A Fortress of Pebbles

By the time Cassandra and Orion got back in their beds, it was only two hours before they’d have to get up again and catch the bus. Nobody slept normal hours around here anymore. Inadvertently triggering a fight between Mom and Dad hadn’t helped.

Hearing from Aissaba, though, was what guaranteed that Cassandra wasn’t getting sleep. It wasn’t the cancer, nor the Ebola. Those were obvious fabrications – or at least exaggerations. It was the fact that Aissaba was frightened, and Cassandra could feel it.

Something about the pebbles was dangerous, something Aissaba was trying to protect her from.

“Maybe we should give them back,” said Cassandra to the bunk above her. The flickers of light around the edges told her that Orion was either playing with his phone or with the pebble.

“I can’t believe you told him I was wetting the bed,” he said.

“He was going to come in!” said Cassandra. “You know he would have.”

“We could have used our prison pockets,” said Orion sullenly.

Cassandra didn’t know, or want to know, what that meant. Besides, Orion was just being difficult. He had declared a few minutes ago that Dad believed he was wetting the bed because Mom was seeing Grandpa too much – while Mom believed it was because Dad wasn’t seeing Grandpa enough. How Orion had decoded this from the Battle of the Non Sequiturs, Cassandra wasn’t sure, but she could tell from the way he was acting that, regardless of the details, everything was her fault.

“My point is,” said Cassandra, trying a new angle, “the pebbles are causing problems.”

“If you want to give yours back,” he said, “feel free.”

Cassandra sighed. He was in a mood, and there was no getting him out.

***

Over the next several hours and into the next day, Aissaba tried to reestablish the blink-link with Cassandra. But it remained elusive.

“You know,” said Tassadu, handing her an apple from the tree that grew within their small encampment, “if our mission is to recruit them… maybe scaring them away from the pebbles is the wrong strategy.”

Morning sunlight crept through the forest, awakening the birds and cracking the layer of ice on the leaves and rocks. The apple was cold, like a frozen dessert, but somehow it warmed her from within – life magic at work.

“How do you figure?” said Aissaba, chewing through the vitamin-rich, genetically modified plant fibers. “The Master of Mind literally said that if pebbles fall into the wrong hands, it might as well be the end.”

“But,” he said, “the kids are like Chosen Ones or something. Maybe they’re supposed to have the pebbles. Maybe teaching them to use Fortress magic is the way we prevent the end.”

Aissaba didn’t particularly like when Tassadu got philosophical. He tended to play the Devil’s advocate – or advocatus diaboli, as he liked to call it. He took another two apples from the life magic tree, fat ones that were too high for her to reach. He handed one to her; the other, he punctured with a fang so he could lick the juices with his forked serpentine tongue.

“Or what if,” he added, “by trying to prevent the end, we actually end up causing it?”

“You’re debating with yourself,” Aissaba pointed out. “It’s like masturbation.”

***

Mom and Dad insisted on walking them to the bus stop – like they’d decided to run for Parents of the Year overnight. Cassandra traded so many glances with Orion that when they finally escaped onto the bus, her eyes rolled so hard it hurt. She went straight to the back and hunkered down with him.

Orion whispered, “Do you ever wish we had different parents?”

Not for the first time since the memories of the Fortress had come back, Cassandra found herself wondering if they’d made the right decision to come back from the dead. What if the Fortress wasn’t a prison, and what if Aissaba and Tassadu were supposed to be their parents? Like, destiny and fate – all that stuff that Mom liked to write about at night.

What she found herself saying, though, was, “We’d just mess up Aissaba and Tassadu’s lives, too.”

She blinked, not sure where this had come from. But Orion nodded, as if he’d been thinking the same thing.

***

In Aissaba’s ear, the Master of Mind’s voice said, Our scouts at the roadway have just observed the bus departing and the humvee heading into town. This is an optimal window for your reconnaissance mission.

So Aissaba and Tassadu emerged from their garden of safety like moles, blinking in the light and looking around for predators. Together, they stole to the edge of the woods, where they could see the wooden target propped up on rotting two-by-fours. It was full of holes. The bullseye was so riddled that it was basically empty space.

Over her shoulder, Aissaba could no longer see the fruit tree – hidden as it was within the psychic distortion field. More empty space. Tassadu’s scales flickered, taking on the colors of the world around him, and suddenly there was emptiness where he stood, too. Dragon camouflage.

To a casual observer, Aissaba would appear to be alone as she crossed the dead grass. She imagined that the wind on her face was caused by the ghosts of dead bullets, a whole river of them flying the opposite way over the years.