"I think we're lost."

"We are not lost. Quit your worrying."

The sounds of the woods filled the (however short) silence between them.

"We should have brought the better map, Jared."

"I don't need a map, dear. I know this area, and we are NOT lost."

"No." Jared smiled at her agreement. "We just don't know where we are." That smile disappeared. "I told you we should have turned around when we first didn't recognize the area."

"Well, there's your answer, Sarah. I still recognize the area."

"No, you don't. You're just too stubborn to admit we're lost."

"We are not lost!"

The couple stumbled their way up the unmarked path, which Sarah was not actually sure was a path so much as a break in the trees they could easily pass through. They had started out hiking up the draw that morning, but after a picnic lunch, they had somehow managed to lose the trail.

"How long do you think we have until he starts looking for us?" she asked.

"Seriously? He sent us on this wild goose chase. He's not allowed to worry about when we get back, though we should be back before dinner."

A very unladylike snort answered him. "Knowing him, he probably knows where we are better than we do. And it is dinnertime. Or nearly dinnertime, anyway. There's no way we'll be back before dinner, unless you can teleport."

"Do portals count?"

"Only if you have a relic in your bag." Jared remained silent. "There's your answer. No, Jay, portals do not count. Besides, you're not good at those anyway. That's my job." She pulled their (horribly confusing) map out of her bag, and again started trying to decipher it while walking. "Let's see," she mumbled, thinking aloud. "It's midafternoon in high summer so north is…that way. We started here and walked…south? So we should be in…this area. Hey!" She stopped walking completely and studied her map.

"What?" Jared asked.

"If I'm right about our general area, we should be near a road."

He looked around, but, as anyone who has been to the south in summer knows, he couldn't see ten feet through the trees. "I don't hear a road," he said instead.

Sarah rolled her eyes at him. "Of course you don't." She laughed even as she swatted at him. "We're in Tennessee, the land of trees." She looked back at her map, grumbling, "Or are we in Kentucky?" Studying the map, she alternately griped about the hot, humid south with too many trees to see anything and when she would be transferred to Denver. Jared, though he was usually the one to initiate their playful banter, wisely kept quiet.

They kept walking forward, following paths that probably weren't actually there, and trying to get out of "these infernal woods," as Sarah called them.

Finally, after several more minutes of plodding along through the woods, Sarah had had enough of the map. She wasn't even sure where they were, and every map reading class required a starting point to find the current point. She slowed down a bit, Jared getting further ahead of her as she swung her bag around to shove the map back inside. By the time she looked back up, Jared had completely disappeared.

She took a few steps forward, expecting to see him around the next tree, since he couldn't have gotten too far ahead. "Jared?" she said, barely raising her voice above normal volume, in case they weren't alone. There was no answer.

Just before she could start getting really worried, she heard something off to her right. It sounded like a gasp, and she turned toward it right as she heard him call out. "What in the world?! Sarah! SARAH!"

She bolted toward the copse of trees to her right, expecting to find her fiancé under attack. What she found was almost the opposite. Jared was on his knees next to a figure, a small figure that was lying face down on the ground. He reached out and gently turned the figure over to reveal the pale, injured face of a very young boy.

Sarah started to run over, but glanced down just in time to skid to a halt. The boy wasn't alone. Sarah knelt next to a young girl, a year or two older than the boy, and just as injured.

"Sweetie, can you hear me?" She gently moved the young girl's shoulder, trying to wake her, but the girl remained limp, reminding Sarah scarily of a ragdoll. A large knot bloomed on the side of the girl's head. Sarah started digging through her bag, looking for anything that could help, and finally found a brand-new hiking first aid kit in the bottom. She vaguely remembered buying it shortly before Derald announced they would have guests, but she had no idea what was in it.

As she opened the kit, she glanced over at Jared to find him trying to help the boy, without any idea as to how. Neither of them had much healing experience, and they'd left their best healer back at base with Iskandar, trying to make sure he was recovered from that episode last month. She found a variety of bandages and ointments in her kit, and started trying to stop the bleeding.

The small kit didn't have a lot of supplies, but it had just enough for them to stabilize both kids to get better help. When they had done all they could for the time being, Jared started to ask how they could get the kids out of there. Sarah was one step ahead of him, though, and pulled a scroll and a boat-shaped amulet out of her bag.

Noticing Jared's raised eyebrow, she simply said, "Ruby said I would need a quick escape at some point, and I can't think of a better time to use it. The amulet contains the magic to summon her boat one time, and the scroll is the summoning spell."

"Ruby," he repeated. "Ruby Kane?"

"Of course," she replied in a duh tone. "Do you know any other diviners?"

He wisely didn't answer, and moved the young children closer to Sarah as she started her spell.

Sarah always had been good with hieroglyphs, showing a natural ability to read them even before they graduated the scrying bowls. She had loved to tease him with the material, and the first thing she said to him all those years ago had been in correction of a mistake he made in pronunciation.

A boat came to rest beside him. He glanced over to see the small amulet dissolve into sand as she shoved the rolled up scroll into her bag. He gently lifted the boy and followed Sarah and the girl into the boat, which lifted into the air.

Leaving the covering of trees, the couple looked around for a road or any other sign of life from which the children had come, but there was nothing around. They soon stopped looking.

Settling in for the short ride back to Nashville, he studied the children. The girl looked to be about seven years old, maybe six, with how small she was. She had waist-length black hair that would usually be sleek and shiny, but with her injuries was more tangled and ratty. Numerous cuts and scrapes covered her light brown skin, her left arm appeared broken at the wrist, and she had large bruises forming on her shoulders.

The boy didn't look any better, with just as many cuts, except he also had a black eye forming and his pale white skin showed various bruises. He looked about five and had blonde hair, which was less tangled than the girl's, but only because it was shorter. It was still full of twigs and leaves. The youngsters looked as if they had been living in the woods for a while, until he looked at their clothes. They were torn, yes, but not because they were worn out. More like because they had been ripped while doing something.

Their outfits had decent-sized pockets, so he carefully dug out what was inside, hoping for some kind of identification, but not really expecting any. What seven-year-old has an ID? His search was rewarded with a rubber band, an eraser, and a small locket for the girl, and a matchbox car, several candy wrappers, and a Rockies pen for the boy. He set all their trinkets inside a Rockies ball cap he'd found next to the boy, then noticed something tucked into the girl's waistband, at her lower back. He pulled it out to reveal a pocket Bible. Upon opening it, he breathed a sigh of relief: there was writing on the first page.

"Presented to Machaela Louise Noland on the occasion of her seventh birthday." The boy's cargo pockets revealed a matching Bible, which said, "Presented to Jesse Lee Noland on the occasion of his fifth birthday." Both Bibles had the previous December listed, though Machaela had received hers on the seventeenth and Jesse his on the seventh.

They landed before he could say anything, so he carried both Bibles inside the hat as he moved the young boy, Jesse, out of the boat.

They barely made it to the door before Derald met them, his wife Penny close behind him. Penny immediately started fussing over the kids. In no time, Iskandar's primary healer was looking over the two, and shooing everyone else from the room.

Without anything else to do but wait, Jared and Sarah wandered down to Iskandar's room.

"Knock, knock?" Sarah asked, poking her head in.

"Hello, dear," Iskandar replied. "You found them?"

Jared walked in, shaking his head in amazement. "You sent us to get lost in the woods with only instructions to 'help whoever needs it.' I still don't know how you do that. How did you know we would find two kids in the middle of nowhere?"

Iskandar smiled, but strangely developed the sudden-onset selective hearing that older generations often have, as he ignored Jared's question with one of his own.

"Where are they?"

"They're in the infirmary with Will," Sarah answered. "He was very adamant that they be left alone, even when we protested that he shouldn't have to treat both at once."

"Then let us go see his progress." Iskandar slowly raised his thin frame from the chair, and for a moment seemed to need help, if the dimming hieroglyphs were any indication. But he managed to stay vertical, maybe to spite their attempts to help him. None could deny he had a mischievous streak a mile wide, and often did things just because he enjoyed others' reactions.

He led the way down the hall toward the infirmary, where they found Will making notes on a clipboard.

"How are they?" Jared asked.

"What in the world happened to these kids?" Will started at the same time, then simply kept going. "Broken wrist, concussions, cuts and bruises everywhere, and that's just the obvious injuries! They're going to be in here a while, and they may not even wake up for several days." He looked about to continue, but right then his face twisted, and he turned away to hide it, though Iskandar noticed. Will had children about the same age, and he was having trouble not picturing them as he treated these two.

"We don't know," Sarah answered Will's initial question. "We found them in the middle of nowhere. We don't even know their names."

"Actually," Jared jumped in. "That last part is not quite true." He reached into the hat he had left on a nearby table and pulled out the two Bibles. "I found these on each of them. They are Machaela and Jesse Noland. She is seven and he is five."

"Do those give any other info?" Sarah asked, taking the Books. Admittedly, she had never been interested in a Bible. What would be the use when her whole life had been focused on other gods? But, she did know they often had quite a bit of family information.

"Sadly, no," came the answer. "But look at their clothes." He picked up Jesse's shirt, which had been removed during Will's injury assessment. "This is brand new, as are all their other clothes." He folded up the collar to look at the size tag. "It hasn't even been washed. There's still a hole from the price tag."

"These kids are definitely from a family," Sarah agreed, "and their family is probably looking for them. Let's wait until tomorrow morning, to give adequate time for flyers to be posted, then send a couple initiates back to the towns closest to where we found them to look for Missing Person flyers."

They both looked to Iskandar who, being Chief Lector, would give the final say. At his nod, Sarah stepped out to find Derald, while Jared and Iskandar found seats near the beds. Neither wanted the children to wake alone in a strange place.

Iskandar eventually left to claim his bed, but Sarah found Jared still next to Machaela the next morning, fast asleep in the chair.

He jumped awake when she rested a hand on his shoulder. "Have you been here all night?" she asked.

He looked toward the two sleeping figures. "Yeah," he finally answered quietly. "I couldn't leave them in here. They're so young. They'd be scared if they woke alone."

She sat next to him, taking his hand. "We'll find their parents," she assured him. "They have to be frantic by now. We'll know more once the initiates get back this evening."

"Are they already gone?"

"Yes. They left at first light. They should be scouring the local towns by now."

He nodded, and they slipped into silence. Sarah finally shook herself out of her thoughts and stood, dragging Jared with her.

"Come on. We have work to do." Jared shook his head, but she continued. "I'll send Emma in here with them. She'll jump at any chance to get out of classes for a day, and she won't scare them should they wake."

He thought a moment, and seemed about to refuse, but the look on Sarah's face was one he knew well. He was not going to stay in that room all day and so help him should he try. He agreed with a sigh.

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