I took out my knife and slit the seam on Mallory's tunic. We all stared at the glowing words.
Power of Healing
I stared. Then Holly spoke once more.
"Stephanie, I believe you posses the power of speed," said Holly. Stephanie looked absolutely shocked for a second, then she too, also rose up to the heavens. I was absolutely slack-jawed. When she also touched down, her shoulder (which was bare because she was wearing a tank top) had been inscribed with words.
Power of Speed
"Oh my..." stuttered Stephanie. I turned in fascination to Holly.
"Um, how did you do that?" I asked. Holly turned to her calmly.
"I simply figured out the secret for the powers. Once you use them, someone else has to find out and say it. Like me, for instance. I used my powers to calm Eli down. Then, the next time my powers were needed, you told me about them. You alerted me to the power's presence and allowed me to use them to the fullest. I did the same for Mallory and Stephanie. Stephanie got sick because she used her powers more than once without someone telling her what they were. She got us up this tree using her speed, but none of us said anything. Then she rescued Phillip, and no one had alerted her to the presence of her power. I think using your power without knowing it's there is limited, and can only be used once," said Holly. The others contemplated this, mulled it over, and decided she was probably right.
"Well, this is great," said Phillip. "When we see someone behaving inhumanely like, let's say Eli lifts something impossible for humans his size to carry. Like a boulder or something. Then we say, Eli, you have the power of strength or something and then he rises up, gains his power and starts looking like a super buff Hercules."
We laughed, but our laughter was soon cut short at the sight of the Deci lizard stretching on its rock. I opened her guidebook again, this time flipping to the extra facts section, hoping to gain something useful.
"Hey, guys, check this out," I said. "The Deci lizard spends its day sunning itself and hunts during the night." I looked up. "We thought we were lucky that the Deci lizard hasn't tried to kill us yet. We were wrong. As soon as the sun sets today, we're dead meat." We looked out at the setting sun.
"And that would be...." asked Stephanie.
"Now," I confirmed.
Chapter 13
"What?" said Phillip.
I glared at him.
"Shut up! We're have to be quiet!" I hissed. It was pitch dark. Stephanie had gotten Eli and Kae up the tree, filled them in, and now we were huddled as far in the middle of the tree as we could get, sitting stock still, hoping that we could get through the night without dying.
"But... I heard one of you say you're gonna.. ..... kill me?" Phillip phrased the last part as a question.
"What?" I snapped. "Are you crazy? Now shut up and be quiet! The Deci lizard's gonna find us!" I didn't mean to be rude, but I was stressed to the limit. Phillip gulped.
"I think it already did," he said hoarsely. "It's Aren'k that's speaking to me."
"Aren'k?" I asked, now seriously worried about Phillip. Phillip nodded.
"That's the name of the Deci lizard," said Phillip. "He says he's going to kill us, unless we can convince him not to."
"Okay, okay," I said. "You're absolutely sure you aren't imagining it?"
Phillip shook his head resolutely.
"Okay, then we need to tell the others," said I, and she crept toward them and related to them what Phillip had told her.
"But if this is true, then we need to do the thing and say he's got animal speech power and all that-" said Holly worriedly.
"Yeah, yeah," I cut in. "We'll do all that later. Right now we need to focus on the lizard. Phillip can obviously communicate with the lizard, so if you feed him the lines, he should be able to convince the lizard. Okay?"
"But Phillip-" said Holly.
"We have no time to argue! Okay?" I said sharply. Holly nodded and went to discuss with Phillip what he was going to say to the lizard.
I sighed and slumped against the tree trunk. This leader thing was killing me. Well, in the morning it would be better. Assuming I survived the night. I heard Holly talking to Phillip, and Phillip relaying what she said in weird raspy noises. I couldn't sleep that night. I waited fearfully, sure that at any moment, a spike was going to impale me. I shivered as I listened to the meaningless rasps continue.
"Here," whispered Kae, handing me Holly's spare turquoise hoodie.
"Thanks," I whispered gratefully, pulling it on. I continued to shiver, though not from the cold. My fear was beginning to dislodge from my throat and spread down to my heart. A tear leaked out of my eye.
"What's wrong?" said Kae.
"Nothing," she said, wiping the telltale tear away. "It's just all this leader stuff, the pressure is so much, I mean how are we supposed to save the world? We're just a bunch of thirteen year olds thrown together because the world needs saving! How are we supposed to-" My voice broke and I started quietly sobbing.
"Hey," he said. "Look at me." I looked up into his icy-blue eyes which were at the moment full of warmth. "Everything happens for a reason, Evanna. We are so not just an ordinary bunch of thirteen year olds! We are special! Look, why would we get thrown together? Because otherwise the world would fall to pieces. It's our life force holding the world together. If we weren't here, Arachne would definitely rise, right?"
I nodded mutely.
Kae continued, "But since we are here, we give the scales some doubt! If Arachne wins, the world falls to pieces. So why not fall to pieces now? Why wait till she rises? Because we are here. We could stop Arachne, so the world can't fall apart yet. Get it?"
"I think so," I said hesitantly.
"Good," said Kae. "And Evanna? It not all on you. We're going to help you. You may be the leader, but don't be afraid to ask for our help from time to time, ok?"
I smiled.
"Yeah, thanks Kae," she said. Kae smiled slightly and walked off. Fortunately Eli stopped him, or he would have walked right off the platform.
Chapter 14
Light crept in through the tree branches. I could sense it even though my eyes were closed. It turned the black of my eyelids red.
"Hey, wake up, sleepyhead." Someone was shaking me. "Come on, we need to get out." Huh? I opened an eye. Stephanie's face stared down at me.
"What happened last night?" I asked, yawning. I wasn't worried. Last night had had to have gone well, otherwise it wouldn't be morning and she wouldn't be alive.
Stephanie's expression was of pity.
"You should get ready. We need to leave by two," said Stephanie. I sat up. There was something in Stephanie's expression I didn't like.
"Stephanie," she said slowly. "What happened last night? I'm not getting up till you tell me." Some of Stephanie's old glint in her steely blue eyes came back.
"Ah, I always knew you were a stubborn one," she said fondly. But when she caught sight of my serious expression, she stopped.
"Okay, I'll tell you," she sighed. "We didn't convince the lizard."
"But then why are-" I said as I struggled to get a grip on things. Her mind was working reaally slow today.
"If you want me to tell you, you can't interrupt," said Stephanie, giving me her best death glare.
"Okay," I said meekly. Stephanie sat back, satisfied.
"Okay. So Phillip didn't convince the lizard. Apparently, Phillip said all the right things, but he lacked the confidence needed. They were trying to convince the lizard that we're poisonous so there was no use killing us. Apparently, the lizard eats the things he kills. It kept on saying 'But you are not bright colored' throughout the night." Stephanie snorted.
"So they kept on debating. Finally the lizard decided just to attack. But as he shot the first spike, the sun came up, and the lizard went back to sunning himself. They like, shut down during the day. Now we have to leave Fairy Circle by one o'clock so we can, you know, stay alive."
"So, we're out of danger?" I asked.
r /> "Well...." Stephanie's guilty expression made me suspicious. Then I realized what it was. The way they let me sleep even though we had to leave.... as if I needed rest. Stephanie's furtive glances at my foot...... I threw back Phillip's unused towel I had curled up on and saw a large silver spike next to her right foot. The wound was a medium sized puncture, and the skin around it was black and blue with a tint of green. The spike looked like a rose thorn, only larger and silver.
"It hit me," she whispered softly. Stephanie nodded, unable to keep the guilt out of her face.
"We saw it coming and were able to leap out of the way," said Stephanie. "But you.... you were asleep. It hit you full on."
I considered.
"Why am I not dead yet?" I asked. I thought I knew, but she wanted to make sure.
"Mallory," said Stephanie. "She sat with you for three hours, kept on making Kae bring her something called fern-rose. She crushed it and made a soup with water from the springs. Then she used it to wash your wound." Stephanie's expression became horribly guilty.
"You know, Evanna, when I think of how I could've prevented it..."
"Don't be stupid," I said. "How could you have stopped it?"
"The spike," said Stephanie. "It was coming right at me, but I jumped aside and it hit you instead." Her lip began to quiver.
"Oh, Stephanie," I tried to console her. "Don't be stupid. Then it would just have been you hurt. It's not causing me any pain, whatever Mallory did worked. Don't worry..."
"But don't you see, Evanna?" said Stephanie. It could've killed you! I would've been a murderer."
"That is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard," I declared. Stephanie gulped and smiled at me.
"Yeah, I know I'm being stupid," she said thickly. "It's just survivors guilt, you know?"
I grinned.
"So, can I walk?" I gestured to my wound.
Stephanie nodded.
"If it isn't hurting, then Mallory says that walking shouldn't do any harm to it. We just have to go slow, because otherwise the blood will start flowing again. She's cleaned out all the poison. It's had an effect on the skin, though. It probably won't return to normal color until you grow new skin."
I nodded, and said, "Well, help me get out of this tree, then!"
Stephanie laughed and quickly shimmied me down the tree.
"Hey, Evanna!" called Phillip. "Check this out!" He showed his shoulder to me.
Power of Other Speech
I laughed.
"That's great!" I was genuinely happy for him.
"Well, we got three powers discovered in one challenge. Making good progress, huh?" said Holly, running up to us. Her blonde hair streamed out in the wind.
"Yep," I said, returning her high five.
"Kae did it," she said, gesturing to Phillip's mark. "He tried about a hundred things, like power of lizard speech and power of reptiles. It was only after he spoke to birds, bobcats, and even flowers when we figured out it was other speech." She smiled.
We chatted for a while, when Eli jogged up to us. Along with him was Kae.
"Just went for a run," Eli smiled. "You know, to keep the muscle muscular." He flexed his non-existent muscles and winked at Holly. Then he caught sight of me.
"Hey, feeling better?" he said, smiling kindly.
"Yeah, thanks," I said, smiling as I fist bumped him.
"Hey! You guys need to get washed up!" said Kae.
"Oh, that's right!" said Holly, smiling at me. "We need to get out, but we have time to get dressed! Aren'k isn't going to touch us during the day!" Holly grabbed my hand and pulled her to the springs. Stephanie followed.
"Mallory showered earlier, before the boys," Stephanie explained sliding in next to me. I just sighed happily. Mallory had put some ground fern-rose in the springs for my ankle, and I decided to just relax and not worry for a while. After all, we had done some amazing things. Now all we had left was to save the world. I settled back against the stone wall. Yep, it would be as easy as pie.
Chapter 15
My shoulders ached. We were on the second to last day of the month, and no new powers had showed up. We had reached the last landmark before Arachne's castle, but it seemed to go on forever. It was a forest. The Twilight forest. Which, according to the map, which we had found out gave us fun facts on where we were, was the longest forest in Au. We had been walking in it for two weeks.
I supposed I should look on the bright side of things. We hadn't encountered any monsters. And the forest even had a trail, so we weren't just barging through uncharted wilderness. But tomorrow Arachne would rise and destroy the world and we were no way close to reaching the castle.
I sighed as Holly came up from behind her, adjusting and readjusting the pack on her back. At first she had been solely carrying the packs but as we ventured deeper and deeper into the wilderness that showed no signs of stopping, the others took pity on her and took one pack each. As the days went wearily by, the packs weighed down heavily on our shoulders, and one of Stephanie's was lower than the other. She was now carrying her pack only on her higher shoulder, hoping to level them out.
"What are we going to do?" asked Holly wearily. The two of us had secretly kept track of the days, and we were the only ones who knew that all hope was lost. I glanced backward. The rest of my troops were out of earshot, so she said," I assume you mean about the whole Arachne rising tomorrow thing?"
Holly winced and said," What else?"
"We need to tell the others. We've went over this a million times ourselves and I don't believe we'll get anything out of it by doing it one more time. It's time to break it to them."
Holly sighed, but she agreed.
"You're right. They're not going to like it, though."
"Well, what other choice do we have?" I asked.
"Fair point," said Holly, and we went to the others.
After explaining the situation to the others, they were all shocked. All but Phillip. He was absolutely excited.
"Look," he said. He sat down and spread the map out on the floor. The others knelt around him. "In the fun facts. It says if you defeat a monster in the Twilight, as a reward it grants you a boon."
"A boon?" asked Mallory. She had been much easier to deal with on this part of the trip. I supposed having her power made it easier, plus I could see Mallory was really trying.
"A wish," said Phillip. "I could see that we probably wouldn't get there in time so I made note of this." He pointed at the flowing scripture below.
"Of course, none of us likes killing monsters, so I refrained from mentioning it," said Phillip. "But now we need it."
"But how are we gonna get a monster to just pop up out of the blue?" asked Eli.
Phillip pointed. "Here are all the instructions. The Twilight believes in being fair, so we get to prepare before fighting. Once we believe we are absolutely, resolutely ready, we ask he forest for stuff and blah blah blah. Then the forest will inform us of what monster we're fighting and we get one hour to prepare."
"Excuse me, but how will a forest inform us of the monster? Not all of us have other speech powers," said Stephanie scathingly. She was ticked off that Holly and I had kept a secret from her. She didn't mind her keeping it from the boys (really, can you imagine telling a boy a secret and expecting him to keep it?) and Mallory was understandable. She was a big blabbermouth. But Stephanie thought that keeping a secret from her was the lowest of low.
"I don't know!" exclaimed Phillip. "A lot of people have tried it, but there have only been three survivors. Apparently they suddenly just knew."
Stephanie rolled her eyes.
"I don't like it," she said and she got up and walked a few feet away.
"Well, what other choice do we have?" asked Kae angrily. Stephanie sighed.
"Fine," she said. "But we have to be careful. Last time was too close a call." Everyone knew she was referring to my injury. I was completely healed now, but had Mallory not discovered her power then, I would be dead.
"Okay," said Phillip. "Let's start preparing."
Chapter 16
I waited nervously. Phillip had performed some rituals and had prepared the fighting ground and told the forest they were ready. Now we were waiting, on edge, to find out what monster we would be fighting. Suddenly I knew what we were fighting. It just suddenly appeared in her mind. It was the Nemean bull.
"You heard it your mind too, right?" asked Holly with a troubled expression on her face.
"Uh huh,"I confirmed. We all sat in a circle.
"Stupid bull," said Stephanie. "Evanna, can you look it up?"
I took out her guidebook.
"Says it's like the Nemean lion," I said.
"Wha..." said Eli.
"The Nemean lion," I explained. "It's an old Greek myth. The lion has iron hard skin. I think Hercules defeated it. But the bull is a little different. You see, it has iron skin around it's whole body except for its underbelly. The only way to defeat it is to get under it's belly and puncture it's heart. Oh, and the bull's mind is completely bent on staying alive, and never thinks nor speaks about any thing else." I glanced up at Phillip. "That means you can't communicate with it."
"All right," said Phillip, nodding. "Any thing else?"
"Yeah," I said. "Apparently it weighs two tons. Twice as much as a normal bull."
She let this sink in.
"We're not going to win unless Kae, Eli, and/or Evanna bust out some new powers," said Stephanie.
"Yeah, you're right," I sighed. "But we can't count on that. We have to make a plan." We bent our heads together to discuss.
Your preparation time is up. The Nemean bull will enter the arena.
I looked around the clearing we were in and supposed it was like a arena. She backed away and retreated to the edge of the clearing, hiding behind a large tree. She saw the others do the same. It was part of our battle plan. Not so much as a battle than a plan.
We were hoping that when the bull entered, it wouldn't be able to see us because we were hidden behind the trees. But it would be able to sense us. Agitated, the bull would run around the clearing, not notice the giant trap we had set up, get caught, and get killed. Yep, great plan.
Suddenly, a huge shadow loomed up above us, blocking the moonlight. I saw two big horns and glimmer of a tail. The rest was a shapeless mass. Wading into the clearing, knocking down trees as it went, the bull sat down in the middle of the clearing with a big heave. In the moonlight, I could see the bull clearly for the first time. It had towering, curved, needle sharp horns, and red glowing eyes. Its body was enormous, and was covered in a silky brown coat that I knew was impenetrable.