Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (37 page)

No wonder I thought Emma
was an animal,
I thought. Even knowing
better, it was hard to believe Ross was entirely human beneath all
of the leather and fur.

“
Too much energy, it screws
with the dials and stuff. Pilots used to crash here all the time. I
guess they wised up though, ‘cause we only get a few idiots a year
now who attempt it. This is the marketplace,” Ross said, abruptly
changing the subject before I could ask what he meant by too much
energy.

The path ended in a town square sort of
area. More of the huts lined the perimeter, each one with a painted
sign swinging above the entrance. The snow had been cleared away,
leaving carved wooden benches, a gazebo, and two small frozen ponds
visible. And in the very center of the square was an enormous
octopus. Chiseled from the world’s largest ice cube, the statute
stood over fifteen feet tall with ten-foot tentacles extending from
the creature’s bulbous head and lazily draping over a sea rock with
flowers etched into the face.

“
Mr. Robb does a new one
every year,” Emma informed me.

“
Yeah, last winter he did a
mermaid. That was my favorite so far,” Ross added.

“
Only because she was
topless.” Emma smiled indulgently at her younger brother. “Come on,
let’s make a quick round of the shops, warm up a bit. Then we can
see the rest of the village.”

Even though we’d been outside less than
twenty minutes, my cheeks and lips were numb and talking was
becoming a chore.

“
Sure, sounds great,” I
replied, glad Emma had been the one to suggest going in out of the
cold.

The square was fairly quiet, only a handful
of villagers wandering about. This, Emma informed me, was because
most people were working. She assured me the foot traffic would
increase steadily as the day went on.

First we visited one of two
restaurants in the entire village, a place called simply
Pattie’s
. The interior
reminded me of a rustic tavern, quaint and cozy with fires burning
in two hearths at either end of the dining room.

The aroma wafting out from the kitchen made
my mouth water and my stomach grumble. I was famished. The flight
from Vault had cost me a lot of calories, and I was suddenly
desperate to replenish them.

“
You must be starving,”
Emma noted. “Shifting—or, rather morphing—for such a long period of
time must have drained you.”

“
It did,” I agreed, once
again curious about Emma’s extensive knowledge of the Talented and
how our gifts worked.

She must be
Talented,
I decided.

We stayed only long enough to devour some
sort of meat on an edible stick, which was surprisingly delicious.
Though I refrained from asking what type of meat it was and what
the stick was actually made of. Then, we took steaming mugs of
fragrant, extremely sweet lilac tea to go.

From there, Ross and Emma showed me the
butcher shop, the bookstore, the jewelry boutique, the bakery, and,
finally, the toy store. Emma seemed to want to linger in the toy
store, so I perused the selection of handcrafted wooden games and
beautiful dolls with dried and dyed sea kelp for hair and
iridescent pearls for eyes.

Alex would love this
stuff,
I thought with a heavy
heart.

My longing to see Alex was nearly as great
as my desire to see Erik. The little boy had experienced so much
upheaval in such a short amount of time. He’d become attached to me
so quickly that I felt guilty being away from him. No matter how
many times I tried to tell myself the separation was not by choice,
I couldn’t ignore the voice inside my head that insisted it was.
After all, I had chosen to break the rules and knew, or should have
known, the consequences. So, really, in a way, I had elected to
take a sabbatical from my duty to care for Alex.

“
Talia? Can…me?
Talia…tell…you’re okay? Are…safe?”
Even
though the thoughts were broken and sounded as though they were
coming from an ancient radio, tears sprang to my eyes. Erik. I’d
have known his voice anywhere.

“
Erik? I’m here. I’m safe.
I’m so sorry I ran.”

His reply didn’t come
immediately. And when Erik’s voice spoke in my mind a second time,
the reception was even worse.
“Tal…shit
show. Frederick says…fur…animal. Hurt? Crane…safe.
Asylum.”

“
You’re breaking up, Erik.
I can’t really hear you. The reception is off or
something.”

“
Just…are, Tals.”
And then, there was only dead air.

Even though I knew the connection was lost,
I still screamed his name in my head. I couldn’t help it. It didn’t
matter if I only received every third word he sent, I just wanted
to hear his voice.

“
Emma only likes to come
here so she can she her
boyfriend
,” Ross sang as he sidled
up next to me.

I jumped, caught off guard by his sudden
appearance.

“
Daydreaming of the
mainland?” Ross asked.

“
Something like that,” I
muttered.

“
What’s it like? Dad says
mainlanders are heathens. That it’s not safe to visit.” He studied
me with open curiosity. “You don’t look like a heathen. What’s your
home like? Is it big? Oh, and what do your parents do? Are they
like lawyers or something? Dad says there are a lot of lawyers on
the mainland, and that’s why the justice system is so screwed
up.”

I opened my mouth, but had no idea how to
answer. Opting for the path that invited the least amount of new
questions about myself, I asked, “Emma has a boyfriend?”

“
Yep.” Ross pointed across
the store. “That’s Mr. Smoochy. I call him that because that’s what
they like to do—smooch.”

I glanced over towards the counter. Sure
enough, Emma was chatting animatedly with a good-looking boy behind
the register. Both Emma and the boy wore identical dopey
expressions and giggled coquettishly at anything the other said.
The scene was as adorable as a newborn puppy and as sickeningly
sweet as confections made by a heavy-handed baker. I had to look
away after a moment. Watching them, on their own little island
where the population never exceeded two, gazing longingly at one
another reminded me too much of the way I felt with Erik.

What have I done? How could I have been so
freaking stupid? Would I ever learn my lesson? Was I ever going to
grow up and start thinking before leaping?

Not for the first time since fleeing Vault,
these and many other unanswerable questions flooded my
thoughts.

I half-expected Erik to send a response. But
the voices inside my head were all my own. I tried calling out to
him.

“
Erik? Can you hear
me?”

The words echoed inside my skull. Silence
followed. Erik wasn’t blocking me—that much I was sure of. My
thoughts weren’t even reaching him. It was the weirdest thing. Were
my talents broken? Was that even possible?

Just to be sure, I tried moving several of
the dolls on the shelf in front of me. They stood on their tiny
feet and saluted me.

Nope, not broken,
I thought, frustrated.

“
His name’s Kip, and he’s
eighteen. Dad says Emma’s too young to date, so she has to come
here if she wants to see him,” Ross was saying beside me, not
bothering to keep his voice down. “Sometimes they sneak off
together at night. I followed them once. They went to Freedom Beach
and kissed for like hours. It was sort of boring to watch after the
first couple of minutes. This other time…”

Freedom Beach—that was where Emma had told
her father that she and Ross found me.

“
Ross, what’s Freedom
Beach?” I asked, interrupting his diatribe about Emma and Kip and
their affinity for feeding each other ‘like babies’ as Ross put
it.

Before Ross could answer, the front door to
the toy shop opened and gaggle of children poured inside, followed
closely by two wizened and harried looking caretakers who seemed
unable to control their charges.

With one last baleful glance at Kip, Emma
turned to Ross and me and nodded towards the door.

“
We had better get going,
this place will be a zoo for the rest of the afternoon with those
children on the loose,” Emma muttered under her breath as we
departed the toy store.

At Ross’s insistence, the siblings showed me
the frozen ponds before heading out to explore the rest of the
village.

“
Cool, huh?” Ross asked
excitedly when we reached the edge of the nearest pond.

“
Cool,” I echoed, staring
down at the neon shapes zooming back and forth beneath a thick
layer of ice.

In varying shades of blue, green, purple,
and orange, the fish were so brightly colored it was like gazing
into the sun. When I turned away, neon starbursts exploded before
my eyes for several moments.

“
You’re missing the best
part,” Ross whined, tugging the sleeve of my coat to draw my
attention back to the pond.

Reluctantly, I followed his finger to the
spot he was indicating. For a moment, I had no idea what I was
supposed to be seeing. Then, just beneath the top layer of ice, the
words came into focus: Good afternoon.

“
Whoa.” Surprised, I jumped
back from the edge of the pond.

“
Neat trick, huh?” Ross
asked.

“
It’s not a trick, stupid,”
Emma said, smacking her brother lightly on the back of the head.
“You really need to pay better attention in your
lessons.”

I was with Ross. Glowing fish were one
thing. Synchronized spelling fish, however, were a different
story.

Though the Great Contamination had occurred
nearly a century ago, rural and island communities such as this one
still saw the lingering effects. The wildlife—animals, vegetation,
and even insects—were often larger, stranger, and, in some people’s
view, more deformed than in the areas surrounding major cities and
landlocked states and countries. But working together to form a
message, even a simple one, suggested these fish had superior
intelligence and cognitive thought processes that far exceeded
those of the ones I was accustomed to.

“
Do the bears here talk,
too?” I asked Emma, only half joking.

“
Don’t be silly, there
aren’t bears in the woods.” She grinned devilishly. “The shadow
wolves, now they can be quite talkative.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not she was
kidding.

The rest of the tour was sort of a letdown
after the fish. Emma and Ross led me through the clusters of cabins
where the villagers lived. We visited the school; a large
barn-style structure that abutted a forest of snow covered
trees.

“
Mrs. Honeywell gets really
angry if people mess around inside when we’re on holiday,” Ross
informed me.

“
Is it a holiday?” I asked,
confused.

“
Yeah, storm season. We
always have these three months off, so we can help with the snow
removal, food gathering, and security,” Emma said.

“
Security?” I asked. “From
what?”

“
Animals mostly. The storms
drive them out of the woods; they get scared and attack villagers.
So we set traps for them. Once caught, we either release them back
into the wild or hand them over to the butcher. Just depends on
their size and age.” Emma’s expression darkened. “Then there are
the other tribes. The weather reduces visibility and the watchers
aren’t able to see all the way to our borders from the towers.
Other tribes take advantage of that and come into our territory to
steal food and supplies.”

“
How many tribes are there
on—Pelia, right?” I asked, suddenly insanely fascinated by this
primitive culture.

“
Five. Ours is the largest.
But the others are more vicious.”

“
And then you have the free
lands, too?” I asked, recalling bits and pieces of earlier
conversations.

“
Exactly. Anyone can go
into the free lands to hunt or fish or whatever. But there is no
law in the free lands. Anything goes. Usually it’s not a problem. I
wander around there a lot.” Emma shrugged. “Every once in a while,
though—well, it can get pretty dangerous. That’s why Dad doesn’t
like it when I go there.”

“
I see,” I replied, though
I wasn’t really sure that I did.

Ross thought mainlanders were heathens. At
least we didn’t have designated areas where anarchy reigned
supreme.

“
Up here is the fishing
cove. Come on.” Emma waved me forward. “Let’s see what they’ve
caught.”

We made our way down to a winding path cut
through a particularly dense clump of trees to a bluff. Men and
women in waist-high rubber pants, elbow-length rubber gloves, and
woolen knit caps stood at the edge of the bluff reeling in an
assortment of sea life with poles mounted into the rocky terrain.
The fish weren’t quite as exotic looking as the ones in the pond
had been, but most were vibrant oranges and yellows, and a few had
patterned scales.

Behind the fishermen and fisherwomen,
clusters of teenagers roughly Emma’s age stood around wooden
barrels full of the caught fish. One girl had what looked like a
crudely made wooden ruler, and was measuring the fish from nose tip
to tail end. Every so often she would toss one back over the
bluffs, presumably if it were too small to eat. A boy had his
gloved hands around the head of a pretty turquoise squid. He
stroked the sea creature with his thumbs, causing it to squirt a
blue-black liquid into a pail held by another boy.