“How about you tell her yourself?” He waved off to the side. A girl, no more than ten, maybe eleven, stepped into the opening, her green eyes wide with wonder and admiration taking up half her elfish little face. She had long blonde hair, board straight and hanging well past her narrow shoulders. “Katy Reed, this is Tabitha.”
I didn’t know what to say. I never expected to see someone so young here at the grove and didn’t know how I felt about that. She should be out riding bikes with her friends or playing with dolls or something equally as carefree. She shouldn’t be here, forced from her home and into hiding from a governing body that wanted to throw her into Carcerem for being who she was.
Seeing her hurt my heart and made this all that much more real. I swallowed back any emotions clogging my throat and knelt in front of our young guest to be at eye level. “Hi, Tabitha. I’m Katy. Thank you for the sketch pad and pencils.”
“Bryan said they’d be helping the cause.”
“They definitely will.” I moved to the table and opened the sketch pad, turning page after page, impressed at her skill at such an early age. Flowers. Grassy fields. Trees. I turned another page and stopped, blinking at the image and running my fingers over her sketch of a woman standing on a stage, her ginger locks flowing off to the side, her fist in the air as she addressed a crowd of women. It was me, and it was a damn good job. The wave of my red hair. The hint of gold in my hazel eyes. She’d even captured the determination in my expression.
I turned to the next page and paused, just as impressed. It was Bryan on the stage next to me, his short brown hair perfectly groomed, his hazel gaze fixed on me. He had just a hint of a smile, but enough to tease the viewer with that cute dimple.
“Wow. Tabitha, these are amazing.” I turned to another page and stopped. It was my fist from the first image, but with an S drawn into the center, curving around the knuckles, across the heel of the hand, and sweeping along the wrist, and it was beautiful, utterly perfect. Simple, yet powerful. “What is this?”
Tabitha joined me at the table and tapped her finger on the drawing. “That’s Sentry.”
“Yes, it definitely is.”
And now Sentry had a logo.
13
“Today’s top stories: Weather anomalies continue. A tornado touched down in Western Washington earlier today, which in itself is not unheard of. However, the waterspout that was spotted less than two miles away, and in an inlet, is. Weather experts are baffled. There were no reports of injuries in either event. In other news, a wildfire broke out in the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula. Experts believe the fire is the result of lightning striking a tree, which exploded on impact, sending embers in every direction. It didn’t take long for authorities to have the blaze contained thanks in part to the wet weather and the cool, moist conditions of the terrain. A look at your weather is coming up after the break.”
Bryan turned down the radio and drew his eyebrows together, remaining silent for several seconds as he stared straight ahead. After standing and running his hands up and down the front of his pants a few times, he joined me at the table as I sketched out the next set of panels for the webcomic.
Our inaugural Sentry webisode introduced a new character, a blond runt with owlish glasses that took up half his face. Although I’d never had him on the page, I’d worked it out that he was a regular at the library, one who pestered Amethyst nonstop with questions. He even mentioned her being gone for so long. I hadn’t been able to upload a new webisode in weeks, not since being banned from my world and declared elemental enemy of the Council.
Trevor’s character—that I’d changed to Adam to protect the innocent and because I’d always liked that name—perpetually had his nose in a book, so it made it easy to hide the title in plain sight. No one knew how to find it unless they specifically looked for it. The cypher…was more of a challenge.
That was where Detective Nigel Brandt came in. He’d talk in cop code to Amethyst and promptly apologize before proceeding to repeat it in laymen’s terms. He’d been doing that since before this whole shit show started, so chances were, it wouldn’t lift an eyebrow.
I hoped.
Bryan watched in silence as I sketched out each panel, judiciously adding in the message. The title of the book in Adam’s hands that’d be the cypher. The carefully crafted code Amethyst called the detective on. It’d worked out last week, drawing in new members from the alchemist community. Not all of them, but a good majority. They’d joined us here in the grove, hiding from the Council, and immediately got to work creating potions, powders, lotions, and any other kind of medicine we’d need.
We’d also recruited a fair number of blacksmiths who worked with the alchemists to strengthen the weapons they created. I didn’t know if we’d need swords and shields, but I’d take anything we could get at this point. On top of the strength of the weapons, the witches charmed them to protect them from an attack. It wouldn’t stop the element, but it would slow it down.
But the kicker was the emergence of someone calling themselves the custodian graffitiing Sentry’s symbol of a fist with an S trailing down the wrist all over the island and sending more and more newcomers our way. I
