“Shadow and Scout can be lookouts, Socoro will be guard, Syed will be the distraction guard, Sameer and I will work cover, and Simone will go after the pouch.”
“How come Simone gets to be the one to get the pouch?” Socoro whined.
“Yeah, you always send her and leave us to do nothing!” added Syed, crossing his mud slathered arms over his chest.
I just inwardly rolled my eyes, remaining relaxed with a look of passive indifferent plastered to my face. I was used to this; it happened every time we tried doing anything together.
“Simone is the smallest of all of us. She can get where we can’t. You and I both know that they’re going to stick that pouch in the smallest crevice of the most cramped space they can find, just like we did. It took Simone’s size to get it in there in the first place. I’d like to see you fit,” retorted Sylas calmly.
My mind brought up the picture of my burly brother trying to fit in the small corner space between the well and the wall of our courtyard. I nearly laughed aloud at the sight, but stopped myself just in time. A rookie slip like that would have sent me right back as a lookout with Shadow and Scout, giving Syed his wish. As it was, I could see Scout’s eyes flick towards me. He said nothing to Sylas, nor gave any other indication that he’d seen anything, but I knew he’d noticed. Scout saw everything.
Sameer spoke up now, his deep voice as unbothered as always. “If we keep standing here, Teague will have dispatched his brothers and have our pouch before we can say ‘light fingers.’ I know cheerful banter this is so much fun, but if we could disperse this merry party and focus on our tasks?”
Sylas looked approvingly at his younger brother, second eldest at twelve. “Right you are, Sameer. Now, you know your jobs; carry them out to the best of your abilities.”
I slipped into the wake of Sylas and Sameer. Tucked in behind them, I disappeared from view. Out of sight, out of mind was the most employed philosophy during these games. The other team figured if they couldn’t see me, I must not be playing. How wrong they were.
Taking a quick look back, I spotted Syed and Socoro positioning themselves a goodly distance apart throughout the courtyard, Socoro in the general area of our prized pouch, Syed nowhere near it (another reason he hated his job; if he couldn’t catch an trespasser, it didn’t matter anyway). This was another of our plays. It had yet to be revealed to anyone that there were in fact identical twins in our family, causing these who tried to play with us to think that they were seeing double. Not knowing which boy was guarding the pouch, they were forced to either send two members, one in each direction, to try to retrieve it, thus weakening their defense, or to just guess which one was a real guard and hope they were right.
Just ahead of me I saw Scout and Shadow climbing their trees, two tall pines with plenty of plenty of branch cover and a magnificent view of bother our courtyard and the surrounding forest. By the time our opponents arrived, they would be safely hidden in the boughs, ready to alert the twins of the intruders.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Reaching the edge of the forest, I stepped lightly out from my brothers’ berth and ducked into the trees. In here, I was air; I was freedom; I was serenity. I knew each bush and needle and root. No twig snapped under my nimble steps; no leaf crunched or crackled wantonly. The birds did not acknowledge my presence with anything more than their usual chirping song, feeling no reason why I, their cherished and sacred friend, should not be there. I was one with the forest, no more different than the selfsame trees that grew there.
But I’d no time to stop and take in its splendor right now. I had a job to do, and there would be heck to pay if I didn’t do it exactly right. I could hear my eldest brothers, not quite so skilled in forest oneness as I, flanking me far away on either side, ready to come to aid me should I need it.
I knew I wouldn’t. I knew these woodland paths as well as, if not probably better, than I knew my own name. Their memorization had been required of me from the moment I stepped onto the courtyard flagstones for the first time. The only reason I could think of that I would need help of any kind would be the danger of people, and from the ones that could actually cause me to need help, my brothers were defenseless against, their aid useless.
An audible crack resounded from my right. In a flash I was up the closest tree, a fir, its welcoming needles not even twitching loose as I scrambled into its concealing limbs. I slowed my breathing, regulating it as I’d been taught to not make the slightest sound, while still allowing me to avoid asphyxiation.
I settled back, resting against the trunk, closing my eyes and allowing my ears to tell me the story of what was happening beyond the branches. My brothers had also stopped; I no longer heard their distinctive footsteps through the undergrowth. Now another pattern, unfamiliar to me, approached my hiding place. My breath almost caught, then I forced it back to its needed tempo. Another twig snapped as the figure came closer; from the way it cracked I could tell that whoever it was likely a male, and rather small. Their missteps marked them as either young or inexperienced, likely the latter, as even I didn’t make the rudimentary blunder of not watching where I was walking.
The steps stopped right in front of me. It was all I could do to remain calm. I wasn’t sure why I was so worried. So far as I knew, we were on our side of the boarder, making this careless boy in danger of being caught, not me. However, I thought it best to be cautious. I may have misinformation coming to mind, caused by the panic of the opponent so close by.
He stood there for what seemed like hours, though in the rational part of my mind I knew he was only there for about a minute. Once from the rustle of his shirt I was sure he was going to reach into my tree, but the moment passed, and I remained unfound. When he moved on towards my brothers back at home, I breathed an inward sigh of relief.
I waited five minutes, each second counted faithfully to three hundred in my head, as dictated constantly by Sylas, who insisted that I never leave my hiding place without them flanking me, which, with my exceeding forest walking skills, was next to impossible without knowing an exact moment when we should all start moving again. As soon as I made it to the last second, I stepped out from the tree, listening hard for the sounds of my brothers’ movement and continuing only when I heard it once more.
I could tell I was near my mark when I heard the sounds of the humans of our village. I had been to the center of it a few times before, usually during these games, but today I needed only to venture to the edge, to a small cottage whose appearance Sylas told me would made quite obvious its occupant’s occupation. There I had to find the pouch hidden somewhere nearby.
I knew exactly which house was the one I was looking for. Though I had never been to this part of the village, Sylas had been right about my ability to identify it. Only a blind man could miss the glass chimes dangling all around the roof’s edge. Hung on the inside of both of the windows in the back of the cottage were beautiful glass plates with colorful scenes detailed inside.
All this was seen from ten yards from the cottage itself. I climbed the tallest tree I could find, a sycamore, and searched the area around it for the pouch guards. I spotted two, one of them who looked as if he were doing double-duty as a lookout. The two were spread out, as my brothers were back at home, but these two were not quite as smart as us in the ways of this game. They kept looking behind them at where they had placed it, and from that knowledge, I could see that they had placed themselves equal distances from the pouch, a mistake on their part. Now all I had to do was calculate the middle point between them, look for likely hiding places, and bam, I was in business.
I nearly cackled at how simple finding the pouch’s location was. I wondered if they had really thought they were being clever or if they hadn’t even bothered to try. Along the side of the house, between the cottage and another building I assumed must be the glass working area, a pile of deformed vases sat discarded in a jumble of glass. One wrong pull would send the whole thing tumbling with a deafening crash.
I supposed they might have thought themselves smart for thinking along those lines when they stuck their pouch under this pile, but they had not taken into account the fact that I had been taught how to remove an object from a potentially noisy stack years ago. Of course, they likely hadn’t even taken my existence into account, so I suppose I couldn’t blame them.
Now that I knew where the pouch was more than likely hidden, I had no time to waste. Upon arrival at the cottage, Sylas and Sameer would wait only ten minutes for me to deduce the pouch’s location, retrieve it, and get back to the forest before they would depart for our home, leaving me to make my own way back. I had already wasted at least two minutes of this time scorning our opponents’ stupidity. I needed to put my skills into action.
The guard-boys stared stupidly into the woods when they weren’t checking on the glass pile. They didn’t even bother to go check out the front of the house. They probably weren’t expecting anyone to just walk up through town and take something from the pile. I almost groaned from the simplicity of it. Much as I loved a good idiot, I longed for a challenge.
Mayhap I could make it a bit more challenging…
I struck that thought from my mind as soon as it entered. My brothers would never forgive me for looking incompetent. I was to get in and get out, and that was it. There were to be no unnecessary complications caused by me.
Backtracking further into the woods, I skirted the cottage, working my way around until I was two houses away before wandering into town. No one looked twice at me. In fact, I went out of my way not to be looked at once. Keeping to the shadows, I remained mostly out of sight.
Not that I looked much different from any of the other kids. My chin-length black hair was pulled into pigtails, neat and tidy with a tight black headband securing fly-away wisps. My top was leaf green, chosen for it’s resemblance to the many trees of the forest. Black shorts that looked a skirt if I held my legs close together and black boots completed the regular village girl look –not too girly, but not overly boyish. The only thing that made me stand out was my skin tone and eye color.
I never understood my looks. My medium dark tan skin and gray eyes contrasted heavily from the pale skin and blue and green eyes of all the other people I had ever seen. My family had never minded, as the tone of my body helped me blend in with my surroundings, but even they were disconcerted whenever they looked into those pools of pale gray, a cool and unforgiving color.
Despite my secret hope that they had placed some kind of look-out in the front, the place was deserted. There was nothing, not even an animal to alert them of my presence. I crept around the side of the cottage to the corner, and as I inspected the pile I noticed even more errors on their part. The pile not only was high enough to hide me if I crouched, they had stuck the pouch on the side facing away from them, based on the premise that I would have further to go so that I wouldn’t be able to run away. Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem if they never saw me.
This would still require a bit of stealthy-ness on my part, though. It I made any noise at all, they would certainly know I was there. My small size could work against me if they were faster than I. But maybe…
A brilliant plan came to my mind. Something that would make this a trifle more interesting, not to mention would cause my brothers endless amusement if I could pull it off successfully.
First, I had to get rid of this suspicious sneaky air. If they though I was up to something, they would definitely have the upper-hand, being more than twice my size. However, I could turn myself into what they thought I should be…
Running quietly back to the forest, I scooped up a handful of flowers, not worrying about their kind. I loosened my headband, making sure it wobbled sufficiently. Then, taking a deep breath, I rounded the corner and walked straight up to the pile of glass, not even bothering to be quiet.
“Hello!” I called to them, affecting a cute little girl voice.
Both boys turned around to see who this child was who was disturbing them. The moment they laid eyes on me I knew I had been too hasty in thinking this was a foolproof plan. They were too far away to see my eyes, but the dark color of my skin could be seen for miles on this sunny day.
“Wha’ d’ ya wan’, kid?” growled the bigger one, trying and failed to mask his discomfiture.
“I just wanted t’ know what you were doin’ starin’ at the woods like that,” I replied breezily, as though I walked up to random people to see what they were doing everyday.
“We’re not doin’ nuthin’, so you can jus’ go away, kid,” snarled the other boy, who didn’t even attempt to hide that he was disconcerted by this strange skinned little girl.
They had played right into my favorite part of this scheme. Squeezing my gray eyes tight, I forced tears to start falling onto my cheeks and shoved a tremble into my voice. “I was j- just askin’. Y- y- you didn’t have to be so mean!” Raising fists to wipe my watery eyes, I knocked my black headband right off onto the ground next to the pile. Its landing place was out of their sight, but they had seen it fall.
I now had every excuse to get down on the ground to pick it up, and fear that they would make me cry even more kept them from coming nearer or stopping me from doing so. Kneeling, my tiny fingers flitted easily under the vases and hooked the small leather pouch. Tucking it into a pocket, I grabbed my headband, now covered slightly in dirt, and shoved it fiercely at the boys.
“And now my headband’s all dirty, too!” I squealed at them. “I’m telling my ma!” Then I turned tail and ran, still miming the perfect overly upset little girl.
Through my fake sobs I couldn’t hear signs of pursuit, so they hadn’t tried to stop me from tattling on them. I attributed this to both the fact that a little girl’s tears didn’t mean much in terms of being punished, especially when they hadn’t actually done anything, and that they were still a little too frightened of my different skin to want to get any closer.
I waited until I passed three structures before ducking back into the forest. Running in a twenty meters, I stopped to allow myself a round of raucous laughter before continuing on home. I couldn’t wait until the hour before sundown, when we would meet up with those boys plus their brothers. It was always a sweet victory to see our opponents’ faces when they realized a girl had slipped past them, but this would taste even sweeter.
The trip home was undisturbed by our opponents. I could have run straight home, but another plot had jumped into my mind. Unlike the one for the game, however, this plan would benefit me only. All it would take was a small detour and a bit more acting on my part to pull it off.
I turned off the unmarked path to my home and ran deer-like toward a location only I knew. It was my special place, my sanctuary of peace and wonder. The grove was about seven furlongs away from home, deep enough into the woods that my brothers would have only the slimmest chance of discovering it if they ever chose to follow me, Of course, the six of them together were still so dense they would never have recognized its value.
The maze of trees and undergrowth disappeared to form a clearing. Long grass grew patasino green, undisturbed by all humans but me. Many a time I had come here to watch a doe and her fawns or a group of rabbits nibbling on the thick blades. It was more beautiful and relaxing than any place I had discovered in the woods yet.
Enchanting as the allure of the grass and other growths were, the real queen of the glade was the oak tree. Standing regally in the center of the clearing, its thick trunk, three times as wide as I was tall, rose whole up to my shoulder before splitting into five twisting gnarls, which sprouted into a plethora of leafy branches, all perfect for climbing. The arrangement of the five trunks splitting from the ground was something of an anomaly. One continued straight up while the others seemed to box it in, jutting out equal distances apart around the center.
I wished I could stay here to relax, but this was no time for dilly-dallying. If I was gone too much longer, they would start to wonder. Not worry, they knew I could take care of myself, but they would surely be suspicious of my actions.
I climbed the oak, which I’d named Grammy Oaklina upon learning my own was dead, up about three-quarters of the way, to a spot that only a person who didn’t know trees could tell wasn’t natural. Thinly woven leafy branches, never separated from their main growth points, formed an almost waterproof canopy, and a faint outline was the only indicator of the little girl-sized hole carved into the side. Slipping through said hidden entrance, I welcomed myself home.
I had carefully whittled and carved, thanking Grammy and making certain I did not harm her, a rather large room into the main trunk, approximately one and a half times my height of four feet each way. I had been so careful that it had taken nearly a year to finish this much, even with the help of several woodpeckers I had coaxed in from time to time.
Hurrying to the far side of the burrow, I reached into a perfectly natural-looking notch. Feeling carefully, I tugged out a gray pouch, about the same size as the one I’d taken from those boys. Pouring out its contents, deep red, blue, green, and white rocks fell into my palm. Then I reached and again and pulled out a red bag, spilling my snatched pouch’s five rubies into it. I replaced them with five of the red rocks, each chosen for their resemblance to our smallest currency, pat.
Climbing out of the trunk-room and scrambling down the branches, I gave Grammy Oaklina a hug before dashing off through the woods again. I would come back later, after we had met up with our challengers. Grammy had stood for over eight hundred years; she would wait for me for a few more hours, and waiting… well, that was her way, just as fooling people and traipsing the forest was mine.
“Where
have you been?” Sylas demanded, towering over me. Of course, being ten years older than I, that wasn’t too difficult for him.
“Yeah, Mini Moan, we were
worried ‘bout you,” simpered Socoro, smirking down at me. Unlike with Sylas, however, this was much less impressive, seeing as he and Syed were only head taller than I, even at ten.
“Aw, how sweet,” I teased. “I worried about you too, Soccy –worried that you wouldn’t see people sneaking up…
look out behind you!”
Socoro whirled around, expecting an attacker and seeing none. Quick-tempered as always, he advanced furiously upon me. This was not a good sign for me. Not even Sylas, for whom I was the favorite, would step in, breaking the honored code of our childhood. Short Socoro may have been, but he was easily twice as strong as I.
Running was not an option, not to me. I was no coward, to flee at the first sign of trouble. I could have taken the beating bravely, but nor was I a doormat to be stepped on by those bigger than I.
Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong! We all turned to stare into the woods.
It was five, and the village tower clock was announcing the hour before supper. The boys from the family we had just played against would shortly to see that we had their pouch along with our own. I grinned savagely at what else they would discover.
“I hate to break up this little lovefest, but they’ll be here soon,” intoned Sameer calmly, as though commenting on the weather.
They all turned back to me. In knew what they expected. I silently handed the pouch to Sylas and scaled the pine tree Scout had so expertly hidden in, reaching the top just in time to hear the boys arriving in the courtyard below.
Tears slipped down my face even as my second plot, so happily thought out, unfolded. They would never find out I had been the one who had tricked them and taken their bag. I would never get a chance to tell them.
Because to all but my family, I did not exist.
