Rimwick

The Color Hunt

It's night again. It's always night, but this time is different. I've been in Rimwick for exactly one month. The winter air around me is beginning to hint at warmth, waiting to pounce on us when the year turns a corner, and the wind blows breezily through the forest's trees.

I wake up on my own. No Echo gently touching my shoulder with her cinnamon hands, no Fallon swinging a lantern in front of my face so that the candle wax leans precariously towards the precipice of my nose. This evening, I rise with the moon, and walk to the school-yard clearing by myself.

It's a good feeling.

We're playing another team game. Lately, our competitions have been solo missions that involve finding our way in the dark woods. I'm terrible at them. But tonight, we're playing Capture the Flag.

"Riley and The Singer will be captains," Master Atlas says.

Me? I look at Echo, who hasn't been captain yet of anything, either, at least not while I've been here. She frowns, then nods, smiling uneasily at me.

"Choose your soldiers," Atlas commands.

My mind races. I want to win this. I want to prove that I belong in the hills, even though I don't belong in Rimwick. To do that, I need someone who knows the forest, since I don't. Fallon would be the obvious choice, but... I also want someone who will listen to me, and she might not.

"Anvil," I say, and everyone stares at me.

Silence ripples through the clearing. Seriously, I can hear the individual snowflakes as they touch down on the icy ground. If a pin dropped, I would be able to hear that, too.

Dazedly, Anvil steps towards me. He smiles, then wipes it from his face, then gives in and smiles again. He stands next to me without making eye contact with anyone, grinning at the forest around us.

"Um. Felix," Echo says.

"Actually..." Master Atlas pauses. His hood is pointed at me and I imagine him staring. I hold my breath, hoping he doesn't force Anvil off my team.

He doesn't. Instead, he says, "I wish for The Augur's presence with me tonight."

Felix nods. Echo bites her lip, then chooses Fallon.

"Roman." He's annoying, but he's fast, which makes him invaluable.

"No," Master Atlas says. "Echo, you may choose next. Riley made the first selection and she will make the last as well."

Excuse me? That's not how we've ever chosen teammates before. He just wants to punish me for picking Anvil. The bitter injustice of this wells inside me, threatening to burst in an angry rant that definitely won't help me, or Anvil, or anyone else. I bite my tongue and wait while Echo gets Roman and I'm stuck with Brooke.

Master Atlas pulls two ribbons out of his tattered sleeves and hands one to both me and Echo. When he does, I glance at his hands. They're pale and scarred, too small, like they don't grow along with his massive body. On his left hand is a small piece of twine wound around the finger next to his pinky, like a wedding ring. He retreats back into his long cape before I can get a closer look.

The object of the game is to grab the other side's flag before they get ours. Each team has a territory, opposite sides of the creek, and anyone who goes into the other side's land and is tagged dies. It's a simple contest with two parts: defense and offense. Before, when I've played this game in Rimwick, both sides had a border patrol. But the boundary line- the creek- is so long, and our numbers are so few that we can't do that. The best I can think of is to have Anvil sneak into the other side and guard the flag myself.