The Chosen Ones: Red Smoke

by Mitchelly Melo

  “I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

  "I had already searched the entire hotel for you.”

  Being a person who is accustomed — and prefers, or preferred, I don’t know — being alone, it was different to see someone care. It was good. It felt good to know that he cared. That he wouldn’t ice if something happened to me. But I think now, with all the Pacenians, that list had increased exponentially.

  “It won’t happen again. I won’t disappear any more, I promise. Calm down.”

  He began to breathe normally. I raised my hand and wiped a drop of sweat that started to run down his straight nose. I smiled in an attempt to calm him down.

  "Let's go back to your room," I suggested.

  I took him by the hand, entwining my fingers with his, and we walked back to the bedroom. When we entered, John went straight to the bathroom and I sat down. When the bathroom door was open, I could see everything going on inside from where I was sitting, on the left side of the bed with a pillow on my legs.

  John was washing his face in the sink. When he finished, he stared at the mirror. He came back, drying his face, and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at me.

  “Better?” I asked.

  "Yes," he replied, trying to smile.

  "I didn’t want to make you worried.”

  “I apologize. I shouldn’t have talked to you that way.”

  "You were just worried about me. It's all right.”

  "I wasn’t worried, that would imply that I had some control. I was ready to go out on the street and not stop until I found you.”

  He was serious. A wave of despair hovering over every word he spoke. I dragged myself to where he was and put my hands on his face.

  "John, I know it’s who you are, but you can’t worry about me all the time.”

  "Not worry? That's what happens when I don’t worry "he said, running his fingers gently around my neck. "This is what happens when I'm not around.”

  "John, you're just one person. You can’t put the weight of a life on your back.”

  "Liz, I would do anything to keep you safe. Not only because I want to, but also because I need to. I need you here with me.”

  His fingers were still gently caressing my neck. John was protective, I always knew, but I didn’t like him putting so much responsibility on himself. The only thing I could do, since I knew he wouldn’t change, was to cooperate.

  "All right," I said. "Starting tomorrow, I won’t go anywhere without telling you. But I think you're going to end up getting sick of me.”

  I smiled and John finally did the same.

  “That’s impossible.” He said and kissed me gently.

  In the days that followed, things have remained calm in the hotel. Eventually, the glances in my direction diminished, but they didn’t end completely. John and I spent almost every minute of the day together. And I loved it. On my second night here, I had the same nightmare, and every night since. John now slept in bed with me, since when I woke up screaming, it was he who calmed me down. So the mattress turned out to be no longer necessary.

  During the day, I tried to forget the nightmare in the kitchen. Almost every day I made some dessert for lunch. It also helped me feel useful. Since the first time I asked the cook if I could make the desserts, I have taken them to Runne. And I can swear she's even more ruddy. She didn’t say more about the hunter, and now she seemed happy when I showed up. I even managed to convince her to leave the room a few times.

  John talked to Zal about the training and he immediately accepted, excited, even with all of John's threats if he hurt me. It was something to get Niko out of his head, I thought. Zal and I wanted to start right away, but I had already promised John that I would only begin when my wounds healed completely. John tried to delay as much as possible.

  "Zal and I will start training tomorrow," I said one night.

  "But you’re not healed," he said, sounding slightly frightened at the thought.

  I sat on the bed and looked at him. I knew he didn’t want me fighting, but I had already put off too much. I needed to do this.

  "John, it's been almost two weeks since the attack. My cuts soon healed, as you predicted. I don’t feel any more pain in the ribs, and the bruises on my neck are almost gone. I've been postponing this for days, just for you. You know I want to do this.”

  "Zal can lose control and hurt you. You haven’t seen it yet, but he's incredibly strong. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  "You'll be there, right?"

  “Certainly.”

  "Then you'll see I'll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  I kissed him and then went to bed.

  That night the nightmare tormented me again, as it did for days. I woke up the same way, with a scream, just after the blade went through my throat. John did what he always did, hugged me until I calmed down.

  "I'm sorry," I said as tears slowly descended. I wiped the drips of sweat down my brow.

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  "For waking you up so many nights in a row. I don’t know why this is still happening.”

  John had his chin on top of my head, and I could hear the beating of his heart.

  “It's not your fault. There’s nowhere else I'd rather be.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For being so good to me.”

  I heard a chuckle in his chest and went back to sleep.

  I woke up early in the morning, immediately changed and went straight to the kitchen. John was still asleep. Liam was sitting in the deserted kitchen. I felt a scare as I passed the door when I saw him like that. I noticed he was eating a piece of a cake I made with his coffee. I tried to turn around, taking a slow step back, but he had already seen me. Luckily, our interactions in my time here were minimal. I could take another one. I walked over to the coffee bottle.

  "Good morning," he said gently.

  "Good morning," I said, filling my cup.

  He looked at me furtively, thinking I didn’t notice. After examining me for longer than I would like, he asked,

  "Why are you dressed like that?"

  I wore typical gym clothes, leggings that ran down my calf, a top with a loose t-shirt and a sneaker I borrowed from Isys.

  "I’m going to train with Zal," I said as I took a loaf of bread and filled a second cup for John.

  “Why?” he said smiling and without trying to hide that he thought the idea funny.

  “Because I can.”

  I shoved the rest of the bread into my mouth, grabbed the cups, and left. Sometime later, Zal, John and I were ready to begin. We found Isys and Maena on the way, going to watch.

  "We wouldn’t miss it for anything," Maena said, smiling.

  We went to the back of the hotel, the backyard. I discovered a few days ago that it was the most beautiful place in the hotel and I asked Zal to train here. It had a vast lawn — of a vivid green — with tall palm trees and some flowers. The huge pool was empty, but the loungers were still around it.

  “Shall we begin?” Zal asked.

  I nodded and looked at John. He looked dissatisfied, but remained silent.

  “Where should we stay?” I asked, starting to feel a nervousness taking over me.

  "The grass is not ideal” he said, looking around. “Let's go inside the pool.”

  Zal started to walk and I stood still, watching him with a raised eyebrow.

  “The floor is straight there. I can put some rubber mats in case you fall.”

  “Okay.”

  We went into the pool and Zal put the covers on the floor. Isys, Maena and John were on the loungers watching us closely.

  We stepped on the mats, facing each other. Zal put both hands together, closing his eyes and breathing slowly. I looked at him in surprise. I smiled and looked at Isys. She and Maena laughed and John stared at Zal with a frown. I felt the carpets fiddle and the next second I was already on the floor with Zal on top of me holding me by the neck with his forearm. I stared at
him, my eyes wide with surprise. My nervousness had evaporated and was replaced by excitement.

  "First rule: if you don’t pay attention, you die," he said seriously.

  “Zal!” John shouted.

  John looked furious. Zal stood up, held out his hand and helped me up. I fixed my ponytail that was now loose.

  “I’m fine.”

  "Dude, they're rubber mats, calm down. She has to learn somehow," Zal said.

  John sat down again.

  “If you see that your opponent is on the ground, and that he’s not in a position to get up, what do you do?

  “I don’t know. Run?”

  Zal shook his head frantically and sighed.

  “No! You finish the job. If you turn your back, a second later your throat may be being cut because you assumed that the enemy couldn’t get up. So, the first rule is to pay attention.”

  "Do you fight any kind of martial arts?" I asked.

  "We may look like it, but we’re not human, Liz. We are Pacenians. Our martial art is to survive."

  Zal was concentrating on all that. I realized that this was what he liked; the action.

  “Second rule: don’t give up. No matter your situation, you can always find a way to reverse it. If you have hands on your neck, — I felt a shiver in my spine — you can attack the aggressor's eyes. If he’s behind you, you can reach the rib region. The key is don’t give up.”

  "Don’t give up," I said in a whisper to myself.

  “Come here.”

  I walked closer to him.

  “Try to hit me.”

  His knees were slightly bent. I positioned myself and tried to punch him in the face, but he swerved so fast it made me dizzy.

  "You can use your size in your favor, Liz. You just need to learn.”

  I tried again, but the moment I threw my fist forward, Zal grabbed it, pulling it to the side and putting me with my back to him. He held me in place with his strong arms. I thought about what I would do if I were in the real situation. Zal wrapped his arms around me like a snake wraps its prey, but my right arm was loose. I threw it back with the intention of striking him in the face. And that's what happened.

  Zal released me. Not because I'd hurt him, but because that would be the normal response of anyone else who didn’t have his strength. I went back to my place, panting. John smiled. He looked satisfied.

  "Well done” Zal said, smiling proudly. "Now try to divert from my attacks.”

  He was throwing punches at me and I did my best to dodge them. Sometimes feeling that one was almost the one to hit me. I knew that Zal wasn’t putting all his strength and skill or I would have taken at least a dozen punches, but I kept dodging. He blocked them with his arm, turned them sideways, and down. At one point, we began to train the punches in a punching bag.

  It was lunch time and I was exhausted. We were all eating and then rest for a few minutes. Zal asked if I wanted to continue tomorrow, but I didn’t see why we couldn’t continue today. It's not like I have something to do. When we got back to the pool, the audience was much bigger. Liam and Eimée included.

  We went back into the pool, staying in the same place.

  "Now I'm coming at you," Zal said. “Don’t worry. I won’t put all my strength into it. I don’t want to kill you. John would kill me later.”

  I gave a nervous smile and saw that John was on the edge of the lounger, ready to interfere.

  "All right," I said.

  Zal came up to me and I started to step back, startled by the giant in front of me. He stepped back and I went back to my place. I heard a laugh and I didn’t even need to turn around to know who it was. I did it anyway. Eimée was still smiling. I saw other people coming in, paying attention to what was happening in the pool.

  Zal came back at me, sending a punch in the direction of my face. I flinched, blocking with my arm and immediately felt a pulse, like a shock, go through my body. The impulse made me fall backwards on the floor, banging my head on the concrete. I felt a buzz in my ears and a pain in my head. It didn’t take a second for John to appear on my side and help me up.

  “That’s it. This ends now." John said, directing his anger toward Zal. "The purpose was to teach her to defend herself, not to kill her in the process.”

  "I don’t..." Zal began to say, looking embarrassed.

  "No, it wasn’t you," I interrupted immediately. “I felt a strange shock go through my body. Only that.”

  Zal seemed to return with his normal expression and John went back, still furious. I felt strange. The shock still tingled my skin. I raised my arm in front of me, turning it around and analyzing it. I saw people looking at us intently. Eimée smiled. Of my fall, I presume.

  We went back to our places and I was attacked again. I just swerved or blocked, knowing that attacking was useless. Zal punched me again, and in a second of confidence, I went in with everything I had. I blocked the punch with my arm, holding his, and returned it with one in his stomach. I punched as hard as I could.

  As soon as my fist touched him, the impact was strong. Threw him backwards by yards, as if he’d been thrown by a giant. Zal landed on the pool wall. In a hole in the wall, actually. I heard a gasp of surprise and looked around. Everyone was gawking, standing, looking at me. Automatically I looked at my hand, which looked as fragile as before.

  Zal stood staggering and I ran to him, still stunned. The distance was unimaginable. How had I done that? How had I made the strongest Chosen One fly by meters and practically go through a wall?

  “Are you alright?” I asked in agony.

  I realized I was starting to shake as I held out my hand for Zal to lean on.

  "How did you do that?" He asked, ignoring my hand.

  “I don’t know. Are you alright?”

  "Liz, you may have become strong in the last seconds, but I have been for a long time. I’m good.”

  Zal soon recovered, standing straight once more. I looked at people again, suddenly feeling ashamed. I didn’t know how I'd done it, but I did. I let go of Zal's arm and started to walk away. Curious eyes followed me with every step. I saw the surprised looks of Liam and Eimée together with everyone else. I accelerated the pace and went back inside the hotel. I hurried upstairs and started changing clothes. John entered the room soon after.

  I was pacing uneasily.

  "Don’t ask," I said as he stepped in and sat on the bed.

  "I wasn’t going to ask."

  “Great.”

  We stayed the same way —John and I silent — for a few minutes, trying to understand what happened. When I got tired, I sat on the floor, facing him.

  "Do you want to ask?" John said.

  I nodded quickly, nervous.

  “How did I do that?” I asked.

  "I don’t know either, Liz.”

  The only possibility hung in the air, wanting to get inside my head, but I repelled it. In the end, I gave in.

  "What if it's a power?" What if it's my power?” I said quickly.

  “It's impossible.”

  John came to sit on the floor, taking my hand. I felt it tremble even in John's firm hands.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If a Chosen One already has one power, another won’t gain the same. It’s as if the generation had already filled their quota, you know? If someone already reads minds, we won’t need another one to do the same thing. If the Chosen One dies, the power becomes "available" again.”

  It made sense, but I still had no idea what had happened. My brain didn’t seem to realize that I needed to reason my thoughts. They flew from corner to corner wildly. My mind was a mess. What had just happened simply couldn’t be explained.

  "I don’t know what happened," I repeated. “I really don’t know.”

  "How were you feeling? Were you feeling all right?”

  “Yes. Until that strange shock. It was like a tingling in my whole body. And then it stopped.”

  John seemed focused, trying to unravel the mystery.

 
; "I need to talk to the elders," he said. "Actually, they should have been briefed by now.”

  "All right," I said, but the last thing I wanted was to be without him right now.

  "But it doesn’t have to be now.”

  He smiled and hugged me. He knew how frightened I was. A phrase kept coming back to my mind: "you're going to be powerful." Runne hadn’t said anything more about the hunter, and deep inside, I was grateful. The things she said didn’t make sense, but they scared me.

  The next day Runne told me those things, I told John. He seemed to worry, but said it was nothing. I wanted to believe, so I believed. Until today. Now I could only do one thing.

  "I'll talk to Runne," I said. “She’ll be able to help.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I still had John's arms around me. He hadn’treally liked the idea oftalking to Runne.

  "Runne won’t help, Liz. You know that most of the time she doesn’t even know what she's talking about.”

  "She always looks better when I go there. She talks nonsense, of course. But who doesn’t?”

  “Fine. I'll go with you.”

  "But let me do the talking. You know she doesn’t respond very well to others.”

  John nodded and we got up off the floor. We walked to the end of the hall and stopped at the door of Runne's room. I knocked on the door.

  "Runne, it's Liz," I said.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  "What if she gets agitated? She didn’t answer.”

  "That's her way of saying I can come in," I said, smiling.

  We entered the dark room. Runne was drawing something on the wall, standing on the bed.

  “Elizabeth?” She said when she saw me. "Did you bring me dessert?"

  "I didn’t make anything today, Runne.”

  “Why not?”

  She grimaced and turned her face to John.

  "I was training with Zal. Remember I told you that?”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember.”

  She continued to run the chalk on the wall. How could she see in that dark, I had no idea. I walked to the window and opened the curtains.

  "Elizabeth, just because I said we were friends doesn’t mean you can change things.”