CHAPTER TWELVE

"Just a little further. I know it." Celia couldn't help but roll her eyes. After their close call off the coast of Katarin Island, Jack had insisted that they fly inland. They had hidden for a couple of nights in an abandoned farmhouse, and then once they had rested for long enough they had made for the forest. Jack thought that they should use it for cover while they were traveling. It was slower, he rationalized, but at least it would keep them out of sight for a while, and therefore out of trouble. And to an extent, he had been right. Certainly, in the day or so that they had been traveling through the vast woods, they hadn't drawn the attention of any Dominion forces.

Of course, when one was as hopelessly lost as they were, it was difficult to draw the attention of anything.

"Jack, we could take off right now and leave this forest and any pursuers behind in no time. There's no way they could catch us, and Appa can outfly any messages they might send," Celia pointed out. Jack shook his head stubbornly.

"Why draw attention to ourselves?" he asked. "Why risk it when we can avoid it by living with a small inconvenience for a little while?" He turned to Brishen. "Your people were wanderers," he said. "Surely you don't mind walking for a while?" Brishen shook his head.

"Not at all," he said. "Anything to let Appa rest for a while." He patted the sky bison's giant flank lovingly. Easy for him to say, Celia thought. He was an aeromancer, of course he'd be light on his feet. The fact that he had a staff didn't really help his case in her eyes, either. She wasn't used to walking so much. Their home island had been small; almost everything they needed had been within an arm's reach. The things that had been further away were always reachable by boat. But here, Celia found herself in the very unfamiliar environment of a place where the most readily available source of water was what was sloshing about in the skin pouch on her belt.

Jack, for some reason, had seemed to adjust to things rather well. In the earliest part of their journey, he had been the most reluctant, and trusting Brishen hadn't come readily until the young Scion had proved himself in Jack's eyes during the battle of Katarin Island. The self-proclaimed warrior had never gone on a long trek in his life, and yet she watched as he looked at random leaves and bits of dirt as though he were some great woodsman who knew how to interpret the signs that nature left him. It was almost like seeing a child at play, Celia thought, to herself, on a newer, larger beach than the one that they were used to.

Brishen, on the other hand, seemed the most at ease as she had seen him since she had met him. At their meals, he was talkative and cheerful, but in one of these rare quiet moments, she realized that he was a lot more laid-back and introspective than he usually let on. He ambled across the forest floor slowly, as though his eyes were drinking in his surroundings. Every so often, he would reach out and touch the trunk of one of the enormous trees, and it was like seeing a blind man run his fingers across it, as though Brishen wanted his fingertips to saturate themselves in this sensation of pure, uncorrupted, unadulterated nature. With a low screech, something dove out of the forest canopy. Celia didn't have to look up to know that it was Momo, doubtlessly with some new fruit to gnaw on. In many ways, he was the most curious member of their little group of wanderers. Perhaps it was because of his origins in the Shrine of Zephyr, but he had formed a strong bond with Brishen almost instantly, as though the two shared some deeper connection than just pet and master. Brishen craned his head up to see what Momo was doing, and then stopped for a moment as the winged lemur neared. With his usual grace, Momo landed on Brishen's shoulder, happily gnawing on a half-formed apple that looked as though it had been picked from its place far too early. Momo didn't seem to care.

Everything seemed so idyllic from down here, even if Celia's feet were as sore as they'd ever been. And isn't that a sad thing, Celia thought to herself, when I can't trust a moment of peace anymore, because now I think it's too good to be true. She thought back. They had been traveling for a few weeks now, and in that time they had been accosted by the crown prince of the Dominion of Fire twice, arrested (admittedly, as a joke) by the ruler of the city of Osterlitz, and ambushed by the Katarin Island warriors. They had had scarcely a moment to relax the entire journey. Celia had never wanted to get used to being in constant trouble, but just as Jack had adjusted quickly to the life of a transient, so too had she adjusted to the life of a fugitive in her own way. She had thoughts of home to keep her at ease, and the vague promise she had made herself that when this whole business was over, she'd go back to how things were without a problem.

"Brishen," Jack said, by way of reminder. Brishen nodded, and swept his staff across the trail. Wind blew dirt about, filling in Appa's footprints and obscuring their trail. It wasn't completely pristine, but they had decided that a completely unmarked road would look all the more suspicious. And besides, Jack had figured, forcing Brishen to thoroughly erase every single footprint, large and deep as they were, would take up valuable time they could be spending running from the Dominion. But while Jack may have hit on one good idea with walking through the forest, only half-erasing their trail was a plan that lacked the same virtues of practicality, and to a certain extent, wisdom. For that very reason, Jack's ill-conceived plan was about to catch up with them.

The arrow struck the ground in front of them and stuck there, quivering. Celia was about to tell off Jack for firing his arrows when she realized that there was no way Jack could have fired an arrow from where he was standing and gotten it to stick in the ground facing them. Instinctively, as a warrior's hand might drop to his sword, hers dropped to her belt flask, and she uncapped it with a flick of her thumb. A second arrow came careening for them, and with a whipping motion of her arm the water inside her large flask came snaking out and entrapped the missile in a floating bubble of water. She let the arrow fall harmlessly to the ground.

"Run!" Brishen yelled. Immediately, Appa broke out into a lumbering trot, while Momo immediately took to the air rather than try and balance on the Scion's shoulder while he was running. Celia started running, and again she noticed that despite the fear in her mind and heart, she was oddly used to this situation now. Running for her life had become normal in her travels with Brishen. She risked a look up to see figures slowly making their way across the upper branches. One of their number was firing off arrows, while the others bounded ahead. Celia could all ready tell that they were going to head them off, but before she could yell out a warning to Jack or Brishen, four figures dropped from the canopy above and landed on the path in front of them, barring their path.

At the back of the group was a boy, and it was impossible for Celia to tell his age. From his face, he looked about fifteen, but from his build he could have been a full-grown man. Despite his great size, he moved with a surprising nimbleness. On his broad shoulders he carried a much smaller boy, this one no older than ten. Yet, there was a strange crazy determination in the child's eyes, an emotion that did not belong, and yet was. A young girl with very short-cropped hair, almost boyish, brandished a pair of shortswords at them. She had a distinct rodent-like air to her, her eyes constantly flickering this way and that. The fourth was…well, the truth was he was the handsomest boy Celia had ever seen. He had long, flowing brown hair that went past his shoulders, and despite his peasants' garb he had very noble and patrician features. That face, however, was contorted in a glare as he took a strange stance, one that Celia supposed was the ready stance of geomancy. A glint up in the trees revealed to Celia a fifth person, a gaunt boy, clad in dark green and brown livery, with a longbow pointed menacingly at them.

"Take them," the handsome geomancer said. He punched the air, and a wave of earth rose up beneath his blow, rolling along the ground and knocking Brishen and Jack down. Appa, with his six legs, easily kept his balance, while Celia stayed up by clinging to the trunk of a nearby tree. The girl, the giant, and his young companion leapt into the fray, slowly moving to surround them. Jack parried the girl's twin blades with his dirk, but even the warrior was having trouble bringing himself to fight a young girl with all his might. Brishen, his usual peaceful self, was doing a fine job of keeping the large boy at bay, spinning him around with an array of wind blasts. He did not, however, seem to be able to knock his foe down. The geomancer knelt quickly and punched at the ground, and a rock launched itself straight at Celia.

Celia reacted quickly, and lashed out with her water. The rock, however, was a much heavier and harder target than she was used to, and she had to strain far harder to alter its course than she ever did with a person. It was apparent that she was not as good a hydromancer as this boy was a geomancer, and that didn't bode well. The geomancer, however, seemed to have stopped attacking for a moment, surprise on his face. She was about to make her attack on him to take advantage of that moment of weakness, when she heard Brishen yell, "Celia! Look out!" She turned and saw the arrow flashing straight for her, and too late, she had all ready committed her water to its attack on the geomancer. But then, the water snaked itself around and lashed at the arrow with such force that it cut the thing in two. Celia was confused. That hadn't been her. She looked over and saw that Brishen had an arm outstretched, a look of surprise and awe on his face. Wait, Celia thought. Did he just--?

Suddenly, the geomancer held up his hands. "Stop!" he called out, and immediately the fighting ceased.

"What are you doing, Otto?" the girl asked. "Richter said--"

"Richter said that we were looking for a weapon of the Dominion," Otto cut across her. "These three are not of the Dominion, and neither is their beast. This girl," he said, pointing to Celia, "is a hydromancer, the last thing the Dominion would have guarding some great weapon." The other three assailants started to relax. Otto straightened up and looked at the waylaid trio. "Who are you?" he asked, and his tone was not demanding. "What are you doing in our forest?"

Celia breathed a sigh of relief and stepped forward. "My name is Celia," she said, "and that there is my brother, Jack, and our friend, Brishen." She indicated each of them in turn as she spoke. "We're refugees from the Dominion of Fire. My brother and I are of the Water Tribe, and Brishen—" she faltered. She wasn't sure if it was her place to be bandying about his name. Fortunately, Brishen finished the sentence for her.

"I'm the Scion," he declared. The would-be highwaymen exchanged looks, as though not quite sure they could believe it.

"He's an aeromancer," said the large boy in a surprisingly quiet voice. "He was using it when we was fighting, he was." Celia breathed her first sigh of relief since the entire encounter had happened. Suddenly, their attackers didn't seem like fearsome opponents; they were kids, she realized, almost like a youth gang. Despite their obviously hardened nature, even the mention of the Scion was enough to cow them.

"What are you doing?" The voice behind them made Celia, Jack, and Brishen turn, while the four attackers and even the archer in the tree immediately came to attention, of sorts. Striding up the path towards them, a knife in each hand, was another boy, who looked to be as old as the geomancer. Despite the severe look on his face, Celia had to revise what she had thought earlier. He was the handsomest boy she had ever seen. His dark hair was short and unkempt, and he had traces of stubble on his chin, giving him a rogueish sort of charm. Every space he could fit on his body was festooned with knives, it seemed, and he had a stalk of grass clenched between his teeth. He stopped and pointed a knife at them. "Why aren't you taking them down like I ordered you to?"

"They're not Dominion, Richter."

"What?" the boy called Richter asked, surprised. Almost instantly, he recovered. "Don't be stupid! Of course they are! Look at them, they're obviously foreigners!" The geomancer started approaching Richter, shaking his head.

"They're foreign, all right," he said, walking past Appa and stopping almost as though he were interposing himself between the incensed Richter and the three weary travelers. "That boy and that girl," he said, gesturing to Celia and Jack, "are from the Water Tribe, and the third boy has the most airtight excuse of them all." Richter raised his eyebrow skeptically.

"What, is he the Scion or something?"

That night, the Freedom Fighters, as Celia learned they were called, held a celebratory feast in the treetops. Once all the misunderstandings had been sorted out, the group had welcomed them to their arboreal hideout. To Celia, it was truly remarkable, what they had been able to do. There was an elaborate series of bridges, platforms, and huts that all seemed to be just below the sky's limit, and the leader of the group, Richter, proudly claimed that he and his fighters had constructed the entire thing themselves. She looked as Jack and the giant boy, who she now knew was called Pipsqueak, went head-to-head in a berry-eating contest, while Pipsqueak's young companion, the Duke, hurriedly brought forth plate after plate. The handsome geomancer, Otto, was talking with the sword-wielding girl, Smellerbee, about something or other. Countless other Freedom Fighters milled about, happily eating and playing in the treetops. Celia stood off to the side, leaning against a tree and just taking all of it in. She heard footsteps behind her, as well as the telltale sound of a staff scraping against wood. It was Brishen.

"Hello, Brishen," Celia said. "I was wondering where you were."

"Feeding Appa for the night," the aeromancer said, jerking his thumb down towards the ground. The sky bison had no way of fitting on any of the Freedom Fighters' platforms, and so had to make do with the forest floor for the night. "I left Momo down there to keep him company." He paused, as though looking for something to say. "Great party, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Celia said. She looked at Brishen, and some of the weariness in his face seemed to have been washed off by the soft flickering firelight. And yet, here before her stood the legendary mancer to end all mancers, the best there was. It was strange, how the reality of his identity had never hit her until that afternoon, when she had seen him use hydromancy. It was a strange, almost alien idea, to divide one's loyalty between elements. Water had been her mainstay since birth, and nothing would make her stray from it.

"Listen, Celia, about this afternoon," Brishen began a little awkwardly. It was as though he was reading her thoughts. "I don't know what happened. It felt like instinct, it really did. I'm sorry." Celia turned to him.

"What're you apologizing for?" she asked him, a little confused.

"I reached out and took your water from you," Brishen said. "For as dedicated a hydromancer as you, that must be like borrowing your soul." Once again, Celia was surprised by Brishen. He showed a surprising amount of insight into how she felt about her hydromancy. It occurred to her that it was that kind of insight that would make him such a good Scion. She shook her head.

"I should be thanking you," Celia said. "You saved my life back there. If anything, I should be congratulating you. Maybe I can teach you some things about hydromancy before we both get to the north pole," she offered. Brishen's face brightened a little bit, hard as it was to see in the darkness.

"I'd like that," Brishen said sincerely. The two watched the fire crackling while the celebrating Freedom Fighters and Jack continued to carry out the festivities.

"You know, Brishen," a suave voice said, cutting into their shared reverie, "Otto over there is quite the geomancer." Both of them turned around to see Richter walking towards them casually, his hands thrust into his pockets. "Why don't you go and talk to him for a while? I'm sure that as the Scion, you'll have a lot of questions about geomancy." He had all ready sidled over next to Celia. Brishen looked for a moment as though he were going to argue, or at least decline, but for some reason he just shook his head, and Celia thought she saw a flicker of annoyance pass over his face. He left to go and approach Otto, and now it was just Celia and Richter together.

"So," he asked, "what do you think of our hideout?" There was something so confident and strong in that voice of his, and everything about the way he carried himself cried out charisma. Celia was, to say the least, impressed.

"It's like nothing else I've ever seen," Celia said earnestly. Richter grinned a Cheshire sort of grin, and the grass stalk in his teeth stood up straighter.

"What do you say we go for a walk?"