Free Fervor by Chantal Boudreau Page B

That’s exactly what I mean!” she pushed at him with greater enthusiasm, the connection carrying her feelings of frustration loud and clear. “That’s something that you should have had the right to know from the very beginning. There’s so much that Francis is hiding from us. It’s wrong, and I don’t care what you think, he has some say in the matter.” She chewed absentmindedly at her lower lip like she always did when she was upset.
    They walked in silence for a few moments, with Sam still reeling a bit from her last fierce push. Fiona didn’t realize how much more receptive he and Sarah were to communication through the connection, and what felt like a firm mental statement to the older girl came across as a very loud shout to him. Eventually, when he had recovered from the experience, he started pressing her for more information.
    “ So do you have any ideas on why they did this to us – anything that you may have seen or heard, and remembered? Why do we suddenly have access to the connection? Where do these gifts come from, and why do we have them? Why did we lose some of our senses? What’s with these Directives and the way things have been organized here? Why won’t they let us leave the island? Why do the Controls not share in all of this?”
    Sam didn’t mean to, but he bombarded the poor girl with one question after another, unable to control his curiosity. Since she seemed so bent on sharing anything that she did know, he was compelled to find any answers that might be hidden in the assortment of memories that she kept.
    Despite being overwhelmed by the sudden influx of his forceful thoughts, Fiona grinned down at him. She reached over and tussled his hair.
    “ Ah, my funny little detective, I’m not sure exactly what treasures lie inside my head. I have to know what I’m looking for, or be lucky enough to stumble upon something by accident. I may have what you need, but it’s going to be up to you to find it. That is what you do, after all.”
    She had a pretty smile, Sam contemplated. One that he had noticed the older boys sometimes found disarming. He often wondered if that was why Nathan and Royce tried to avoid her, and Francis tried so hard to please her.
    Sam also suspected that she had invited him along on this errand for this very reason. She wanted to use him to ferret out any clues that her memories could offer, ones that she had not been able to recognize herself. He also knew that she, more than anyone else, felt cheated out of life the way that she believed that it should have been.
    “ How about we sit down for a moment?” Fiona gestured at a cluster of large rocks by the side of the path. “Maybe we can address those questions one at a time.”
    They each perched atop a large boulder, and Sam considered what she had told him so far.
    “ Do you recall anything about the adults that left the first time around? They weren’t teachers or minders, you said. Can you remember anything about them?” he asked.
    She sat back, staring off into space for a moment, and he could almost feel her delving back into her memories, looking for something – anything.
    “ Wait!” she finally said, her eyes widening . “I do remember overhearing Martha say something to one of my teachers once. They were talking about scholars and technicians. I didn’t know what they meant at the time, but I’m pretty sure they were talking about the people who were about to leave. Martha said something about what they would do if any of the hovers or appliances stopped working after they were gone. She complained that they didn’t have to worry about having the magic to make them go, as long as they were in working order, but they would be in a fine mess if any of the parts wore out, or something just stopped working. She even made a point of mentioning that it wasn’t like they had any functioning Fixers yet. The teacher said that there were enough teachers who had a generally knowledge of how those