A Fortress of Pebbles

Grudgingly, Cassandra let Orion into the bathroom.

“You stole a pebble?” he rasped through a sore throat he’d been developing since the bus crash. He got sick every winter, sometimes all the way through Christmas.

“I found it,” she said. But she could tell he was hurt, pretending to be interested in rolling the toy bus across the linoleum tiles. Back and forth, back and forth. Before he could start plotting some kind of revenge, she added, “I figured you put it there. Like, with slight of hand.”

He grinned at this. Over the past year, Cassandra had passed him up in height by about an eighth of an inch, but his obsessive practice with coins and card tricks had started to pay off. He could literally make things disappear before your eyes.

“I, too, have a secret,” he said, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his dinosaur pajamas. He was too old for them, and if anyone at the new school found out, they’d probably both be quarantined. Or executed. Or–

Cassandra’s mouth dropped open as Orion pulled a pebble from behind her ear.

“Remember when I threw all the pebbles at once?” he said. “Well, I didn’t exactly throw all of them. You know?”

Speechless. Cassandra couldn’t exactly berate him for keeping it a secret – no moral high ground here. Orion pushed the pebble into his fist and opened it to reveal that it wasn’t there. Then, he pulled it from behind her ear again.

She swatted at him. “Stop that,” she said. “And for the record – just in case anyone asks – you stole yours. I just found mine in my pocket.”

“Glad we agree,” he said. “That they’re ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ – that is. Cuz we are sooo not telling Mom and Dad.”

Cassandra sighed. The job of moral policing often fell to her, but she wasn’t good at it. Everyone had their flaws. Orion was hers.

“Have you tried putting it to your forehead yet?” he said. “A little dragon appears. And you can tell it to reflash the pebble.”

“You reflashed yours?” said Cassandra, incredulously.

He looked solemn. “I wet the bed,” he said.

Only after Cassandra had glanced down at the pterodactyls on his pant legs, looking for the telltale patch of moisture, did he give a raspy giggle. With a flourish, he tapped the pebble to his forehead and set it in the empty bathtub. The gurgle of water and the suddenly increasing waterline held her spellbound. It stopped after it covered the pebble halfway.

“You really did wet the bed,” Cassandra said.

“I could have made even more water,” said Orion. “But the dragon said it might destroy the pebble.”

***

Aissaba sat in their small cave, hunched over a crackling fire and feeling sick. Tassadu had gone outside to barf – something his dragon physiology often inflicted upon him when nervous. A minor eruption of his second stomach.

“Why didn’t you tell me Orion had a pebble,” Aissaba said when he returned.

“I didn’t know!” he said, collapsing next to her and breathing heavily. “The blinks are intermittent. I must have missed it.”

She got under one of his wings for warmth. Staring into the fire, she tried to make a blink happen. Nothing.

“You know what we need to do, right?” she said. Or tried to. It didn’t come out, and the fire just kept crackling and crackling. Tassadu’s rib cage expanded and contracted, his breath like bellows for the flame.

The Master of Mind’s instructions had been quite clear: do not enter the Johnson’s property. Do not. In fact, the prerecorded voice in their ears had said this several times, as if there had been some doubt as to Aissaba and Tassadu’s ability to pay attention. Do not enter the Johnson’s property. Do not do it. Their job was to establish the camp, observe from a distance, and await further instructions.

Aissaba allowed herself to imagine crossing the dark shooting range of Cody Johnson, Master of Handguns. Before taking refuge in their little cave, she’d stolen to the edge of the treeline to look at the house – its windows like distant stars. The fact that so many lights were still on meant that people were awake, even at this hour. Even if they managed to get to the house without being seen or heard, how would they get in? Walk through the front door? What if it was locked? Plus, the kids, no doubt, would be screamers…

“Maybe we can contact them,” said Tassadu. “With the blinks.”

Aissaba almost wept. It was perfect. The two errors in the universe would cancel each other out: the unexplained psychic connection could be used to recover the stolen pebbles. And no one in the Fortress would need to know.

“You, sir, are a genius,” she said. “How do we do it?”

And so they sat, staring into the fire intently, thinking about two kids in pajamas in a bathroom not too far away. Finally, just as Aissaba was nodding off… (Blink: Cassandra froze at the sound of footsteps outside the bathroom door.)

***

Knock. Knock. Knock. It was Dad. You could tell from the footsteps, from the way he knocked. “What’s going on in there?” he said.

Orion froze like a rabbit. Cassandra said the first thing that came to her mind, “Orion wet the bed. I’m helping him.” To Orion, she mouthed: I’m so sorry.

There were tears in his eyes, but he nodded.

It was the only way.

And he knew it.