Hope

Chapter Fourteen: Darkness on the Horizon

We were finally in the wagon and on our way. It was just our luck that Stan was the one who drove because his songs were driving the rest of us crazy.

"Oh, I'll take you to a place ever so far from here

Where the birds always sing

And the water's always crystal clear

And you don't have to worry about anything

Even if the world decided to fall down around us

We'll still be safe in this place!"

I winced. He was slightly off-key on the last note, but this song didn't offend me nearly as much as it did some of the others he was fond of singing. I was used to worse. Besides, he sang of hope, which I suppose was something we really needed right now. However, I could think of a dozen other deliveries that wouldn't be as offensive to the ear. Tornheart had somehow managed to go to sleep despite the noise and was snoring away in one corner. Rebecca, Zack, and I occupied the other corners while Tasha and Jing made do with the remaining space.

"Oh, please end this torture!" Rebecca moaned, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. "I'll do anything if it would stop!"

Tasha rolled her eyes. "That would go against Stan's grain. It would be like asking a piper to never play the pipes again or a farmer to never pick up a plow. Believe me, I've asked many times. His response every time was another song."

Rebecca then glanced over at Jing. "Help me, please!" she begged. "I'm being tortured!"

For a second, something dark crossed Jing's face. Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed and she said coldly, "It's your problem. Deal with it."

Tasha, Rebecca, and I stopped and stared at her. This was so uncharacteristic of Jing that I thought for an instant that the real Jing had been stolen and replaced with a duplicate. I could tell that Tasha and Rebecca were thinking along the same lines, but I could tell neither of them were probably going to point this out. Tasha had concern on her face, but she didn't look like she wanted to get involved. Rebecca just looked hurt. And I... Jing was my friend, but I had the feeling that this behavior stemmed from something I couldn't control.

I glanced over at Zack. He was very quiet as usual and huddled in his blankets. He gave no indication that he heard what had happened, but I had no doubt that he did and understood. I wondered briefly what he was thinking, but decided against trying to reach out to him and get him to talk to me. Jing's strange behavior was probably hurting him far more than it had just hurt Rebecca.

Stan, meanwhile, had heard nothing, and was still singing. Rebecca's gaze finally broke off of Jing and she retreated to a far corner of the wagon like Zack and pouted, but I could see that her eyes were brimming with tears. Tasha also broke her stare and went back to whatever she had been doing before. I looked at Jing for a few more moments before switching my gaze to the outside of the wagon where I could see the clear blue sky and a pair of black birds circling each other high above. I had never seen birds like them before. They were large and vaguely predatory, but somehow I didn't think they were hunters.

Tasha looked up from her project and saw what I was looking at. "Those are vultures. There might be something dead nearby. Vultures are scavengers; they eat what's left after another animal does all the work."

I wrinkled my nose. "Gross. I'd hate to be a vulture." I then looked back at Tasha. "There's so much here that I didn't know at home. It's strange because at home I knew everything. I knew every tree and every blade of grass within my territory. And then I come out here and it's like stepping into a whole new world. It's strange, wonderful, and scary all at the same time."