“I asked you a question,” the boy said. “You wan’t some help your gonna have to answer a few things.”

Will tried to stand up straight. They shouldn’t think they were gonna get the best of him.

“I fell, from really high up… landed on my arm, and now I can’t move it. I need a doctor.”

“You mean a Mender,” the girl chimed in, but the boy extended his hand to hush her. He then walked over closer to her side before talking again.

“How’d ya fall so hard? You come from up there?” He pointed to the swirling cloud above.

“I think so—”

“How’d you get in it?”

“I… was on a ledge. I tripped, and fell. Then I was here.”

“With your Cakrit bird?” the girl added. She sounded the same way his teacher did if she didn’t believe a story he’d made up to get out of homework.

“Stop talking.” The boy said without a single look her direction. “She’s right,” he said finally, “How’d you get it?”

“It just started following me.”

“No it didn’t.”

“Uh, yeah. It did. It won’t leave me alone.”

“That’s because it’s yours. Your linked with it.” The boy looked irritated.

“That’s what Murden said,” Will mumbled his words.

“I’m sorry what? Who did you just say?”

That certainly got his attention back. The boy leaned in with intense eyes and the girl shuffled sideways to better see. Will now noticed her large brown backpack. A backpack that seemed to jostle and move on its own.

“Um…” Will stammered. “It was just some guy, his name was Murden or something. He was the first to tell me that me and the, Cakrit are linked, or whatever you call it.”

This put the boy into a rage. He completely ignored Will and began to angrily kick tufts of dirt and grass into the air. Then he let out a long agonized scream. The girl ran to comfort him.

“Ezra, it’s ok.”

“No its not!” he yelled. “Murden’s taken him through the portal. He’s already in. We’ve come all this way for NOTHING!”

“We can still get him back,” she said.

“Really? How? There’s the portal. Right there and there’s nothing we can do. We can’t get high enough to go through it, not without going back to Bezda first, and if we do, it’ll be closed by the time we get back.”

“He’ll come back through. You know he will. He has too,” she said.

“Eventually… but he doesn’t have to come that way.” Again the boy pointed sharp and upward toward the mist. He stared a moment then turned and paced toward Will. “What else did he say?”

“Nothing, he just said I had a Cakrit bird.”

“Oh really, just ‘high there, you have a Cakrit, bye,’ that doesn’t sound like Murden. Why didn’t he take it?” Will remembered Murden had offered, but Will had refused. “He wouldn’t have let you keep it. He would’ve killed you to get it.”

Suddenly Will felt very cold. The Mantis. Were to two of them connected? Linked or whatever? Will wanted to ask but thought better of it.

“Ezra, what do we do?” The girl said. “This kid needs help.”

“I know,” That same irritation was back. “He can’t run with us. He’ll blow everything.”

Will suddenly felt very foolish. They talked about him as him he couldn’t even hear. The boy—Ezra she had called him—went and sat in the grass and the girl knelt just behind him with a hand on his shoulder. Again Will saw her plush backpack jostle and move. The two of them took a long moment as they decided what to do. Eventually, Ezra stood, dusted himself off, and turned to call out to Will.

“You can follow us to Bezda,” he said. “It’ll take a full day. Once we’re there, you get to a Mender and we’re gone, understand? The two of us don’t have room for another, especially a Darkhand.”