Finding the Lost Boy Page 3

  Chapter Two

  Katelin stood there at a loss staring at the boy with her mouth open and her head tilted to the side. The boy was just over five foot tall, strangely pale, lean but muscular, and covered in nothing but cuts and dirt from head to toe. He looked like he was about the same age as her, maybe a few years younger, but sh wasn't sure. Almost immediately an endless stream of questions began to flood her mind. Who is he? Where did he come from? What should she do now?

  Then as if to give her an answer to at least one of her questions she saw the slight rise and fall of his chest.

  "He's alive?" she said more as a question of disbelief than a statement. "There's no way" she thought. He fell out of the sky for Christ's sakes. She was slowly shaking her head from side to side when she saw it happen again. This time she rushed to him, knelt down beside him and took his pulse. "Oh my god. He's alive!" she yelled when she found a slow but steady pulse.

  Katelin tried to pick the boy up in her arms but couldn't manage. Strange, she thought. Growing up on the farm and being raised by her father had made Katelin tougher than most girls her age. Not overly muscular, but capable. She had been one of only three girls in her class able to lift the adult male training dummy, so she should be able to pick up this boy.

  "No stranger than a kid falling out of the sky." she said as she gave up trying to carry him and moved behind his head. She squatted down and was suppressed when she put her arms under his and brought them around his chest. He's solid as a rock, she thought as she felt the firm muscles all around. She had a flashing thought of child body builders and had to laugh at the idea. Her laugh quickly died as she strained to lift the boy up enough to drag him to the house. She realized pretty quick just how far away from the house they were. When she had to stop to take a break she saw that they were only a quarter of the way to the house. She took the time to try and think of a better way to do this, one that might not throw out her back by the time that she got there. She couldn't think of anything that didn't involve leaving the cut, bleeding and broken boy alone in the dirt in the middle of the cold night. No, she had to get him inside, cleaned up and bandaged before he bled out or went into shock.

  "Alright kiddo," she said, grunting as she lifted him, resigning herself to the task at hand. "We made it this far." she added to give herself the boost of confidence to handle this.

  Katelin drug him the rest of the way to the house and only had to stop two more times before they made it to the porch. Once she got him up the stairs she slid him onto the rug from the hallway. The rug was long, narrow and slid well on the hardwood floor. Dragging the boy on the rug was much easier and she almost wanted to hit herself for not thinking of using the rug to get him to the house house in the first place. But there was no point in beating herself up over not thinking of it earlier. So she slid the boy through her house and into her parents old room. She stood there struggling with the idea that this was somehow disrespectful to the memory of her parents. Then she looked down at the boy and said, "He needs it more than you do." And with that she rushed off to get a bucket of water and a washcloth. Although what she said might have sounded a bit morbid to a stranger, her parents had been more practical than faith oriented I their lives and she knew that her father would've called her foolish for not using his old room or even for not making it her's after so long, since it was the master bedroom and a fair bit bigger than hers.

  She came back into the room with several different towels, washcloths and a five gallon bucket of water. She set everything down next to the boy and went around turning on all the lights. One of the benefits of going to medical school in a town surrounded by small farming communities was that they taught you how to do emergency medicine in nearly any environment since at any given point you might find yourself a couple hundred miles from a hospital. Good lighting was very important during the initial clean up and examination of a patent. Between the overhead lights her fathers desk lamp and both of the night stand lights. It was enough light from enough directions that she didn't cast a shadow over the boy no matter where she knelt down to work.

  Satisfied with the lighting she sat down and began to clean the dirt and dried blood off of the boy. She started at his face and worked her way down. He had a three inch long gash along his right cheek just under his eye. It wasn't bleeding and Katelin was careful not to reopen it as she worked. That was the case with most of the cuts and scrapes that she found as she worked he way down from his face to his chest, none of them were bleeding. She was a little stunned by one of the slashes on the boy's chest. It was at least half an inch deep and went from his right shoulder nearly all the way to his hip bone. When she began cleaning it she was sure it was going to need stitches, but when she was done it was barely bleeding. It was the same with all his cuts, none of them bled like they should have, and if it hadn't been so late Katelin probably would've been more worried by it. However, as it was she was just happy she didn't have to do the extra work of giving the boy stitches.

  When she got to his waist she carefully draped a cloth over his privates. Not that she hadn't seen it before but the idea of handling it herself made her blush. That all went away when she saw the softball sized bruise on his right thigh and realized that the bone was broken underneath. Katelin took extra care with the boys leg and found another bruise down on his shin and another broken bone underneath it too. "Poor kid" she said, knowing that most people never walk without some form of complication after they have multiple breaks in a leg. She almost laughed, "You're lucky to be alive broken leg or not." she said as she stood up to get the first aid kit. After she finished bandaging the boy up and putting splints on both parts of his broken leg she was beyond exhaustion. She was content with leaving all her unanswered questions and what to do with the boy for the following day. So she covered the boy with a blanket, put a pillow under his head and turned off all the lights. Then she went to her own room and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

  ---

  Katelin awoke the next morning with a sense of righteous accomplishment that added a quickness to the way that she moved while getting ready for the day. That sense was further fueled when she went to check on the boy. One of his arms was folded over his chest and he was still asleep. Good, she thought, people in a coma don't move and neither do paralyzed people. Smiling she went outside to make sure that all of the farm equipment was working right. There was no reason that everything wouldn't be fine and since it was early in the summer only a few machines would actually be working, but still she went to check. Katelin smiled as she warmly thought of her father telling her how a farmer could check his equipment everyday for years and never have a problem, but the one day he chose to sleep in and neglect his duty he would wake up to see his farmed ruined by those "damn machines", as her father would affectionately call them.

  All was well with the machines and everything was working as it should be as usual. After doing the checks by herself for the past year and for as long as she could remember with her parents she had her system checks down to a practiced science that only took forty-five minutes. She could cut it down to a half an hour if she hurried, and today she hurried. She wanted to be there when her new boy woke up. She thought of him as hers anyways. After all she took responsibility for him and after sweating through the night before she felt an attachment to the unknown boy that was new and exciting for her. Not only did she want to be there to ask him all sorts of questions, but also to make sure that he wasn't terrified at waking up in an unknown place.

  As she made her way back to the front porch she saw that she hadn't been fast enough. There on the front porch the boy had just hobbled out the front door.

  "No wait!" Katelin called out as she ran to the boy. "I'm sorry I wasn't there but you really shouldn't be walking around." she said, as she reached the boy. She put her hand on the boys shoulder and tried to guide him into turning around but he didn't budge.

  Instead he reached his arm out, past her, towards the field where he
fell and said,"I need my sword."

  Great, he's delirious she thought and then began to be more insistent. "No you need to come inside and-" that is until she was cut off by the smacking sound of polished wood hitting the boys palm. She turned around and was stunned to see the boy holding a straight bladed, red handled sword in a high gloss, blood red sheath. "You're a havenist." she said, almost as a question as she stumbled back a step. She'd heard of havenists, but not on Bifoil and never as children, although it made sense that not all of them would be old. Still it made her a little uneasy and she really had no idea what she'd gotten herself into.

  The boy went to stand up straighter and answer, but when he shifted his weight back to his right leg his words were cut short as a hiss of pain came out instead. Quicker than Katelin thought was possible the boy's sword clicked against the porch as he used it as a cane just before his leg gave out from underneath him.

  "Oh god I'm sorry." Katelin said, as she ducked under the arm that wasn't being used to help him stand. "Your leg's broken, I'm sorry. Let's get back inside." she said.

  The boy nodded and with Katelin's help managed to hobble into the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and he sat down, then she ran off to her fathers room to see if he had anything that might fit the boy since he still wasn't wearing any clothes.

  "I'll be right back." she called out from the other room.

  The boy sat still with both hands holding his sword trying to recall the last days events that had landed him here. He knew his name. He remembered all of his training and missions, at least he thought he did. He remembered everything except how in the hell he got here, where here was, and who this girl was. Was he on a mission, he asked himself. He didn't think so, it just didn't feel right. Then what was it, he wondered. Why was he naked, broken and for all intense purposes lost. Nothing made any sense and he had to ask himself if any of this was even real? There was a thought and it took him right to the idea that this might be some new form of VR training. As soon as the thought took form in the boy's head, his mind was violently bombarded with flashing images and moments of combat that he couldn't remember. However, the images and moments felt so familiar that the boy couldn't deny them as being his own memories.

  Katelin came around the corner from her parents room at a tip toe pace. "Umm, hi" she said, to get the boys attention.

  He looked up to see her walking towards him with a pile of cloths in her arms. He went to stand up to receive the pile that he was sure was meant for him, but from the sharp pain that he got from shifting in the chair and seeing the girls eyes go wide out of either fear or concern he decided against it.

  Katelin handed the boy the sweat pants and tee shirt that she had pulled out of her fathers dresser. "I'm sorry, I know it's not much but it should fit at least." she said. She couldn't help but feel awkward now that the boy was awake. She hadn't really planned out how everything was suppose to happen when he woke up, but still this was far from ideal.

  The boy slipped the shirt on and when he went to put the pants on the girl turned away to give him some privacy. Odd he thought as he put them on. Modesty wasn't something that any of the Masters enforced and they surely hadn't felt the need to give him privacy. Then again he had known them since he was a child and had just met this girl. "Thank you." he said, as he finished pulling up the pants.

  As Katelin stood there with her back to the boy, she toyed with many ideas as to finding out how much, if any, memory loss the boy was suffering from without causing him to panic. She decided to start with the simple things like names and build from there. So when the boy thanked her she took it as an opportunity to introduce herself and get started.

  "Katelin," she said, spinning around. Her shoulder length hair whipped around unbound, and in that moment the boy thought that she was the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen. "My name is Katelin Abbern." she said, extending her arm out for a handshake.

  "Eathen," the boy said, taking her hand in his. "My name is Eathen Yeagher."