Part 16

I ran as fast as my feet would carry me. Normally, I would have gotten lost, but the burning timbers gave me a sense of direction. When I finally burst out of the tree line, I saw everyone getting handled by strange men, and I saw the woman who brought me to the cabin. I felt Alex run to the space behind me, and I almost faced him. My attention turned back to the woman who had now placed herself in the center of the space. I saw her bow her head in concentration, and then look at us. She then sent a wave in our direction, but it didn't hurt. Instead, it kind of tickled. We stood there, rooted to the ground, watching as the people I was going to be introduced to just a couple of hours ago got thrown into black vans. When they approached the woman, she chuckled and burst into a shower of light. And just like that, she was gone. When they looked around, they started to speak among themselves.

"Do we have everybody?"

"I think so, why?"

"We only have 13 kids, plus the old lady. The other lady disappeared, but there should be two other kids. We started to back up when they looked right at us. At that, we froze. After a bit, they decided that we must have given the slip during all of the chaos. After they left, I started crying. I couldn't believe what had just unfolded in front of my eyes. I had just met these people, and already I felt bound to help them somehow. I wanted to run after them, but instead, I felt myself fold over and sit down. I wanted to lay down on the ground, and curl into a ball, but I felt my head rest on something else. Alex's chest. I tried to push myself off of him, but he wrapped his arms around me and proceeded to hold and soothe me. Even though he had yelled at me not even 5 minutes ago. But at this moment, that didn't matter. We had lost everyone and everything. And as he held me, I heard something else. I looked around to see what the source of the noise could be, and I found Alex crying. I sat up and wiped the tears from his eyes. He looked at me and proceeded to collapse into my arms. I held him as he wept and reflected on how quickly our positions had changed. I wanted to stay here forever, and not have to worry about anything, but I knew that we didn't have that liberty.

"Hey, come on. We gotta go."

"Where are we gonna go? We don't even know where we are." While he had a point, that wasn't entirely true.

"There was a small, clear area on the right side of the cabin, with the door facing us. When the teacher brought me here, we landed in that area. We saw it just before we saw the cabin, which means that my house should be about 30 minutes to an hour's walk that way," I explained, turning almost 180 degrees.

"And what are we going to do when we get to your house, hmm? Your parents don't know. In fact, if they did know, you'd be enslaved or dead by now. And I'm not running that risk."

"What if it's not your risk to take?" The words I just spoke were completely unintentional but had the effect that I was looking for. He was speechless, unable to come up with a good defense. "All right then. We go this way and find shelter as soon as we can. It's almost night, and I don't want to be caught out here in the open." With that, we started walking.

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'I don't know how much longer I can go. That blast took a lot out of me, and my entire left side hurts. Ahhh...'

"Did you hear that?"

"No. Hear what?"

"Nothing I guess. I assume that I must be hearing things... Oh my god, Alex!!" With that, I rushed forward to catch him and tried to wake him, but he was out cold. He was burning up! I looked around to find the nearest place where I could hide him, and I found this tree with branches that started a little above standing head level and that bent all the way to the ground, creating a little canopy. I dragged him over there as fast as I could and pulled some of the branches aside. Then, I shoved him in and set the branches back to their proper positions. Once that was done I had a look around. I couldn't explain half of what I saw, but I knew one thing for sure. Whoever called this their home was going to be very upset with us.