The Boys Without Names

Chapter 1~~~ The Kids

Those two boys had had it tough, alright. They made it from rags to riches, quite literally. When I first met them, they were dressed in tattered clothes that looked as if they were victims of like homicide, or something. Really, I don’t know, maybe they been through a lot else too.
Each one had black hair, and each had come from South Carolina. They had eyes that were as green as the mountainside. And for not being related, they looked so much alike they could pass for cousins. If you never opened a book in your life, even brothers.
Only they knew each other’s names. We all called one Hawk, the other Falcon. They liked those names and it had stuck alright. It had stuck.
After this adventure and another ten years later, I never saw them two boys again. I had recently learned they had both been killed.
Hawk was from a town called Thomason. Not even he knew why it was called that. He grew up there until his father got a knife and carved his name into his foot. Not long after that, his dad killed his mom, and he ran away. Falcon’s parents were killed in a fire, and he didn’t want to go to an orphanage. The orphanage in his town (called Range) was abusive, and he didn’t want to be abused like that. He found Hawk and they ran away together. But they got into this mess.
I don’t know what happened between this adventure and the next, but Falcon and Hawk split up. They never talked to each other on that one.
A week after that, Hawk was shot by a maniac and thrown off of a cliff. His body was recovered, but they never found the killer.
Falcon was killed a month later. Another maniac (In my opinion, it was likely the same one) slit his throat.
Learning about them made me feel lucky, and for a long time I was not. But those two boys inspired me, even though I was around forty years older than they were when I met them. I was on a fishing boat.
I was a slave when I first heard of them, I heard the Professor say:
“What’s that?”
I looked. The two boys were on a plank of wood, hanging onto the boat with a rope. There appeared to be a shark chasing them.
One (Falcon) yelled to us: “Hello and if this White Death catches us, good-bye! Can you help us?”
The Professor said, “No. Hey, shark! Happy eating for you!”
He cut the rope loose.
Falcon cursed, and Hawk turned around.
Hawk said to the shark, “You’re not so tough, are you?”
The shark was now a breath away from Hawk, and he punched it right in the eye.
The shark doubled back, and then it very gently swam away.
I could not help but feel awe for the two kids. But their ‘raft’ was slowing down.
“Dang it!” Falcon said.
They started paddling with their hands.
As I watched all this from the window with by good pal, Poppy (that’s what we called him back in Africa) the Professor sneaked up from behind us.
“What are you crap-heads doing?”
“We was lookin’ outside!” Poppy said to him.
The Professor punched him. “Use proper grammar in my presence.” Poppy did not need telling twice.
Poppy and I were slaves to the Professor. It was illegal, but he made sure no one knew. And if someone found out, he killed them. I heard he threw his wife over a bridge when she threatened to tell a friend. And for good measure, he killed the friend.
He had one daughter whom he never called by name, he just said “Girl”. She was basically a slave too, except he punished her harder. She does not have a middle finger on her left hand because she didn’t hear her father when he whispered an order to her when she was in the other room.
She was around twelve years old, the same age as Hawk and Falcon. She had blonde hair and brown eyes, a horrible stutter, and she was terrified of her father. A rational fear, I’d say.
Anyway, she was on the deck for some reason on this trip. Probably to do service work.
But we were well on our way to finding this treasure the Professor had heard of. He had studied pirates in college and had found of this place Christopher Columbus had hidden gold to keep for himself on his first voyage. But a crewman learned of this place and took the coded map. When he couldn’t decipher it, he burned it.
But the Professor had learned the location of the supposed ‘treasure’. Personally, I don’t know what gold does if you can’t spend it.
But still, greedy people love gold for some unknown reason.
My thoughts were interrupted when Poppy came out and yelled: “SOUP’S ON! GAZPACHO TODAY!”
Great. I hate gazpacho. If those kids had stayed around, I could fry myself some shark. Speaking of which...
I looked, and what I saw was remarkable. The boat was going fifteen miles an hour, but the kids were still behind us, paddling their life away.
I saw a giant fin behind them.
I could hear Falcon say to Hawk, “Excuse me, but I believe there is something you should know.
Hawk looked behind them. “Gosh dang it! Why do we keep attracting sharks?!?”
“Our paddling is a sign of distress to them!” Falcon said. “Our paddling attracts them!”
“I got to say,”-Hawk paused here-“That’s a thirty-footer.”
I could swear one or both of them boys heard the Jaws music in their head just now.
They jumped out of the way just before the White Death ripped their raft to pieces. They both went underwater.
The shark followed closely, edging for prey.
Hawk tried to punch it in the eye again, but it was useless, and he swam away.
Falcon got a puffer fish in his hand. It swelled and got him, but not before he threw it into the shark’s eye.
The shark winced, and then swam away in utter defeat.
Falcon swam up to the surface.
He met Hawk at the shore.
“Whoa,” Hawk said.
“Look at my hand,” Falcon said.
Part of it had turned baby blue.

Chapter 2~~~Hostages

They swam to the shore of the island. Man, did these boys ever get tired?
We had gotten to the island around fifteen minutes before, when the boys were in the tussle with the second White Death. And the Professor had seen them at a moment’s notice.
“Those boys!” he yelled. “Get them. GET THEM!!!”
Poppy did as he was told, and next thing you know, the boys were hostages.
“What are your names?” asked the Professor.
“I can’t remember,” said Falcon. “But I’m Falcon, and he’s Hawk.”
“What’s up?” Hawk asked.
“I’ll tell you. The sky. So is shut.”
“Shut’s up?”
“Yeah. Shut up.”
Hawk got the point very easily.
They were taken by the Professor to a place in the ship I called ‘SC’ which is short for ‘solitary confinement’.
When I whispered this to Falcon, he said, “Oh, great.”
I saw nothing of them for only one hour.
“Now, if this is the island we have come to for gold, and then let’s explore, shall we?” said the Professor.
We went to look for a supposed temple in this land, a ‘Temple of the Crypt’. While we were searching, Hawk and Falcon looked around SC.
“It’s a dark place, isn’t it?” asked Hawk.
“You bet your nose it is,” replied Falcon.
“What do we do now?
“We bust out, that’s what. You got a knife?”
“No.”
“Then what do we use?”
“Ew! I think I found something, but you won’t like it.”
“What?”
“Look in the hand.”
Falcon looked at his hand, which had turned aqua-blue; in other words, it had gotten darker.
He said “Ew!” too, and he pulled out a puffer fish spine.
The puffer fish he had used to kill the shark was obviously poisonous, but the poison had hurt so badly at first, he didn’t realize that a spine had gotten stuck in his hand.
And the puffer fish was huge, too. That meant that the spine was roughly the same size as a pencil.
And it was adequate to use to cut open the lock.
It worked like a charm. The spine had cut through the lock. It took a little longer than the knife would have, but at least they made it out. We were so far away that we didn’t hear the door crash.
It was very muddy on that island, and our footprints had soaked in it so well I would not be surprised now, eleven years later, if they haven’t disappeared.
So they followed us, without us knowing. After a while, the Professor’s daughter began to get tired.
“D-D-Duh-Daddy, how muh-much longer d-d-do we have to w-walk? I’m t- tired!”
The Professor slapped her, and she fell down. Hard.
“Girl, if you dare complain, I’ll rip your guts out and feed you to the sharks.”
That shut her up pretty quick. She said nothing else.
I looked at her. She was behind me, trailing after Poppy, and I just happened to look up.
I saw Falcon jump into the bushes, so I only got a moment’s glimpse of him.
I did not tell the Professor because he would surely kill them just as he had threatened to do to his daughter.
Good gracious, that man is sick.



Chapter 3~~~The Professor Gets a Couple of Good Scares

By the time we had gotten to the Temple of the Crypt, we were all tired and hungry.
But not Falcon and Hawk, they were fast.
Falcon said, “Look!”
“What?” Hawk replied.
“A pig.”
“Where?”
“There, behind the bushes!”
“Let’s get him!”
Hawk, being a natural climber, got a brick he found and climbed up a tree with it.
From above the pig, he dropped the brick.
It hit the pig with amazing force. It let out a sharp squeal that barely got the attention of the Professor.
“I hate pigs.”
Falcon used the puffer fish spine (his hand was now light green) to kill the pig once and for all.
They gutted the animal, and then fed on the juicy bits.
It was good, but they got the attention of wolves.
Huge wolves.
Falcon and Hawk took their meal to the tree, where they ate in peace.
Pretty soon, though, the Professor came to investigate.
“What’s all this?”
Hawk whispered, “Give me the pig skeleton.”
“Sure, okay.”
“And hide, too. I’m going to do something hilarious.”
Falcon got higher into the tree, and Hawk got the pig skeleton and dropped it onto the Professor.
“DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
The Professor was scared so bad he didn’t notice Falcon and Hawk escape from the tree.
I saw them run past me and Poppy. Falcon briefly looked at the Professor’s daughter and waved-with the hand that was now pitch-perfect green.
She laughed. The first time I ever heard her do so. Then Hawk and Falcon ran off.
The Professor came back, shocked.
“Alright!” he said with some shock still in his voice. “Let’s keep moving. We should go into the Temple in the morning. But for now let’s set up camp.”
It took around ten minutes for us (sans the Professor) to build the only tent. The Professor thanked us (for once) and went in. Of course, we weren’t allowed in. We slept in the jungle. Without a blanket or anything, we went to sleep.
The Professor’s daughter got up around an hour later. She walked almost thirty feet away and whispered, “H-H-Hello?”
She was looking for Falcon and Hawk. Falcon came out of one of the bushes and bowed.
“Welcome, Princess.” Falcon whispered. “May I give thou a cup of tea?”
“S-S-Sure, I’ve n-never had any.”
“Uh, it was a joke.”
“D-Dang it-ah!” She clapped her hands over her mouth, and looked at her father’s tent. Nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” asked Falcon.
“M-Muh-M-My father would whip me if he heard me c-cuss.”
“Ooof. That hurts.”
“Y-Y-Yes, it d-d-duh-does.”
“Come on in.”
She followed Falcon in. Just when she got in, Falcon said to her, “Is it okay if we call you Eagle? That’s the only buzzard name we haven’t used.”
“W-What ab-b-bout osprey and the-“
“Okay, we get the point!”
There was nothing special about the bush, really. Eagle at first wondered if it was their home.
Falcon introduced her to Hawk and then she explained to them why her father was here.
“Whoa, so he wants that treasure, huh?”
“Yep.”
“What’s he going to do to get it?”
Just as Eagle was about to say anything, the Professor screamed.
I didn’t hear them again, so I guess they were oblivious to the fact he was having a nightmare about pigs.




Chapter 4~~~~Newspapers, Disappearances, and Death

RESPECTED PROFESSOR GOES MISSING IN ATLANTIC
Professor R.H. Horowitz, of the University of South Carolina, was officially declared missing by the local police of Range, South Carolina. He was last seen with a large fishing boat of the shore of South Carolina. But not all people are troubled over the disappearance of the Professor. Others are concerned with the recent disappearance of two children, both without available parents. Many think this disappearance is associated with the vanishing of the children, whose names are unknown. “We are all [troubled] with these disappearances,” said Chief Norton, of the Range Police Force, “But also notable are the rumors of Professor Horowitz doing several illegal things, among them child abuse and slave captivity. Whether these are true, we may never know, but, personally, I am willing to bet on it.” Also in concern is the legend of the Bermuda triangle (see page 4a) that reckons, overall, the Professor may have fallen victim to this mysterious legend. Also to note, shark season has come. Beware of the killer fish from now until August.

“Its shark season, alright, but is the Bermuda Triangle thing serious, Lent?” asked Chief Norton.
“Crap your life away; I just put that part in there to cheese up that freaking Mystery Study Club or whatever. You know I don’t give bull about that triangle,” answered Lent, the newspaper editor.
“Oh, yeah, you love to tease the local clubs with that nonsense you put in that crappy newspaper.”
“The Range Times: Stories Guaranteed 100% True-not!”
They both had a laugh over that one.
“Man, you are hilarious!” said Chief Norton.
“Yeah, I’m hilarious. But I’m also hygienic.”
“Lent, you are the fattest son of a gun I’ve ever seen! How can you be hygienic?”
“I’m huh-I’m huh- I’m HUH-Help m-m-m-m-m-me...”
Lent’s head hit the chair with amazing force. He sputtered a few times more, and then he fell on the floor and died of a heart attack. There was a death rattle, and it was all over. Norton called an ambulance, but it was no use.
There will definitely be no more trashy talk in the paper now.



Chapter 5~~~The Stone Steps

“Get up!”
Falcon was talking to Eagle. She got up, just as she had been told.
She looked around.
“Th-Th-The sun’s n-not even up yu-yet.”
“Yeah, so get back to the place you were before you looked for us so no one will know the difference.”
She went back to her spot on the ground, and fell down and fell asleep again.
****
“Up! Everyone UP! I want to be at the Temple in exactly one hour! Everyone UP!”
I got up groggily, Poppy at my side. The Professor’s daughter (or, I guess now, Eagle) looked like she had been up a bit already. The Professor didn’t notice it, and since when would we say anything to get her hurt?
I looked up. A couple of what looked like purple swans looked back at me.
I had looked these purple swans up, but I never found them anywhere, in encyclopedias, on the Internet, nowhere.
These purple swans where not known to science. The Professor didn’t notice them, which looking back, was very likely a good thing.
We followed the Professor and I knew Falcon and Hawk were following us again.
We came to a stone archway and the Professor said we were getting close. And I bet the last thought Poppy had in his life was that the Professor was an idiot.
Poppy fell on the ground, and then he stopped breathing. I went to help him, but he was already dead.
“Poppy!” I yelled.
The Professor turned Poppy over, and his dead black eyes stared up at me. I will never forget that look.
The Professor said, “Malaria. Dang fool never got his shots.” And before I could protest, he threw Poppy over a nearby cliff.
“See you later, stupid gator!” And that was it. Poppy didn’t climb back up.
****
“Hawk?”
“Yeah, Falcon?”
“My hand. Look at my hand.”
It was a nasty shade of dark green.
Hawk turned away in disgust.
He knew if the poison escaped his hand, his friend would be long gone.
“Come on.”
Maybe there was a native healer who could help him.

Chapter 6~~~“CAUGHT ONE!”

Fishing in the Atlantic Ocean took an awful long time to catch something.
This Jon Goth knew (you pronounce his name ‘Gooth’-he was from Germany). He and his good friend Marcus Langford were doing that exact same thing... Fishing in the Atlantic. Good grief.
All of a sudden, something caught on the line. It pulled the boat at about thirty-five miles an hour.
“What do you have hooked on there?” Jon asked.
“Don’t know.” answered Marcus. “Wait-“
A giant of a fish emerged its fin out of the water.
“Good golly! It’s a Great White!”
To Jon, that meant, ‘One great giant fish’ but some part of him said, ‘YUMMY’.
He got a gun and shot the great killer to death. They towed it in.
“CAUGHT ONE!” Jon said, and they both laughed. Marcus started to speed the boat towards shore.
They managed to hide the great white they had caught from the authorities in Range. Chief Norton looked and thought he saw a huge fin, but after the death of Lent, he couldn’t care less.
When they brought it to Marcus’s house out in the country, they carried it (with some difficulty-this shark had to weigh over a ton) into the house. The house was broken down, smelly, and worst of all, infested with doggone rats.
The only table collapsed under the weight of the shark, so they carried it onto a steel table in the attic.
“Alright, let’s cut it open.”
“Isn’t that illeg-“
“Who cares? Bring me the knife.”
Marcus did as he was told, and Jon cut it open.
Several pieces of a board that looked like it could have been used as a raft fell out of its stomach.
And at this, both men lost their appetite.

Chapter 7~~~The Dreadful Hunt

Toykaka was the first to volunteer to hunt for the village. He was determined to make up for his failure to catch enough fish for the clan. He planned to catch one of those tchokyo birds, a purple swan.
According to the telling of the Trian god, the tchokyo would bring good luck for the whole village, and peace among the elders.
He planned to catch it and become a local legend. He could already see the name Toykaka written in the local writings, and the name Toykaka would be the name of a god.
And most of all, he would win the one he loved. Mayana was the most beautiful girl in all the land, and he was positive it was her kiss that would end all of his troubles.
He went out to limited applause, his friend behind him, and he looked around for the tchokyo.
He heard it.
He looked up and saw it-it was as beautiful as Mayana. He threw his spear at it.
That single movement started a chase for the record books.
Toykaka ran at top speed, his spear clutched tightly in one arm, the tchokyo running brightly ahead of him. He threw his spear again.
Missed.
It started to fly, and he threw his spear again.
Missed.
He ran to the top of the cliff, and threw one last time.
He got it.
He started to take his capture back to the village in triumph when the dirt fell out beneath them.
Toykaka managed to throw the dead tchokyo to his friend before he fell. He slid along the cliff and stopped at the heel of a man’s boots.
The Professor.
“Who are you?” asked the Professor.
He said his name in his native language, which sounded a bit like ‘Tokay’.
“Well, Tokay, hello and goodbye.” He raised what looked like a metal twig shaped like a type of rifle, a sound of a bullet, whiteness, and Toykaka knew no more.
His last thought was that he would still be greatness.
And if you look now, there in the Trian writings, there is a god named ‘Toykaka’.







Chapter 8~~~Falcon Meets Yaa

About right after Toykaka was killed, Falcon and Hawk were starting to fall behind. Falcon’s hand was now pitch-black, and it was hurting him like crap.
“I can’t feel my hand,” Falcon whined, and then he fell into Hawk’s arms. “Help me.”
“I may be able to do something about that, sonny!”
Hawk looked up. So did Falcon, with some difficulty, and they saw a squat little man with no hair on his head and a white beard that was longer than he was. He was as tall as a five-year-old, and he had a type of hic voice that if you heard, you would never get over it.
“What can you do to help, old man?” Hawk asked.
“Everything!”
The man, who introduced himself as Yaa, took Falcon’s hand. He cut it open with a knife and sucked the blood out of it with his mouth. He then spit black saliva out into a red wooden container.
In awe, Hawk looked at Falcon’s normally colored hand.
“How did you do that?!?” Hawk asked.
“All within the limits on the imagination.” Yaa said.
Falcon groggily got up. “Are you like a witch doctor or something?”
“No, laddy, I am a healer. I can heal a person whenever they are poisoned or mortally wounded.
“But, of course, I cannot heal myself.”
“Wow.”
“Now, what else can I do for you little sonnies?”
“We need to get to the temple those guys”-he pointed at the Professor’s troupe-“are going to.”
“Oh? What temple is that then?”
“I heard them say something about like a temple of the crypt or something.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know of this temple. It resides right beneath your feet, actually.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but the only way in is from over there.”
He pointed to where me and the Professor’s troupe were waiting.
The Professor said, “HOW DO YOU OPEN THIS STUPID DOOR?”
Although I am not for certain exactly what Yaa said, Falcon and Hawk learned how to get in. Yaa disappeared, and the two boys came up to where we were.
“Out of the way!” Falcon said, and gently opened the door. He pushed below and Hawk pulled on top, and it slid open.
I was in awe. Those two boys were very clever.

Chapter 9~~~ The Second Mess

Like I said, there was an adventure ten years later in which I encountered the boys.
We were on this boat and we (meaning me, Hawk, Eagle and Falcon) had to find a treasure before these Germans did.
Falcon and Hawk, like I said, never talked on this journey.
Hawk heard something strange under the floor. Without letting the Germans know, we looked for a way to get under the floor.
Nothing led to it.
Falcon, however had a knife with him, and started to cut open the floor.
A German saw what he was doing and screamed to the others, “THEY’VE FOUND IT!”
It was not long before Germans started to open fire on us.
I went in the hole first, then Hawk, then Falcon, but Eagle never came down.
Falcon looked up, under request from me, and said, “Eagle’s dead. Those darn Germans blew a hole in her stomach.”
After a moment’s mourning, we started to look for the treasure. I eventually found a locked chest that was very heavy.
But then I thought of something.
Eagle had two children, boy and girl twins, that she gave birth to when she was nineteen. She named the boy Fiefel and the girl Ella. Such cute names.
Unfortunately, their father had run away when Eagle told him she was pregnant, and she had raised the children alone, working at a daycare center for seven dollars an hour.
So she was poor and now she was dead, and her kids were orphans.
I thought then I might adopt them.
Just then, the Germans had made it into the hole. Look around, said the chief. Man, did he sound bossy.
I heard two people walk up beside me, but realized with relief it was Falcon and Hawk.
Hawk did not have kids, but Falcon was married and had a son on the way. The son, at the time, would be born in two months.
Falcon would never see him.
I whispered, “I have the treasure!”
When no one came out of the hole, we snuck out of the hole.
Falcon was the last to come out. The same German yelled, “THEY’VE FOUND IT!”
Falcon started yelling over the bullets. We pulled him up.
His legs had been blown off, but surprisingly, no blood came out.
We got into a boat, carrying Falcon, and sailed away. When the Germans were well away, I opened the chest.
In it was trash.
We had gotten the wrong treasure. Falcon had cursed when he heard this, and I don’t blame him.
We eventually made it back to the South Carolina shore. We bought Falcon a wheelchair and he was happily reunited with his wife, and Hawk just walked away, possibly jealous of Falcon.
I went to Eagle’s house.



Chapter 10~~~The Rescue

Paul Huggins read the paper. He knew that recently the newspaper editor had died of a heart attack.
He read the story of the missing professor and the kids. And he vowed to rescue the kids at any risk.
“Y’all could kill yaself!” said his good friend Jacky. “Ya sure you wanna do dis?” He had a very serious Texan accent, and for some reason, he hated Quakers.
“Why?” Paul asked once.
“’Cause one of them Quakers saved ma life once. Hya, hya, hya, hya!” he said in that horrible laugh he invented.
Paul went out in a small fishing boat. He wanted to save those kids.
After about three days, he was starting to give up when he spotted an island. “Eureka, I’ve found them!”
He went onto the small island, not noticing he left the engine run on his boat.
He could not find the missing kids on the island. “CRAP!” he yelled.
He left the tiny island the next day. In the middle of the ocean, his engine exploded, cutting through part of the wood.
Paul Huggins was sinking.
It took about an hour for the water to reach him.
He started swimming to keep himself afloat. After three hours, he gave up.
He went under.
After a minute underwater, he felt an immense pressure to his lungs. He was too far under to swim back up to the surface.
It feels like a shark’s biting me, he thought. It feels like a shark’s got my lung. No, an alligator. No, that eighty-foot prehistoric creature, Liopluerodon, no...
But before he could decide how to describe it, Paul Huggins drowned.



Chapter 11~~~ The Skeletons

After Falcon and Hawk opened the door of the Temple, the Professor went in. Hawk followed, and then I went in, then Eagle, and Falcon took up the rear.
As soon as we went in. the Professor dropped his flashlight. It’s pitch-black in here otherwise, so we stayed close together, like a punch of pack-rats, so if anything happened, we would be able to get out.
There was light at the end of the tunnel we were in. We all saw it, and we all went toward it.
When we got there, Eagle almost slipped and fell.
And if she had, she would have fallen off of the bridge and into the lava below.
She screamed.
We walked across the bridge in a single-file line, careful not to fall. We eventually got to the other end.
The Professor lit up a torch with his lighter and what it shined on scared us all.
It was a skeleton, about the size of a thirty-year-old. He was hanging by his neck, and appeared to have either been killed, or killed himself.
We all screamed, and a bunch of dirt fell on Falcon, who wasn’t off of the bridge yet.
“Phew! What the-“
“Shut up! I need silence!” the Professor yelled.
He tripped over another skeleton, slightly longer than the other one, and if it still had a nose, his and the Professor’s would have touched.
The Professor was the one who screamed loudest.
We all saw that the cave was littered with skeletons, of all sizes, but none seemed to be of children, and all were over five feet tall.
Every step we took was a dreadful ‘CRUNCH’ that scared Eagle.
The Professor looked at her, his eyes gleaming with fury.
“WHY DO YOU DISSOBEY ME?!?” he yelled, and he pulled a belt out of his pocket. “Time for a whopping, girl! TIME FOR A WHOPPING!!!”
Eagle screamed as he Professor advanced toward her. But Hawk jumped in front of her.
“Get away from her, you evil killer!!” Hawk said, and he kicked the Professor. If we were still on the bridge, he would have plunged to an unearthly death.
And then the Professor stormed down the path without any of us.
I went towards Eagle. “Are you okay? I asked her.
“N-N-Not-t ok-ok-o-k-ka-okay. My l-l-leg hurts.
I looked. It was bleeding, very bad. A bone had ripped it open.
We walked down the bone path, we saw another light. We all ran toward it, expecting to see another bridge.
Instead, we saw a small hut, littered with candles.
“I hate you, Deck!” I heard the Professor say my name, and then the sound of a bullet, and I died.






Chapter 12~~~Yaa meets God

I wasn’t dead for long.
I woke up from death, and saw all blue.
The blue soon rose up, along with a bloody bullet.
The first sound I heard was Hawk say, “Oh my Gosh!”
And I agreed with him.
When the blue disappeared, I saw Yaa standing above me, cradling the bullet in one, zesty arm.
“Ya’ll darn nearly killed him,” he said with the grunt of a bull and the swish of his cloak.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU LEAVE HIM DEAD YOU SUCKER?”
“Because it was not right for him to die yet, he has a time. Everyone has a time.”
“M-M-Man, he h-has a p-p-point th-th-the-there,” Eagle said.
“Stop stuttering or I’ll put my fist in your mouth and make you swallow it!” the Professor said, and started to advance toward her.
“YOU WILL NOT HARM HER!” Yaa said.
“I AM HER FATHER! I CAN DO WHAT I WANT TO HER!” answered the Professor.
“YOU CANNOT HARM HER!”
“I DO WHAT I WANT!”
“NEVER!!!” Eagle yelled the loudest of all of them, and then stood up. “I c-cannot help m-m-my st-st-stutter, Daddy, b-but my c-c-conscience tells me you’re the worst daddy a girl could have.”
The Professor stopped, and I noticed right at that moment I was still on the ground. Hawk helped me up.
“What’s your name?” Hawk asked.
“Deck was how my name sounded back in Africa, so I guess that’s my name.”
“Falcon! I need you to bring me a skeleton! Or anything! The Professor’s at Eagle!”
The Professor had knocked down Yaa and was hitting Eagle with a belt.
I felt fury and lunged at him. I knocked him down and he tried to hit me with the belt. I got hit once or twice, but I knocked the Professor unconscious.
That should take care of him.
I went over to Yaa. Eagle, Falcon and Hawk were already over there. I looked.
Yaa’s head was blue. He looked at me.
“I’m dying.”
What? He was dying? NO!
“You can’t die!” I told him.
“I can heal everyone except myself.” He chuckled. “I knew when I would die, and that really ruined life for me.
“But I can tell you this. All of you will have short, despicable futures. Except for you, Deck.”
He wiggled his fingers at me, and purple stuff came out of his hand.
“You and the first three you touch will have good luck forever. But one thing. If you touch any of these three children, who have witnessed you get the power, you and they will all die.”
He sighed.
“Good-bye, my friends.”
And Yaa passed on, to go to a better place.
Then the door to the hut started to close.
And the Professor woke up.
Chapter 13~~~The Psycho
George walked around his cell unable to know what to do.
He was trapped in this cell. How could he? He was the only one who had power; he was the only one that was ‘real’.
It might seem strange to you or me, but George Caravan was sadistic, solipsistic, and psychopathic. And the police had gotten him the other day.
See, George had been convicted of murdering a woman and her son. The son’s body was never found, so he was legally presumed ‘missing’.
But George didn’t do it.
That was that.
George had been walking along a sidewalk when he heard a woman scream. He looked up, and got out of the way just in time, before a kid with black hair, and eyes as green as the mountainside (George didn’t know why, but that was the only way you could describe those eyes.) ran out of that house carrying a backpack.
The woman was apparently dead, and a knife was thrown out of a window.
A knife that was bloody.
He picked it up to examine it at the wrong time, for just as he picked it up, the police turned the corner of the street. He was arrested and taken to Thomason State Prison. (A bit of information; Hawk’s hometown of Thomason is named for that prison!)
But he knew that the man who called the police was really the murderer.
He had a mini-shovel with him, and he was thankfully on the first floor, and after about seven hours, when the sun rose, he got out of the prison.
And he wanted to kill the man who convicted him.
He went to the place he was found with the knife that night, and went into the open house.
The man in that house, Jeff (he never stated his last name) was watching football on his TV when he heard the door open.
“What the-who’s there?”
No answer.
“I DEMAND! WHO’S THERE?”
He was looking at one door, George came through the other.
He had the knife.
“WHO’S THER-“
Jeff was stopped short by the knife George was holding.
If Jeff convicted me, George thought, he might be ‘real’ too!
George stabbed him in the heart, and now both Falcon and Hawk are truly orphans.



Chapter 14~~~The Escape

It was lucky that Hawk looked gently to the side as the door started closing.
He saw another door.
Quickly, he opened it. He saw the most gold, silver and diamonds anyone had ever seen.
“GUYS!!!”
We all got seven pounds of treasure to put in our pockets, and then we went out of the door.
It was dropping from the top of the ceiling, so we all slid under it.
We ran away, into the chamber of the lava bridge, while dodging the skeletons.
****
The Professor woke up, shaky; he saw the open door to the treasure.
He got as much treasure as he could carry, and then crawled under the door.
Halfway through, his pants got stuck on a twig that was on Yaa’s robes.
The door was made of stone.
He desperately tried to get his pants undone, but it was too late.
The wall touched him now.
He screamed, and as the wall crushed him, he thought of Eagle.
And for the first and last time in his life, he truly loved her, and regretted everything he did to her.
The wall kept coming. It squeezed him so hard blood came out of his mouth, and the Professor died rather violently.
****
We all got out of the temple before it collapsed completely. Man, I wonder were all that gold we didn’t get would go.
I wonder if anyone would ever find the other part of the treasure.
We cut down one tree and we all got on it. We heard a honk, and saw a purple swan had gotten onboard with us.
We didn’t shoo it away.
It sailed with us to South Carolina, were I kept it as a pet.
We started to paddle away.

EPILOGUE

It’s been two months since I heard of the deaths of Falcon and Hawk. I’ll miss them.
I really will.
I’ve been living here at Eagle’s old house with the purple swan.
It had babies a week ago, and I wonder how that happened. There are no other ones around, so where did the little brown chicks come from?
There may be things about this bird I will never know.
I also adopted Eagle’s two kids, Ella and Fiefel, and though they are a hassle, I love them so much.
Sometimes when I find myself alone, the kids with a babysitter, and the swans in the attic, where the babysitter can never find them, I find myself visiting the cemetery. And although I probably will never find the graves of Hawk and Falcon, as I never learned their real names, I find myself looking at the grave of Eagle.
I loved them all.
And now my life without them seems strange.
But truthfully, I will never forget the two little nameless boys, and how they brought me out of being miserable, and brought me in to a wonderful life, with a wonderful purpose.

THE END