Chapter 16 Second Journey

"Sonic Hedgehog," Julayla began saying in even tones as she walked toward the table where Sonic sat, "it's not my place to tell you what you can or can't feel. But, you know that I will not allow that kind of behavior in this hut or anywhere else in Knothole! Is that clear?"
"Yeah," Sonic grumbled, his arms folded in front of him, refusing to even look at Julayla. "So can I get out of here now?"
"You're not getting off that easy, young man." She took a piece of paper and a pencil from an adjoining table and placed them in front of Sonic. "You're going to do some writing."
"What do you want me to write, 'I will not break stupid bowls' one hundred times?" Whatever it was going to be, he knew it would be a stupid waste of time.
"No," she said calmly. "I want you to write down everything that you can remember about your mother." Sonic had been ready for everything but that.
"Say what?"
"You heard me, young man. Start writing."
"Here," he said as he handed her the blank piece of paper with a disingenuous grin, "I'm done, 'cause I can't remember nothing."
"I don't think so," Julayla said as she placed the piece of paper back in front of Sonic. "Start writing."
"But…"
"No buts." She sat down on the bench next to Sonic. "We're both going to stay here until you finish, and I don't care if it takes you all night or a week or the rest of your life. Now start writing."
"But…but I can't!"
"Yes, you can. Now write!"
"No!" Sonic slammed his pencil down on the table.
"I said write!"
"But I…"
"Start writing, Sonic!"
"I… I can't!"
"And why not?"
"Because I…"
"What?" Julayla demanded.
"Because…" Sonic's lip began to quiver and his eyes widened. His voice sounded as if someone had him by the throat."I didn't have…I mean, I never knew… my… she…" Sonic suddenly let out a howl of pain. His well-cultivated cool was gone. He threw his head upon his folded arms and cried. He did not know how long he spent crying out the anger and grief he had carried inside for so long. He only knew that it had gotten darker inside the hut when he opened his eyes. He also realized that his head and arms were in Julayla's lap, and that she was gently stroking his head.
Sonic looked up into her face. It was no longer stern and angry. It was softer now, and tears stood in her eyes as well.
"Sonic?" she asked kindly. The boy was still unable to talk; his chest heaved as he breathed in an erratic rhythm and tears continued to stream down his face. Julayla put her arms around him and held him to her as she slowly rocked her body back and forth. Her embrace was so comforting to Sonic that he started crying all over again.
Eventually Sonic stopped weeping. His breathing steadied. He felt as if someone had reached into his chest and scooped out whatever was inside.
"Sonic?" He again looked up into Julayla's face. "Sonic, I'm sorry for what I did to you, for forcing you to face the pain behind your anger. But everyone here has felt that pain. All of your friends have lost their parents; you lost your parents first, but we all have lost them."
"We?"
"My own mother died in childbirth. Every year, at First Honor, I'd take a bowl of milk and pour it out upon her grave." Sonic sniffed loudly and ran his upper arm across his lip. Julayla did not correct his manners. "It was a long time before I realized that mothers do not give their milk to the dead, but to the living. I then began to show honor to my father, who had been both mother and father to me when I was young."
"Like…like my Uncle Chuck," Sonic sniffled.
"Yes. First Honor isn't just about our mothers; it's about all those in our lives who have cared for us and helped us along the life path thus far. It would be no dishonor to your true mother or to your uncle to show First Honor to Rosie."
"You know?" Julayla smiled.
"I'm afraid I've lived long enough to be able to find out many of the secrets you children think you can keep to yourselves. That's why you must tell Sally when you see her that whatever she's planning, she doesn't have to go through with it. The milk you'll need for First Honor has been set aside in the kitchen."
"But that's for Tails, isn't it?"
"Rosie knew that First Honor was coming, so she made provision to have extra milk on hand. You children won't have to put yourselves in danger. Tell her that."
"Okay." Julayla stroked Sonic's head one more time.
"Go, now. I'll clean up in here."
"But the paper…"
"I think you've learned enough for now." Sonic stood up and began walking toward the door. He stopped and turned.
"How did you know what was ticking me off?"
"Sonic," Julayla said as she shook her head, "it's easier for a red bird to hide in a green tree than it is for you to hide your feelings. I've watched you struggle with the loneliness and anger you've felt every year when First Honor rolls around. And Sonic?"
"Yeah?"
"Whatever was said here, don't repeat it to the others. Let's keep this between you and the 'slave driver'." Sonic smiled.
"That's cool," he said in almost a whisper. He stepped outside and closed the door.
It was now early evening, and a couple stars were visible in the sky. Sonic was more than relieved because of his session with Julayla; he was elated. She had not punished him and they did not have to go through with Sally's plan. What is more, he had not felt this unburdened in a long time, at least not since he first held a power ring in his hands. He ran to the girls' hut and knocked on the door.
"Yo! Sal!" No answer.
"Sally?" He tried the door, and it opened easily. The hut was empty. Next, he ran to Antoine and Rotor's hut. "Hey, Rote!" he called out as he opened the door. Empty.
With a start, Sonic realized that the rest of the kids were gone. They could only be one place: on their way to Robotropolis. He ran back to his hut and began fishing under his bed. He had stashed that day's power ring in his backpack. He needed to catch up with the others, and fast.
Five small figures moved in and out of the shadows at the base of Robotnik's headquarters. They huddled behind the hulk of a wrecked hovercraft.
"Can we go home now?" Tails asked for the tenth time.
"Not yet. We're almost there," Sally answered.
"But my princess, how are you to be knowing where we are?"
"It stands to reason that no matter what he's done to the palace, there still has to be a door leading to the kitchen from the outside. We just have to find it."
"Yeah, before Robotnik finds us!"
"Bunnie, quit worrying. Let's move."
They slipped out of hiding and walked several hundred yards around the base of the giant egg-shaped structure. Sally paused.
"Okay, I think we're almost there."
"I hope so, Sal," Rotor whispered. "I've got a feeling that there'll be a SWATbot patrol coming after us any second now."
"Let's just keep moving." They rounded the building and paused several yards ahead. There was an access door and some kind of loading dock clearly visible.
"That's it!" Sally whispered. "Come on." The children paused in front of the door, studying it closely. Rotor was so intent on examining the electronic locking mechanism, and the others were so intent on watching Rotor, that they failed to notice the figure moving toward them out of the shadows of the loading dock.
"About time you slow-mos got here!" The children just about jumped out of their skin, then turned. There was Sonic, smirking and leaning against the wall.
"Sonic!" Tails started to call out. But he only got past the first syllable before Sally covered his mouth with her hand.
"What're you doing here?" she hissed. "I thought you didn't want any part of this!"
"Sal, we don't have to do this! Julayla said…" But before Sonic could finish speaking, there was the wail of a SWATbot siren. They could not see any units but they sounded close.
"We've got to get out of here!" Sally said.
"Where are we all gonna go?"
"Inside!" Rotor said in a husky whisper. "I've almost cracked the locking mechanism."
"But Rote…"
"Got it!" The door began to slide open and the children dashed inside. It took a few seconds before their eyes adjusted to the dim light but they knew that they were in a kitchen. It was not however, the kitchen that Sally remembered. That room had been one of her favorite rooms in the palace, with its worn flagstone floors and its wooden shelves piled with food and the giant centuries-old stone hearth. It was a room with a personality; an open, friendly personality.
The room they were in now had no personality, or if it did it was a formal, cold personality. Everything in it was metal: the floors, the walls, the ceiling, the tables, the shelves, the oven, the doors, and the sinks. This was indeed a kitchen made in the image of Robotnik.
"I don't like this place," Tails said.
"Me neither, little bro."
"Such a pity that this could not being used for good instead of the evil," Antoine lamented.
"What the hoo-ha do you know about kitchens, Ant?"
"My oncle, he was a great chef. He let me watch once while he made for us the soufflé that was the master's piece!"
"Save it, Ant!" Sonic said testily. "We gotta juice outta here!"
"Not until we get what we came here for," Sally insisted.
"But Sal…"
"SWATbots!" Rotor whispered, his ear up against a door.
"Where?" Sally asked.
"In the hall. I heard them!"
"Everybody scatter! Maybe they'll go away!" With that, the children dove for cover. Sonic grabbed Tails and slid under a table, Rotor squeezed into a pantry alcove, Antoine slipped into a spacious oven and eased the door shut, and Bunnie hid behind a nearby janitor's sink.
As for Sally, she saw that she was standing next to a massive door with a large latch. She opened the latch, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.
The first thing she noticed was the dull, red light that bathed everything in the room, a room that seemed to stretch on forever. Then she noticed the cold, a bitter cold. There had never been a room like this in the palace. It was dark and freezing cold and, Sally had a feeling, evil. In the light, she saw numberless forms that appeared to be suspended from the ceiling all around the room. They appeared to be hanging down from hooks that ran in grooves that laced the ceiling like the strands of a spider's web.
Sally blew on her hands, trying to keep them warm, and saw her breath come out in clouds as if it were winter in the room. She looked intently at the form hanging in front of her. She had never seen anything like it before.
Then she remembered one of Julayla's lessons: when confronted by something unknown, see if it resembles anything known. Looking again at the form, she studied it for a few seconds. She then tried turning the image over in her mind, as if looking at it from a different angle might be the solution. She felt no urge to reach out and touch the object.
It was only by the most vague of associations that she realized that there was something familiar about the skinny part of the object, the part impaled on the hook. She never formed it as a conscious thought but suddenly she saw it with ghastly clarity.
She saw the part as it might have been at one time; covered with fur and ending in a foot, a foot which had been severed at the ankle. With that, the truth fell into place and the full weight of horror closed in on Sally. The object before her was no longer some mysterious abstract. It was, it had once been, a Mobian. Its skin had been stripped from its body, its feet, arms, head were gone, and it had been gutted.
She had solved the mystery of the room and now knew it for what it was. This was a place where dead Mobians were stored, but this was no tomb like the burial vaults of the long-dead kings and queens of Mobius, which lay beneath the lower floors of the palace. This room was too close to the kitchen to be anything but a place to store food.
In her mind she suddenly saw the room teeming with Mobians of all ages, males and females and children strung up with hooks through their ankles, split from chest to groin and their vital organs gone, their throats slit, their life's blood poured out onto the grated gleaming metal floor below as they looked at Sally with open mouths and with dull, pleading eyes.
Speechless with panic, Sally started to back away. Her back met the cold metal wall and she gasped. She was so gripped with fear that she was only dimly aware that she had emptied her bladder onto the floor. Unable to take her eyes off the forms she saw in her mind she groped for the door latch. She found it, opened the door, and stepped outside. She closed it behind her.
"There you are!" Sonic said. "Coast is clear, Sal. Those SWATbots never even came in… You okay?" Sally only nodded.
"What's in there?" Tails asked.
"Nothing!" Sally's eyes were wide and her hands trembled slightly, and it was not from the cold. "Nothing at all."
"Okay, Sal, okay."
"Where's the sink? I've got to… to splash some water on my face."
"Over yonder, Sally-girl."
"Yeah, then we gotta get gone!"
"What's that smell?" Tails asked.
"Guys! Look!"
"What's up, Rote?" The children gathered around Rotor, looking at a screen mounted on a wall. Sally joined them after drying her face on a nearby towel, which she then used to dab the inside of her legs before tossing it into a nearby garbage can.
"It looks like one of Robotnik's security monitors. I was doing some channel surfing when I saw that!" On the screen, they saw Robotnik's malevolent image, seated in what appeared to be some kind of control room. They also heard his voice coming from a nearby speaker saying: "Bring in the prisoner."
"Prisoner?" The children looked at each other as if to make sure they were all here. Then they looked back at the screen.
"Sir," Snively began, "a SWATbot patrol apprehended this… this creature outside your headquarters. I believe she was trying to break into the kitchen."
"How bold," Robotnik said sarcastically. "Bring her to me." Two SWATbots moved into the camera's view, a small figure hunched down between them. Yet, the children all gasped when they saw the figure, for they recognized her in an instant.

(End of Chapter 16)