with you girls and that window?” he said, and when he glanced at me, I suddenly decided it was time for me to go home. Morgan walked me to my gate and he would have come right to my door, but when Jonah appeared at the end of the street carrying grocery bags, I told him to go home because it was pointless both of us being in trouble. He went to argue, but I closed my gate on his argument and ran quickly into my house.

Mirren was waiting for me in my study and I walked straight in and sat down to face her. I’d never been late to a tutoring session before, or to any other session for that matter. I’d never had reason to be, and I suddenly hoped my punishment wouldn’t involve being sent home and having my pendant removed for a week. I’d heard of this punishment being given to students who gave their tutors trouble and I held my breath while Mirren looked at me thoughtfully………But, she unrolled her history parchments calmly and simply began to read to me, and she didn’t mention my late arrival at all. She read to me in the old language, and I leant back in my chair and relaxed a little as I listened to the sound patterns, rather than the words she read, in her soft, melodious voice. For some reason, as she read, she didn’t sound as nervous today and she sat more calmly in her chair as well. Occasionally, she lifted her eyes from the parchment too and, when she did, she looked straight into my eyes which she’d never done before either. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and glanced out the window, but Morgan was long gone from my gate now………..

Our tutoring session finished very quickly, mainly due to the fact that it had been more than half over before it had begun. When our time was up, Mirren rolled the parchment carefully and she still didn’t mention anything about my presence in Morgan’s back garden. She simply informed me, calmly, that I had a combat class in a quarter of a clock turn and she suggested that I should probably change. She spoke to me again with very little of her usual nervousness and, I was so surprised, I was tempted to make another attempt to befriend her. She didn’t give me a chance though. She turned suddenly and walked briskly out of my study, and I watched her go before I returned to my bedroom to dress in my Aldiris clothes. It only took me five minutes to change, and this time, I made sure I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for my tutor with plenty of time to spare. I didn’t intend to be late again………..

CHAPTER 5:

It was Friday morning and the finals orientation was tomorrow but, as I ran with Mirren through the park, it wasn’t the orientation I was thinking about. In between thinking about how much I hated running, I was thinking about Morgan. In fact, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Yesterday, in my late afternoon combat class, I’d nearly ended up with a concussion because I’d been thinking about him instead of concentrating. My instructor, who was a retired quester, hadn’t been impressed, and she’d told me I may as well move permanently to this time segment and forget all about passing my finals if I was going to wander about in some kind of a dream world while I was being attacked. I could see her point.

Last night, after my evening meal, I’d had another scheduled tutoring session with Mirren and I’d thought about Morgan the whole time my tutor had read from her parchment too. I hadn’t heard a word about Synthetic Era history and, at the end of the session, Mirren had looked at me thoughtfully with her clear, blue eyes again, making me wonder if she could read my mind. She’d gathered her parchments together calmly at the end of this session too, and even though she’d glanced at her pendant at the same time as she’d collected them, I’d noticed she hadn’t dropped a single one.

I’d gone to bed thinking about Morgan too. In the darkness of my room, Josh’s music had filled my head as I’d replayed my day, and I’d lain on my back and stared at the pattern of lights on the ceiling while I’d wondered if Morgan was awake too……….

I hated running.

The sun rose slowly and the temperature rose along with the sun. There was dew on the grass beside the path and it glistened in the sunlight as we ran past another runner who listened to music through the head phones in her ears. I glanced at the woman enviously before I glanced at Mirren. She ran beside me in her blissful, running world and I scowled. My lungs were burning already and we still had one more lap of the park to go……..

Morgan was waiting for me outside my gate when I left my house to walk to school, and he asked me straight away if Mirren had made me clean the meal dishes and scrub the kitchen floors for being late to my tutoring class. It took me a moment to realise he was joking, but when I told him she hadn’t mentioned my late arrival at all, he didn’t look surprised. 

We talked on the way to school again but Morgan seemed preoccupied this morning. I noticed him, a few times, staring ahead with a slight frown on his face. Eventually, I asked him if there was something wrong and he avoided my question by asking me when I was going to tell Josh I wasn’t going to be returning to school after the holidays.

“I’ll tell him soon,” I said awkwardly, and Morgan surprised me when he wanted to know why I’d made friends with Josh in the first place. I shrugged.

“Evangeline and I didn’t get along and Josh started talking to me between classes. The next thing I knew, we were friends,” I said slowly. “He’s not the kind of person who gets discouraged if you don’t appear that friendly at first,” I added wryly. Morgan rolled his eyes and nodded.

It was when we sat down in our second class of the day that Morgan surprised me again. We were seated and I’d already removed the appropriate books from my school bag when I realised Morgan wasn’t getting any books out at all. He looked at me apologetically when I turned towards him.

“I have to go, Livia. I’m being taken home today,” he said. He didn’t sound too happy about it but he was already getting up from his chair.

“You’re going home? You mean…..Now? Why?” I asked him in surprise. He shrugged uncomfortably as he put his Synthetic Era back pack over his shoulder.

“It’s just a short visit. I’ll be back for the last class of the day,” he said, as he backed away from me, and I frowned and watched him as he turned and quickly left the room. I shook my head and continued to frown. I’d never been taken back to Aldiris in the middle of a school day. When I’d been taken home in time segments where I’d had to attend school, I’d always been taken home on the weekends, and I always stayed in Aldiris overnight as well. Not only was I surprised by Morgan’s sudden departure, I was also surprised by the depth of my disappointment at having to spend the day without him. I looked at the clock on the classroom wall and I found myself counting the number of clock turns until Morgan would return.

“Morgan’s gone home,” I said to Josh, when he entered the classroom and sat down beside me.

“I know. I just passed him in the hall. He’s going to his maternal grandfather’s funeral today. He said to tell you he was sorry he didn’t explain himself, but he doesn’t really want to talk about it,” said Josh, who seemed to think this was perfectly acceptable.

I frowned as I translated the Synthetic Era language to the old language in my mind. Morgan was going home to Aldiris for his mother’s father’s memorial procession. No wonder he’d seemed preoccupied this morning and no wonder he was going home in the middle of a school day. I frowned to myself as the class tutor arrived. He could have told me. Now, I felt terrible for asking him if something was wrong.