Chapter 5 - Oproka coproka

Nelson was the second of the individuals to be caught, but the other three children were soon caught. Once they were, all of the points were tallied and the group who won was the group that split up. As the children all started to disperse, Sybil and Lewis came out of Sybil's house with a large group of paper. The paper wasn't binded together but Sybil's firm grip held it together tight enough to form dents in the spots her fingers were. As Lewis ran out he flailed his arms and yelled out to all the children, "We made a book!"

As he continued to brag Otis met Sybil up and she handed him the papers. Otis stared at the first sheet of paper, the cover, before flipping to the next page to start reading. "I drew it and Sybil wrote the words!" Lewis informed Otis, as he continued to flip the pages. The handwriting telling the story was neat and the pictures were big and sprawling, if not for the ends of the pages they would have flown spilled out onto the floor. Nothing was colored or blacked in but instead all outlines were completely blank.

Otis continued to read the story, it was about a small bird escaping from bigger birds. Once Otis made it to the seventh page, Sybil interrupted his reading, "Nelson, look at this page," she commanded Nelson as he started to sit down under a tree. Once Otis heard this he began scanning the page for anything, curious as to why Sybil wanted Nelson to look at it. It was a very unnecessary page which showed the bird finding a knife with crushed bugs on it, the most noticeable thing on it was the art was neater than the other pages. "Was this Lewis's idea or-" Otis began to ask when he was interrupted by Sybil's answer, "I made that whole page."

Nelson looked at the page and looked up at Sybil, who made eye contact with him before nodding her head. He then walked back to the bottom of the tree, "The art looks nice," he told her. "Oh, she was just testing her art abilities," Otis thought to himself, relieved that she wasn't trying to say anything related to crushed bugs or knives. Once Otis finished reading he looked over to Lewis and said, "It was very good!" as he did he kept a forced yet genuine looking smile across his face. Once he told Lewis it, Lewis stole the book from his hands and handed it to another kid next to him who had wanted to read it.

The other kids started to regroup as the book was passed along. Once a kid finished reading he invited all of the kids there, "...tag?" The kid who was currently reading walked away from the group and Lewis followed her from close behind. As the kids were deciding on the details of the game Woody approached the group of kids from the west, "I'm going to need the current candidates for a little while, also Nelson, can you come too?" He told them in the most friendly voice he could, he tried to avoid making his voice commanding but had only hardly achieved that. At this point, everyone but Imaan was outside so all of the candidates were in the group. They all followed the man slowly from behind, trying to keep up with his slow pace.

"Alright, we're all heading to Nelson's house for now. I have a little lesson for you guys," he told them, with his back turned to them. As they approached the house, Otis noticed Mr. Greene walking toward the western well from the back of Nelson's house. No one was able to see the back of the house until they came directly to the side of it, where they saw Maxine Greene, Nelson's mother, sitting in a chair.

They entered the dimly lit house and saw papers nailed to the wall and across the dining room table. They all entered and sat on the dining room table, the table already had trouble seating six people but couldn't seat eight people. "This is my house, I should be the one stand," Nelson thought to himself as he made his way to the side of the table. "I'm the oldest candidate, so I should be the one to leave a seat open," Sybil thought to herself, following closely behind Nelson. Once everyone, but Nelson and Sybil, were seated Warren Wheatly exited Nelson's bedroom with more papers.

As Warren walked over Woody beamed to the entire room with excitement, "This is a lesson about Wimborne, the country you all live in." He pointed to a long line on a map nailed to the wall behind him. The map was circular with one line horizontally separating the top side from the bottom side. "Wimborne is a circular country with one long river going straight through it, horizontally. The river splits until the water from it ends up on your guy's creek," he told the children as he moved his hand on the line from the middle, to the far eastern side of the map. "You are all on the southern part of Wimborne, which is separated from the top by the river. The capital of Wimborne is in the Wimborne region which is all in the north. The southern region contains Merctone, Yarrin, and where this town sits in, Calmnarok."

Nelson immediately recognized the name Yarrin from last night, where Mr. Kemp said he would teach Nelson about what happened to Tarrin and Yarrin. Woody continued, "The northern area includes Wimborne, Senkeep, and Tarrin." As he finished, Otis raised his hand with an immediate question. Woody looked at Otis, signaling him to ask his question "I've heard of Tarrin but haven't Yarrin, what is Yarrin and is there any reason why the two names are so similar?" he asked.

Woody looked back at the map and pointed to the western side, near where the river split the northern half from the southern half. Where he pointed there were two areas that were drawn out with names and the areas would be the regions of Tarrin and Yarrin, Tarrin was above the river and Yarrin was below it. "The latest book in this town from the little that I've looked around, was written about 40 years ago. Around 35-30 years ago Yarrin declared that it was independent from the country of Tarrin, and 20 years later it gained its independence. None of the books here have informed this town of it."

Sybil's hand shot toward the ceiling only a moment after Woody had finished. Before he could give her permission to speak she asked him, "Why did they seek independence?" Woody continued looking at the map and pointed to the river separating the town regions. "Tarrin originated inside of a valley and the river in that valley separated the two communities, so the Southern region of Tarrin that is now Yarrin created its own cultural identity. So the seeds for a revolution were already planted, but it didn't start until after Tarrin shifted its focus from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Yarrin gets its profits and food from fishing in the river and its traditions are used regularly. Tarrin started to standardize many practices for getting the most efficient products possible which directly conflicted with a lot of the cultural practices and traditions practiced in Yarrin." As Woody finished his sentence a wave of hands shot up, primarily from the younger candidates who needed to have it explained again or explained differently.

Woody went around the room answering each question one by one as Nelson retold the story in his head, as he looked at the map. "How much different is the world outside of Rivumpt?" He asked himself in his head, as he tried picturing the world. The way he pictured it, it wasn't very different from Rivumpt except for the amount of people in it. Nelson's father had always told him that this town wouldn't have enough people to fill up some of the streets in the capital.

Once Woody had answered each question he went back to the map, "That about sums up what happened. Cultural differences separated the two regions and some of Tarrin tested their relationship with Yarrin. Actually, Tarrin's doing good for themselves right now. The shift to agriculture has helped them develop their towns more and become a larger part of the country, they still do have the smallest amount of land compared to every other region though," he told the children, as they sat and paid attention to avoid getting lost.

Once Woody finished Warren stepped toward where Woody was and away from the corner he had stood in for the whole lecture, "I'm Warren Wheatly and the older man over there is Woody Kemp, we're the candidate test takers for this group" he told them with a confident voice. "We actually don't have enough room to have everyone take the test, so Sybil can sit this one out and we'll have her do it after everyone else has finished," Woody declared.

As Warren stepped toward the table the rest of the candidates were sitting on, Nelson and Sybil walked out of the house. Outside of the house, a group of children were waiting. "What did you guys go do?" "Is everyone else coming out?" "Who are those two adults?" they all asked.

"They were just teaching us a bit about outside of the town," Nelson told them as he smiled and walked toward the bridge, the children followed him as he meandered. Sybil followed him as he continued talking with the children and when he stopped talking for a short moment she interrupted to ask, "Is the idea involving the book earlier good enough?"

"The one you and Lewis made? The one page you made me look at?" Nelson guessed as he looked back toward Sybil. The other children ran ahead of them and made their way to the east side of the town to play. As the last child passed, Sybil nodded her head in response to Nelson's question.

"Is that our best option? Wouldn't it be more potent to have the saliva directly on the weapon?" Nelson asked as he continued his stroll to the other side of the town.

"It doesn't really matter, just a bit of it will be enough."

Once they got to the east side the children asked to play something. "Weren't we about to play tag?"

"We already did," one of the children responded

As he discussed the game he and the children would play, Sybil continued walking to her house. "Hey!" Nelson yelled to Sybil, who was close enough to her house to open the door. She looked at him as he yelled, "It's break time, you'll have to be called back in to take the test anyway. There's not much you can do before that, you might as well try and enjoy the short time while you can!" Sybil ignored him and entered her house, none of the other children were really unhappy but it was clear that it bothered Nelson the rest of the game.

"The test is in a couple of minutes. I've been studying for my whole life for this one test and it's only in a couple of minutes," Sybil thought to herself as she marched to her study to cram before the test. She skimmed through all of the books in there as fast as she could to get as much information as possible. As she was skimming the last book she heard a knock on her study room door, Woody and Warren had arrived only 20 minutes after the first set of tests had started, to start her test.

"Is it fine to take it in the dining room?" She asked the two men as she made her way out of the study.

"Yes, that's fine," Woody responded as he and Warren made room for Sybil to lead the way to the dining room. Warren looked at her desk for a moment and noticed her drawing of the Haragcstic.

Sybil arrived at the dining room and Woody and Warren entered shortly. They put the collection of paper face down on the dining room table as Sybil sat in a chair. Once she finished sitting down she slid the papers in front of herself, with the papers still face down. "You have 15 minutes to complete this test, all questions not answered within the time limit will be submitted as not answered. This test will determine your ranking, you are currently in third place behind Leopold and Otis who have both already finished their tests and had their rankings determined. You were second place before they did their tests with only Otis in front of you, the ceremony this morning also determined your ranking," Warren informed her monotonously.

Sybil continued to look at the piece of paper, "...you may begin the test the moment Mr. Kemp says go." Sybil looked toward Warren and saw him pointing at Woody. She looked back down at the papers and waited for only a couple of seconds.

"Go!"

Sybil flipped the papers over immediately and started answering the questions that were presented. They started easy enough for Sybil, stuff she had gone over years ago. As she progressed she came across harder questions, the test was structured the same as it had years ago when she last took it. She breezed through the questions before coming across one question late in the test, "If you were to encounter a kid that had been exposed to multiple supernatural elements, what would you?" The answer choice was in a sentence format, not allowing for multiple choice questions.

Imaan was starting to feel better, so she decided to go and play with some of the children before the day ended. As she walked over to the east side she saw all of the candidates, except for Sybil, together walking. "Hey guys! Are you all doing a candidate thing?" she asked them as she ran over to them, she still felt sick so she ran out of breath shortly.

"Yeah, we finished our candidate test," Leopold responded to her as the whole group stopped walking, to let Imaan catch her breath. "Sybil's actually doing it in our house right now."

They all walked to the east side and greeted the children. The candidates explained what they had done and Imaan reunited with the children she had not talked to in several days. Nelson watched everything from afar, as he helped one of the smaller children tie his shoes. Once he finished helping him, he looked at the crowd and back at Sybil's house. He had seen Woody and Warren enter the house and knew she was probably taking the test. As he looked he saw the black figure from earlier in the day. He stood in place and watched the black figure, he got a better look at it this time. The figure had the stature and body shape of an older kid, around Otis's age. The figure quickly made eye-contact with Nelson and ran off.

Sybil finished writing her answer to the question, that obviously was there to see if any children had seen Matt, with, "I would tell a trusted adult right away, to help the kid if they can still be helped or help honor their lives if they lost it."

She continued with the test before arriving at the final two pages. The first of the last pair was blank with the hand text "Ages 10 and up only section." Sybil had never been old enough to reach this section, so she didn't know it existed until now. She flipped that page over to the next page, which was a colored circle.

"I didn't want to write more text so I thought I would say it instead, but close your eyes while looking at the circle. Once you've done that, picture the circle in your head and start to distort it as hard as you can. You'll need to not think about anything unnecessary when doing this. After distorting the circle, breathe at a rapid rate and whisper as much ancient tongue as you know, and to end it off say out loud 'Oproka coproka'." Warren instructed her. Once he had finished, she immediately started following his directions. She closed her eyes and distorted the circle. She then went to clear her mind of anything unnecessary, but it was already clear so she started to breathe rapidly. As she breathed she whispered under her breath as she squeezed as much air out as possible "gabiscah, renksdagaf, gabiscah, renksdagaf, gabiscah, renksdagaf, haragcstic, gabiscah, renksdagaf, haragscstic..." then said out loud "Oproka coproka."

Once she said the final chant the circle on the paper distorted in the same shape similar to what she had last imagined. Warren and Woody both looked at the paper along with Sybil, they were all astounded. "And that concludes your test," Warren said, still struck by the distortion of the circle. As Warren took the paper from Sybil, Woody got his own paper out from the pocket of his pants and started adding tally marks next to Sybil's name, he kept adding until Warren got back. "Thank you for being cooperative today!" Warren said, as he and Woody both walked out of the door.

The moment she finished the test she had been thinking, "What happened? How did that happen? Did I do that?" She continued to think once they left her house, and once they did leave she got up and walked to the window in her dining room. She walked to the window staring at the floor, trying to work out what could've happened. Once she made it to the window she looked up, expecting to see a golden field full of children playing but instead saw the figure. She stared at it intensively before making a stabbing motion at it with her left hand, her right hand picking at her fingernails. Once she made the motion, she turned around and started to cook dinner. Cooking dinner was something her parents used to do, but they still weren't home.

"Is it that chant?" she thought, as she took a pan from a small cupboard. She chanted in her head, "Oproka coproka."

Nelson and Otis were discussing the situation with Tarrin and Yarrin that explained to them earlier in the day, when they heard Sybil's door close. They both looked toward her house and saw Warren and Woody leave. The two groups made eye contact, and the two older men made their way to where Nelson and Otis were.

"Did she finish?" Otis asked them, remaining seated as they took a seat next to them. They weren't able to sit in the same way the two kids were able to but sat down with their legs spread out. Once Warren sat down he told him, "Yes, with overwhelming results."

Nelson expected that news and once he had heard it he asked Warren, "How, about Tarrin and Yarrin, were they not able to transport their food and materials down the river?"

"What? Can you elaborate?"

"Mr. Kemp said, last night, that bread is so expensive here because it's expensive to transport across the country. But that wouldn't be a problem if they transported it by the river, right? We make boards that can float and hold things on them all the time here."

"For them to do that, it would probably take a lot of boards and still wouldn't be able to transport enough. It's probably too dangerous as well, the river's more rough in the river than the small creek here."

Sybil continued to say the chant in her head as she prepared more mushrooms for her family for dinner tonight. "Oproka coproka, oproka coproka, oproka coproka." As she dumped the group of mushrooms in she said "Oproka coproka," out loud. Once she did, one of the candles lighting the house went out and Sybil looked at it as it relit itself.