Arroon

Arroon—Stone Seeker is the story of Arroon Samuel Walker, a fourteen year old foster kid. All he wants is a family…instead he’s saving the world. I’ve included chapter 1 and chapter 13 for you to have a look at. I hope you enjoy!

Arroon—Stone Seeker

- Chapter 1 -

My Dad said once, a couple weeks before he disappeared, “It isn’t so much what you do to fit in—it’s what you don’t do that makes all the difference.”

I guess somebody forgot to mention that to Finnley Chudney.

Finnley stuck out like a sore thumb on a fish, and the last thing I needed was to make my debut at Ely High with The Chud trailing me like a lost puppy. But the Chud was my temporary brother, and that made him my responsibility.

I’d been with my newest foster family, the Rydal’s, for about a week when the Chud came to live. Mr. Rydal, a plain-looking guy without much hair, shoved Chud in my room, tossed him an old blanket and told him to keep quiet. Funny, he thought he had to tell the Chud to keep quiet. Chud’s not much of a talker.

I quickly kicked my muddy shoes under the bed, then sat down and covered the fresh dirt on the knees of my jeans with my soil stained hands, trying to act normal and innocent, like hey, who me? Doing anything unusual? Like sneaking out at night and digging for hidden documents at the local high school? Must be some other short, scrawny foster kid.

When a new kid comes to a foster home, you never know if you’re going to get Nick the Neanderthal or Sidney the Sniveler. It’s best to find out before you shoot off your mouth. So I waited, crouched on my bunk, trying to look cool—like I knew how to beat the pulp out of anyone. It isn’t an easy way for a scrawny little guy like me to look, but I knew how to fight, and I always fought to win.

After Rydal slammed the door closed, the Chud turned a full circle, holding his blanket to his chest. He was about my age, fourteen, only taller. He didn’t look scared, and he didn’t look ready to beat anyone up. I knew a lot about guys that liked to beat up smaller kids. They’re the reason I knew how to fight. I also knew a lot about kids who were scared. I knew how to react to either one. But I didn’t know how to react to this kid.

Chud’s gaze arrowed in on me. “You are Arroon.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.

He took a step closer. “You are Arroon, and I have searched for you.”

“I hate that name. Call me Sam.” Sam. A nice, normal name for a kid who wants to be normal. Is that too much to ask?

“I am Finnley Chudney,” he said, then touched my shoulder. He wore an odd, solemn expression, as if shoulder touching were a grave procedure. “Together, we will save the world.”

Okay, I decided. Not Sydney the sniveler or Nick the Neanderthal. This was Waldo the Weird. I shrugged his hand away. “Don’t tell me. You’re from planet strange. You just got here and your spaceship is out in the hills. You need Earth food and titanium to make repairs.”

He cocked his head like a dog trying to figure something out. “I have no need of spaceships.” He turned and strode across the scarred wood floor and stood in a patch of moonlight that beamed in through the window. Something about the way he stood—all alone, looking out—I knew that look. I’d felt it a lot on my own face when I’d looked out yet another window at yet another backyard and wished for something that was gone.

I didn’t say a word. Some times a guy needs some space—some time to get himself together.

He turned suddenly to face me, his features back-lit by the window so that all I could see were his eyes. “You have lived with a shark?” asked the Chud.

“What?”

“You lived with a shark named Nizby?”

I felt my words dry up. I wanted to ask him how he knew, but of course he knew. If you’d been in the system any length of time, you knew about the really bad ones. The thought of my last foster home and The Niz made my stomach hurt. The Niz. My hands curled into fists. The Niz never hit a kid. Why bother? There were so many more effective ways of being a brutal, foul… There were better ways to hurt. The Niz knew them all.

“The children,” The Chud continued as if he couldn’t see that I wanted him to shut up, “Will need further help.”

I sprang to my feet, my hands still tightly fisted. I wanted to hit something. To kick and holler and pummel. I wanted to yell at him to mind his own business. Instead I deflated slowly back onto the bed and put my head in my hands. “I know.” My voice cracked. There were four kids still living with the Niz. I hadn’t forgotten them.

Everything I’d done in the six weeks since I’d escaped the Niz, had been aimed at helping the kids. I had spent a month of nights huddled behind a dumpster and the same month of days traipsing to the public library and the county law library and the records department. I’d learned some things. Important things. I had a plan…or at least a part of a plan. Now all I needed was some good luck, a map and a couple of minor miracles. Is that too much to ask?

I was fourteen years old. I had no family. No real friends. I had nothing except an insanely overdeveloped sense of duty and an underdeveloped sense of self preservation. The kids were my temporary brothers and sisters; Mine. That made them my responsibility. So even though I figured I’d be caught and turned into Sam-burgers, yes, I was going back for them.

But where do you put a bunch of kids once you’ve kidnapped them from their foster home? Let them live behind a dumpster? No.

That was why I had fresh dirt on my jeans and blisters on my hands. I had to find the kids a home. Believe it or not, the dirt, the blisters and the home were all part of the same plan. Now for the miracle? …anyone?

It didn’t occur to me that the Chud might want to help. It doesn’t work that way.

The Chud watched my face. “You are angry and you are sad.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how I feel,” I snarled, ready to beat the pulp out of him after all.

He placed one hand over his heart and gave a very slight bow. “My apologies, Arroon. That is not my job.”

“Don’t call me Arroon. And what do you mean, my?”

He moved across the room and tossed his blanket on the bare mattress, then sat and peeled off his boots. He studied his feet and scowled. “They do not grow here.”

One minute I’m mad as a hockey player with a puck in his face, the next I’m looking at his big white feet, wondering what he’s talking about and if I should bother asking. “You just got here. How can you expect them to grow?”

The Chud nudged the boots with one bare toe. “The boots should grow. I paid two weeks time.”

“Sure, Chud. Whatever.”

The Chud gave me a puzzled look. “You called me Chud?”

“Yeah. Like a nickname. And you call me Sam.”

He shook his head. “Your name is Arroon Samuel Walker. A good name.” Then he spread the blanket out on the bed. “Come, Mika. You will sleep.”

Mika? Arroon was bad enough. I opened my trap to tell him to shove it when something landed on the middle of the mattress. Something invisible. I blinked a couple of times, just to be sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing. Nobody was touching the bed, but that didn’t keep it from creaking like someone had jumped on it. Then the blanket wrinkled and the bed sagged as if a heavy weight had settled down for a nap.

I took a step back. “Wha…what is that?”

“Shhh!” said Finnley Chudney, placing a finger to his lips. “You’ll wake her.”

Chapter 13

There are some people you will never get along with. Ever.

No one had to tell me that.

It was dark outside and dark inside the car. I sat in the back, next to Nizby, my thoughts going a thousand miles a minute trying to come up with an escape plan and a rescue plan and getting nowhere. The air was dense and hard to breathe. My stomach hurt and there was something…a feeling that twisted at me so that I couldn’t be sure that my life had ever existed outside that car…away from The Niz..

The Niz grinned. All I could see were his gleaming white teeth. He wrapped his hand around my arm and cold like the deepest, densest part of an iceberg stabbed into my skin. My ears filled with a buzzing like a swarm of grasshoppers hitting a lettuce crop.

“You never know when to stop, do you, Samuel?” said the Niz in his high-pitched voice.

“Don’t know when to stop,” I mumbled. I wanted to stop right there. I wanted to rest my head on the seat and let the darkness pull me down. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to give up.

Give up? To the Niz? I don’t think so.

I dragged my shoulders straighter, and said the first thing I could think of. “You’ve pushed me too far this time, Nizby.” Stupid thing to say, but it made his grin disappear. A minor win for me.

Nizby leaned closer, breathing in my face. “You’re a strong boy, Sammy, but when I am done with you, what you have will belong to me.”

“You should use mouthwash after you eat garlic,” I said. Somehow, in spite of the weight of my limbs, I managed to raise my hand and wave it in front of my nose. “Your breath stinks.”

Nizby held very still, his mouth working soundlessly. I’d seen grownups do this a time or two when they were completely floored by my lack of logic, but the look never gratified me the way it did now. I knew I was in big trouble. Deadly trouble. But, I felt a surge of energy melt the ice.

Nizby’s face contorted into a snarl. “You resist me now…but soon, you will give me what I want. You will beg me to take it.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. But I wasn’t giving the Niz anything. Ever.

The invading cold returned.

He laughed. “You feel it, don’t you? You feel the power drain from you and I feel it too… Yes, I feel it pour into me.”

I glared at him, but my head wobbled and gray crept in around my vision. Nizby seemed taller, bigger. His pale skin had taken on a tinge of color, like a vampire in a cheap horror flick after he’d sucked someone’s blood…except this was not a horror movie, it was real and somehow, the Niz was stealing my strength and using it as his own.

In the past two years, I’d been afraid a lot. And I’d felt like a scrawny, puny, weakling, a lot. I thought about Chud the super hero. I didn’t have a pet tiger, but I’d sent a big dragon flapping back into the sky. For just a moment, I’d felt that I could make things right. I could.

The car came to a halt and I suddenly realized that Nizby had removed his hand from my arm and was watching me with a slightly perplexed expression. Almost fearful. He spoke quietly to himself. “He has already gained power. Almost too much. Almost.” He shook his head, but his brow was furrowed.

I was weak as a day old rat, but I nodded, as if I knew what he was talking about and agreed completely. “I have gained in power,” I said, imitating his voice. I gave him a rat’s smile. I don’t know what effect the smile had on him, because my door flew open and a strong hand dragged me out into a dim street. A few streetlamps created an umbrella of light that blocked out the night sky. It was one of the things I had missed the most when I’d lived here…the ability to see that the universe was bigger than the street I lived on. Somehow, that was easy for me to forget when I couldn’t see the stars.

Nizby’s house was too ordinary to describe. It had a lawn, a few shrubs, off-white paint, blue shutters. The walkway was gray concrete, leading to a concrete porch that opened into…well, let’s just say the inside of the Niz’s house is not ordinary.

I didn’t know who shoved me up the gray concrete step. I wanted to yell for help, but my voice was clogged in my throat and I couldn’t even squeak. The door opened and the hand shoved me face first onto a patch of moldy carpet. The house was dirtier than I remembered it, and quieter. The quiet hit me like a slap in the face. I lay there for half a minute, remembering the three months I’d lived here. The mismatched furniture. The sagging ceiling. The stacks of burlap sacks lying in the front room. The crates of junk that came and went in the night. My mind went over the details of the house, trying to discover a way to escape.

The hand yanked me to my feet and dropped me onto a hard chair. I looked back to see who had been tossing me around like a toy. The light was behind him, his face shadowed so I couldn’t see his features, but there was something familiar about the way the owner of that hand stood. He was huge, slightly stooped in one shoulder, hair waving across one eye.

He thrust his face close to mine. “Do you recognize me?” he rasped. His voice was like charred wood.

Of course I recognized him. Arthur Sanchez. He had worked for my dad. He had helped me train my first colt. He had taught me to fish for crawdads in the Kings River. He had taken my mom and dad to Guatemala to meet his family. He had never come back from that trip. Neither had they. “Where are my parents?” I said, forgetting that Gaylee had told me they were dead. I rose from the chair, my hands knotted into fists.

Arthur shrugged and for a second, his eyes wavered. “I couldn’t…” A grin appeared on his face. It was a cruel grin and wild with insanity.

The Niz stepped between us. “Bring me my dinner, Arthur.”

Arthur shuffled away, mumbling. “Couldn’t, couldn’t…wouldn’t, won’t.”

“What have you done to him?” I yelled at Nizby.

“Sit down,” Nizby said quietly. His voice wrapped around me and made me want to settle into my chair. My legs ached from the effort of standing when what I wanted more than anything at that moment was to do what Nizby commanded. “Where are my mom and dad?”

Nizby raised one eyebrow at me. “You will sit down.” This time his voice cracked through the room. A glass fell off a shelf and shattered on the floor.

I felt my knees waver and I staggered a bit. A cold sweat broke out on my face. Without knowing how it happened, I found myself sitting. I wanted to deck Nizby. I wanted to jump up, find where the glass was stored and throw the rest around the room.

Another glass shattered.

Nizby winced. His eyes widened and he leaned slightly away from me.

I sat very still. I could see by the look on his face that he thought I’d broken the second glass, even though I couldn’t have. Could I? I focused again on the glasses on that shelf. Another one shattered. I grinned.

Something close to horror took over the Niz’s features.

I concentrated again. One more glass zinged across the room, only missing the Niz’s head because he ducked just in time. This was too good to be true. I focused on the table in the middle of the room and it turned on its side, spilling an ashtray onto the already filthy floor.

“Sanchez!” Nizby called. He backed as far from me as he could and called again. “Sanchez!” He ducked a flying chair, but I was having such a grand time smashing the furniture into toothpicks, I hardly noticed. I didn’t hear a door open, but I heard a voice that made my hands clench and my shoulders ache.

“I’m going to kill you!” someone said. It was a voice I never wanted to hear again. I turned slowly, the hair already standing up on the backs of my arms. Mick the Moron—known in polite society as Mick Miran.

Sanchez held the Moron’s big arms twisted behind his back in a grip that even Moron couldn’t…or wouldn’t break. Moron’s mouth was screwed in a snarl, his eyes closed into mean little slits. I stared a full forty six seconds. Then I just shook my head. “Figures,” I muttered. If anyone belonged with the Niz it was the Moron.

Moron shook his head like a bull and strained toward me so hard the cords of his neck stood out.

Sanchez hardly noticed. He just stood there, one arm locked around Moron’s throat the other holding the big ape’s wrists. If I tell you that my old friend, Sanchez had changed, I mean he changed. He wasn’t even…Don’t laugh at this…he wasn’t completely human. If you’d been there, you’d have seen what I mean. He had that mad grin, and his eyes were black and shiny, like the obsidian the Native American’s used to carve into spearheads.

“You’d better let me go, or you’ll be sorry,” the Moron bellowed. He wasn’t very original, but I had to admire his belligerence.

The Niz strolled back and forth waving his hands like he was playing Hamlet at the county fair. “I brought one of your little playmates along, Samuel. Perhaps he can convince you to behave.” The Niz seized Moron’s shoulder.

Moron screamed.

The Niz raised one eyebrow at me while Miran twisted and roared in agony.

I felt like a squirrel trying to decide if I should go left or right to avoid an oncoming truck. I did not want to feel sorry for Moron. I did not. Want to, I mean. The guy was a jerk. He was a bully. He was the enemy. I should have been happy…no, thrilled, to see the big worm scream. I tried to be thrilled. But Moron’s cries cut through me like a knife through cheese.

“What do you want?” I yelled.

The Niz let Miran go and took a step back. Miran fell to the floor and curled up into a whimpering ball. He managed to lift his face enough to glare at me. “I am going to hurt you,” he said. I hardly glanced at him. I’d gotten the Niz to let go. That didn’t mean I had to get all sloppy over Moron. Besides, I was busy.

The Niz bent to peer into my face. “Are you ready to listen, Samuel?”

“Not quite,” I said. I lifted an end table off the floor with my mind and flung it against the wall, then returned my attention to the Niz. “Ready,” I managed to say with a smirk.

Behind him was the ruined mess of his front room. Somehow I had done that. It made giving in a little easier to swallow. The Niz pushed the big mass of moaning Miran on the floor with his toe. “It is your magic, Samuel,” he said in a gentle voice. “I need your magic.”

I spent a minute or two staring at him, trying to work it out, but come on…even you would have come up empty on that one. Wouldn’t you? I thought back again to when I threw the dragon into the sky and the nasty weakness that had followed. And the headache that still cracked open my skull with its constant pounding. I was pretty sure that if I had magic, I didn’t want it. I was equally sure that I wasn’t going to let the Niz have it either. Besides, how do you give magic to someone…even someone you liked? Could it be traded back and forth like baseball cards?

“Uhmm…I lost the stone. Sorry.” I shrugged and lifted my hands like a six year old trying to play innocent.

“I don’t care about the stone, fool. It is your magic I want.”

I decided to say nothing. Play the strong silent type. As soon as I did that, I almost choked on the really great things I could say that would prove that I was smart and Nizby was not. That I was right, and Nizby was a jerk. That I was the good guy and Nizby was the bad guy. Fortunately, Nizby interrupted before I could state the obvious.

The Niz curled his hand into a fist then turned and pointed at Miran. Light sprang from his fingers and speared right into Moron. Moron howled and scrambled around on the floor like a crab on a beach full of storks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I shouted, feeling desperate, and feeling mad for feeling desperate. This was Moron’s fault. If he wasn’t here, I could be tearing the place down. But, nooo, I have to spend my time saving Moron’s extra large hind end.

Nizby whirled to face me. “Just release your magic to me. Now.”

The obvious question would have been, “How?” But I, having the general intelligence of a red-legged frog, asked a far more pressing question. “Why? You have your own magic.”

Nizby’s face turned red. He approached to within inches of me, his mouth twisted into a snarl. “Not everybody is born with a silver spoon of magic, boy.”

I could feel his breath, and believe me, I could smell his breath. But this time, decided against saying anything about it. The way he was puffing up, he was going to explode and I was close enough to get caught in the blast. “So…are you from Veritor?” I asked as conversationally as I could.

“What business is it of yours?” he shouted.

“So Veritor really exists?” I sat up a little straighter, not sure if I wanted him to say yes or no.

“Fool.”

“That’s not an answer,” I said.

He turned and pointed at Miran again, probably preparing to hurt him some more.

“You’re wasting your time with him,” I said quickly. “He’s a bully, and a jerk and he deserves what you can give him.” I said it off handedly, but I felt a lump rise in my throat. I’d experienced the Niz’s torture first hand a time or two, and I still had nightmares.

Nizby frowned, then lowered his hand. “Then we will have to find someone better. Someone you do care about. Won’t we, Samuel?”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I made it a rule not to care too much about anyone, but I had never been very good at following rules. There were four people I cared about right here in this house. Why hadn’t the Niz trotted them out to torture? Fear rose in my throat and made my hands and knees shake. They were here, weren’t they? They were still…still alive, right? “I don’t know how to give you my magic.” I hoped the desperation wasn’t as strong in my voice as I thought it was.

“Take them to the cellar,” Nizby yelled at Sanchez. “And put them in a cell…together.”