Chapter 12 (Rachel)
Flying is great. And I'm not talking about aeroplane type flying either. Being a bird is like being released from prison. Released from the ground. Defying gravity is so great. But we had a job to do and flying was not going to be my main order of business today.
We must have looked like an odd assortment. A bald eagle (me), a peregrine falcon (Jake), two ospreys (Cassie and Marco), a eurasian kestrel (Lee), a red tail hawk (Tobias) and a northern harrier (Ax). We were flying about half a mile apart in case a rouge bird watcher was out this early. Always pays to be cautious of these things.
Are we there yet? Marco. How long did it take you to guess? My wings are tired.
Ax? The reason Jake was asking Ax, is that Ax has an in built watch. It's Ax's job to keep track of time.
About twenty of your minutes Prince Jake.
Stop calling me prince. I'm not sure why he bothers to tell Ax that anymore. On the Andalite home planet, high-ranking warriors are called 'princes'. Ax has taken Jake has his prince. I'm still trying to decide whether that is a good thing.
Hey Ax, called Marco. They're your minutes too. We're all on good old earth together here. Another on going joke. Marco drives me nuts sometimes.
We're almost there, Tobias assured us.
But didn't he say fifteen minutes? Lee still gets a bit nervous when we go on long range missions.
How sure could he have been? asked Tobias. And we aren't going anywhere near the sixty miles an hour I would imagine the Controllers were driving at. Tobias made sure he spoke in a way that wouldn't hurt Lee's feelings too much.
For about five minutes we all made small talk. Trying to pass the time. Eventually we came onto a main road. Here it is, announced Tobias triumphantly. There's the woods he was talking about.
How slow was he going? I asked. It wouldn't have taken me half an hour to get through those trees.
It would have been dark. He was trying to get away from someone. He would not have been concentrating on going in a straight line. I took Ax's point on board.
So, what exactly are we looking for?
Something that might tell us where Joseph is, muttered Jake.
So… What exactly are we looking for?
He hasn't a clue, piped up Marco.
Are we headed down? I asked.
Yeah, I suppose we are. I could tell that Jake had no idea what we were going to do once we got down there, but we all landed a few feet after each other and demorphed.
My human eyes seemed remarkably dull after the sharpness of the eagle's eyes. But my poor human vision was still good enough to spot the perfectly round scorch mark in a nearby tree. I stared at it for a moment, wide eyed. Then I shouted for everyone else.
Cassie traced the mark in the tree with a finger. Jake's brow was furrowed in thought. Lee was watching Cassie. Ax, forgetting about his human expression, didn't really look like he was thinking at all. Tobias, not being capable of any expression anyway just looked the same as he always did, angry and fierce. Marco looked puzzled. A thought flicked across my mind. I wonder if he's feeling sorry for Joseph or if he thinks Cassie's mourning the poor tree. Because Cassie, being Cassie, probably would feel the tree had been hurt by the Dracon blast. That's what it was. Someone or something had been in the range of a Dracon blast. I just hoped they'd managed to get out of the way fast enough.
"What now? We know someone's been shot at."
"I guess we go for a walk in the woods," said Jake. Just by looking at his face I could tell he was definitely worried. He'd barely met this guy, but he was concerned for his safety. That suited me just fine. I was worried too.
We decided not to morph. Joe wouldn't have been in a morph, and the best way to catch someone was to think like them. But nothing turned up. We were about to go back to the beginning and try going wolf to see if we could find any smells. But Tobias had spotted something in the undergrowth.
Rachel? What's that down by your foot?
I bent down and picked it up. It could have been anything, a gum wrapper maybe. But then, your average gum wrappers don't have directions written on them. Or street names and house numbers.
I handed it to Jake. "I'm guessing," he said, "That we want to be going here."
"Whatever gave you that idea?" Marco asked in mock surprise. "I thought we wanted to be going the other way." He studied the paper over Jake's shoulder and then pointed at it thoughtfully. "Mind you, I hear they do great burgers in one of the places down there. Yeah, we definitely want to be going there."
"Ha, ha, ha," said Jake flatly.
"Was that an attempt at humour?" Ax looked puzzled.
"A pretty lame attempt, but yeah. An attempt."
"Tomorrow's Saturday. We can check this out tomorrow." We made plans for Saturday. Not going to the mall or playing video games. No, we had to save an alien's son on Saturdays.