I had to admit, the difference between those stories and my own was that I was terribly alone. Though I had no homework, no chores, and no responsibilities, I ached for all of it because it was at least familiar to me. The hardest part was the inescapable feeling that things would only get harder. It was as if I had walked into a dream, and here everything was all about me. Lots of girls, and probably some guys, fantasize about that kind of thing, I bet. Now that it had happened to me, I realized the foolishness of such a thing, and how bad selfishness can truly be.
Michael had left me alone as well, and I had thanked him for it. I had told him, “I know I’ve been kinda out-of-it lately; sorry. I should get myself sorted out in a day or two, though.” He had smiled and hugged me, acting impressively mature, which had melted me to goo inside all over again. I felt so safe in his arms. I didn’t know what it was about this guy, but he was everything I wanted out of life. If I could just have him, honestly, nothing else mattered. It was all so crazy anyway that I was tempted to just throw it all away and start over. It might be easier.
“Take all the time you need, Airel,” he had said to me. “We just gotta play along here. I think over time he’ll get tired of us and let us go.” His statement had caught me off-guard. He hadn’t believed any of it; he thought Kale was crazy, that this had been just some psychopathic game, and that in the end the cops would show up to spring us.
I returned to myself, wondering if that wasn’t what I had thought too. Or was that what I was supposed to think? I didn’t know anymore. The stories in the Book were so real. They were too impossible to have been made up. I knew in my heart that Kreios was a real person. I could sense that his life was as real as mine somehow.
I wasn’t having bad dreams, but I wasn’t sleeping well. I guess I didn’t need it, because I wasn’t tired. It was as if knowing the story gave me an energy boost. I used the nights to think and to walk all through the great house. I spent some nights in the huge study with all the books, reading by the light of the fireplace that never, not once, went out.
The house really was very beautiful. I explored every room but one. I couldn’t get into it because it was locked—even though I could have broken the door down, I guess. I didn’t do that. It would have been wrong. I imagined a great library of old books, or a hidden staircase leading to underground caves that held something unknown. It haunted me, and I thought about it often.
As I fell into bed that night, I relived the adventures of Kreios and his beloved daughter Eriel. I was struck by how similar our names were. She seemed to have been so kind and beautiful. I wished I could know her, and in some weird way I felt like I did. I was falling deep into a dream when a firm hand shook me awake.
I bolted upright to find Kale standing over me. He wore a white robe, and he appeared monkish in a 21st century sort of way. “Airel, come with me.”
My heart pounded in my chest from the shock. It was like I was ready to defend myself from an unexpected intruder at my bedside. Even though I secretly was beginning to like him, I still tried to fight against it with all of my will. “To where? Don’t you knock?” I looked out the windows and said something rude about how it was still in the middle of the night. I was angry, too, for even considering trusting him.
Kale looked slightly dejected, but he left the room. “Be sure to dress in something that doesn’t inhibit your movements.” He left no doubt in his mannerisms about the expectation that I follow him immediately. I grumbled darkly as I dressed in a gray track suit and tennies. My hair was a mess, but I didn’t care—I just pulled it up in a pony. Men—they were all the same. So demanding, and no time for anything remotely sensitive. Well, except Michael, of course.
I left my room and closed the door behind me. Kale was waiting for me in the hallway. He led me out of the house to the shack I had seen on my first solo journey through the house. There outside the building, just as I had seen it before, was the large floating area where my imaginary gymnasts did their floor routines. My hands buzzed with the excitement of discovery.
The shack stood in the corner of the area, lit from the inside. Kale ascended a stair made of wood and opened the door. I followed him inside. The shack, shed, dojo, or whatever was constructed of wood and stone. The floor was covered thickly with a huge rough rug. It seemed impossibly large inside, seemed not to fit the dimensions of the shell that hemmed the space in which I now stood. Huge wood beams anchored the roof overhead, and a rustic chandelier, already lit, hung from the middle beam, lending a warm glow to the room.
A perfect square, I could tell in looking around that it was indeed a dojo of sorts. No matter what, it was a place designed for sparring. Against the far wall stood a rack with swords, staves and other weapons I’d never seen before. Kale walked to the middle of the floor and stood in a dark red circle. Farther out from that circle was a faded blue ring, then another red one, and so on about every five feet, I guess.
“The rings are the first stage of your training and schooling. I will train you in hand-to-hand combat and teach you to use your abilities. You will be able to control them at will soon.” He stood with his feet slightly apart, his hands in front of him at chest height in a kind of salute, grasping a long pointy stick.
I was beyond flabbergasted. I responded coolly, cocking my head to one side as if appraising his sanity. “So. It’s hand-to-hand combat, then.” I inhaled, still trying to take it all in. “Did you not get the memo? I’m seventeen—” Before I could do anything else, he had stepped to one side, drawn back a spear, and hurled it at me with blinding speed. The end of it plunged into the shallow of my gut, shredding me right through, the leading edge exiting through the small of my back. The pain was so sharp that it was indescribable. I began to black out, and I fell to my knees.
Kale was upon me in a flash, standing before me like a warrior thirsting for the kill. I could feel him panting heavily. He grasped the weapon firmly and yanked it straight out from my body, my blood flowing.
He brought the heel of the pike down with a shattering crack on the floor, the weapon standing vertically, a spray of blood showering me as it vibrated powerfully from the violence of his grip. He reared his head back as he towered over me, as I collapsed sideways, and released a blood curdling shout that seized me, head to toe, with icy fear. My head bounced off the matting of the floor and the room started to spin as my eyes involuntarily squeezed shut in pain.
I saw blue pink and white stars floating across my vision, then an unbearable tingling itch grabbed at my gut in tiny fingers of intense pain. It itched so badly that I seriously considered death as a viable choice for a few seconds. I lifted my shirt cautiously, in horror, and watched in awe as the huge gash closed up and smoothed over as if it had never been there. The itching subsided gradually, but my track jacket was hopelessly shredded and bloody. I looked up at Kale, quite beside myself with shock and rage.
He smiled down at me and laughed.
Chapter V
Kale’s grinning face looked stupid to me; I was beyond irritated. He held out his hand to me. I looked at his fingers as if they were attached to the hand of Satan. “Nice. Attention getter. Okay then, what’s for breakfast?” I finally took his hand, deciding to ‘just roll with it,’ as Kim would say. I cooed, an aftershock of my injury wracking my body one last time as I regained my feet.
Kale cracked a joke: “You shouldn’t train on an empty stomach.”
“Hilarious.” I placed my hands on my knees and breathed hard. “That’s why I’m asking about breakfast—mine’s killing me.”
I stood there like an outfielder for a while, just taking everything in. I guess you always want what you can’t have—now that it seemed impossible for me to die, I felt trapped in my own life. More so than usual.
He must have heard some of my doubtful thoughts. “In time you will have your answers. For now you must just accept things as they are.”
There was real, honestcompassion in his voice. It was refreshing, I decided.
/> “You have been given a gift—will you accept it?” He still held out his hand, though I was standing already.
Kale standing before me like that triggered something in me. I knew it, too. Something had let go way up at the top of some gigantic mountain of me, and an avalanche was going to come down and change everything. My eyes filled with tears. “Do I have a choice?” Destiny was coming for me again, I could feel it, the moment was beginning to crash in upon me, and I had been stripped of my defenses against it.
“You always have a choice.” His words sounded like the Voice of God—very still, very quiet, and purely true. I broke. I heard the sweetest music. I took his hand and collapsed into his enormous chest, heaving in big wet sobs. I felt like heaven, creation, God Himself, were all part of a conspiracy designed to bring me always and forever back to the point where the tiny capsule of all that I was resided on the tip of a pin.
Kale simply held me like a child and let me cry. I didn’t know how long it was. And I’m not sure what, exactly, happened. Lots of times I just cried because I have to, to let off the pressure that accumulated inside me, to say with tears what words cannot describe. Whatever happened in that moment of time changed everything.
I pushed Kale away and dried my swollen eyes with the sleeve of my track jacket, now mangled and bloody. I took it off, deciding I could manage with just my t-shirt, but that, too, was impossibly destroyed. It made my mind tangle in knots.
“Fine, then. What do we do now? Cut me some more to see how much I can take?” I wiped at my eyes and sucked in a sob.
Kale’s voice was gentle. “We need to find out what you’re able to do and how much control you have over your abilities. When I say that you have a choice… you do realize that you have the choice to do good with what God has given you, or evil. Which do you choose?”
It was surreal. I felt like I was on a game show. I felt like I was back at the kitchen table arguing with my parents about the SAT and what college I would go to, what major I would declare. I felt like asking Kale how I should possibly know. The truth was, though, that the answer was quite obvious.
But wrapped up inside his question to me was another one, directed right back at him: How can a murderer ask someone to choose between good and evil without being crazy himself? I wanted to ask it—and I unwittingly did, forgetting that he could read my thoughts. Crud. I found myself wishing desperately for some privacy.
“Good,” he said, willing to gloss over all my mental baggage for now. “The first thing we will work on is hand-to-hand combat.” He turned and walked over to one of the racks that held staff upon staff like pool cues, and I followed, shaking my head, trying to clear it. He continued, “You are stronger than you think, but only when you’re filled with raw emotion. You will be able to feel it coursing through your veins.” He handed me a staff.
Oh, what the heck. Maybe I could use a little workout action to help me think clearly. I took the staff in my hand, feeling a little like Moses at the Red Sea. What next?
“Love. Anger. Fear. Whatever the emotion, it must be strong.” His voice commanded attention.
I nodded, though I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I figured I would learn as I went, me being a hands-on type when it came to kickboxing and such. I turned the wooden staff over in my hand, running my fingertips along the smooth surface. It was dark, very hard, and was wrapped around the middle with a leather grip.
Kale held up his own staff, now, made of silvery metal with the same leather grip in the center. “I want you to break that staff over my head.” Kale looked at me with eyes that seemed to be lighter than they had been a few seconds ago.
“What?” I looked at my staff, then at him.
“You heard me, hit me. It must be hard enough that you shatter that staff—and I must warn you—that is gopher wood. A rod of that is very hard, almost impossible to break. So you must focus on your anger right now, and try to channel it into your actions.”
Well then, no problem.
“Here’s a little something to help you out,” he said, and whacked me in the shin with his metal staff.
“Ow!” My left shin stung, and I instinctually snapped into kickboxing mode. Kale was not smiling this time, and I knew if I didn’t at least defend myself he would punish me further. Whatever, old dude. It helped me to ‘channel the anger,’ anyway.
I moved as swiftly as I thought possible, swinging my staff overhead and bringing it thunderously down. It collided with his staff with a clang, and the vibration hurt badly. “Ow!” I said again.
He made ready again, elegantly. “That’s all?”
“Hmm,” I scoffed, and tried again, this time faster, stronger, quicker. I pivoted on my left heel and brought the staff across his midsection with all the force I could muster. I was going to put everything into it, even if I fell afterward.
His staff was everywhere at once. He blocked the blow almost casually, and his unexpected movements caused me to lose my balance. I went down to the floor, landing on my knuckles, my staff skittering off and rolling. Pain shot up my hands. I turned over onto my back, winded.
“Again! Break the staff over my head!”
A warm feeling began to spread through my body as I interpreted his words. I was never super-athletic, but from lying flat on my back I jumped to my feet in a single movement, grabbing my staff again along the way. I twirled it once over my head like a baton and jumped, swinging the staff in an arc at the top of his head.
He raised his bright silver staff to deflect the blow. He laughed. It’s like all he saw was some kid who had just learned to ride a bike without training wheels. I, however, was screaming like a crazy woman. The impact of the two competing weapons cracked like lightning, and just as I had imagined in my mind, the staff shattered into splinters.
I landed on my feet, bending my knees to absorb the shock. I uncoiled to my full height, Kale now off to one side and behind me at the end of our maneuver. I turned toward him, absolutely filled with rage like never before, a little out of control.
I tore the silver staff from his hand and racked him in the back of the legs with it. He went down like a bag of rocks as I reset and brought the metal staff up over my head. Right before I stabbed the end of it down through his face, he rolled out of the way. It impacted the floor, tearing through the matting and wood, digging into the earth below, so deep that the leather grip was only half visible.
My breathing was rapid and my heart pumped furiously. I felt cold steel against my neck and froze. Kale grabbed my wrist and wrenched it into my shoulder blades. The tip of a knife rested threateningly just under my chin.
“You let your anger control your power one more time and I will show you the meaning of pain.” He flicked his wrist, slicing the underside of my chin, which hurt. But it healed quickly. That itching thing was going to take some time to get used to.
I walked over to one of the walls and sat with my back resting against it to catch my breath. I studied Kale from across the room as he wiped the blood from his knife and put it away. The silver staff stuck out of the floor like a gigantic needle. As I calmed, I wondered how I could be so strong. Here it was, right in front of my eyes. Evidence, facts, truth.
The room was littered with wood splinters, and the metal staff stuck out of the floor. It was hard not to feel discarded, in a way. I had sat in class wondering if I was abnormal or normal—whatever that was—so many times. I wondered if I would ever be accepted as-is, or if I needed to change part of me. Maybe I was doomed to be on the outside looking in. Try to fit in now. Now I would be the kid who had been kidnapped, at least. Or the girl who had superpowers. “So bizarre.” I wondered if I was concerned about the right things—and I even wondered if that thought belonged to me in the first place.
Kale grunted approvingly at me and picked up another wooden staff from the rack. “Now do it with love.”
Love? “What does that even mean?” I was trying not to feel awkward. “How do I do that?”
“Feel that heat, the same as when you were angry—but feel the way love can overpower your emotions and use that to break the staff. But this time break it over your knee.” Kale managed a sideways smile and tossed me a new wood staff.
I took hold of it and closed my eyes, trying to concentrate. I wondered what I was supposed to do to make my emotions flow. It should be second nature. But not when you’re thinking about it so intensely. I felt like I was trying to conjure spells or charm snakes—like I had ever done anything like that. I felt like a fraud.
Love. Right. I loved my mom and dad. I loved Kim, and oh, how I missed her. She was such a ham, and I sure could use a good laugh right about now. Michael then flooded my mind, and I could see his eyes. So very blue and welcoming.
I could feel him looking at me, and remembered the way he brushed against my arm whenever he was near; it was always so incidental and natural. Whenever he helped me out of the car or walked with me, or gestured while he talked about something.
It was the way he was. All the physical considerations aside, he was an amazing person. I loved his heart, his kindness and the way he loved so honestly. I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life and I wasn’t ashamed to admit it, even to myself. He would be my one and only; ever.
Okay, this might actually work. I thought back to our date. I remembered how he had looked over at me and smiled as we drove off to the restaurant. He had just stunned me with that line about Audrey Hepburn… my heart melted and I pushed off the wall that marked the safe zone of my thoughts, drifting out into the pool of all things Michael.
Kale’s voice was soft and low. “What are you thinking?” I stood, eyes still closed, hands on the weapon. When I comprehended his question, I blushed. He prodded gently still. “Tell me.”
“I’m thinking of love.” Warmth washed over me, but this time it was different. I could feel Michael’s arms around me. I began to overflow with joy. It just kept coming and coming. After a while I couldn’t stand it anymore. I opened my eyes and saw everything around me awash in a warm foggy light.
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