Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [70]
In short, it meant turning everyone’s world upside down. He didn’t have the first notion how to go about doing that.
“While you’re deciding how much you want to tell me,” Owl said, breaking into his thoughts, “there’s something I need to tell you.
It’s about River. She’s been going somewhere on her own without telling anyone.
Not at night, but during the daytime, when the rest of us are busy with other things and don’t notice her absence.” She paused. “I think she might be meeting someone.”
Hawk knelt beside her, one eye on Fixit, who was standing at the plate getting ready to hit the ball. “How do you know this?”
“Candle told me. You know she and River are like sisters; they don’t have many secrets. But this was one. She noticed River sneaking out and when River came back, she confronted her. River wouldn’t tell her anything, just said she had to trust her and not to tell anyone. Candle didn’t, until yesterday. She became worried after you got back from your visit with the Weatherman and she heard about the dead Croaks, so she decided to tell me.”
Hawk shook his head. “Who would she be meeting?”
“I don’t know. But Candle says she was taking something with her in a bag when she saw her leave that one time. She thinks she’s been doing this for a while. Hawk, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to confront her about it. She would know it was Candle who told me, and that would ruin their relationship.
They’re too close for me to do that.”
He nodded. “But we have to do something.”
“Maybe you could keep an eye on her, and when she sneaks away again, you could follow her.”
That sounded a good deal easier than it was likely to turn out to be, he thought. River was pretty good at looking out for herself, and she would not be caught off guard. If he was going to find anything out by following her, he would have to be particularly skillful about it. It was not something he was anxious to attempt, in any case. Following any of his family secretly was a demonstration of his lack of trust in them and a betrayal of their trust in him.
“I don’t know,” he said to Owl.
“I don’t know, either,” she agreed, “but I don’t think we can let her go off by herself like this without knowing what she’s doing. Being a family means assuming responsibility for each other, making sure that we look out for each other. I don’t think we’re doing that if we ignore the possibility that she is putting herself in danger.”
He knew it was true, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. He resented the fact that this was happening now, when there was so much else that needed his attention. He wanted to confront River on the spot and tell her that he didn’t need this added distraction, but he knew that wasn’t the way to handle things.
“Let me think about it,” he said.
Owl’s attention was back on the game. “Don’t take too long. I don’t think this can wait.”
Hawk didn’t think it could, either.
* * *
WHEN THE GAME was finished, he took Panther, Bear, Fixit, and Candle with him to forage for purification tablets for the catchment system. They had been running low on the tablets for some time, and he had been delaying replenishing their stock because it meant traveling all the way across the city to a supply source nearly two miles away, a distance he didn’t normally like to travel. But clean drinking water was a must, and he couldn’t put off the trip any longer.
Owl and the others retired to the underground to work on cleaning and mending chores, busywork that would keep them all occupied until the others returned. Hawk took the biggest and the strongest with him, a necessary precaution on a journey into territory that was only marginally familiar. Candle was the exception, but he took Candle because of her ability to sense danger. It would take them all afternoon to go and return, and there was no guarantee they would find what they were looking for, but at least with Candle present they would have a better