Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone! Hey, if you have time, I suggest looking up the animated short about St. Patrick from "The Sumo of the Opera". It's a cute way of retelling the story.
Anyway, welcome to this week's chapter!
Chapter 6
Rafael sat on the overturned wheelbarrow and breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the smell of tilled earth. Although his mother and sisters worked as secretaries and errand-runners in the Echelon building, Raf's father and elder brothers tended the fields in the south part of town: the agricultural quarter.
Technically, he and Pilar were too young to have full jobs, like the adults. Pilar sometimes tagged along to the Echelon building to help clean offices - that was how she'd come across the gauntlet she'd smuggled to her little brother - but today she sat next to Raf on the barrow, tossing pebbles at crows.
"It's not fair!" she whined, beaning an unfortunate corvid on the head with a fair-sized rock.
"What's not fair? That you have to sit out here with us instead of in the Echelon building?" Raf mumbled, halfheartedly throwing a stone. He didn't really want to hurt the birds. They were just trying to eat, he reasoned. Pilar elbowed him sharply.
"No, it's not fair that Tulle shut down the art hall just because she didn't like someone's drawing! If she didn't want cartoons made of her, she shoulda stayed out of politics. And besides, she's the supervisor of the magistrates, not the crafters' guild! She has no right to open or close the art hall."
With an aggravated huff, the fourteen year old lobbed her pebble with a bit more force than necessary. It bounced off the handle of the plow with a clack.
"Hey hey! Cuidado, mihija, me veo como un pájaro a usted?" the man behind it shouted, playfully shaking his fist at his youngest children.
Pilar laughed. "Sorry, Papa!"
Raf cupped his hands around his mouth, "Yeah, sorry she missed! She was aiming for your head!"
Pilar squeaked in outrage and pushed her cackling little brother off the wheelbarrow and into a pile of sacks of seed. Well, at least some things never changed.
By the time the light began to dim and the foraging parties returned from the field outside the fence again, the Esquivels had finished planting. Miguel ran to fetch their scarecrow, a truly unpleasant thing that made Raf's skin crawl. It bore an unfortunate resemblance to Slender Man, and that alone was enough to make the birds avoid it.
Miguel set it in the middle of the field, then turned to his father and siblings. "¡Vamos!" he called, "It'll be dark soon!"
At a quick, but not rushed, pace, they made their way to a wide house not too far away. Mama and Alicia and Marcela were already home, as everyone but field hands got off of work early on full-moon-nights. It was a sparsely furnished place, and the children slept in hammocks which were kept in the closet during the day, but Raf didn't mind. Marcela ruffled his hair as he entered and he batted her hands away with a groan.
He wasn't sure how he'd ended up with an extra brother and sister in the fouling of the timestream, but at least Mama had more hands to help her.
Dinner was simple: rice and vegetables, but everything they ate they'd grown themselves. "The magistrates can't touch this lot with their stupid ration cards," Beto boasted, waving a piece of celery like a conductor's baton.
His mother snatched the vegetable from him with a disapproving look. "Don't play with your food, mihijo."
She dropped the celery on Juan's plate. "Tomorrow, take the surplus down to the shop and man the counters."
On weekends, the Esquivels sold produce in a little stand in the northern district. It was suspected (but never said aloud) that they secretly gave food to those whose ration cards had been filled with demerits by Tulle. Talk of farming and judicial issues peppered the conversation until the gongs rang for curfew.
Mr. Esquivel stood quietly and dimmed the lamp over the table. Raf sighed. He knew the nightly routine by now, but that didn't mean he was comfortable with it. He pushed back his chair and slowly followed his family to a back room.
A wooden chest was taken from beneath his parents' bed and from it, they took an Autobot insignia. Mrs. Esquivel passed it from person to person, with each voicing a hope or wish. "Perhaps we'll have meet this winter if the Draug are kind," she said.
"Perhaps Ar will slay Kerythcor once and for all, and we won't have to worry about Raptor packs anymore," Marcela sighed.
Raf cringed as his turn neared. It was almost like they were praying to the "Raa Anta", and even though Pilar had told him it was "just for luck", he could not bring himself to copy them.
As he had done the previous nights, he hurriedly passed the carving to his brother and ignored the startled stares.
At last, the wooden chest was put away, and all the siblings climbed into their hammocks. Raf waited with eyes shut, feigning sleep, until all lights were out. Then, furtively, he listened for the deep breaths that meant his siblings slept, and rolled out of the hammock.
Bare feet hit the woven rug with hardly a sound as the boy tucked himself into a stealthy crouch. When no one moved, he let out the breath he'd been holding and grabbed the tattered mocassins near the door. One last glance over his shoulder, one last-minute decision to take his brother's hunting knife from its place on the mantel, and he was off into the night.
It was Rafael's first time out at night in the five days he'd been in the Other Jasper, as he called it. Distantly, he could see lights bobbing about on the walls as the doubled guard watched for Raptor packs or Raa Anta.
'Now if I was in charge of this place,' the little one said to himself, 'I'd have a patrol or two going about to make sure no one was on the streets past curfew. We'll just have to watch for that, won't we?'
The Southern Quarter was silent, save for the bark of a stray dog, proclaiming his rule over the wide walkways as Raf made his way from shadow to shadow. Twelve years of being the youngest and one year fighting Decepticons had taught him how to move unseen. Ratchet had more than once bemoaned his sneakiness as he sometimes used it to startle the old medic.
Raf paused behind a barrel and held his breath as the slow, heavy tread of a night watchman grew nearer. It was impossible to tell which way he was coming from, given that the empty streets were serving to amplify and confuse the sound. Raf scowled and hoisted himself up onto the barrel, using it as a step-stool to scramble up the side of the nearest house. He lay on his stomach on an outer support beam, covered in thatch, and waited. From beneath the itchy, stale straw, he saw the faint glow of a battery-powered lantern as two soldiers rounded the corner.
"This street's clear," a bored young woman sighed, "Just like the others. Come on! Does Tulle really think anyone would actually be stupid enough to go outside when the shields are down?" She was quickly shushed by her companion and hurried along the road.
"That's Magistrate Tulle. And you know she gets twitchier every full moon!"
The guards turned at the end of the street, voices growing faint. "Right, right. Hey, think we'll get to see the Raa Anta when they come?"
"Doubt it. Nobody sees an Anta when it doesn't want to be seen."
Eventually, footsteps and voices faded away entirely, and Raf rolled down off the beam and hopped off the barrel. "That was close!" he muttered.
On foot, it would take him twenty minutes to reach their normal meeting place from where he was. Once in the less agricultural part of Jasper, there would be more places to hide.
A quick look at his gauntlet told him that Miko was on the move as well, and that Jack hadn't left yet. Keeping to the shadows, Rafael crept through the center of town and ducked under a bench. Unsurprisingly, the highest concentration of patrols were on the walltops, watching for any signs of Raptor Packs.
The boy crawled on his stomach from bench to bench, avoiding the spotlights being cast about. His foot connected with the edge of a cobblestone with a soft clatter, twisting his ankle slightly.
"Who's there?!" A man with a flashlight emerged from an alley and Raf froze.
"Ah, Fallen blast it!" he hissed under his breath, trying to ignore the twinge of pain.
Grimly, he pressed his lips together and waited. The soldier, wearing an insignia that Raf would later learn belonged to Tulle's personal guard, walked slowly across the square, turning his lamp this way and that.
"Where are you?" Raf heard him mutter under his breath.
'Nope. Nope! You didn't hear anything! Go away, go away, go away!' The child chanted silently, willing the man to turn around.
Suddenly, a low, warbling whistle broke the night. "Movement in the South fields!" Sentry Fowler bellowed, "Raptor Pack incoming!"
The guard abandoned his search and sprinted for the wall stairs. "How many, Fowler?"
"Just scouts for now, but they know the shield is down."
As soon as the guard had reached the walltop, Raf scrambled from his hiding place and limped in the opposite direction, towards the ruins of the park.
He flinched when he heard another sentry call out, "Who's that down there? Stop!" but he kept moving.
There were no shadows or alleys to hide in now that he had reached the edge of the center of town. He heard the pounding of feet behind him, yet he pressed on. A rough hand fell on his shoulder.
"What're you doing out after curfew?" the woman demanded.
When Raf refused to answer her, she grabbed him by the collar and lifted him bodily from the ground.
"You're in a heap of trouble already junior, don't add 'resisting arrest' to 'breaking curfew'." The glow of the watchwoman's lantern bathed the boy's face in a sickly light and he turned his head to shield his eyes.
The grip on his shirtfront tightened and the lantern fell away as Raf's scars caught the light.
"By Ar," the guard gasped, "You're a Speaker!" She turned to shout up to her superiors.
Crack! Her head snapped to the side and she collapsed, dropping Rafael to the ground. Out of the darkness, a figure wielding a long staff emerged.
"On your feet, ats'ka," Miko reached down for Raf. "Let's go, before the Raptors reach the fence."
Hoisting the boy up, Miko shouldered her staff and took off at a run, towing her friend behind her.