All the ways to fall

                                                                      Chapter 1



There are towns that the world doesn’t know exist. They are the towns too small to be on a map, too remote for anyone but the most lost of travelers to stumble upon. Even then the traveler might not be sure they found a town at all. It was from a place like this that Caylin came from. Knowing nothing else, at first she had been happy. She wanted for nothing, with food taken from their surroundings, along with clothing. It was not asked where the cloth came from. Actually, nothing was asked about. Things were simply the way they were, which was the way they had always been. Her home was the hub of all the people who lived in the remote area, and when everybody showed up, it was not so small. Still, the world had forgotten about all of them and that was the way they liked it.  Unfortunately, Caylin stopped counting herself as one of them by the time she was seven years old. That was when she started seeing the adults she had once seen as all-knowing protectors as paranoid tyrants. 



A lost hiker had stumbled upon their hidden home one day while most of the adults were out doing whatever it was they did and only the children and two adults were there. They all scattered and hid when they heard oddly heavy footsteps and Caylin was the only one peering at the strange man with curiosity instead of ignorant terror. The man had stayed, delighted to find shade and water. Unfortunately, he found much more once the other adults returned. The so-called “elders” did not wish this poor lost man to remember the cluster of peculiarly behaved people he had found. So they dragged the man out of the village, one lecturing the rest of them about the wrongness of the other people that were not a part of their little family. Caylin had snuck after the adults taking away the stranger and watched from a little hiding place as they killed him.  Once they had returned home, she emerged and cautiously looked down at the pale, still face and knew in her heart that it was not this man’s people that were the wrong ones.

         

The next several years of Caylin’s life was a gradual slide towards the complete and total sundering of all relationships between her and everyone else within the ”family”. The older she got, the more she questioned. As she got older, the elders were no longer able to excuse her behavior as childish curiosity and stopped answering her, instead trying to get her to stop asking anything. The harder they tried to silence her, the louder she got. As children she and her brother had been close, with him protecting her from any teasing and pranks that she was the frequent target of. But once she hit twelve years old and really started pushing against the family, he pulled away. He had ambition to be important and closeness to her could jeopardize that. Things between her and her parents grew tense as they pleaded her to stop causing trouble and just do what had always been done. Once it became clear she wasn’t going to cooperate, they got upset at her for refusing and she got upset at them for even asking her to. 

         

She finally ran away when she was fourteen. Despite the fact that by that time nobody would really talk to her, she had caught wind of the elders talking about exiling her away from the family. It gave her an odd sense of happiness that they weren’t planning to just kill her. Apparently the belief that people in the family did not kill someone else in the family was stronger than the other rule that no one in the outside could know about them. So she took the preemptive approach, running away before they could make her. The added bonus was that she wouldn’t be there just in case they changed their minds about her being able to live. She rather liked being alive. There was no way she was going to die before at least a decent portion of her questions had been answered. 



The problem she failed to see was that she really had no idea how to get to the outside world or what to do when she got there. It was a part of her nature that didn’t let her think anything other than that she would find what she wanted, that she would get it, and that she would find a way to make her life turn out the way she wanted it to. Although she couldn’t put words to it, she knew what she wanted. She wanted knowledge and power and she instinctively understood that without knowledge, she would not have power. That understanding was innate.

         

It was a good thing Caylin didn’t mind walking, because she had to do a whole lot of it before she found a different small town full of different things. Excited at achieving this first important goal, small as it was, Caylin set out in her determined way to find people who could answer her questions. This was when that first un-thought about problem was joined by another equally troublesome one. She didn’t understand a word anyone was saying. Going by the weird looks she got from the pale people she attempted to talk to, they didn’t understand her either. Naturally, this was incredibly frustrating for her.



This was not supposed to be how things happened at all. She was supposed to leave home and immediately find people that could understand her and could give her want she wanted; a satisfying of her curiosity.



Not surprisingly, the first night in this new town was not encouraging and she started to keenly feel the absence of her family. As much as they had struggled and as much as she hated a majority of how they ran things, it hadn’t been all bad. It had been very communal, with large fires and gatherings almost every night, tales of past wonders and events told master storytellers who could create a whole new world with a few well-spoken sentences. Away from all that now and all her plans not looking so promising or easily reached, Caylin found herself feeling lonely. It was a new feeling and she did not like it at all. She had felt on the outside before when people weren’t talking to her, but there had still been a pervasive feeling of still being part of the family. Now she didn’t have that. For the first time Caylin realized she was completely alone.



                                                                              Chapter 2



The next morning found her in only a slightly better mood. Having never felt lonely or homesick before, she had no idea how to deal with it. She was discovering the downside to feeling every emotion keenly. She could not feel only a little happy or a little sad. If she was going to feel something, she was going to completely embrace it. To her, why do something small when you can do it big?  Stuffing the thin blanket she’d taken with her from home into the leather bag that now held everything she had, she slung it over her shoulder, took a deep breath, and ventured back out into the dusty, rain-starved streets of the town.



It didn’t take her long to realize that nobody really paid any attention to her.  Even if she wanted their attention it was hard to get it. But that was okay. Their attention wasn’t what she wanted anymore.  She had a new mission now. If she was going to learn anything and talk to anyone, she was going to have to be able to communicate with them in ways other than hand gestures. They just didn’t work so well. Back home it would’ve been fine because they had a complete system of silent communication, but out here it didn’t seem to work.



With that goal in mind, she spent the entirety of the next several days doing almost nothing but loitering near people that were talking and listening to their conversation. By sheer force of luck, she had gotten the gift of language, although she did not know it. She just listened, absorbed, and quietly rehearsed the new words she’d heard at night when people were in bed and there was no one around that could hear her. The more she listened, the more she could follow. She was riveted by the conversations around her, delighting in two farmers discussing how to treat a sick goat and listening at the window of a school and listening with them as a teacher read a story. It didn’t bother her that she was listening to a kindergarten class. She didn’t understand the concept of grades and what was appropriate for her to learn. What she listened to from the books was simple and slow and she was too busy being happy when she got to the point she could follow the story and understand what was happening.



Learning to read was a whole new problem. Once she felt she had a decent enough understanding on speech, she promptly went to investigate the little library. She’d seen enough people go in and out with books and she had hung around there enough to figure out what a library was supposed to be for.  She failed to understand that being able to speak a language did not mean at all that she would be able to read it. Expecting to have no problem, she just marched up to a bookcase, pulled out a book, and opened it to commence reading. She stared at it in dismay. The little black marks were confusing and her heart sank that this new obstacle. How was she supposed to figure this out? Looking up from the book, she glanced furtively at the other people there. They were all silent, eyes smoothly going back and forth and Caylin suddenly felt very stupid. This was a problem she didn’t know how to fix. She couldn’t just be around people who were reading and figure out how to do it. Blushing from a sense of shame, she quietly closed her book and slid it back into the empty space on the shelf.



“Can I help you?”



Caylin jumped a little at the sudden voice behind her and turned around to see an elderly man standing there, eyes twinkling a little at the sight of the confused looking girl before him, with tangled black hair and brown skin that would probably only be a shade paler after a good shower. Caylin cocked her head a little, studying him. It did not occur to her to lie. “I want…” She had to pause to puzzle over what she was trying to say. She was much better at listening to English than actually speaking it.



“I want read, can not.” Her clipped speech made the man look at her curiously, trying to determine why she very obviously did not know English very well.  He looked her over again.



She definitely looked like she was an Indian and considering the Indian reservation that was nearby, it was quite possible. That didn’t explain why she didn’t know English, because every Indian he had met before had spoken English at least tolerably. So it was a puzzle, but he was never one to turn down someone who wanted to learn to read. As a librarian and former teacher, he regarded it as his duty to teach anyone who was willing to learn. Besides, in such a small town, he usually had plenty of free time on his hands.



“Well then, let’s get to work on remedying that problem, shall we?”



Caylin looked at him, eyebrows pulling down as she frowned, mentally searching her new language file for remedying. It wasn’t there. “What remedying?” The man nodded, reminding himself to be prepared to explain meanings. “Remedy. It means to fix a problem. A remedy is also something that is used to fix a medical problem. Do you understand now?” Caylin stared at him intently while he explained and it wasn’t hard for him to imagine her memorizing every single word. Then she nodded solemnly.



“Yes. I understand. I name Caylin.”



He corrected her gently “You say it my name is Caylin. Hello Caylin. My name is Patrick.”



Caylin grinned broadly, not at all minding his correction. Patrick was now a friend, the first she’d made and she was quite excited about it. “Patrick! How we remedy not reading?”



“How do we remedy not reading.”



“Ok. Start now?”



Patrick glanced around the library. Nobody needed him at the moment, so there was no reason not to. “Yes, we can start now.”



In Caylin, Patrick found an unusual student. She showed no embarrassment at having to go into the children’s area to find books that were the only things she could even attempt to figure out. Although it took very little time for her to memorize the alphabet if it was figured in actual time spent working on it, that short period of time was spread over many days. Patrick quickly learned using the normal form of giving examples of things that started with a letter did not work well. He’d tried that and for every letter found himself being pelted with many questions about what the object was that he used as an example. It was amazing how many questions she could think of about apples.



Trying to use a keyboard and computer resulted in several hours with her staring at the computer, hitting all sorts of buttons and clicking on things, occasionally expressing delight with exclamations. She’d refused to get back to the alphabet until her curiosity at the computer was satisfied. He suspected it had more to do with her eyes being tired of the screen than actually her being done with trying the computer out.



Then there was the problem of her absolute cluelessness to what was socially acceptable. She had a tendency to just walk up to someone and get entirely too close and examine some article of clothing or jewelry. Tattoos in particular held fascination for her and more than once he’d ended up hauling her away from some highly offended person, trying to stem off any tactless questions until they were out of earshot.



Nor did she have any concept of time. Patrick would say to be there at eight in the morning and she’d traipse in after nine, with no idea that she was even late. After three times of her reason being that she was exploring something, he stopped asking. He told himself it was good for him because he’d been told that he was much too rigid about schedules. The fact he’d finally start changing because of a teenage girl was not something he would have expected. He’d never had children and was generally confused when it came to dealing with non adults.  Despite this, he found himself shrugging when she was late and occupying himself elsewhere until she managed to get herself to the library.



Of course, he still had to help others at the library, but usually when he left Caylin to help someone else, he’d come back and she’d have her nose in the book, mouth slowly moving as she figured out words, or at least tried to. Despite her tendency to leave her first focus for something else, she had complete focus on whatever she’d currently chosen. He suspected that once there wasn’t so much novel things for her, she’d be able to stick to one thing a bit easier. So far he hadn’t been able to get her to talk about where she was from, so she was still a puzzle. He had pits and pieces he’d made calculated guesses about, but none of it made any sense and every time he’d tried to ask, she’d evade all his questions.



One time she’d even gotten up and left, not returning for two days.



About the time she’d gotten into grade school reading, she discovered the educational videos. Patrick hardly saw her for the next three days, unless he walked into the one enclosed room with a TV and VCR. Caylin would be in there, draped in positions he could not imagine being comfortable and her eyes glued to the screen. If she ever went out for food, he supposed she just paused the video and went out the window, returning the same way. Where she spent her time outside the library, Patrick had no idea. He knew she occasionally visited his sisters to bathe. He’d convinced his sister Ruth to allow this when he just could not stand the dirt Caylin was pretty much covered in after a couple of days.



One day, out of the blue while she was sitting, technically crouching, in a chair and looking at a globe, she asked “Where else have you been?” Patrick looked up from his own book, thrown off guard for a minute because he hadn’t been expecting a question like that. “What do you mean?”



Caylin turned her dark eyes to him and he suddenly felt like she was assessing him, uncomfortably so. She gestured at the globe. “All these different places to go. Where have you been?”



“I lived in Phoenix for a few years while I went to college.”



“Where’s that?”



Sighing because he was comfortable, Patrick got up and stood next to her, spinning the globe until Arizona was in front of her face and pointed to the little dot that represented Phoenix. “It’s right there.”



She got so close to the globe her nose was almost touching it. He wondered if she needed glasses. “How far away is that?” 



“About 160 miles I think, maybe a little more.”



One question was never enough for her, so he wasn’t surprised when another followed. “Is that far?” He shook his head. “Not really. A couple hours by car, although it would take a long time to walk there.” Caylin nibbled on her bottom lip, a habit he’d noticed whenever she was mulling things over.  “Is that all the places you’ve been?”



Patrick sat back down on his chair. “Well yes. I grew up here and once I had my teaching degree, I knew I wanted to come back here to teach.”



Caylin looked up at Patrick and for the first time there was something else in her look besides curiosity and respect for him. There was disappointment. This man, the one who was teaching her so much, hadn’t been anywhere. There was an entire world to go exploring in and he hadn’t done so. Was he really that much better than she was? How much longer would he have anything else to teach her? She could read well enough on her own now and could continue improving without any help from him. He wasn’t needed for that any more. Books could give her answers to other questions. When she looked at him in that way, they both knew a simple truth; she would not be staying there for much longer. It wasn’t big enough for her.



Two days later, when she walked into the library and late as usual, Patrick was prepared. So was she. Slung on her shoulder was a large bag, stuffed with whatever it was she owned. At least in the preceding weeks she’d gotten new clothes, thanks to the Salvation Army in town. He’d wondered where she got the money for them, which she defensively answered with she’d been doing odd jobs for people in the town and outlying areas during the times she wasn’t at the library. He had to apologize a couple of times for the vague implication she’d come into the money through less than honest means before she stopped being angry at him for that.



With a sad smile, he gave her an envelope and an extra watch he’d found lying around his watch. “You’re going to need to learn to be on time.” Dropping the bag from her shoulder, Caylin flung her arms around him and squeezed hard enough that he grunted, even while hugging her back as tightly as his old arms would allow.



She was crying as they exchanged their silent goodbyes, not even attempting to hide how she was feeling. He had made things feel less lonely. Between the sniffles, she asked “Will you be my uncle?” Ever since she’d learned about the idea of adoption, she’d been mulling over the idea of adopting her own family. This time it would be people she liked and liked her too and had no problem with her questions and curiosity. This time, it would be better, it would be right.



Patrick gave her a slightly harder squeeze. “Not your father?”



She shook her head, having figured it out with simple logic. "You have to have kids to be a father, and younger. You make a better uncle.”



Smiling at her blunt tactlessness in spite of himself, he nodded. “Uncle it is then.” Caylin let him go and took a step away from him, wiping the tears off her cheeks. “I guess I should get going.” Patrick put his hands in his pockets, suddenly feeling old for the first time, despite the fact he’d been old for a while. “Be careful out there and come back for a visit. I expect to hear a lot of stories about things you’ve done, places you’ve been, what you’ve learned, and who you’ve met.” Caylin nodded, grinned because she was excited to continue whatever journey she was on, and waved as she went out the door without looking back.





                                                                    Chapter 3



Traveling was much easier for Caylin now that she had a map, passable knowledge of social skills and money, and the ability to communicate. Still, bus tickets were expensive. For a while her travels were largely unremarkable to anyone but herself. She earned money where she could by doing the unpleasant jobs that other people didn’t want to do, particularly in their own house or property.



One unpleasant side effect of her seclusion growing up was that she was getting sick with irritating frequency. At one point she started wondering if she would ever have a clear nose ever again. She hated to use her precious money on medicine, but occasionally she just couldn’t take it anymore and succumbed to the lure of relief. A couple types gave her strange dreams so she stayed away from that. Once while she was helping an older woman named Ida with things around the house Ida could no longer do, she came down with a nasty flu and had ended up being stuck there for a couple weeks. It didn’t seem like Ida minded, having been deprived of anyone to mother for several years.



As kind as Ida had been and Caylin knew Ida would be lonely again when she left, she could barely contain her wanderlust until she was back to full strength. As soon as she was back to normal she moved on, hugging Ida and promising to keep in touch. Between walking, buses, and hitchhiking, she made her way from Arizona and into California. Maybe that part of her journey would be surprising to most people. It never occurred to Caylin that people might want to hurt her and so she had no qualms about accepting a ride from anyone. It was probably sheer luck that no one she rode with did try anything.



Once it was an ex-Army officer who told her stories about Vietnam and the Pacific. She was horrified by some of what he told her but fascinated as well, listing with rapt attention to the man, who was only too happy to share his experiences with someone who had formed no opinions about the past events already.  Another person kind enough to give her a ride was a very nice woman who talked almost incessantly about Gaia and the souls of trees. Although Caylin personally thought it sounded rather ludicrous and highly impractical, it was nevertheless educational and entertaining, so the few hours ride wasn’t completely horrible. There was also a banker who skied to escape his life that slightly depressed her as he told her about it because she could see how miserable he was but was unwilling to give up the money he gained from it. She didn’t understand it.



Eventually she found herself in a city called San Jose. It was larger than the other places she had been in and she was optimistic about what opportunities she would be able to find there. The size was daunting and the noise made her uncomfortable sometimes. It was worst at night. It a gradual process to get used to anything other than quiet night sounds when she was sleeping and the city sounds in the wee hours of the morning would jolt her awake incessantly. It irritated her, because being tired made it difficult to concentrate on other things.



Naturally she had found a library quickly, eagerly going in and expecting a kind welcome as had happened with Patrick. Her surprise was total when the librarian didn’t help her at all, believing the homeless-looking girl wasn’t really interested in learning, only pretending to so that they could stay in the library where it was warm and dry until the library closed at six.



The assumption offended Caylin and she didn’t even bother to try and tell the unhelpful woman that she wasn’t a very good librarian and was completely wrong about Caylin. Not in terms of being homeless because that was true, but she certainly wanted to learn. It being warm and dry in there was simply an extra perk.



Not long after she got to San Jose, Caylin found herself completely lost. She’d taken a wrong turn trying to find a different branch of the library than the one with the unhelpful librarian and now found herself in the one of the sections of the city she’d heard others people talk about and say they would never go there at night or even in the day if they could help it. She didn’t know what they were talking about.



She wasn’t aware of the hostile glares as she walked down the trash-scattered streets, although she observed a lot of what she called ‘macho drama’, with men acting far more rough and aggressive than they needed to be, as if not doing so made them not a man. It was simply ridiculous to her. If such men and boys heard her giggles at their expense it probably would not have gone well for her.  Several times she stopped to admire the artistry of graffiti that covered a surface almost beyond recognition. The ideas behind the design intrigued her even if she didn’t understand the meanings of them, nor did it matter that perhaps it was illegal to spray paint like that or that there was anything menacing or threatening behind the designs.



The sound of a fight made her turn down an alley in curiosity, ignoring the fact it was probably risky. What was risk compared to exploring?



The sight that greeted her was two boys locked together in an unschooled version of wrestling. There were a couple other boys there, watching and shouting odd sorts of encouragement to the two that were fighting. Caylin didn’t get why they kept shouting instructions to whomever it was they were rooting for, because as far as she could tell neither of the combatants were paying any attention.



Even if she didn’t understand why the fight had occurred, her curiosity was piqued. Having no wish to penetrate the crowd of teenage boys, she nimbly climbed up onto a large trash bin and then onto a ladder up onto a low balcony along the side of the rundown building that formed the side of the alley. From this much safer vantage point, she watched the fight in earnest, studying not only the fighters but the surrounding gang. One boy was decidedly the smaller of the two, but it only took a couple minutes before she was quite certain he would be the winner. He was fighting smarter than the larger boy and even to her unfamiliar eyes she could see there was an inner drive and fire that would push the smaller boy to win, even if the odds were against him. She suspected that such situations only drove him to greater efforts. Simply put, he hated to lose and being smaller was no excuse for it.



Despite the youthfulness of the boys, the fight was definitely not soft. More than once she flinched at the dull sound of knuckles hitting hard against flesh. Neither boy would be walking away uninjured.  Although the fight seemed to last a long time, in reality it was only a few minutes before smaller boy landed a heavy enough blow to the bigger boy’s stomach that it rendered his opponent breathless and unable to stand up. With that final strike, the fight was abruptly over. The yelling stopped, instructions didn’t matter and there was a moment of shocked silence. It apparently had not even occurred to the gathered group of boys that their fighter would lose.



What intrigued Caylin was that no one had been rooting for the smaller boy. Had he gone into this fight on purpose, or simply been unable to walk away from a situation he didn’t mean to be in?

As abruptly as the fight had started it ended and the group of boys rushed to their fallen own, picked him up, and carried him out of the alley, throwing glances at the defiant victor that were a mix of fear and hate. The boy didn’t seem to care. He stood there for a moment, watching the departing gang. Then he ran the back of his hand below his lip and glared at the blood that appeared on it, muttering “Dad’s gonna be pissed about this.”



Just as the boy turned to go, Caylin spoke up from up on the balcony. “I knew you were going to win.” The boy looked up in surprise and Caylin got her first good look at him. He was a strange looking boy. It wasn’t the shape of his face, which was just starting to show the lines of adulthood and promised to be a fine-looking face when it was done. It wasn’t the unruly mop of dark hair that probably wouldn’t lay flat even when wet with a hefty amount of styling products applied. It wasn’t his stature, which was typical for a boy in the treacherous time of puberty, if on the wiry side. What made him look odd was his eyes. Some odd quirk of genetics had caused one eye to be green, the other decidedly more brown than green. It wasn’t just the color though. It was the spirit that showed through them. There was a hint of something angry and unpredictable in there and restlessness, but there was intelligence and curiosity as well.



“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but it’s not like it matters.” He was sarcastic and Caylin grinned at his defensive behavior.  She climbed her way down to the alley, with him crossing his arms and watching her warily the entire time. Once down into the alley, she put her hands on her hips and grinned at him. “I’m Caylin. Who are you?” It took him a moment to decide to answer and when he did it was a little petulently. “I’m Colin.”



For his part, Colin saw a girl that couldn’t be much older than he, for she also had that look of someone in that awkward stage been adolescence and adult hood, with sharp elbows pushing against her shirt because of how she was standing and a knobby knee showing through a rip in her pants. He was old enough to note she was pretty without being grossed out by the fact. Not that this had never really been a problem for him any way. Celeste had always been there. If Patrick had seen a disheveled child with the air of an eager puppy, Colin saw someone who he could relate to and saw a kindred spirit of who had more energy than they knew what to do with and who wasn’t much impressed with the rules of society that didn’t make sense to them. 



There are people that will never get along. There are those that will be friendly but never close. Some become friends after a lot of time and work. Then, as rare as true and powerful love, there are the people that know immediately that they were going to be the sort of friends that people just couldn’t imagine not being friends. They might argue, they might fight, they might insult from time to time, but they would be friends through it all. It can be called chemistry or termed kindred spirits, but it doesn’t really matter what name it is give. It simply was what it was.



So it was that in an alley in a bad part of town, two teenagers grinned at each other and knew immediately that this was going to be fun.