Crow - The Awakening (4 page)

"You bet." He grabbed the bag and looked at the delicious honey. His wife will be so pleased. "How close are you?"

"I got it to boot up a couple days ago! I just need to get the wireless working and I'm in business." Steven beamed. He'd built his computer from scrounged pieces that used to be from several laptops and ordered what he couldn't find from scraps to fill in the holes. "The new bootloader I wrote works great, but I'm having trouble getting the wireless driver to work. I think the chip is buggy and the manufacturer hacked it to work, so I just need to back trace their fix and make it work on my system."

Dmitri was about to pursue that line of thought when a couple of men in their young twenties stepped up to the booth. By their appearance, Steven guessed they were from Seattle or some other major metropolitan area. More chefs, he hoped. They usually took at least half of his cases. One was carrying a few canvas bags of produce and mushrooms. Steven could tell some came from Jonah's booth. Definitely a chef, Steven thought to himself. As they looked at the display, picking up a jar of honey and looking at it in the light, Steven grabbed a gallon jar of his honey and put it next to his display and grabbed his sample jar and a pair of fresh spoons. Dmitri moved over to let them shop the booth. He wanted to pick Steven's brains a bit more about his little project so he waited patiently. It's not every day a kid as young as Steven writes his own operating system.

"So you're the young beekeeper everyone is talking about," the chef beamed, admiring the display of golden joy. "Shawn from Palm Kitchen wouldn't stop talking about you so I had to come see for myself." He took a sample and tasted it, closing his eyes. "Oh yeah. That will work great. I'll take that gallon." He looked at the display for a second. "And this." He held up a block of wax. "My wife makes lotions and soaps." His friend tried a sample, too, and nodded. "Wow. There's nothing quite like real honey."

"I remember Shawn. He was here last weekend." Steven smiled widely. It was great to have chefs talk to each other and make the trip to get his honey. He grabbed another canvas bag and sacked up the honey and the wax. "If your wife likes the wax, I've got a lot more as well as propolis and pollen." He held the handles of the bag up for the customers. "And let me know what your customers think of the honey. There's lots more where that came from."

The chef's friend leaned in. "I heard you talking some serious computer talk. We have summer camps and intern programs you might be interested in." He handed him a business card for a tech company in Seattle. He was a recruiting executive, always on the lookout for new and budding talent.

Steven looked over at his godparents to make sure they weren't overhearing the conversation as he pocketed the business card. His computer project was getting more attention than he was comfortable with. "Thanks. Yeah, well, I dabble." He wrote out a receipt for the chef, hoping the conversation wouldn't continue. Dmitri was familiar with his godparent's anti-computer stance, but the customers were not.

"Dabble? Writing an operating system at your age?" Dmitri was particularly proud since he was Steven's computer mentor, though now Steven was moving beyond even his own capabilities. There were a lot of geeks vying for jobs but not many with such natural talent and drive. "I used to teach him, but he teaches me nowadays," he confided in the executive.

Steven grinned sheepishly. "It doesn't do much right now."

"For now." Dmitri winked at the computer executive. He had always encouraged Steven's technical ambitions, in spite of his godparents. With his talent he could go far when he enters the workforce.

Steven chuckled shyly, still uncomfortable with the conversation so close to his godparents. He handed the chef his receipt and thanked him and his friend as they moved on to the other booths, and Dmitri started to ask him more about his project when he stopped and smiled at someone behind him.

Steven looked over at Jonah's booth and was shocked to see Jonah standing right beside him with a stack of books. Did he just walk up or did he overhear the discussion? Jonah plopped the stack of books on the table, jostling the jars of honey. "These just came in for you." Steven looked at them. His homeschool textbooks.

"Uhm. Thanks?" Steven looked up at Jonah, but Jonah showed no sign of having heard anything. Dmitri quietly grabbed up his honey and wandered off. Jonah didn't approve of him hanging around much given his profession, so he tried to keep an inconspicuous profile. Steven already spent a lot of time at the library checking out books so he would grill him about his computer project then.

"Now, be sure not to go through these too far ahead of the lessons. You do that every time and we have to follow a schedule to keep the state happy," Jonah chided. Steven was already a few years ahead of his normal grade and was on the verge of graduating high school before other kids entered junior high. His godparents weren't complaining too much and were quite proud of him, but they were also concerned that he was going through the material too fast to retain what he learned beyond the exams. Steven was pleased as he flipped through a few pages. Fresh meat, he thought.

"Okay." Steven remembered the small box of computer parts sitting on the table and his heart jumped, but Jonah didn't notice it. Jonah shuffled through the stack of books and pulled out what he knew would be Steven's favorite - a large sketchpad. "And, here ya go," Jonah said as he presented it to him.

"Cool! I'm almost done with mine!" Steven grabbed it and flipped through the blank pages, savoring the new paper crispness of the pressed cotton sheets. Jonah grinned. He was delighted that Steven was so artistic. Steven looked around the books. "Did you get any more pencils?"

"Oh..." Jonah almost forgot and rushed back to his booth. Steven quickly tucked his box of computer parts under the table in his lunch basket, relieved. When he stood up there was another box on the table, but this time full of both color and black art pencils. "These should last you for a little while," Jonah said.

"Excellent!" Steven opened the box and pulled out a pencil as he shoved the lunch basket under the table with his foot. His favorite way of passing time was drawing and he went through pencils fast. Today was a good day after all. He was determined to get that computer file he wanted, if indirectly. It would have been nice to be able to browse around, but he already knew what he wanted. He got the computer parts he had waited weeks for, and he got a fresh set of drawing supplies. The textbooks were the icing on his cake. Now he had to just finish at the market and head out to his tree house where all his computer work took place and get busy.

At chores' end, and with projects and schooling done for the day, Steven's playground and refuge was the vast forests of the mountainous hill country they lived in. Closer to home there was a fairly mixed forest of deciduous and conifer trees, a lot of it newer growth replacing previously cleared forests. Farther out, however, were more virgin, tall, conifer-dominated forests and forest floors littered with fallen trees, ferns and underbrush. He loved to play in both. And when not playing, he enjoyed taking a book and his drawing pad to various favorite spots to dive into his own worlds through imagination and art.

His godparents used to be fearful of the predators in the forest when Steven ran off on his own. Attacks were not all that common, but he spent a lot of time out in the woods so it was hard not to get nervous and imagine the worst. But Steven always seemed to have an unspoken rapport with animals of the forest. Many times they would see wolves or bears sitting next to him way out in their little pasture while he was off in his own little world drawing something or reading one of the many library books he was constantly digesting. Their most memorable moment was when, at barely five, a lost Steven was found being towed back to their homestead clinging to the tail of a puma. After that, they no longer worried, and the forest was the one place where Steven was truly free and unfettered. So long as he made it back before nightfall, of course. His godparents had to set some limitations.

Fresh from a morning at the market, which was usually all it took to sell out of his honey, he was eager to get out to the forest, especially to his secret spot where he tinkered with his computers. He hurried to unload his empty crates next to the bee boxes that were waiting to be extracted, and then went back to help Sally and Jonah unload their wares. Then he had to put up his textbooks and perform various after-market chores before leaving for the forest.

All he could think about was the final step he needed to get his computer networked and every little delay seemed like hours to him. In a rush to leave, Steven stuffed his sketch pad and a handful of pencils in his backpack. He rarely went anywhere without those essential tools, and his bedroom walls were plastered with drawings he had made of virtually anything that caught his eye out in the forest.

Looking around, he reached under his bed, grabbed his moccasins, and hung them from his belt. He preferred to roam the forest barefoot, but the footwear came in handy just in case he ran into a rough patch or very sharp rocks. But most of the terrain out there was covered by forest floor detritus, moss, ferns and various understory plants so he rarely used them. When climbing, he found that bare feet could not be beat.

He secured his computer parts in a pocket of the backpack, then went to the kitchen for some snacks. Steven's favorite foods were the many types of wild mushrooms that grew on the forest floor and the trunks of trees. He liked to supplement his foraging with dried or honeyed fruit and nuts and whatever mushrooms were left over from the market. As he scurried around getting stuff together, Sally handed him a canteen of water and gave him a quick hug. "Hey, you. Don't stay out late tonight. We're having trout for supper." Steven smiled and wiggled out of her embrace. She tried hard to hold onto him but he still eluded her grasp as he got away and ran out the door.

"I'll be back by supper," he yelled over his shoulder as he sprinted down the trail. Sally shook her head as she watched him race away toward whatever adventure he had planned for himself that day. She marveled at how he was always doing something and wondered where the energy came from. Looking around the kitchen and the chores she had to accomplish, she sorely wished she had some of that abundant vitality.

Steven’s staff was leaning against the rustic fence post where he’d left it. He grabbed it without breaking stride as he dashed past. Before he knew it he was in the forest on the other side of their small pasture, ducking branches and jumping over roots as he went. The forest was a very familiar place to him, as familiar as his own bedroom. Every trail, bush, sapling, and tree seemed like old friends to him. As he ducked through the underbrush he knew exactly where to go to avoid getting snagged or slowed. At times he'd swear the forest was getting out of his way or helping him along.

In spite of entering the dense wood, the world around him seemed to expand rather than contract. The trees, towering up into the sky, surrounded him by the hundreds in his direct line of sight and receded into the distance until they all blended together, giving the impression of an endless space around him. The forest sounds were abruptly apparent to him as well, markedly different from the sounds of the open farmland their homestead sat on. It was almost magical to him. Steven could feel the life in the forest and hear the tiniest rustle of leaves on the ground or the claws on bark as squirrels climbed. He closed his eyes and let the forest soak in. He could sense nearly every living thing in that part of the forest - a hawk picking at a mouse up in the trees, a bear foraging for berries some distance away, even a puma curled up in a den in a rocky bluff nearby. He also found the smell of the forest intoxicating, with the plants and humus enveloping him with an earthy, woody aroma like a comfortable blanket. For him, it was like entering a completely different world.

But there was little time today for him to stop and experience the forest in greater detail. Though he never became bored with it and his endless discoveries, Steven had a meeting to attend to and an important component of his computer project to acquire. With just the slightest hesitation, he headed quickly to the rendezvous point, hoping Brandon was successful in getting the file for him. He found a comfortable rhythm as he trotted through the forest and covered ground rapidly. No matter how far he ran, in the forest he never seemed to get tired and could run all day if he had to.

As he ducked branches and ran along deadwood trunks and through the ferns, his thoughts wandered and his playful fantasy world surfaced in his imagination. He saw gnarled, dead branches as terrible monsters reaching wretched claws out for him and he whacked at them with his staff as he dodged, weaved, and swerved through the underbrush. He turned it into a full running, fantastical battle. The landscape transformed around him into a dark, foreboding forest with monsters hiding in the underbrush and behind the trees as he ran by. He jumped up onto a leaning tree and ran along the trunk and onto a branch, whacking at reaching tentacles as he danced his way between the spiny arms that threatened to grab him. Without breaking stride, he jumped off onto a downed trunk that became the back of a massive dragon. He balanced on it as it writhed wildly, trying to knock him off. While at a full sprint he ran along its back, crossing a small ravine over which the dragon lay. Angry trolls reached up from the ravine trying to grab his feet and pull him down. He soundly beat them back with his staff as he jumped from the dragon's back onto the far bank and continued his jog through the enemy territory. A tree thrust its branches out, and before they could trap him he grabbed one of them and swung up into the tangle of the canopy, crawling quickly from branch to branch up high, then jumped from the canopy and grabbed another branch of a neighboring tree and repeated scrambling from tree to tree as he picked up the pace. He found he could travel even faster this way than flat out running. As the forest thinned a bit he jumped out of the canopy and grabbed a long thin branch that bent down low enough for him to drop to the ground. He felt most liberated as he gallivanted through the forest without a care in the world.