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  Fervor

  Book 1 of the Fervor Series

  Written and Illustrated by Chantal Boudreau

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  PUBLISHED BY: May December Publications LLC

  Fervor

  ©2011 May December Publications LLC

  Split-tree logo a registered trademark of May December Publications LLC

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author or May December Publications LLC.

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  Acknowledgements

  For test reading: I’d like to thank my primary butt-kicker and real-life muse, Barb McQueen. I’d also like to thank my other wonderful test readers, Ren Garcia, Jonathan Stotlar, and Elisabeth Tilton for keeping me on my toes with questions and constructive criticism.

  For moral support: I’d like to thank my very encouraging family, especially my husband, Dale and my kids, Gwyn and Etienne, for putting up with my compulsion to write. I also want to thank my equally encouraging co-workers and manager. Jim, Leanne, Sherry, Marian, Maria, Vicki, Elizabeth – you guys are great! A big shout -out to all my facebook friends too, particularly my writer pals!

  Lastly, I want to thank May December Publishing for believing in me. I hope we’ll be producing many more books together.

  -Chantal

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  A Moment with the Author…

  Dear Readers,

  Inspiration can come from unexpected places. While on a hunt for representation, I came across a list of themes that one agent was supposedly looking for. I had nine unpublished manuscripts and a real yen to get some attention from someone in the industry. As driven as always, I decided to take on his challenge. I selected one of his themes and in the course of an hour I had pulled a wide selection of ideas that had been lingering in my mind, and woven them together into a story that matched his demands. I had my plot, my main characters, my title and my outline (which would change somewhat before planning was complete but the basic elements have remained the same.) Of course, the agent in question never even asked for a partial when I queried him with regards to Fervor, but I am still grateful for the initial push that brought Fervor into existence.

  Some of the ideas in my book surrounding genetic manipulation originated from a non-fiction book that I had read more than a year before the creation of Fervor. Elaine Dewar’s book, The Second Tree: of Clones, Chimeras and Quests for Immorality (Random House, 2004) was a definite influence for me and a source of interest that led me to the Scholars and their experiments. She discussed what extremes man might go to in the name of science and “progress”, and questioned the morality of justifying playing God on the basis that it might improve our circumstances. I continue to find her research fascinating.

  Another significant influence for Fervor was the growth of social networking. I am in awe of the connections that technology has permitted me to build and I often wonder if someday science might allow those connections to be more direct, from person to person rather than having to use some type of intermediary media. The Connection in my story is merely social networking without the computers, cell-phones or other communication devices, but with other limitations and associated issues.

  One of the biggest inspirations for me while I am writing is my music. I normally listen to alternative rock and my playlist for Fervor did include Three Days Grace’s “Life Starts Now,” but I decided I needed something less mainstream in order to help me capture the unusual flavor that I was looking for, something more indie. I chose Aselin Debison’s “Bigger than Me” for a sound with child-like innocence, and Saran Slean’s “Night Bugs,” for a sound with depth and soul. It was the latter that helped me choose the names “Elliot” and “Francis” for my characters.

  Lastly, while writing is a fairly solitary endeavor for me, I want to acknowledge the assistance of my work-in-progress test reader and real-life muse, Barb McQueen, who never fails to bring out the scissors and threaten me when I find myself in need of motivation. Thanks, Barb!

  -Chantal

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  Fervor

  And Then There Were None

  All Sam could hear was the screaming, and the screaming was all in his head. He knew that, because, as it woke him, he had tried covering his ears. But it hadn’t helped – they were still crying, screaming, shrieking, and wailing. He had tried screaming, too, and while he had heard it inside his mind just like the other voices, what scared him the most was that he had not heard it on the outside as well. He realized at that point that, aside from what echoed loudly through his brain, all that he had was silence. He clutched at his ears, clawed at his bed, and as he hyperventilated, everything went black.

  When he opened his eyes again, for the second time that morning, he felt a firm grip on his arm.

  Sam was dizzy. The voices were still there in his head, and there were still so many of them, too, but they were much calmer now. Some were louder than others, but most of them were simple whispers and gentle murmurs, like he was listening in on someone else’s quiet thoughts. The majority of them seemed to be saying almost the same thing that he was thinking, his own musings blending into the general commotion.

  He glanced up, expecting to see the warm brown eyes of Maria – believing that maybe she had woken him, and that he just had not completely shaken himself free from the nightmare yet. The hand on his shoulder, however, did not have Maria’s feminine fingers or somewhat swarthy skin. It was a pale hand, larger than Sam’s, with squared fingernails that looked slightly chewed. Sam looked up with surprise.

  Before Sam could say anything – no, before Sam could think anything, the older boy looked into his eyes, put a finger to his lips, and inside Sam’s head there was a distinct and obvious “shhhhhhh.”

  Sam obeyed. He could not help but obey. It was as much a compulsion as it was a desire to please the strange blond boy with pale green eyes. Then, the boy talked to him, only he did not move his mouth.

  “I’m Francis. I’m here to help you. I’m a Teller, and we have to go to the Gathering. Don’t say anything. Don’t even think anything. Quiet your mind as much as you can. Then, if you want to say something to me – if you want to ask me any questions – you have to focus your thoughts at me. Think at me. Do you understand? Nod if you do.”

  Sam nodded. He tried to follow Francis’s instructions to the best of his ability. Once again, there was that compulsion. The smaller boy closed his eyes, breathed steadily, and tried to calm his thoughts. Others were doing the same somewhere out there in the void in which his mind now floated, Sam sensed it.

  When he was sure that his mind was as quiet as he could get it, he opened his eyes again and stared at the pale, blond boy before him. While trying to focus his thoughts, out of habit, he opened his mouth as well to speak. He wanted to ask Francis where Maria was, why he was hearing things in his head, what this strange person was doing in his bedroom. While he could hear what he was going to say in his head, he could not hear it in his ears. He closed his mouth quickly; almost as frightened as he had been the first time that the silence had hit him.

  “You won’t be able to talk that way from now on,” Francis informed him, inside instead of out. “It’s a good thing that you are Connected, but you aren’t a Listener anymore. You’ll only be able to talk to others through the connection, unless you learn sign language, and you won’t
be able to make out real sounds either. If you want to hear what others have to say, they’ll have to communicate to you through the connection.”

  Overwhelmed by his circumstances, which were more than the typical eight-year-old could endure, Sam started crying. He wanted desperately to understand, but none of this made any sense to him.

  Yesterday, he had gone through his usual routine. He had woken up in the normal way, not like this morning. Maria had taken him to school using her magic to guide the hover. Then, he had learned, played, and afterwards, she had picked him up just like she always did. There had been nothing to suggest, the day before, that he would wake up the next morning and everything would be different. But it was.

  “Calm down,” Francis told him, and Sam felt himself immediately relax. “I’ll try to answer your questions, but you have to use the connection. You have to think them at me – and remember, stay focussed, or everyone will hear you whether they want to or not.”

  Trembling slightly, the smaller boy tried to do as he was told. He thought his questions very directly at Francis. Sam felt him cringe, saw the blond youth open his mouth and close his eyes, then rub at his temples.

  “Ah! Not so loud. You have a very strong link. That’s good, but that means that you will need better controls. Focus is good, too, but don’t push so hard. That actually hurt. Try again, but be gentle about it,” Francis sighed mentally. Sam decided that it was best if he took it slow, and started with just one question.

  “Where is Maria?” There was a tremor to his thoughts as a result of his anxiety, one that he was sure that Francis would be aware of.

  “She was your minder? You are too young to remember the first exodus, aren’t you? I barely remember it, and I must have at least five years on you. I’m sorry, Sam. She left Fervor. All of the minders did. There are no adults left on the island. They were the last, and now they’re gone.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped and his little heart fluttered. Maria was gone? No adults left on Fervor? How would he survive? As if he didn’t have enough to worry about with this new “connection,” as this strangely persuasive boy put it, and his unexpected deafness, he now had a million new questions. Who would take care of him? How would he get food? Who would teach him? Who would make him feel safe? Why did they leave? Why wasn’t there any warning? Why hadn’t Maria taken him with her?

  Sam was so frantic that he forgot to rein in his thoughts. Thankfully, Francis was right there again, watching him with his quirky smile and raising his finger to his lips.

  “Shhhhh.”

  The soothing thought washed over him like a warm bath, and Sam felt himself relax despite a reluctance to let his worry go. He was starting to hate the power that this older boy had over him. He had to know. He needed to know. It was like a small flame of curiosity burning hot and deep inside of him, desperately wanting to flare up and engulf him if it was not fed any answers. He had never felt such a powerful drive to seek out information before – just one more thing to add to the complete and utter chaos in which Sam felt like he was drowning.

  One step at a time,” Sam thought. “Back to the start – back to my first question and work my way forward.”

  Francis nodded, and that made the younger boy shudder. He could not think anything without someone else knowing it, or so it seemed. Was it going to be like that from now on? Had he lost all privacy? Was he going to lose his sense of self? There were just more questions, and so far, very few answers.

  “If the Directives that the adults left behind for us to follow speak the truth, eventually, we will be able to block others out completely so that we can preserve who we are and share only what we want to. But it will be something that we will all have to learn, and it will take a lot of practice. That’s why they left some of us disconnected, to mediate, to help maintain order until we sort all of this out. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to be them in the long run. They are the Controls. When we finally get this working properly, when things are running smoothly for everyone in the connection, they’re going to feel isolated and excluded. They won’t feel like they belong on Fervor anymore, and we don’t have any way off,” Francis assured him.

  “What about the hovers?” Sam asked. He noticed that if he managed to hone in on Francis’s mind with enough clarity, he could hear feedback from his own thoughts reverberating in the background. It was eerie.

  “None of us who were left behind can use them,” the blond boy thought with a patronizing edge. “I don’t have the magical training to run one of those things – do you? Anyone old enough to know how to use them is gone now. I think that they arranged it that way on purpose. They set it up to keep us here. They didn’t want us to be able to leave.”

  Francis’s demeanour, which had come across as so peaceful and pleasant despite the oddness about him, seemed to fold in on itself, and for a moment he regarded Sam with an air of melancholy. Then he snapped out of it, and giving Sam that same quirky smile, he offered up a distraction.

  “I can see how that might present us with a problem. We have to get to the Hub for the Gathering, and without the hovers, we’re going to have to walk. That’s a very long walk.”

  Sam grimaced at this idea. He had been to the Hub, a massive and centrally positioned communal building on the island, only once in his short life, and it had taken more than half a day’s travel by hover. If they walked, it would take them several days to get there.

  “Why do we have to go? What is this Gathering?” Sam did not want to have to make that trip unless there was no other option.

  “You want answers? That’s the only place you’re going to find them. I can give you some, but I’ll only be skimming the surface. I’m your Teller, but I only have leave to tell you so much for the moment. I told you that there would be a lot to learn, and that’s where it’s going to start. Believe me, you want to go.”

  Sam gritted his teeth. There it was again. Any time he tried to put up a fight – any time he tried to offer any resistance – it hit him, the blond boy’s words hanging over his shoulders like a heavy yoke, a burden that Sam could not possibly hope to escape. If Francis told Sam to believe him, then Sam would. If Francis told Sam that he wanted him to do something, then Sam did. If there were going to be any battle of wills, for some reason, Francis would always come up the winner.

  “Why are you here, Francis? Why are you taking me there? What is a Teller?”

  Sam wanted to keep it simple and ask only one question at a time, but he found that the thoughts were all tied together, and he could not separate them. It was not as straight forward as talking, this connection. It was difficult to limit what you were thinking at someone.

  “That’s going to take a lot more explaining than you might imagine. Let’s get you ready to go and I can give you some of the details along the way. We have someone else that we have to stop for who will be coming with us to the Hub. She’s a Little like you. She’s not that far away. I can introduce you now, if you like,” Francis suggested. The older boy’s eyes went vacant, as if he were staring off into the distance, but that distance lay beyond the confining and bare walls of Sam’s room. “Sarah? Sarah, are you still there? I’m with Sam, just like I told you that I would be. We’ll be coming for you soon.”

  “Francis?” Sam could barely make out the girl’s thoughts, like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation, and only because the older boy was allowing him the privilege. Her thoughts were even more tremulous than Sam’s. “I’m scared. It’s so dark, and I can’t move without bumping into things. Are you sure Sasha won’t be back?”

  “She won’t be back, Sarah. She’s not on Fervor anymore. Stay where you are. Sam and I can’t be your eyes for you until we get there. We’ll be leaving here soon. Sam just has to gather his things.” Francis’s thoughts always seemed so self-assured, like he had done this before, like he didn’t have the same kind of questions that Sam and Sarah had. That in itself bothered Sam.

  “Sam?”

  He felt the m
ental tendril extending towards him from the girl, hesitantly. There was something softer and more fragile to the touch of her thoughts that was not there when Francis spoke to him via the connection.

  “You’re going to help Francis to be my eyes? You can see like he can?”

  Answering Sarah was much different from answering Francis. Francis was right there, and the older boy kept his mind wide open to him. To reply to the girl, Sam had to push his thoughts through a tunnel of sorts, a flimsy tunnel that kept out some of the commotion, so that they could hear each other specifically. Her own fear made Sam’s feel insignificant. He wanted to make her more comfortable.

  “I can see, but I can’t hear anymore except through the connection. Don’t worry. I’ll help Francis to find you, Sarah. You’ll be safe soon.”

  Sam was not sure why, but he honestly meant that. He was fairly sure he knew exactly where she was, and that he would be able to take Francis to her.

  “Gather your things – anything that you really want to take with you – because we won’t be coming back here,” Francis instructed Sam, glancing around the plainly furnished room. “They’ll be assigning us to a house, and it won’t be this one. Not enough room for the six of us here.”

  “Six?” Sam was puzzled. How did Francis know all of this? It had only ever been Sam and Maria in their boxy little house on the hill. It was not much, he had to admit, with its very simple design and lack of adornment, but it had met their basic needs.