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(Page 1 of 2) Anarchistic Knights-a serialadventure Chapter 16E-Tobal Confesses by Joe BandelRafe looked carefully at the two tags and slowly handed them back along with the necklace. "I guess they are", he commented. "What else did you find?"
Tobal slid the necklace back over his head and put the plastic tags back into his medicine bag before he unsheathed the dagger and handed it to Rafe.
Rafe examined the golden dagger wordlessly and turned it so he could examine the initials better. "Your father?" He asked quietly and gave it back to Tobal.
Tobal just nodded, blinking back some tears and a lump in his throat.
"Is there anything else?"
Tobal nodded and stood up. "Let's walk a bit. We have to get away from camp first."
Together they walked out into the woods where they had been hauling wood for the last month. It was about a half mile from camp and Tobal figured it was reasonably safe.
"Watch", he pulled out the wand and pointed it at a nearby boulder they had sat on for lunch a few days ago. A bright red light showed briefly on the boulder and then vanished as Tobal pressed the fifth button.
"So what!". Rafe said. "It's a little laser light. I used to play with them when I was a kid. I used to tease the cat with it."
"Not like this", Tobal said. "Come over and look." He went over to the boulder and pointed at the small hole that went straight into the boulder and came out the other side.
"Damn!", Rafe whispered, running his fingers over the hole. "It's not even hot."
Tobal pointed the wand in the general direction of where they had been working the other day and pressed the second button briefly. Instantly the area fifteen feet in front of them was clear of snow and there was steam rising from the ground in the moon light.
"Holy shit!" Rafe exclaimed. "Put that damn thing away and let's get out of here! What are you trying to do? Get us killed?"
Tobal put the wand back into the sheath on his left leg and they hurried back to camp in the moonlight retracing their steps in the snow.
"I found a secret cave", he said. "It is where my parents used to meet secretly with a few others. It must have been the place Sarah's father told me about. I found my parent's things there and I also found the wand there. I couldn't stay very long and explore so I left right away. I knew the air sleds would be looking for me and I wanted to be as far away as possible when they did.
"They found me about one half hour later", he said. "Lucky for me it was Ellen and she was really pissed at me. At least she was at first. She made me take off my med-alert bracelet and did all kinds of tests on it to see if it was working right. Then she asked me what I had been doing by the waterfall. That's when I told her I was coming back to where my old camp had been destroyed. She didn't believe me at first but she took me to my old burned out site and I showed it to her. She wondered why I hadn't told anyone about it. I said I had told you and that you had said it was not a good place to build.
"That's when she told me it was a 'forbidden' site and I wasn't supposed to be there. It was dangerous especially near the waterfall.
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