The smell of grass, mud and dusty rags were the first things I sensed when I woke up. I remember wondering if I was out in a field, just when it slowly began flooding back to me. I was still at that camp. And based on the softness of the ground I was lying on, I thought I had been put on a bed, and was inside somewhere. I heard someone breathing next to me. Who was with me? Whoever it was, I heard someone dragging himself to where I was lying.
"Hey..." he whispered, but not to me, "Miss Stackhouse?"
I heard her respond, moaning. So she was with me? Doing what?
"I... I um..." she began to respond, but couldn't open a sentence.
"You tried to probe his mind, and fell asleep on it." the other person (whose voice I then recognized to belong to Lawrence) said.
"Er... yeah, must be it." the woman (Sookie, judging from the accent) replied, "He was hard to keep track of."
"How hard?"
"I thought hearing Doctor Thea's thoughts were tiring, because she keeps thinking of too many things at once. But our newcomer..."
"What's wrong?"
"It's like watching TV and they keep showing reruns." she explained, "He keeps replaying the same things again and again."
"Must have something to do with his shock." Lawrence said, "What happened?"
"He was taken." she explained, "Him and all his classmates."
"Like many of us were." Lawrence replied.
"And he was about to be tested, but some people saved him."
"They did?" Lawrence sounded pleased to hear that, "Good! That must mean that people are fighting back."
"Not really." she said, "They're all dead. They died saving him."
Lawrence said nothing, but I can picture the look that must have appeared on his face.
"That's what he keeps rerunning in his head." Sookie added, "Not just his friends dying, but one of his friends turning against him, forcing him to kill another friend. It's all he keeps thinking about. Again and again."
After a long pause, Lawrence took a deep breath: "Anything else? Who these people were? How he escaped?"
Sookie didn't say anything, so Lawrence asked more questions: "Where he's from? What that machine is he held on to? What he knows about the enemy?"
"He actually knows less than us." Sookie answered.
In a way, that was only good news. If my thoughts were this repetitive, then I wouldn't be able to tip her off the way I had tipped off some of the soldiers back at the base. I could think of whatever I wanted, and she'd be too distracted by my other thoughts.
"So chances are that he doesn't even know what that device is?" Lawrence asked.
"I dunno." Sookie replied, "But that machine isn't what bothers me."
"Then what is?"
"That knife he had." she answered, "He seems to hold it as dearly as I would a cross."
Lawrence scoffed: "Wonder how ol' Jigsaw would feel about that."
"Jigsaw?" the name meant as much to Sookie as it did to me.
"He's... a kind of mentor." he sounded as if he made that up there and then, "In any case, both are locked in a safe somewhere, so they won't harm anyone."
A safe? So not only have I lost my only way out, but the one thing I had to remember... her... it was kept away from me, and I didn't know where.
"Are you awake?" Sookie asked... me!
Fear ran through my entire body. The one time I stopped thinking about what happened, and it had to be a moment like this.
"Good." Lawrence said, "Now we can ask him directly."
I didn't want to open my eyes, but I knew I had no choice. I opened them, and saw Lawrence leaning over me, laying his cane next to me, and Sookie behind him watching.
"So Miss Stackhouse just told me you've experienced quite a trauma before you got here."
Wherever "here" may be. Nobody told me that yet. If anything, the more they bantered about, the more I feared I that I wouldn't get my things back.
"Why do you keep thinking about those things you held?" Sookie asked, "Why are they so important?"
I tried holding on to thinking about them, so Sookie wouldn't hear the plan I had in mind. She didn't see how I thought about grabbing the cane and knocking Lawrence out. Which I did, much to her horror.
As I stood there, ready to swing the cane at her, she tried to talk me into putting it down: "Stay calm, we're not gonna hurt you."
I was reminded of a woman in a red dress. She made it clear to me that she wanted to offer me help, and yet she would act like a wild animal if I tried to escape. Somehow, someone like Sookie, who not only said she wanted to help, but was also capable of hearing my thoughts (like the people at that base could), it gave me every reason to distrust everything she said. I raised the cane to hit her, but she blocked it with both of her hands. What she didn't realize was that by using both of her hands on the cane, she had nothing to defend herself with when I made a fist with my hand and punched her face.
"What's going on in there?" I heard Thea ask from outside.
I had to do some quick thinking. I dropped the cane, and ran to the other side of this tent.
Since this tent was made up of rags, it was easy for me to crawl my way out. Once outside, I ran into what looked like a cheetah. It looked at me, questioningly. He would probably want to know what was happening, but I couldn't answer him. And last thing I wanted, was to anger an animal that can run faster than a car. I ran as fast as I could, not looking back, not even wondering if that cheetah had decided to follow me or not. But even so, the entire camp was a maze. I could run past one tent, and find myself an entire new field of tents. And of course, one person running through camp, in a panic as I was, people were bound to notice. All sorts of people were staring at me. All of them either with questions in their mind, or with a sort of contempt, because my running somehow disturbed them. Having all their eyes on me, I couldn't focus. I didn't know what to do. My running started to slow down, until I completely stopped.
"There you are!" someone called at me.
I turned to look at who was talking, and I recognized him almost immediately. He was that short man who was playing cards with three others of his own size.
"I was wondering where you've been." that man said to me, as if he knew me.
"You know this boy?" one of the people (a bear, of all things) asked.
"Of course I do." the short man said, "I sent him on an errand, and told him to report back as fast as possible. But you could not find me anywhere, eh?"
I didn't know who this man was or why he was helping me. Either way, at the time I thought it best to play along, so I nodded.
"See? All is well." he said.
Many of them nodded, others shrugged, the rest mumbled things to one another. But whatever they were doing, it led them to turn away from us, and paid no attention to us any further.
"Come along, dear boy." the man said, "We have much to discuss."
You mean YOU have much to discuss, as I still didn't have the will to speak.
Once we were out of earshot, the little man pulled my arm, forcing me down.
"Subtlety is not your strong point, that much I witnessed." he whispered.
I looked at him, questioningly.
"Do you have any idea where you are?" he asked, and continued after I shook my head, "You're in Narnia."
The name still didn't ring a bell to me, so he added: "It's supposed to be a utopia, guarded by the "great" Aslan."
That was the third time someone said that name, but the first time it was said with such a hateful tone.
"These people aren't used to strangers." the man said, "If any one of them behaves even a little odd, they won't hesitate to tell their guardian."
After all that I had seen, what does "odd" mean to these people?
"Now follow me." he said.
