All Chapters of Foundling: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The next day Poe talked more of the School. What Hunter could anticipate, what would be expected of him, trying to explain tradition and custom, values and taboos without some common point of reference. The boy occasionally made terse comments or asked probing questions regarding certain points of Poe’s narrative. Some of his questions, if vaguely and obtusely worded, were remarkably shrewd and his perceptions insightful, but, at least, they were coming to better understand each other.After midday, when Poe had talked himself into silence and the boy had retreated into his own grave manner, Poe noticed a strange sight, something he would have otherwise overlooked because he only noted it slantwise, at the periphery of vision, and when he tried to look directly upon it, it faded, but it was a persistent shimmer in the air, a blur moving toward them. It would cross their path soon, farther down the road.Poe sent a probe of thought toward the anomaly but could discern nothing. Concentr

Darkness spread as the sun slipped below the horizon. Poe’s thighs were going numb from sitting astride the broad shoulders of the matoskah, and its rolling gait was starting to make the fabric of his pants chafe his thighs. That was an immediate problem, but because they no longer traveled by foot, they would have to cut across the flatlands sooner than he had anticipated to take the main road through the foothills of the mountains. He would no longer be able to hide Hunter away and word and rumor would begin to spread quicker than wildfire by the settlers and merchants. He would need a account of Hunter’s presence, of his strangeness. There were some merits to the claim of an orphaned Dine, but there were also pitfalls. He did shares some of their traits, and could claim ignorance about the others, but among those at the School everyone knew that he would be returning with the boy and that is when the true questions would begin and would need to be answered.Poe’s stomach gave a grum

The turnings of the boy’s mind no longer surprised Poe, but still he had to adjust to the abrupt and direct thrust of his manner. There was no dissembling to the boy, which would profit him and be a refreshing change to the guarded manner of many at the School, but others would not like the boy’s presumptive and brisk approach. “The School is not the journey’s end, Hunter. It is but its beginning. Every promise of your keeping and all others given to you begin at the School. It is a beautiful, stark place that will test you. There will be nothing lightly given, nor lightly withheld. It is a heavy responsibility you accept when you step between those gates. That is the promise that you will find at the School. What you make of that promise, Hunter, only you can determine.”“That does not help with the bindings that pinch and constrain, that hold me against my will.”“Are you committed to seeing this course of action through to the end?”“Yes.”“Then that is half the answer. Your commi

Gradually, Hunter could feel the heat of the other’s palm increase, the tingling sensation increase. There was pressure but no sting. Slowly, as the pressure built, a blue swirl, fluctuating and spinning, began to coalesce on the back of Poe’s hand.“That is my ki, or how my ki would appear surrounding my body if it could be perceived just by sight. I want you to hold that shape and feeling in your mind and not let it go as I begin channeling my ki into yours.”Hunter relaxed as ki flowed into him as if he were a dry streambed filling with water. It invigorated, enlivened, and carried the tension from his body. He had never felt anything like it and grasped at that feeling as if to never let it go.Poe lifted his hand and trailing between his palm and the back of Hunter’s hand was a fine, colorless gossamer tendril seeming as if spun from spider silk. Watching the gossamer thread, Hunter yearned to see what color his ki took.Slowly, it began to coat his hand and then spread up his ar

Alone in the formless nowhere between consciousness and the void, Hunter could find no succor or warmth. Pulled in myriad directions, a bleak feeling of despair, like that after his mother’s death, seeped into him from the void, drowning him. He fled from those emotions and feelings. It was only in flight that he could arrest the wailing despair, and his flight led him back into his dreams of memory. Eyes opened to flickering shadows on the paneled wood of the ceiling. Recently, he had begun to put faces to the voices around him: the maid who nursed for him; the mother who wrapped him in the warmth of her bosom; his father, obsidian cloaked in light; and the shapeless man with pale eyes. “Farther away from the Spheres, in those unknown scraps of existence, lies our only hope. They will be hard to find there,” his father said. “There is a reason we stayed as close to the Spheres as we did. The concentration of rûah hid your chakra and hides your son’s as well,” was pale-eyes’ respo