The Exiles (Book 1 of the Exiles Series)

Four

Nicole shook me awake just as the first rays of sunlight were shining through the doorway. "Come on," she told me, sounding impatient. "It's time to go." The details started to flood back into my brain. We were off to the Center. I remembered thinking about Magnus the night before as I sat up groggily in bed.

Nicole stood over me, dressed in the same outfit she had been wearing the day before. Her hands were on her hips, her lips curled in a serious look.

"What about breakfast?" I muttered drowsily. Nicole rolled her eyes and handed me my shirt and pants. "Don't worry, they'll have some breakfast there," she promised.

I pulled off my tunic and pulled on my shirt and pants. My hair was a tangled mess, but I didn't care. I pushed it over my shoulders so it was out of the way. It would just have to do.

"Are you ready?" Nicole asked once I was dressed. I nodded and followed her to the door.

"You'll like it at the Center," Nicole told me. "You'll get to meet some people. I bet you're bored out of your mind." I nodded again. She twisted the door knob and we stepped outside. It was a little cooler outside than it had been the day before. My bare arms shivered in the cold.

Nicole gave me a concerned look once we were outside. "What's wrong?" she asked. "You seem down. You weren't this quiet yesterday." I shrugged. "I'm just tired," I lied, which wasn't a total fib. My thoughts were elsewhere this morning. I wondered what kinds of people I would meet at the Center. The only people I had seen here were Nicole and Magnus. I suppose I didn't anticipate there being more people on the island. I had a sinking feeling that I wasn't exactly a social butterfly.

Nicole suddenly stopped in her tracks. She stopped moving so fast that I nearly toppled over her. She gave a little yelp. Once I had regained my balance, I trotted up next to her.

"What-what is it?" I stammered. If Nicole was frightened of something, I felt I should be terrified as well.

She swiveled to face me. "It's...gone," she breathed, turning pale. I glanced around, puzzled. "What's gone?" I asked her. Her face turned stone hard. "The bison, you dummy," she nearly shouted, not a trace of teasing in her voice. She was right. Where the remains of the dead bison had been laying the night before was nothing but scraps of fur and a bloodied bone or two. All the meat was gone. By how the bones and leather looked I guessed that something had gotten to the bison. Something told me I wasn't getting my own tunic like Nicole had promised.

"Where did it go?" I asked Nicole. Nicole knelt on her hands and knees beside the remnants of the animal. Her face was pinched, like she was angry and frustrated at the same time. "Crap," she muttered. "That was the biggest one in weeks!" She reminded me of a small child who had lost a pet.

"What got it?" I asked. Nicole stood up like it pained her. She stared around nervously.

"I don't know," she told me in a low voice. "But whatever it was, it was big." I nodded. "We should leave," I reasoned. Nicole chewed her lip. "Yeah," she agreed. "We should get to the Center." She turned right and started walking, towards the exit of our rocky enclosure. Excitement overcame me and I forgot about the bison. I was leaving home (well, the area that home was in) for the first time ever.

"Stay close," Nicole warned, but she didn't seem quite as serious as before. "As you learned the hard way, spiders and other horrible things that want to kill you lurk out here day and night." On that slightly morbid note, we jogged past the cliffs and left our territory.

There was a forest to our left and a glittering blue lake with no definite end to our right. I noticed how green and healthy everything was here: the grass, the water, even the trees. I liked it. Everything grew how it wanted here, wild, but everything was tame in a sense, as well.