(no subject)

[seymoure]

24.

The airport was one of those places where you are never sure about your surroundings. Who are all these people, and where are they going? Are they going anyplace, or are they here waiting for someone else? Who
is the bomber, who is the spy and who is the sky policeman who is going to be responsible for getting you where you are going alive.

If his heart were not so heavy Mickey would have been having a good time playing the airport “Who’s That?” game.

The most amazing thing about this particular trip was that Mom was along. She rarely left the house, and here she was at the airport.

She looked a bit like a rabbit in the midst of a lion’s den. Yet, there was a mother’s strength within her that made the boys certain that she could face down anybody there if it meant the safety of her
children.

Mickey had been wondering what it was Stonedragon meant about his mother being one of the Inheritors, and why she was the way she was. Could she have been a superpowerful heroine who lost her powers in battle?
And what was the “debt” that the Colonel spoke of owing his parents?

For that matter, what was the “other group” his father belonged to that was not an Inheritor but was “no less mythic or regarded” than they?

He had been unable to get any information from either parent in regard to this, and was perturbed that there was a group as mysterious as the “metahuman” folks he had just found out about.

Mickey and David were rapidly finding that the world was far more complex than they or the world in general had ever had a clue about.

If nobody knew about the Inheritors or the people of his father’s group, what else was there out there that were waiting to be discovered?

The phrase from antique maps he had perused during the “age of discovery” history classes kept bouncing around inside his head.

His folks hustled them towards the gate as their flight was loading.

For the first time he found out where they were going, by reading the board above the loading door at his gate.

“Where is Sao Paolo?” he asked his father.

“Brazil,” Benjy said as he stood waiting from his boys to enter the walkway to the plane.

Both boys were stunned. They thought they would be going to a bigger city perhaps, or at most to England.

“Isn’t that near the Amazon?” David gasped.

“Well, its on the same continent, but no where near where the city is,” his father smiled.

“We’re about to load the general passengers, if you want to pre-load the boys, it is time to do that,” the lady behind the counter said.

“The Colonel will be waiting for your plane, so don’t worry.” Benjy said as he hugged the boys.

Mickey’s mother was awash in emotions. She was proud, thrilled, afraid and angry that her boys were being taken, for however short a time, from her.

As she was holding Mickey close to her heart she whispered to him, “There is real magic waiting for you my brave knight.”

She kissed him on the forehead and he felt as emotionally raw as he had ever known.

He turned and walked side by side with his sibling down the walkway.

That phrase from the maps kept bouncing around in his head.

David turned to him and asked, “There be monsters here?”

“Yeah, well,” Mickey said as the attendant led them to seats in the empty plane.

(c) 2005 by C. Wayne Owens