Riley spent most of the weekend at the pavilion, practicing her telekinetic ability as hard as she could. Xander was busy, but Gabe and Perry helped her with her work. They didn’t know about the impending attack and were confused by Riley’s sudden obsessive focus, but with their help and suggestions her skills did improve. She still wasn’t able to move things in any direction other than directly toward or away from herself, but she got much better with her aim when she was sending things away. Only a few days after discovering her limited telekinetic ability, she could hit most targets in a fifty foot range.
Camp was soon on high alert. Ivan spotted one of the Poxinosa spies on the eastern ridge shortly before dawn on Saturday morning. When he and Susanna dive-bombed the man, two more spies were seen. The Greenwood side called in reinforcements and chased the intruders away. Inspection of the spot that the first intruder had been hiding revealed partially assembled video equipment concealed in two of the trees. Had Ivan not seen the man when he did, the Poxinosa would have been able to monitor all of Greenwood’s activities remotely.
The Colonel was elated. As planned, he used the excuse to step up patrols, and then used the patrolling clan members to covertly move supplies around camp in case anyone else was watching them. Xander hired a team of Veiled consultants to sweep the area around camp for non-Greenwood signal transmissions. None were found, and the Colonel was satisfied that the Poxinosa were stopped before any damage had been done.
Reed concurred. When he returned from the Cut after receiving his instructions for the upcoming battle, he reported that the three spies Ivan had caught installing equipment on the ridge had been tortured for their clumsiness. The Poxinosa would have to make do with less information about the Greenwoods than they’d wanted. However, the confrontation had not been postponed or changed.
Reed also told Riley privately that Jack and Will would be looking for chances to create distractions that might be helpful for her. “They’re terrified for you. And Jack is beyond pissed at your elders for allowing you to participate in all this. He keeps using the word ‘exploitation.’”
Riley cringed. “Is he pissed at me too, for hanging up on him?”
“No. He’s kicking himself, not you. He said he knows you’re under a lot of stress and he was short with you on the phone. He didn’t blame you for hanging up.” Reed glanced around them at the other Greenwoods, most of whom were muttering and whispering to themselves. “People are acting crazy.”
They were. Every camp resident had figured out that something big was going on, but few of them knew what it was. Over the last few days, most had been given bizarre and inexplicably urgent tasks, like ‘make sure that every bow at camp is properly strung before dinner’ and ‘map every underground stream on our property by sundown on Friday.’ Worse, they’d been told to complete those tasks without it looking like that’s what they were doing. Speculation was intense.
“Of course people are acting crazy,” Riley said with a chuckle. “Not even someone as uptight and controlling as the Colonel could suddenly — and ‘in absolute secrecy!’ — need to know how many Band-Aids we have in the medical kits by 9:30 pm.”
Reed laughed. “No wonder people are freaking out! You’d think he’d be a little more circumspect. ‘Please count the first aid supplies’ or something.”
“Circumspection is not in his nature.”
Reed had been given his own assignments by the Colonel, who had agreed to Xander's suggestion about gathering biological material to hold over the Poxinosa. Reed was listening in on conversations in the Cut and, whenever possible, collecting items from the warriors there. Fingerprints, hair, used soda cans, anything small that he could smuggle out that might prove useful. He was also informing members of the Intelligence Committee where Poxinosa members were planning to be and when, so that I.C. members and anyone Xander hired to supplement them could go along behind them and search for additional items.
Reed hadn’t told Jack or Will about Greenwood’s plan to collect the evidence, though. He was certain Jack would interfere.
“He’d never approve of this,” Reed told Riley and Xander after his most recent foray into the Cut. “Will would help me gather samples if I asked him, but because he’s under Jack’s command, he’d have to confess if Jack asked him what he was up to. And if Jack happened to ask him that in front of somebody else, we could all be exposed. I can't do that to them. I’m on my own.”
Colonel Matthew, along with Chief James, Ned, Peter and the other clan elders, spent the weekend holed up in the chief’s house strategizing. When the families arrived on Saturday, they called an ‘impromptu’ clan meeting.
As soon as all the children had been moved safely out of earshot, the Colonel explained the impending attack to the clan. He concluded with, “We have no intention of giving in to their demands, so there will be a fight.”
“We’ll all be ready!” someone shouted from the back.
“No. We have a spy who feeds us information from inside the Poxinosa. And it’s because of that person that we know about the attack. If we are seen preparing for it, the spy will be blamed and killed. We cannot afford for that to happen. Therefore, no one who lives away from camp can be here when the attack occurs.”
“Then what will you do?” a woman sitting near Gabe’s mother Cynthia asked.
“We’re going to prepare in secret. It will look like they’ve surprised us, but we’re going to be ready for them. We already know they’re not going to storm the camp. Our main objectives, therefore, are to shield ourselves against Veiled weapons, and to undermine the powers of the fire warriors that we know are coming. Of course, they’ll be making similar plans to undermine our powers, but with the shield in play and our women on the field, we will have the advantage.”
Questions were asked, and answers given.
Riley fidgeted nervously throughout the meeting.
—HIDE—
I can’t ‘HIDE,’ Riley argued with her internal roommate. It’s ME that Tsali wants, not Greenwood. If I hide, I leave them vulnerable. Besides, he will expect me to disappear when he shows up, since that’s what I did on the trail. I’m sure he has a plan for THAT. ... What if I do the opposite? What if I go out and face him? It will look like I teleported there if I go out there invisibly and then just show myself. And because I can take people with me in my shell, I don’t have to go alone…
—HIDE—
Oh, shut up!
She spent the evening piecing together a plan for how she might be able to face Tsali, while shouting down the objections of her protective turtle. The plan she concocted was a little bit crazy and a whole lot dangerous, and she had no idea if it was even feasible. But if it worked, it would protect all the people she loved from harm.
Probably.
She hoped.
After dinner and campfire, when the women had come back and retrieved their hot drinks, Riley turned toward her female roommates and said, “Tell me more about Tsali.”
Alley shrugged. “He’s a mystery. He wasn’t born a Poxinosa. He was claimed by them some time ago. No one here knows where he came from. Also, it’s very strange that he’s called Tsali. That’s a Cherokee name. It’s bizarre for a fire warrior to choose a foreign name, even if he has foreign blood.”
Interesting. “The Colonel said that Tsali can control an Unveiled person, if that person is an animal in their mind?”
Katrina nodded. “He could turn us into his own personal zombies. And apparently it lasts for about forty-eight hours. If he hit one of our people on the battlefield, he’d have more than enough time to make that person kill some of us off — within the shield — and then take his own life. That’s the real threat with him: he could force us to fight one another.”
And this is who I’m up against? Riley shuddered. “What’s his animal?”
“He’s a beaver, like the Colonel,” Katrina told her. “I’ve always pictured him as the Colonel gone bad.”
“What about Nenexsa?” Riley asked.
“Nenexsa’s power is pheromone control,” Alley said. “He can create them, and he can force others to create them. Which really means that he can manipulate people’s emotions. He can make you feel fear, anger, lust, anxiety... you name it. All you have to do is breathe around him and you’re in danger. More than any other warrior, he scares me to death.”
Celia nodded. “The only ones who are safe around him are owls. They have no sense of smell, and people say his power doesn't work on them.”
“Well, and Vi,” Katrina gestured to Violet and smiled. “Nenexsa can’t do jack around her. She’s got our noses covered.”
“But Vi can’t go to the battlefield,” Alley reminded Katrina. “She’s a deer. That’s not what she was made for.”
Katrina shook her head. “Desperate times, Alicia.”
Riley didn’t want to get sidetracked into a debate about who should and should not fight. She was afraid they’d say turtles shouldn’t. “I’ve been thinking. What if I smuggle fifteen or twenty people into the woods under my shell before the Poxinosa arrive, and we wait there, armed and ready. When Tsali steps forward and asks for me, I show myself. Just myself... I keep the others hidden. Then I present a list of the evidence we’ve collected to Tsali, in person. I mean, the man is looking for me, and will be looking at me while I speak to him.” And if he’s looking at me, then he ISN’T looking at the people I love. “If I did that, it would buy everybody else several minutes to assess the threat, get organized, and plan a stronger response. And if he threatens me while I’m speaking to him, I’ll show the other people I brought with me. He will think I teleported them there.” Riley looked around the table. “What do you say?”
Alley gaped at her. “It’s suicide!”
“You’re joking, right?” Violet sounded incredulous. “You want to waltz right up to a cold-blooded killer who’s out hunting for you and threaten him? You’d have no way of defending yourself if he pulled out a gun and shot you. And when he incapacitates you — when, not if — you’d leave all the people you brought with you vulnerable, and within arm’s reach of his men.”
Riley’s heart sank.
—Violet is recognizing threats. That’s what deer do best—
But does that make doing this impossible? “It would catch him off guard,” Riley pointed out. She turned to Katrina. “What do you think?”
“It’s… possible.” Katrina said thoughtfully. “If it were planned right, it might work.”
“No it won’t, Katrina,” Alley argued.
“Alley, I can totally do this,” Riley argued. “If my job is just to carry a team to the meeting site, and to keep Tsali occupied until everybody else is in place, I’m certain I can pull that off. Celia, what do you say?”
“You’d need precise information, and I’m not sure we’ll have it,” Celia said fretfully. “You’d need to know exactly where Tsali will stand when he comes forward and challenges you, within a few feet, to avoid having your turtle tramp around in front of him, giving the whole thing away. And our people who run out onto the field would need to know where you were standing, too, so they could avoid your shell. Otherwise someone would step into it accidentally and become invisible, which would give you away.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “That kind of boldness would make him hesitate, though. He doesn’t have a clue what you can and can’t do.”
“Right,” Riley nodded. “They don’t have any information about my animal or about my power. I could bluff.”
“No. You can’t lie around them,” Violet said. “They have a warrior named Paselo who can tell immediately if someone is lying.”
“I didn’t say lie, I said bluff. I don’t have to answer Tsali’s questions. I can hedge.”
“Riley, this is way too dangerous!” Alley glared at her. “Okay, you can make us invisible! But you’re the slowest animal there is, you have zero experience with weapons, you don’t have any offense capabilities, and the power you do have is only useful when people are sleeping.”
Or when they’re DRUNK. She is really getting on my nerves tonight! “I don’t need to have amazing powers, I just need Tsali to think that I do. He doesn’t know that I’m a turtle, let alone a huge one, so all of those animal abilities are going to look like powers to him. I can make people invisible. I’ve gotten good at expelling things from my shell and hitting a target.” Riley stood again and paced back and forth behind her chair. “And it’s great that I’m still unnamed. When I finally do get named, we need to make sure it’s something really vague. I want the Poxinosa driving themselves crazy trying to puzzle out all the possible meanings.”
Violet snorted. “When is James Buffalo not vague?”
“Ask the Colonel to help him choose your name,” Katrina grumbled. “That man can complicate the hell out of anything.” She looked at Riley and nodded slowly. “I think you should go tell him what you’ve come up with. I don’t know whether he’ll agree to it or not, but I do know that he doesn’t have a plan in place yet. And he did tell us to brainstorm.”
Riley heard the men’s voices as they came back toward the dining hall. “Okay. Will you come with me?” She glanced over her shoulder. “All of you? He will want everyone’s arguments, for and against.”
Violet rolled her eyes, but she stood and walked over to Riley. Katrina, Celia and Alley did the same, and together, the five of them approached the Colonel.
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