CHAPTER 9
FIRE
In some small space in her mind, in one tiny corner of her consciousness, Kiethara was faintly aware of the blackness that surrounded her. It wasn’t tight against her, or closely packed. It wasn’t as if she were…she were trapped in it. Actually, it was quite the opposite. Instead of being trapped in this blanket of blackness, she was free. This blackness seemed to stretch on forever. It let her mind stretch far beyond its normal reach; it was not a pleasant feeling. She felt horribly uncovered, like an exposed nerve ending. Her thoughts began to fly farther and farther away from her, getting lost in this darkness. And it seemed the farther they got away from her, her awareness grew more and more faint. They threatened to leave her forever and cast her away from whatever she were desperately clinging to. Dull fear grew inside her as the blackness grew darker still.
Yet, as she slowly lost her grip on her mind and her awareness, something grabbed hold of her. The fear vanished as this something brought some of the thoughts that had run wild back to her. It seemed to strengthen her a bit.
“Kiethara,” a sweet voice called.
Her mother’s voice.
Kiethara was suddenly filled with a stream of dull, weak emotions. She wanted nothing more than to shout out to her mother, to tell her that she was here, in the darkness. But she realized that she couldn’t find her lips, so the same dull fear flickered through her, but for different reasons. Was the black surrounding her making her crazy? Or was it killing her, and she was simply being reunited with her mother? This made her feel sad. Had she really died, then? Had she failed to protect her forest? She had a small desire to cry, but she had forgotten how…
Hardly any time had passed before these thoughts slipped away from her mind and into whatever lay beyond. They left no trace of their presence, no memory of what had happened. The only thing that remained was the sound of her mother’s voice, ringing out in the vast, never ending space.
There was nothing she could do but float. With every passing moment, the tiny corner of her consciousness grew smaller and smaller as the darkness seemed to expand. Her thoughts grew fainter, like a light that was dimming. Dimming until she could barely make it out…
Then a different voice called out through the blackness. This voice was very sharp, very clear, and very strong. It seemed to emit strength. As soon as Kiethara heard this voice, her thoughts came rushing back to her as though she had called them back, her awareness grew more pronounced. The surprise she felt was the strongest emotion she had felt since she lost her temper…her temper…The words brought back dim memories of what had happened. At the same time, her senses came back to her—her hearing, her smell, her feeling…they all seemed to come back with strength.
“Kiethara,” Aaron called again, sounding anxious.
Kiethara was suddenly aware of her body. Her back was laying on something soft and cool. Something warm was brushing against her skin as her hair was pulling gently from her skull in a slight breeze. Her mouth was dry and a bead of sweat rolled down her forehead.
Yet she still couldn’t see. That fact annoyed her very much and, then, it didn’t take her long to locate her eyelids. She pulled them open.
The first thing she saw was a blinding light. Her eyes watered as they slowly adjusted until she could make out a figure leaning over her. It was the Spirit of Aaron. His light lit up the clearing around her, which looked familiar…
Her eyes widened in shock as she realized where she was. She was in her clearing. How did she get here? Did Aaron bring her here? Could he? The last thing she could remember was collapsing onto the floor of unfamiliar forest.
“Kiethara,” Aaron breathed in relief.
Kiethara tried to lift her head, but as soon as she tried an overwhelming wave of vertigo washed over her. Slowly, she laid her head back down with a soft moan. It took her another long moment to realize she was lying in her hammock.
“Be careful,” he warned. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
It took Kiethara a long while to get her thoughts in order before she could give him any type of answer. “What happened?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“After you…attacked Sinsenta, you fainted because of the blood you had lost when he cut you. You also might have been a little beleaguered from performing an element entirely new to you,” Aaron answered.
Even that small piece of information had Kiethara working rather hard to keep up. Her head throbbed with the effort and, by the time she thought up another question to ask him, she felt mentally exhausted.
“I didn’t know you could faint from using a new element. Will it happen a lot?” Kiethara asked, her eyebrows pulling together.
“What really made you faint was the way things happened,” he explained. “You were wounded greatly and Sinsenta drew a very powerful response out of you. You didn’t expel a lot of magic, but it was a very powerful bit of magic for you.”
“Mm,” she whispered, unwillingly closing her eyes. She was just so tired…
“Get some rest, Kiethara,” Aaron ordered gently. “You deserve it.”
Kiethara did not know if he left after he said that or not, for she had already fallen asleep.
Her dreams were very vivid and very confusing as bright images flashed across her mind. Kiethara was lying on the bottom of the guardian’s lake. The water swirled red around her, stained by the blood that was pouring from a gash in her right arm that ran from her sleeve to her wrist. It tainted the sweet taste of the water as she breathed it in.
Kiethara was watching a figure in the distance walk towards her. As the figure walked forward it split, taking the form of two people she both knew and cared for.
The Spirit of Aaron was calmly walking towards her, showing no sign of concern as more blood seeped out of her arm. Navadar was just the same, but instead of walking like Aaron, he was swimming. Bubbles came out of his lips as he smiled at her.
Kiethara, despite her arm, had to smile back. His own grin grew in response as he measured her reaction and he eagerly swam closer to her. Aaron, though, was not far behind. They both squatted down next to her, Aaron taking her left hand and squeezing it. This time no magic surged through her body like it had before, when they had first made physical contact. His hand felt just as normal as she suspected Navadar’s would feel like. For some reason, this scared her.
Kiethara opened her mouth to ask him about it, but only bubbles came out as she tried to speak. All of a sudden, Kiethara needed to breath. She just had to get to the surface. Puzzled, she brought a hand to her throat.
Navadar was the only one who reacted to her distress. He yanked her undamaged hand out of Aaron’s grip, and tugged on it. With his other hand he gestured to the surface.
It took Kiethara’s sluggish mind a moment to work out what he was trying to say. Finally, she understood. She scrambled to her feet quickly and the two of them slowly swam back up to the surface, which seemed to shrink away as they got closer.
Then her head broke the surface.
As soon as she did, the pain in her arm finally seared through her, coursing through her body as though she had been struck by lightning. She screamed so loudly it echoed through the forest, but it had no effect on Navadar; he only continued to tug on her as he impatiently gestured towards the land. She fought against his grip, trying to go back under the surface. Now the water was calling to her. Why wouldn’t he let her go back under? Why wouldn’t he listen to her?
Suddenly a strong, hot grip grabbed her ankle and began pulling her under again. Squirming in Navadar’s grip, she turned to see who had her. It was Aaron.
Aaron and Navadar began fighting over her. They wanted her for different reasons, to give her different things with different comforts in different places. Each had an almost irresistible temptation to them; both of them had an equally strong hold on her. No one was gaining anything; she was just stuck in between them with no strength to fight. How could she choose between them? It was tearing her apart. And they woul
dn’t stop.
Then the image changed.
Kiethara was in the blackness once more. Her thoughts, again, had the familiar feeling of slipping away. It scared her so badly she almost woke up—she wanted nothing more than to escape the darkness permanently, even if it was a bit different this time around. This time, she could feel her limbs and she reveled in the ability to turn her head and blink her eyes. It wasn’t as though there was anything to turn and look at; the never ending darkness was just that, darkness. Kiethara brought her hand to her face and felt her fingers brush her nose, but she could not see it. Carefully, she pulled herself to her feet, uneasy that she couldn’t see her body. It was like being invisible again.
“Kiethara,” a sweet voice called.
Her mother’s voice. Again.
A brilliant light suddenly ripped through the blackness. It started out in the distance, small but powerful as it outshone all of its surroundings. It came closer, and at first, she thought it was Aaron. The light did take the form of a human figure, but this figure was smaller, skinnier, and contained more curves. It was a women’s figure. The figure stopped just a few feet away.
“Mother?” Kiethara whispered after a moment of shocked silence.
Her voice echoed through the blackness in an eerie sort of way. There was another moment of silence between the two before Earthaphoria’s bird song voice broke it.
“Don’t give up. You can’t give up,” she told her in a firm voice, as if it were an order.
“What?” Kiethara asked, dazed. Her head was full of questions. Why was her mother here in the darkness with her? Why did she look like Aaron, like a spirit? Had she come back to life too? And the last question, the most painful: why wouldn’t her mother come any closer?
“I-I won’t,” she stammered finally. “I promise.”
“I love you,” her mother whispered. It sounded like a farewell, a goodbye.
“I…I love you t-too,” Kiethara whispered in return. She took a step towards her mother, but at the same time, she took a step back.
The darkness began to fade then, just as her mother began to fade. Both drifted away as Kiethara drifted back into consciousness. The distance grew until she opened her eyes, only to have tears gushing out of them.
She let out a hoarse gasp. She tried to sit up, but her whole body was trembling. A breath of wind stirred as she managed to bring her knees to her chest; she rocked slowly back and forth to calm herself. The motion was soothing and it helped halt her tears and even out her breathing.
Get a grip on yourself, she thought, yet something about the dream continued to unnerve her.
Kiethara got up slowly and began to walk to the center of the forest, the routine ingrained upon her since she had started her training. As she walked through the never ending green, she remembered being lost after her fight with Sinsenta. It seemed so foolish now, to have actually been lost within the forest. She lived here; she shouldn’t be able to get turned around. How much did she have left to discover? Navadar’s kingdom was not in the forest and he had mentioned it wasn’t too much of a journey, so the forest had to end at some point. A better question: how much was she really protecting?
Kiethara reached the center of the forest. Even though her world had changed very swiftly in the past two months, this clearing had not changed at all. The level of the water in the lake never rose nor fell, the grass never seemed to yellow, and the air was always clean with the purest magic. The tree’s that rimmed the clearing were always laden with fruit and lush with emerald leaves. It was like a little piece of a fantasy, one free from the chains of time and the burdens of the world that surrounded it, stuck right in the middle of a truly anarchic reality.
With a swift dive, she was in the lake. Her aches were blissfully numbed for a moment and, as she drifted deeper and deeper into the water, she found she could think more easily. Deep, cool breathes eased the pressure on her chest. It very nearly put her back to sleep. A small sigh escaped Kiethara’s lips—she had to return to the surface.
“Feeling better?” the Spirit of Aaron asked as she clambered out of the lake. She made a face.
“Not really.”
“I understand; however, you did an amazing job.”
“Once again I save the day, without any idea of how I did it!” Kiethara huffed in frustration. “I didn’t mean to do it!”
“Very modest of you, Kiethara, but I think if you concentrate hard you will be able to venture a guess to how you did it. You are a guardian, after all, and you instinctively call to your power when you need it. You used what you had: anger.”
“I don’t think I have ever been more enraged than I was today,” she admitted. Aaron chuckled.
“The intensity of your anger was strong, yes,” Aaron said, getting serious. “The anger you felt today, matched with your power, was very dangerous for you. You lost a little control back there.”
“Was that a magical burst?” Kiethara asked hopefully.
“No. Magical burst are much more powerful and dangerous, but what you did today could have had the same consequences, just on a smaller scale. You could have burnt yourself.”
“Why weren’t my hands burned?” she asked, raising her hands. They were as flawless as they had been before they had burst into flames. She caught a glimpse of her scar that ravaged her right arm, though. She swallowed back a lump in her throat and looked away, fighting off the sudden wave of emotion.
“When you use your powers, your crystals have a special power of their own. They put up a shield, if you will, that protects your hands from the elements you use. Only your hands, however.”
“Why can’t it expand past that?” she asked.
“Well, the protections your hands get from your crystals are an instinct. In order to get that protection to expand, you would have to rely on controlling the power with raw instinct and emotion, and let the forest and its magic use you, instead of the other way around. Why this might be powerful, it is still better to use reason, thought, and control to wield your powers.”
“Ah…”
“That brings us back to why you are here today. It is time to begin with the basics of the element of fire,” Aaron informed her.
The statement excited her. The prospect of new material, new emotions, and new skills was invigorating.
“To the lake, Kiethara,” he ordered. The orders brought back memories…
Twelve year old Kiethara was standing next to Aaron, gazing up at the huge stone that lay on the bottom of the guardian’s lake. It towered over her tiny figure; hosting four glass spheres that were carved into the rock.
“Read to me what the element of wind says,” Aaron had told her.
“We did this for earth, didn’t we?” Kiethara had asked, her high-pitched voice echoing through the lake, the bubbles issuing from her mouth making the words almost incomprehensible.
“Yes. We will do this for every element,” he told her, patient as always.
So Kiethara began to read:
AIR
THE ELEMNT OF WIND. THIS ELEMENT IS MOSTLY CONTROLED BY FEAR. TO CONTROL THIS ELEMENT YOU MUST CONTROL YOUR FEAR. DO NOT PANIC.
“So what does that tell you?” Aaron asked.
“Not to panic?” she answered with a shrug.
“Read in between the lines,” he chided her gently. She had no answer.
“This element is very delicate, very precise. You have to think logically to control this element. I think you won’t have too much trouble with this, because to this point, you’ve proved to be a smart girl.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“Just continue to prove me right.”
“When have I ever disappointed you?”