Caleb McCallister and the Sword of Light

Chapter 4

In the morning my parents were already gone. I went for a run and tried not to think about the way I'd been abandoned. It didn't work. My heartbeat was pounding before I reached the end of the block. I wasn't even sweating, but I was on fire. I was used to Dad taking off, but usually, he abandoned me and Mom. To have her go off with him was the worst kind of betrayal.

I'd only planned to go three miles but kept going until I was numb before heading back to the house. I went to the kitchen for water and found some cash and a note on the table. I could've guessed what it said even before I read it. There were leftovers in the fridge. Be sure to take the trash out. Fix the hole in the wall. The only piece of information conspicuously missing was when they would be back. My stomach did a flip at the thought my mom might be gone for weeks, like Dad often was.

Seamus was mucking about in the backyard. Glad for a distraction I chugged the rest of the water and went outside to see what he was up to. He came out of the shed carrying two shovels and a pickaxe. Sweet, we're going on a jailbreak.

He tossed the tools to the ground. "Help me dig a trench."

"When did you take up gardening?" Seamus ignored my question. Maybe his doctor told him he needed a hobby. I figured a little manual labor would be worth it if it got him out of the basement for a few hours. He told me where he to dig, and I set to work. It wasn't too bad because whatever we were planting only needed to be about six inches deep. And the trench went straight across the back of the house.

Seamus was taking this new hobby seriously. It was good to see him doing something other than hiding out in the basement. He probably couldn't hold down a job even if he wanted one and spent most of his time working out in our makeshift gym or practicing with his bow in the backyard. He was an expert marksman, but it still made my mom nervous. We'd work out together, he'd teach me archery, and sometimes he'd help me run hurling drills.

Hurling was an ancient Irish sport. It's a little like lacrosse but faster, more intense, and more violent. The idea was to get a ball called a sliotar into a goal for three points or over it for one point. But a hurling stick didn't have a net like a lacrosse stick. Hurlers ran down the pitch, bouncing and balancing the sliotar on the flat end of their hurley.

I watched Seamus as he tore into the ground. Mom always said he had the face of an angel, even with his scruffy beard. It was obvious he and my dad were brothers. The resemblance was unreal. The only difference was that Seamus looked about ten years older. Well, that, and Seamus was around a lot more than my dad.

When I got to the corner of the house, he told me to keep going around the side while he worked in the other direction. I found my groove and started moving faster. I was almost to the front corner when I heard the pickaxe smashing up some serious rock. Like the Union soldiers at Fort Warren, I went to investigate.

"Seamus! What are you doing?" I wasn't sure why I asked. It was obvious what he was doing. He was destroying the sidewalk that led to our front door.

"The trench has to go all the way 'round." He pointed at four shipping boxes sitting in the grass—as if that somehow explained everything.

"I don't think Dad's gonna be happy about this."

Seamus took another swing and looked up at me. "Ye da left me in charge. Not ye."

I snorted because he was right. Dad definitely said Seamus was in charge.

When we finished digging, a mini-moat ran all the way around our mini-castle. Seamus opened the boxes. They were full of iron shavings he'd bought online. Iron shavings. And not the stuff you buy at a hardware store, mind you, because iron was sometimes mixed with filler and other ores. No, sir—Seamus had to have pure iron. Why? For protection, he told me.