Thundershock

I had every intention of getting up and checking out that hole under the waterfall. That badass-looking guy disappeared with his pokémon, so I was desperately curious to see what he was doing in there. It had to be something cool considering how cool that guy looked. But apparently that little bump on my head and the shock of falling so far gave me a concussion and I passed out.

I was awakened by the hideous face of a furious towhead, growling at me like she was going to stomp on my head and devour my soul. I flinched and jammed my head into the rocks, adding neck strain to my list of pains.

"You hare-brained imbecile!" the beast shouted at me. "You almost busted your skull on the rocks!" Her face wrinkled when she got mad. It made her look a little like a tiger.

"That was just a setback. I slipped."

"It's water rushing with more than 120 psi! Of course you slipped!"

"I would have been fine if the rock I stepped on didn't turn. Who knew that rocks turn underwater?"

"Everyone knows that! They're not cemented to the river!" Brooke scoffed at me loudly and hit me in the face with a wad of spit in the process. She grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me to my feet with the strength of ten, furious women. She then proceeded to smack me on the back of the head. "You know the elder would hold me responsible for your stupidity if you died."

She was right about that. Brooke was exactly six weeks older than I was, and that's what made her the more mature one in the elder's eyes. It may or may not also have something to do with the time I taped the handle on the sink's sprayer; when the elder turned on the faucet, his entire stomach and crotch area got soaking wet. Either way, I was held to a much lower standard.

But the tunnel and the guy with the teleporting pokémon was much more important. Excited about what I saw earlier, I told her, "I get that, but check this out. There's something under the waterfall!" I turned slowly and pointed to the tunnel.

Brooke immediately pulled me away , not even looking at the pure awesomeness under the waterfall. "We're going back to the village right now!"

"Fine," I said, wincing under the pain her vice grip gave my shoulder. I'll just come back later.

There was a tiny path under the waterfall that connected to the rocky shore, but it was really more of a foothold than an actual walking path. I had to squeeze myself to the rock face and hug it tightly in order to sidle over there safely. It wasn't going to be much easier to get back there after dark, but maybe it wouldn't seem so bad if my head weren't still spinning.

But my forthcoming punishment wasn't even on my list of concerns. Even though I was planning to come back later, I couldn't achieve the patience to keep my finding a secret. I leaned in close, catching a whiff of Brooke's peach-scented shampoo, and whispered, "You'll never guess what I saw."

"I don't give a rattata's ass," she cut me off. "I am sick of cleaning up your messes."

"This isn't a mess that needs cleaning," I countered. "It's running water. That's what we use to clean messes. It's self-cleaning!"

I would have continued my witty retort, but a strange buzzing sound distracted me. Buzzing was fairly uncommon in this area woods. Usually you don't come across the big bugs until you head into the thicker areas. One or two bees out here, maybe, but this buzzing sounded really loud and dissonant. The volume was just too great to be normal.

"What is that?" Brooke was the first to ask.

The twitching bushes gave way to a swarm of bees—specifically to combees. Each one was a foot tall and looked like three honeycombs attached like Siamese twins. I remembered studying them in school. In the pictures, each one looks so happy and smiley. But right now, when they came out of the woods in buzzing-cloud form, I was glad my shorts were already wet.

"Oh, crap," she uttered.

Trying to sound so much calmer than I was, I asked, "Do they have just one stinger, or is it one per comb? Is this a bad time to mention that I might be allergic to bee stings?" I really wasn't—proven during the Vespiquen Incident seven years earlier—but my brain suddenly reminded me that a person can develop allergies with repeated exposure… and that was a lot of combees coming my way.

"Run!"

Brooke and I both took off for the village. It wasn't all that far if we ran, and surely we could outrun a couple of bees, right? If only my stupid shorts weren't wet and clinging to my legs like spider webs holding my legs together.

Just when my life began to pass before my eyes a second time this afternoon, four blue feet bounded in front of me and white wool blocked my view. Suddenly every hair on my arm rose and pointed directly at Mary the mareep, and I knew why. Mary was a little lamb, but Thundershock is a powerful electric attack. I got a feel for how powerful when about forty combees dropped from the sky with just one explosive, electrical release. This pokémon I recognized as a mareep, the sheep pokémon. The farmer in the village had a lot of them, but they weren't trained for contest the way Mary was, and she belonged to Craig, my mortal enemy.

Craig was a total downer. He was a cranky old man of twenty-four years who made it his goal in this situation to point out that what I just did violated no fewer than four of the village elder's edicts. He made breaking the rules sound like a bad idea. His chin doubled up on itself when he got mad. It looked like his neck was trying to eat his face.

"Who invited Crankshanks McBuzzkill?" I yelled at Brooke.

"I saw you emerge from the waterfall, Gus," he grumbled. His voice wavered and cracked as he spoke. "That place is forbidden! The Elder is going to tear you a new one."

"Wouldn't be the first time," I muttered. "He's done that so many times I can't drink a glass of water without springing a leak."

Craig ignored my nervous rambling and looked to his ewe. "Go, Mary," Craig spoke to the sheep, and the sheep responded by bleating loudly enough to startle me, but it wasn't enough to intimidate the invasion of bees. Craig didn't want to attack the bees unprovoked, but even I knew it was rare to see bees swarm like that in these woods. In fact, never once in all the times I ignored the elder's rules about the woods did I see more than three or four bees in one place, and they were usually harmless. Except for that one time when I tried an experiment involving a combee hive and a stick… but that was way deeper in the woods, back where you can't even see the sun overhead.

"Hit them with a Thundershock if they attack again, okay Mary?" The mareep bleated in understanding reply. I was amazed the sheep could understand human speech so well, but that was just testament to the way Craig trained Mary. He was a pretty decent trainer, considering he was such a tattletale.

And then I felt disoriented when I was pulled off the ground. I recognized the vice-like grip and the feel of Brooke's bony fingers digging into my shoulder again. Right in the same place, too, meaning the pain was like nails piercing my trapezius.

"Let's go."

Craig and Mary stayed a few feet behind us to make sure the combees didn't follow us into town, but I think we were pretty safe. After that first attack, the combees started piling on top of one another to create a honeycomb wall like they were ready to defend against Mary's next move. I doubt they were ready to attack from that position. Maybe they'd return to their hives after they lost sight of us.

Or maybe they'd come kill us in our sleep, although that wasn't typical combee behavior. Maybe if they were combee vampires?

Brooke squeezed my shoulder tighter and yelled, "One of these days, you're going to get us in so much trouble I'm going to have to kill you."

Some women overreact to everything.

Like I thought, the bees didn't follow us into the village. Once we made it to the dirt road, it was an easy walk into the village. Walking backward with Brooke's fingers in my shoulder was much easier than running. Crazy woman had fingers like biceps! It felt like she physically grabbed my rotator cuff and yanked it apart.

It was strange seeing the village shrink in my view as I moved backward through the streets. At this time of day, just about everyone was wandering out to supper. I waved to my friends and neighbors as each and every one of them shook their heads at me. It was unfortunate that Brooke's being mad at me wasn't a unique situation. And I felt a little disappointed that no one tried to stop her. They just watched me with fear in their eyes. Some friends.

"You can let go now," I told Brooke.

"No, I can't," she argued. Her grip got tighter. "I'm not letting you go until we see the elder and he gives you a sufficient punishment."

I gave one good, sudden yank to pull my shoulder away from her. She scowled at me, but it was nothing I hadn't seen before. "Stop treating me like a child."

"Stop acting like a child," she countered immediately.

I paused. "I am not acting!"

Craig gave me a push. "I agree with Brooke. You're going to see the elder." Brooke gave me a snide grin, satisfied that she was going to get her way. "You're both going." So maybe not her exact way.

As I laughed at her, she asked, "What? What did I do?" I understand why she sounded exasperated considering she was nothing more than a witness to my voluntary audacity, but I found it funny rather than justified.

"Just tell the elder exactly what happened," Craig told us with a worried look on his face. What was he concerned about? I'm the one who was about to sit through another boring lecture about not meeting my potential and putting my and my sister's lives at risk.

The elder's house was exactly six hundred and forty-seven steps from the village entrance we used. I know that very well because I counted the steps every day since I learned how to count. I lived in the elder's house, which is what made it pretty routine for him to be the one reprimanding me on days when I did something to break the rules.

I wasn't nearly as scared of walking through that door as Brooke was. For her, getting in trouble was something to fear, but for me, it was a habit. Brooke always said I was predictable: I broke the rules on days that end in Y. She's a regular comedian, that one.

The elder was waiting for us by the fireplace in the sitting room. This was a room decorated with pictures of the elder's entire family line, including grandfathers who were elders and cousins who grew up and left the village. It was a way of setting the atmosphere of the room. He received villagers in that room every day, and he wanted them to feel comfortable like they were in their own homes. The village elder kind of saw himself as a father figure for the entire village, which made absolutely everyone my brothers and sisters.

"I brought them, Eddie."

"Thank you, Craig," the elder spoke. "Please leave us."

Uh oh. No witnesses. That meant I was in big trouble—like double-digit groundings.

Except Brooke wasn't dismissed. Did that mean she was in trouble, too? If she was getting grounded because of me, I was going to have to sleep with one eye open, and doing that always gave me a headache.

"This is your fault," she grumbled to me.

"Way ahead of you."

The elder was not as old as you'd expect from a man with the title Village Elder. He was actually in pretty good physical shape. He still performed more physical labor on any given day than I did. His hair was thinning terribly and his gut was starting to outgrow the rest of him, but he was generally a welcoming presence and a friendly man. Everyone in the village loved him and revered him for his wisdom: He always picked a fair punishment for my indiscretions, and it wasn't his fault that I refused to learn my lessons.

This situation was a little weird, though. He was wearing his Natrium scarf, the sign of the Village Elder. He always wore that when receiving villagers, but he never wore it to eat supper. Today he wore it through the entire meal. And the whole time, he stared into the fireplace instead of looking at us. Something was off.

"Are you aware the waterfall is off limits?" he asked. That one was directed to me.

"Yes."

He took a short pause before continuing. "Neither of you is old enough to take the mountain path without adult supervision." That one wasn't a question, but it was directed to both of us.

"I'll be sixteen in two months," Brooke pointed out. Rookie mistake; never get defensive when being reprimanded. The only change it can effect is to make things worse.

"That doesn't change the rules," the elder said. "Every rule enacted for this village has a purpose. You can't go breaking the rules just because you don't like them or they interfere with your fun." His voice displayed increased emotion, but it wasn't really anger. It almost sounded like fear.

I asked, "What's going on?" His current attitude was making me nervous. Even Brooke seemed to pick up on it.

He paused for a very long time before saying anything. "How much did you see at the bottom of the waterfall?"

What? Why did that matter?

"I didn't see anything but water," Brooke told him.

"And you, Gus?"

He had me stumped this time. I couldn't figure out where he was going with this. "Um… I hit my head on the way down, so I didn't see a whole lot." That's when I remembered the pointy-headed pokémon and the blond guy with the cape. And the giant pokémon, too. "There was some guy down there. He had a pokémon, and there was also a tunnel that some giant fish exploded from."

Finally, the elder made eye contact. "What guy? Who was he?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea. I've never seen him before."

"What about the fish? Was it a mermaid?"

"A mermaid?"

The elder looked crazed. "A mermaid! Did it look half human and half fish?"

I tried to think about it, but it was hard to get a really good look with my face buried in the rocks. "When it burst out of the cave, I thought it was going to hit me. I covered my head. I only briefly caught a glimpse of the tail before it submerged. It was definitely a scaly, blue fish tail."

"What's going on?" Brooke asked. "What's the big deal with that pokémon?"

The elder took a step away from us. "That mermaid was Clendine, the guardian spirit of the village. A long time ago, she was sealed inside a special pokéball underneath the waterfall. Craig saw her out at sea while he was fishing, and your story corroborates his claim that it was the legendary mermaid pokémon. Now that she's been released, the balance of nature is shifting uncontrollably."

"Is that why the bees came after us like that?" I assumed.

He took another step back. "Yes." He dropped his head and closed his eyes. "I'm afraid without Clendine sealed in the Undine Temple, the pokémon in this area will go wild. They may even attack people without provocation. The village should provide safe refuge for the most part, but the outside areas will offer no protection." He approached the fireplace again and took a box from the mantle overhead. He set it gently on the coffee table in front of Brooke and me and opened the lid. Inside were three pokéballs.

"What's this?" Brooke asked.

Without making eye contact, the elder said, "These are pokémon I bred just a short time ago. They are young and inexperienced, but they are strong and will grow even stronger through training."

"Cool," I uttered. "You're giving these to us?"

"Yes. I could not bear sending you away from the village without protection."

Suddenly my mind went blank and erased the last moment of conversation. "What was the reason? It almost sounded like you said you were sending us outside the village."

"I am."

"Out there with the shifting nature and the wild pokémon and the missing Clementine?"

Another step back. Now I understood it: He was distancing himself from us. That's why the scarf. He was letting us know that this decision came as Village Elder—not as the man who raised us these years.

"We're being exiled?" Brooke asked. Her face was flushed and her lower lip quivered. That was the first time I ever saw her on the verge of tears. Now she and I shared the elder's fear; we were going to be on our own for a while. "I don't understand."

"Clendine was released," the elder repeated. "The people need to know that someone is going to be punished. You wanted my attention, Gus? Well, you got it."

"But it wasn't me," I pointed out. "It was the guy with the cape and the armor and the foxy pokémon."

The elder shrugged, and now he sounded angry. "Where is this guy? Who is this guy? Who else can I put the blame on? You were there! You were in a restricted area, knowingly breaking the rules and performing dangerous stunts for maybe the ten-thousandth time. Craig saw you and already spread word through the village." I understood his emotion right then. It was another way of distancing himself. If he had a reason to be mad at me, he could forget for the moment that he was about to banish me from ever coming home again. "Without proof of another person, you are the one I have to assume wandered into the temple and released Clendine. My hands are tied in this matter."

"But what about me?" Brooke cried. "I wasn't there. I wasn't under the waterfall, I wasn't in the temple, and I didn't see Clendine. Why am I being exiled with him?"

"You went there together. Craig saw you both emerge from the waterfall. The villagers are a superstitious bunch. You came into contact with Clendine. Whether you were there or not, the villagers fear you were cursed by her and that wild pokémon will target you both as long as you stay here. The combee attack didn't help your case." Fair point. They did seem to target us out of nowhere. "That's why I want you to take one of these pokémon. They will keep you safe."

"You believe it, too, don't you?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but the way the elder looked back into my eyes with childlike shyness told me I was right. "You think we're cursed by the mermaid." I didn't care about the pokémon being offered to me right then. I fixated on the stupidity of this old man favoring a superstition over my life.

"Look, Gus. It doesn't matter what I think. There are rules in the village and you continually ignore them. This time, pal, you stepped too far." He folded his arms across his chest. "I don't want to do this, but I have to. The villagers will never be able to rest as long as you are still here. Now take one of my pokémon and go pack. I expect you gone by sundown."

This was it. I'd finally gone too far. The only option the elder had left was to kick me out. No amount of pleading and crying would change his mind. Brooke tried. I just accepted it. The elder was always perfectly strict with me. He never negotiated a punishment. His decision was always fair, and it was always final.

I asked for it.

The three pokéballs seemed like the last connection I would have with the elder. He briefly explained to me what the images on top of each meant.

"Ovisepal is a grass-type, lamb pokémon. Simbder is a fire-type, feline pokémon. Canisouse is a water-type, canine pokémon. All three have their strengths that will aid you and their weaknesses to overcome. If you treat them well and train them right, any can be your best friend for life."

It didn't really make a difference to me because I didn't know much about any of them. I shuffled the three pokéballs around the table and then lifted one at random.