At the start of this chapter Petra took her pony out for a ride in the forest. Some wild, deviational creature attacked her pony and Petra was thrown from her horse. She sent out a mental cry, more powerful than anything that the others could have managed. David ran from where he was, and the same with Rosalind. They tried to contact the others to tell them not to come so as not to arouse suspicion, but could not get through to them because Petra�s mental cries blocked everything out. When David and Rosalind reached Petra, David killed the creature that was attacking her pony. After killing the animal, Michael appears in the clearing. The three tried to calm Petra down before she brought the others there as well. But to their despair, they could not, and Sally and Katherine arrived. Following closely behind the two girls was a man that none of them had seen before, Jerome Skinner. He began to ask questions about why all of them were there and how could they all have heard Petra�s cries. To the Group�s discouragement, Jerome was not satisfied with their answers, but left anyway. The Group made a pact that only David and Rosalind can come to Petra�s aid if she is in trouble.
The Group decided that it wa time to teach Petra how to control her telepathic abilities, and David was given the task of teaching her. They began by trying to send her thought shapes to ascertain whether or not she could receive thoughts; she could. David then worked on getting her to send simple pictures to him and the others. The effects were blinding, so David and Petra worked on toning done her ability to 1% of what she could do. Progress was slow, but promising. The strange thing is that Petra could now identify the Group, but she said that there are others talking and that she could not seem to identify them. This suggests that there are other telepaths in the world. The others listened for these telepaths, but cannot hear them.
After Petra & David�s session with thought-shapes, Uncle Axel came to talk with David. It seems that there have been suspicions stirring up within Waknuk concerning the Group. David stated that neither he nor the others had been unduly careless. Axel then admitted to David that he was the one who had murdered Alan for the safety of the Group.
David returns to the Group and tells them that there are questions regarding them. They decide that in the possibilty of Petra�s capture, they were to kill her, which would be better than sterilization (what they did to deviational women) and banishment to the Fringes.
Chapter 12 - "The Flight to the Fringes�
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