Free The Quest by Adrian Howell

behind us, I fully appreciated how entirely unaccommodating Mother Nature could be.
    It had been a long and restless night. Once the sun had set behind the mountain, it became nearly pitch-black under the trees. Steven had wanted to make a fire, but Terry forbade him, saying that the last thing we needed was a beacon for airborne search teams to see. Steven had seemed like he was about to argue, but then thought better of it when he saw the look in Terry’s eyes.
    Before we slept, Terry had divided the older kids into shifts to watch out for wild animals and possible pursuit by two-legged predators. Neither came, but in the meantime we were eaten alive by the insects. It had rained a little past midnight, and we managed to catch a sip of water in our hands, but that was our only relief. The little ones took turns waking up and crying all night. Lying between me and Patrick, my sister huddled with baby Laila. I slept very little, and Terry woke everyone at first light.
    Once we were all as alert and alive as we could be under the circumstances, Terry called us to attention and we continued our trek through the forest. Again Terry led, and I brought up the rear with Alia on my shoulders.
    Patrick had been walking beside me and chatting with Alia for much of the morning, but now he was up near the front of the procession with Heather and Candace. He had finally reached the limits of his endurance and had accepted Heather’s offer to carry Laila for a while.
    “Looks like you finally made a friend your own age, Alia,” I said. “That Patrick is a pretty good boy.”
    “He’s really nice, Addy,” Alia said into my head. “He even tried to give me his shoes yesterday, but they’re way too big for me.”
    “You two make a cute couple. When this is over, why don’t you ask him out on a date?”
    Horrified at the notion, Alia grabbed my hair. “Addy!”
    “Why not?” I chuckled. “You and Patrick can play house together. You even have a real live baby.”
    Alia pulled my hair until I stopped teasing her.
    Well before the sun had reached its zenith for the day, even the oldest kids were showing signs of exhaustion, often stumbling on the uneven path Terry was slowly carving out for us. Terry herself was as steady as ever. Despite carrying Alia, I wasn’t too bad off either, since I could fall back on my telekinetic power when my physical strength started to give way. But our group wouldn’t manage the pace we had kept yesterday.
    Terry had chosen not to take a direct line over the mountaintop, but to weave between two peaks in order to avoid the treacherous climb and descent. She occasionally had me levitate above the treetops to make sure our heading was correct, and I could tell that we were still far from relief.
    “The sooner we clear this forest, the sooner we can eat and rest,” said Terry, refusing to give more than the absolute minimum in rest stops. “We just have to keep moving.”
    It made sense too, since without provisions, the longer we stayed out here, the weaker we would become. However, I suspected that Terry’s impatience was caused by more than a pragmatic outlook on calorific consumption. She wanted to get these kids off of our hands as quickly as possible so that we could regroup with the Knights and, in the improbable chance that the Guardians didn’t yet know the truth about Randal Divine, report it to the Council. I didn’t share her loyalty to the faction, but I too was eager to get this leg of the journey over with and find Cindy.
    “Laila needs milk,” Patrick said worriedly during our afternoon stop. “I think she’s getting weak.”
    Baby Laila hadn’t cried in a while now. She seemed to be in a daze, her eyes unfocused. Terry suggested that in the absence of milk, which the teen girls couldn’t provide, we at least had to somehow keep Laila hydrated. But even Terry, who could fly a plane and straighten broken bones, knew next to nothing about surviving in a forest, and I