by S. E. Akers
With my thoughts whirling, I readied my fists at my chest like a heavyweight boxer and threw my first punch, only to have my knuckles strike flat against the surface.
“All righty,” Silas sang. “Our emotions may be a bit spent from our recent psychological endeavors. No matter. I have just the fix for that.” Silas strolled over to his stool and collected a paper lying on its surface. He pulled a piece of tape out of his pocket with a cute, “Well, would you look at that,” and then used it to tack up the picture. But it wasn’t any random motivational image scripted with some profound and inspiring message. Nope. It was that damn magazine clipping of Tanner at Malachi’s party talking with the supermodel.
I had to give it to him. He was rolling out the big guns.
Silas pointed to the picture. “That should reboot your anger quite nicely.”
“I’m not angry at him,” I objected. “I’m just a little frustrated.”
Silas lowered his head, seeming amused. “Frustration is simply anger unrealized.”
Admittedly, that one sure left me and my bottom lip feeling downright steamrolled.
“Anger is a normal emotion, Ms. Wallace . . . especially when one bears feelings that swing in the other direction equally,” he assured. “Why else would we care enough to get mad in the first place?”
I shied my stare towards the floor. “I suppose.”
“Then I want you to think about him every time you throw a punch.”
I stared at the picture of the handsome Amethyst Talisman full of reservations. I couldn’t hit that thing as hard as what I needed to knock down the balegore, with or without any magic fueling my blows. It would be like trying to hit a picture of Beatrix. My muscles would wimp out before I drew back my arm.
Then again, Ms. Calvin Klein sure makes an excellent target.
My hand dug into my hip. “That’s not going to work. Thinking about him this summer is what got my head stuck up my ass in the first place.”
Silas pointed to a spot on the wall. “Oh, just give it an honest try.”
“Okay,” I sighed. With my fist pumped, I stared at the picture on the wall while I sought out my myriad of emotions. Yep. It turned out I had plenty frustration-fueled anger to siphon magic from.
“Did you know that it was actually Professor Grey who suggested blending both your lapis lazuli and your golden topaz with the magnetic lodestone that I placed in all those cannonballs?” Silas remarked.
I glanced at him, my eyes as suspicious as they were heated. I hit the wall again, without making a dent.
“Try again,” he encouraged.
I’d barely backed up when he added, “And personally, I thought the way he handled the kordthistle was quite insensitive. He could have had me slip it into your drink. It wouldn’t have been hard at all.” Silas shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk . . . Very insensitive.”
My head rocked towards him. “I know what you’re doing.” Then after a scathing headshake, I refocused my attention to the iron wall.
“You’re so right, Ms. Wallace. I do apologize. So I won’t even bring up your last bout with the chimera. You were much, much quicker. Of course I only had a side view. But I will say from my vantage point, victory would’ve been yours for the taking if Professor Grey hadn’t jumped the gun. That creature would have been halfway to The Darklands before that diamond came close to skewering you.”
Hearing that I could have already sent that thing packing was all it took for me to drive my fist straight through Tanner’s picture, as well as the iron wall. I was standing there, shoulder deep, before I realized that my heart’s desire to banish that beast had automatically stepped in on my behalf to give me all the good juju my muscles needed.
“You see,” Silas encouraged. “All you needed was the right motivation. Something stopping your heart from getting what it wants.”
So after some extensive tweaking, I eventually found my sweet-spot where I could filter the crap and draw out all the magic I needed. Then amazingly, it wasn’t long before that mighty iron wall looked like one big ole metal colander staring back at me. And though the iron had completely tuckered me out by the end of my session, I told Silas that I wanted him to pull a fresh one out of his magic hat for me to play with tomorrow. I had enough frustration to Swiss cheese twenty of those daggone things and after all, practice makes perfect.
I arrived back to my room after a solid hour on the red jasper table, craving the refreshing confines of my watery sanctuary. I found myself doing a double-take back towards the tub as I turned to head for the shower stall. My long-lost porcelain buddies were back after all this time, both the “H” and “C” cross-handles screwed on their valve stems, and the sight of them had my soul beaming like a newborn star.
CHAPTER 21
Instead of robotically heading downstairs after breakfast the next day, my interim coach thought training outside would be a nice change. I couldn’t have agreed more. The sun smacking my face seemed like the perfect complement to the considerable amount of head-clearing I’d been doing. Plus, my cave version of cabin-fever had just about reached its limit. Coalminers saw more daylight than what I had lately. And I’d always heard that a little sunshine could kill most anything…so hopefully that included stir-crazy.
The fresh morning air felt so invigorating, and the cloudless sky mirrored my insides to a T. Silas had me practicing my aerial skills while he tended to his garden. Flying through the surrounding forest and trying to dodge trees proved challenging, particularly when I realized I wasn’t delusional and that some of those leafy giants had in fact magically popped out of freaking nowhere. Though after considering all the unexplained mystical hijinks that had gone on around here, my mind was settled on just going with it. But rest assured not knowing his secret identity had me to the point of jerking my own head bald. Though despite all the bumps and batters I’d tallied at the house steward’s crafty hands, I honestly felt great—sort of uninhibited, if possible—which was also a welcomed change. Silas was nowhere near as sheltering as Tanner, and I didn’t feel the least bit nervous around him. Plus, I noticed my concentration seemed more fine-tuned, which didn’t come as too much of a surprise since I wasn’t feeling the constant pressure of having to impress someone I was pathetically crushing on. Silas accepted my efforts unconditionally whether they resulted in a mistake or a job well done. And though Tanner had basically treated me the same, another undeniable truth smacked me upside my head when I realized my underlying feelings had played a role in my abundance of goofs this summer. Who can walk a tightrope when your emotions are out of balance, and your eyes aren’t centered on the daggone rope? And that was solely my fault. But now that I was fully aware of it like a self-professed Tanner-a-holic, I refused to revert to my old ways. I didn’t think I would, not with the added assurance that my mentor was practically two-steps on his way out the door already. The stickiness of that should serve as enough glue to keep my heels from skidding off my freshly charted mental-course. At least that’s what I was banking on.
Though as thoroughly relaxed as I seemed about everything and as much fun as I was having, I couldn’t shake the crazy feeling that Silas was treating me like his adopted pet. After all, it was only yesterday when he’d slapped a collar on me, and now my tail was wagging because he’d taken me “outside to play”. All that remained was inverting one of those silver domes that covered my meals, and I would have my own fancy food bowl — well that, and him rubbing my belly. He decided to switch things up around mid-morning by having me work on my land-speed, claiming there was always room for improvement. Of course he had an ulterior motive to go along with it. Silas had me race to a nursery roughly fifteen miles down the road to buy seeds he was in need of planting. But he didn’t give me his whole list, only one item at a time. As soon as I’d returned with his single pouch of whatever, he sent me straight back for something else. Twenty-one daggone packets in all. Though I had to admit that by the end of what amounted to an exasperating game of “fetch�
�, I’d managed to shave five seconds off my overall time. My record there and back: thirty miles in forty-three seconds flat. And that was with me waiting to pay. Of course I may have brainwashed my way to the front of the line. But to be fair, there were five registers, tons of employees running around, and only one checker. That place was worse than a Wal-Mart.
Then Silas asked me to help him in his garden, which threw me for a loop knowing how fussy he was about that particular patch of earth and how anally he tended to its harvests. I was to help him tie up his tomato plants. Simple enough. However there was a catch. I had to do it with the lightest wisps of wind that I was to conjure—collecting the ties, wrapping them around the stakes, and then fastening their loose knots. Totally hands-free and delicately, I might add. So it appeared we’d moved to the “teaching tricks” portion of playtime. He claimed if I could master this mentally painstaking maneuver that I could use my wind to control most anything, from writing my name with a pen, binding an attacker with a bendy enough tree limb, or even manipulating the airiest of clouds. Of course I didn’t think I would ever find myself in dire need of performing any of those tasks, but it sounded kind of fun and more challenging than knocking light switches on and off. And to make sure my attention was spot-on, he vowed that for every precious stem I broke he would make me take a swig of togwart…and he would seal my mouth shut until each deposit was good and down. Yep. He’d dipped inside my head and found that memory floating about and knew how my first nauseating experience with it had turned out. So very carefully, I spent the rest of the morning tying his tomato vines with strips of cloth he had cut for ties. Though I soon discovered that all the ties had been compiled from an assortment of my ruined clothes all throughout my stay here. I’d thought some of the colors and patterns looked familiar, but a strip that read “Welch High School” was a dead giveaway. So he repurposed… Very green. And as difficult and exacting as lifting and looping all those pain-in-the-butts were, I only snapped three stems — which I thought was exceptionally good. But the bastard still held true to his word and had three shot glasses filled with the hellish brew lined in front of my plate when lunch rolled around, all ready and waiting for me.
Silas instructed me to head on down to the torture chamber ahead of him right after lunch. I couldn’t have been more thrilled when I saw the brand-spanking new iron wall he’d poofed-up for me to beat the crap out of. The big red bow he’d wrapped it in had me feeling a little misty. Regardless of whatever his hush-hush reasons were for helping me, I felt pretty sure I was growing on the haughty old hard-ass.
Aw… He does like me.
And the surprises kept on coming. Two more were waiting for me when I returned to my room. The first one was a book sitting on my bedside table with note lying on top of it.
“The Art of War,” I read aloud, “by Sun Tzu.” An uneasy feeling churned in my gut. If the title wasn’t a direct enough indication of the pages it contained, the chapter headings sure filled in the blanks. Strictly going off the fact that this printed copy was bound in leather, I knew I was in for some heavy-duty reading — the scholarly kind. I tossed the ancient Chinese warfare manual onto the bed with a sigh, my head already pounding. Scarface and The Godfather weren’t lookin’ so bad right now.
My other surprise was lying on my bed. And oddly enough, I found it more exhausting.
Cute… Sharpening my focus aside, I still couldn’t see a day when tying ropes or anything else with wind would be handier than a stick from my blade.
I’d been camped down in the library for several hours, consuming my new book and poring over the notes in his journal, when the accommodating house steward arrived with a plate of gourmet sandwiches. Silas made his apologies, of course, claiming that “he didn’t want to interrupt the great mind at work” as he so glibly put it, but felt strongly that even the brightest of brains needed refueling. Though I quickly realized he was being more nosey than anything. Oh, he’d spread that honey of his for a reason.
His less than covert looking-over-my-shoulder routine was driving me crazy. “What’s wrong, Silas?” I asked. “Is your mind reading on the fritz?”
“Contrary to what you think, I don’t live in that head of yours,” he countered. “I was merely wondering if you had started reading the book I left?”
I held it up in the air. “I’m halfway through it,” I said and gave the red satin bookmark a tug to show him that it was resting midway.
“Sun Tzu possessed such a brilliant mind,” he raved. “That one book contains a wealth of knowledge that can be put to use in any strategic situation, even to this day.”
“I can see that,” I agreed, especially taking into account that it was penned in the 6th century B.C. I couldn’t help noticing the endearing way he stared at the book, silently smiling and his eyes gleaming so evocatively, as well as the comment he’d made about its author. Maybe it’s his favorite?
“How many times have you read it?” I asked.
“None,” he replied.
My face crinkled with confusion. “Then how do you know what’s in it or how brilliant Sun Tzu was?” Let alone “the most beneficial book I’ll ever read”?
Silas took a thoughtful pause before answering. “I listened to the audio version instead,” he grinned slyly.
Of course YOU did. With all the freaking books I’d had to digest this summer, did he not think that maybe I would prefer THAT ROUTE if it was an option? Seriously?
“And I trust you’ve been practicing with the rope I left,” he added.
“A little,” I said. “But I still don’t see myself ever playing ‘rodeo’ with any creatures.”
“The binding is not as important as the focus you stand to gain,” he assured. “Though you never know when a deserved hogtying may come in handy.”
“Then I will gladly accept you rubbing it in my face with a much deserved, ‘I told you so’, if that day ever arrives,” I insisted. And the only reason I added that was because there wasn’t a fiery chance in hell of it happening.
“And what about my notes?” he inquired. “Have those been of any help?”
I placed my pen down on the table. “Yes, though I’m sorry to say I haven’t crafted any stellar battle plans just yet — but I’m working on it.”
Silas wound around the table and sat in the chair directly in front of me. “Do you remember the passage in there about the creatures and your emotions?”
“Yes,” I said with a grumble, having found that part disturbing when I’d read it. Apparently Silas “believed” that the augmenting powers my diamond held also heightened these full-blooded Darklands creatures’ animalistic senses, which in turn, broadcasted my emotions to the point of making my moves downright predictable. “But I still don’t understand how you could possibly know that.”
“Let’s just say I’m a good observer and leave it at that.”
I picked up my pen and tapped it on the table continuously. “Tanner’s never made a point to mention it,” I argued. “Don’t you think he would know?”
“Why? Because those speech-lacking creatures grew a conscience and used their claws to scribe it down on a rock for him to make note of?” he retorted. “And besides, how could Professor Grey ever take the time to draw that conclusion when his eyes are more focused on you? Answer me that?”
I tossed the pen onto the table and pushed out my hand. “Fine,” I conceded, but I was still only half-convinced.
“All you need to do is look at the facts,” he continued. “Take the imp for example. You always go after it full of hellfire rage, and that creature is well aware of precisely how much you despise it. That’s why it comes back at you so aggressively. Its like watching two opponents trying to win a losing fight every time. You and it may as well bang your heads against the walls . . . or go to an ice cream parlor and share a sundae,” he scoffed. “And the balegore knows you wouldn’t hurt it, despite your tireless efforts. It senses no real threat from you . . . and not because of your strength,
because of your heart,” he assured. “Then there is the chimera. You aren’t as fearful of it as you once were, and that crafty and cunning creature knows it too. Why do you think it let you get so close the other day? It wanted you to believe that the advantage was yours, and you fell right into its trap. Brains beat out muscles more times than not, Ms. Wallace. Controlling your present emotions is crucial to your success in regards to all of your battles. The same way you’ve been filtering them with your physical strikes is what I would highly suggest you start doing when mentally engaging with them as well. That’s the reason I gave you my notes and a copy of Sun Tzu’s book. The best way to defeat your enemy is to know them, inside and out. Predictability is hindering. Get that brain focused on putting more chaos into your plans. That’s how you’ll get rid of them.”
I sat there thinking about my last trip to The Darklands. At first I’d thought it was fear that had kept Adamas from going into that cave, but now I wasn’t so sure. He knew that chimera was hiding in there, but something warned him not to charge inside. Then my mind started recalling some of his bouts. His style of attack changed like the wind, ruthlessly spoiling for a fight one minute and then so painstakingly calculating and patient the next. I’d even witnessed a couple of nail-biting moments when I thought he was down for the count, only for the warrior to rise up swinging and then slaughter everything in sight. No. Adamas wasn’t predictable at all.
“Then I’ll start planning to be unpredictable,” I said, noticeably humored. “You do realize that what you’ve suggested is a total oxymoron.”
“Of course.” He stretched back in his chair. “And that’s the twisted beauty of it, finding the mindset that borders genius and insanity. That’s when you know you’re cooking with gas. That’s when your enemy has nothing to do but fall.”
I picked up my pen and nodded to my blank page, which was waiting for its first inspired mark. “I’ll keep that in mind.”