“To see if you aware.”
“Well? Am I?”
“You have a welt on the backs of your legs, what do you think?”
“I didn’t know this was the game! That’s not fair, you didn’t tell me that you were doing to materialize and beat the crap out of me!”
“If aware you know it coming. If alert, you stop me.”
“Now I’m alert,” I said as I stood, challenging her with my look to try it again.
She stood stone still, eyeing me just as I was eyeing her. We stood locked in a death stare for countless minutes. I felt focused and aware.
Suddenly, CRACK! That cane swung out of nowhere and bit into the flesh of my left thigh.
“Son-of-a. . . You did it again!”
“Emily not aware,” she said as she disappeared again into the nothingness.
I sat down right there and let the tears come. You may have heard of caning, the barbaric punishment still meted out in some countries. Now I know why they still used it – and why it was mostly banned. It hurt like hell! Only two swats with that little piece of bamboo had left me with the most painful welts and bruising I’d ever had. The pain, the fear, the worry about my dad and Jack and Fan – I felt hopeless and beat down. I wanted to give up.
“No think. Do,” I heard a faint voice say from somewhere beyond the mist. The voice was right. If I dwelled on negative stuff, it would make bad things happen. I had to get up and do something - anything - to keep myself from negative thinking.
“Your lessons suck, Madame Wong!” I yelled into the nothing. Screaming that out made me feel a little better.
More laundry. Wash, rinse, and repeat!
It seemed like days that I did laundry. Every now and then, without any warning at all, that old bat would appear out of the fog and beat the crap out of me with that cane. I tried to focus on what I was doing as I finished the laundry then moved to the woodpile.
I can’t tell you how many swats with that cane I got over the endless time that I was doing Madame Wong’s chores. And I can’t tell you how long it took me to figure this out, but I just know that eventually, I realized that I could be focused on what I was doing but at the same time alert to my surroundings.
I was chopping wood (not as easy as it looks, by the way!), swinging the axe high then down into the center of a piece of wood. I split it clean in two. Suddenly I felt a slight breeze to my left. I had my feet planted, but I swung my upper body to the left and held my axe in both hands, ready to deflect the coming blow of her cane.
But as I turned to my left she wasn’t there. Just empty space. Then SMACK! The cane blow came across my legs to my right. I swung myself around and there she was, standing still and holding her cane like she hadn’t just beat me with it.
“Aw crap! I heard you that time! You switched sides on me.”
“Progress, yes. Alert. Aware. But too focused on what you thought was going to be. Don’t think, just do.”
“But if I hear something on my left, then I should think you’re going to be on my left, right? I mean, that’s logical.”
“Don’t think! Logic – logic not relevant. Feeling is way. Be in the flow of things Miss Emily. Let go. Just be,” she said as she vanished again.
Coming so far yet feeling so frustrated.
But one good thing came out of all that wood chopping. I had long ago abandoned my long sleeve shirt and stripped down to just my white tank top. I had never noticed a muscle on my body in my life. But I noticed that my shoulders were cut! I had deltoids and shoulder muscles. My arms were strong, not skinny and lacking in any semblance of muscle tone like before.
I don’t think that building muscles was part of the little wench’s plan, but it made me feel good about myself. I was starting to look like a girl that was strong enough to take care of herself. Maybe I could stop that Dughall guy.
Back to chopping. Sweat poured down my back and my tank was soaked. The pile of wood grew. Focused but alert. “Into the flow Emily,” I told myself. Swinging the axe.
I felt a ripple of air move. “Don’t listen, be,” I told myself. The air around me moved. The hairs on the back of my neck were on end. I swung my upper body to my left, holding my axe out and this time, it connected.
THWACK! I blocked her blow. My axe and her cane were locked together, each of us maintaining our stance and our stare.
“You are ready for combat,” she said as she backed away and bowed her head slightly.
32. Slicing and Dicing
When she said that I almost crapped my pants. I mean it’s one thing to fend off a blow from a cane, it’s another to do battle. As always, Madame Wong kept me unsettled. Just when I thought I’d mastered something and felt balanced, she threw something else at me, and I felt like I’d topple.
“Come,” she said as she walked away from the stream and through the meadow to a path I’d never seen before. Before long a building appeared out of the fog. It was made entirely of wood and looked like it had been there for hundreds of years. Instead of a thatched roof like her cottage, it had a pitched roof covered in weathered tiles. I followed her as she walked up the steps to a wide wooden porch the length of the whole building and then into a door opening (there was no actual door).
Inside there was just one large room, open to the rafters above. Windows from the second story rafters let a little light filter in to the otherwise dark, cavernous room. To my right and to my left were walls filled with racks of weapons. There were broadswords, spears, daggers, lances and other sharp, pointy things that I had no idea what they were called. It looked like a weapon cache for a small army.
“What is this place?”
“My training room,” she said quietly.
“But where did it come from? It wasn’t here before.”
“Building from my childhood,” she said as she walked to the right and inspected a row of swords. Madame Wong picked up one and swung it around gently a few times, then replaced it and chose another. She did this with several until she picked up a sword with a handle that looked like it was made of ivory and a thin blade that had lost its sheen, weathered like so many other things here.
“You trained to be a warrior as a child?”
“No, of course not! Girls were not allowed. Madame Wong snuck in and watched her brothers train,” she said as she continued swinging her sword around in wide arcs and practiced thrusting her blade forward.
“Choose your blade,” she said as she gestured to the wall opposite her, filled too with weapons of all kinds and shapes.
“Oh, I don’t think so. Hindergog told us of your fighting skills. I’m not fighting you!”
“How you learn if you not try? Come Miss Emily, I teach you the ways of the true warrior,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Yes, long time since Madame Wong teach a warrior. Good day this will be,” she said.
She was going to take pleasure in kicking my butt!
I didn’t know what kind of weapon I needed or how to choose. I inspected them all and finally settled on a broadsword with a handle wrapped in black leather and a curved, shiny steel blade with intricate carvings of a dragon etched into it.
I picked it up, and despite the fact that I’d built up quite a bit of upper body strength wielding an axe at the woodpile, it still was so heavy that I almost dropped it. I teetered a little as I tried to hold it out in front of me, gripping the handle with both hands.
“That one too heavy for Miss Emily?”
“I’ll be alright,” I said. “Just need to get used to it.”
“Best to be used to it now,” she said as she sprung into the air, did a somersault and then landed in front of me, brandishing her ancient looking blade. I reacted as quickly as I could and tried to use my sword to deflect her, but her blade caught a bit of flesh at my ankle.
“You should block my attempt to cut you,” she said.
“Really?” I said as I gripped my ankle. My hand was covered in blood. “Son of. . . You cut me!”
“Real warrior fights
through pain,” she said.
“Yeah? Well I’m not a real warrior now, am I? I’ve got to do something about this wound, or I’m going to bleed to death.”
“No need worry about blood. Ready for battle,” she said as she held her sword horizontally in front of her face, her legs planted and ready to go again.
“Look, I’m not like you, okay. I’m a real person – flesh and blood. So yeah, I’ve got to bandage this cut up so I don’t bleed out.”
“What cut? Miss Emily not bleeding.”
“What. . .” I looked down, and my ankle was fine, not a scratch on me. It wasn’t even covered in dried blood. It was like Madame Wong’s blade had never touched me.
“What the hell? You cut me. I know you did.”
“Cut? Maybe. Wound no more.”
“But how?”
“This is Netherworld. Now ready yourself,” she said as she backed up a few paces, planted right foot in front and left behind, then raised her sword in her right hand above her, her left hand out straight in front.
I moved out from the wall and toward the center, all the while keeping my eyes on wily Madame Wong. When we were about twenty feet apart from each other, I planted my feet like Madame Wong’s and put my arms in the same position. The blade I had chosen was super heavy. My arm wobbled just holding it there.
“Remember what you have learned Miss Emily. Focus. Aware.”
I tried to do as she said and focused on her sword, tuning everything else out.
“I don’t know anything about this, you know. I never took fencing in school, and I wasn’t exactly on the medieval knight team. What am I supposed to do?”
“Try not to die,” was her only reply as she flew through the air, did a somersault then kicked me in the chest so hard I flew backward about ten feet, landing flat on my back. She landed gently on the ground at my feet.
“That’s not fair! You can fly.”
“Miss Emily can fly too.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I don’t have wings.”
“Madame Wong has no wings.”
“Yeah but you’re. . . not human.”
“Form of entity of no matter. Intention what matters. You want to fly, you fly. Focus on what you want Miss Emily, not on what you don’t want. Focus on the doing, not the failing. Ready?”
I got up and took the stance. It was like a showdown in the old west. Both of us staring at each other neither making a move. The silence grew to the point that heard my blood rushing through my veins.
If I had been watching with my eyes, I would have seen nothing. If I had been listening with my ears, I would not have heard a sound. But in the focused awareness that Madame Wong had taught me, I felt her coming.
I thought of flying away to the other side of the room, and I pushed off with the toes of my front foot. I sprang into the air effortlessly. I spun myself head over heels several times then gently landed facing her. I think I saw Madame Wong’s lips curl into a small smile, a twinkle in her eye.
But there were no words of adulation or praise, only her little body coming at me, swinging her sword in tight figure eights as she gently glided forward across the grey tile floor. It was like watching a mini combine coming for me, the only sound the swoosh of her sword like a wind turbine.
I took to the air once more, and as I turned mid-air to land facing her, I saw that she, too, had taken to the air and was right behind me. I reacted quickly enough to fend off a blow from her sword, and we were locked in battle, mid-air.
We came down with a thud as our weapons continued to clang against each other. I was working hard just to keep her from chopping my arm off. Madame Wong looked like she was hardly putting forth any effort at all. She stood entirely motionless except for her right arm, swinging the sword tightly as she thrust it toward me over and over again.
On the defensive, my arms quickly tired. I was so busy blocking her blows that I had no chance of mounting an attack. Then it happened.
Pain ripped through my arm as I felt the warmth of my own crimson blood flowing in a torrent down my arm. My legs shook. I dropped my broad sword to the ground. It was like I was moving in slow motion as my head slowly turned to look at my left arm.
There was a gash so deep that I could see the bone peeking through. It was a wound so severe that it was a matter of seconds until I felt the lightheadedness that comes just before the world goes black.
As I slumped to the ground, my last thought was that I’d make a terrible warrior with only one arm.
33. Sword of the Order
When I woke I was in Madame Wong’s cottage, resting on the bed. My arm had been dressed in a white linen dressing, wound tightly. I saw no blood on the bandage so I decided to unwrap it even though I was scared of what I’d see.
I slowly unwrapped the cloth. As the linen slipped off my arm, I saw no blood, no puss, no oozing sore. There was only the faintest of scars where a two-inch gash had been.
“Miss Emily come, take tea and stew,” I heard Madame Wong croak.
I sat at her small table and drank the small cup of warm tea in one swallow then set to eating the bowl of stew like a starving person. She said not a word as she refilled my tea and scooped more stew into my bowl.
“Madame Wong, I don’t understand. How can I heal so quickly and completely here?”
“It is a world of no time and pure intention Miss Emily. We can have things exactly as we want them.”
“Then why did you bandage me?”
“Because your mind expects a bandage. You feel you must do something to heal rather than think something to heal. I gave you what you expected.”
I let her words sink in as I devoured the rest of my stew, bread and tea. Every time she gave me an ‘answer,’ more questions rose from it.
“Look, I see how that may work here, in a place of no time.”
“And a place of no place.”
“Yeah, whatever. But when I go back to my world – the world where I have to defeat Dughall – well it most certainly is a place and has time. So none of what I’m learning here will apply there, will it?”
“If it didn’t why would I teach it to you?”
“Well that’s what I’m saying! It’s like I’m wasting my time here.”
“No time so no waste. Besides, all I teach you works in your world.”
“So I can defy gravity and fly through the air and have whatever I want? I don’t believe that.”
“Then you’re not ready to return. Miss Emily, laws of universe same everywhere. Big or small. Here or there. No matter. Only thing that matters - your intention.”
“Then why can’t humans fly or just think of something they want and poof – it’s there?”
“First, because humans don’t believe they can do those things. Second, because your world is a place of time. Because of time, your creations do not happen instantly. And that causes you not to believe, bringing you back always to the first thing.”
“So when I go back there, I can do all the things you’re teaching me here if. . .”
“If you have belief and patience.”
I wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe I could sail through the air just by thinking it. I didn’t believe I could conjure up a chair or any other object just because I wanted it. I wasn’t sure that I would ever believe those things were possible in my world, even if I stayed with Madame Wong a thousand years.
“You not believe, you not ready to go. But you are ready to fight, no?”
I simply sighed and instantly we were back in Madame Wong’s training room.
“Madame Wong teach you about weapons now. You chose broadsword because it was shiny and pretty.”
“That’s not why!”
“Yes it is, and Miss Emily knows it. Not good reason. Warrior must play to her strength. Broadsword is weapon for a brute man, not a medium-sized girl.
“You need a weapon for finesse, cunning. Come,” she said as she walked to the rack of weapons. “Pick them up, swing them, listen
to them. Choose the one that sings to you.”
Singing swords? I glared at her hard but didn’t argue as I picked up swords and lances and daggers and other objects of aggression. Most of them were too heavy for me or felt awkward to hold. Toward the end of the line, I saw a sword with a wood handle and a thin blade, much like Madame Wong’s. The handle looked well worn, its wood polished to a sheen by the sweat of the hands that had held it before me. The blade was only about an inch wide and could be no more than an eighth of an inch thick. The handle was about a foot long, maybe eighteen inches and the blade about two feet. The blade was not corroded but not shiny either and covered in what looked like Celtic knots.
When I picked it up, I felt a tingly feeling run up my hand and into my arm. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end like it did when I entered the Sacred Grove. I swung it wide, and I swear I heard a single musical note hang in the air. The handle felt like it had always been in my hand. It felt effortless to swing it in a wide arc.
“That blade sing to you Miss Emily?”
“Yes,” I answered in a whispered voice. “Madame Wong, this sword. Who owned it?”
“That sword have no owner but was used by last High Priestess of the Order of Brighid.”
“Saorla.”
“Yes, and many priestesses before her. Like the torc on your arm, it was crafted by the Fair Sidhe for the Order of Brighid.”
I practiced swinging, thrusting and flying with the beautiful sword in my hand. It felt like an extension of my arm, like it was a part of me.
“Miss Emily ready for next combat lesson?”
“Yes,” I said as I continued to practice my moves.
“For a true warrior, life is sacred. A warrior with honor never kills unless she must. But when she must kill, a warrior is prepared to take the life of another – or to die – if honor requires it. Are you prepared to take the life of another? Could you kill Dughall if necessary?”
I hadn’t thought of that. Up to that point my mission had been a bit abstract. Kill someone? The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
It’s not like I’m against a person killing another to save their own life or the life of someone they love, but I never thought I’d be the one doing the killing. Doubt crept through my blood like a cold, dark shadow.
Emily's House (The Akasha Chronicles) Page 15