Defenders of Earth (Book 2 of the Keepers Trilogy)

Chapter 10

I'm already having second thoughts. Mark's staring at me with indecision.

Finally, he asks: "If you're the only one who can protect us, why are you trying to forget?"

He's got a point. But I answer quickly and honestly: "I'm scared."

Mark bites his lip and looks down at the notebook. He flips through a couple pages, then says, "I overheard Dad talking about reading this."

"What?"

"Yeah, I know," Mark breathes in deeply, then sighs. "I'm sorry, Callie."

"That's private!" I'm kind of angry now. I liked Leo. I never thought of him as a snoop. Not even James would look through my stuff without my permission.

"I know. Mom was upset about it, and so am I."

"How come you didn't tell me?"

"It slipped my mind."

I take a deep breath. "Okay. Fine. Let's just drop that, okay?"

"Okay. I have a question. About your locket. How come you didn't stick under the floorboard?"

I pull it off and hand it to him. "It's a tie to my family," I whisper.

He opens it and looks at them. "Let me guess. Your mom, dad, and..."

"My sister, Artemis. We call her Artie. She's eight."

He looks at me. "How old are you?"

"Almost fifteen."

"So you're not hundreds of years old, then?"

"Azerans can live to 300 years, but that is as rare as a human living to a hundred. Aging gets slower as we get older, but not by much."

"Huh."

"Do you believe me?" I ask.

He snaps the locket shut and hands it to me. "I want to say no, but my instinct says yes."

I smile, though it feels like a grimace. "That instinct of yours."

"What can I say? It's reliable."

"So...you believe me?"

"I guess. When's this Simon going to arrive?"

I do some quick calculations in my head. "Three and a half months. If I'm right."

"That's not a lot of time, Callie. Are you sure you can't just go to the government and tell them? Or...well, I guess they'd think you crazy."

I nod and purse my lips. "I know. I do not want to tell anyone else for the same reasons. Or if they're working for Simon."

"Makes sense, I guess. How would you know?"

I think for a moment. "They seem a little out of it. Dreamy. It is really obvious."

"So you'd recognize someone under his control? Then why are you so distrustful?"

"I knew some traitors who were not under his control, that is why," I mutter angrily. And it's true. On Marix, our guard was a traitor. I could tell.

He was there when James was shot. He's the one who threw me in an electrified cell afterwards, nearly killing me. I don't remember his name, but I hated him. For his disloyalty to his planet. For his affiliations with Simon.

"Oh," Mark says. He looks at the notebook again. "So, if I'm gonna help you, can I at least learn this language?"

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, you can read it. You can learn Azeran."

"Sweet." He flips open the first page and says slowly, "Das Azer..."

"Das Azeran Farab." I say.

"Das Azeran Farab," he repeats.

"Good," I say.

I take the notebook back into my room and read through it. Some of it is sentence setup, most of it is words, some conjugations...Dad was right. It is like a grammar book full of nothing but examples.

I start with copying the alphabet. I figured, I'd better get used to the symbols first. I don't know if that's how Callie writes them, but there's a lot of swirly letters. And symbols for th, gh, ch, and wh, and then some.

But the more I look at it, the less confusing it seems to get. The rules are fairly straightforward, no i after e except after c or whatever. It's pretty simple.

I continue flipping through until I stop on a page with a poem on it.

No-a prayer.

It continues on for ten or so pages, and when I get to the bottom, it isn't complete. But it has to do with the lives of five people named Lacros, Daos, Bixan, Pera, and Tarum. I guess they're gods.

Throughout the margins are thousands of notes in Azeran, and judging by the thick lines of the letters and the underline, Callie was mad when she wrote them down. Out of all these notes, only a few are in English, on top of the first page: SECRETS!!!!!!!! LIES!!!!

I'm not entirely sure why this is there, but I choose not to ask about it. Instead, I skip over the sermon and look through the rest of the book, but there's only one thing else. On the very last page, she writes two words in Azeran, with an arrow connecting them.

I flip back and forth between the first and last pages, translating the word from Azeran letters to English letters. Apparently the words say Amacus and Tura.

"Amacus," I say slowly. What was that? The name of the portal to Tura? Or something from Tura?

Though I promised myself I wouldn't ask Callie too many questions, this might require some investigation. I pick myself off the floor and open the door.

When I knock on Callie's door, the only response is sobs.

A.N. Sorry it's a little short, I've had a bit of a writer's block and I've been extremely busy with homework and relationships and whatnot and I couldn't find room in my schedule to write.

I'm gonna start asking this question every couple chapters or so: What do you think will happen next?