The Guardians of the Forest: Book One

by Kelly Napoli

  ***

  Kiethara and Aaron stood under the surface of the guardian’s lake, looking up at the huge stone where the elements were described. This was it. It was time.

  The last element.

  Was this what Aaron had been waiting for? The lowest point in her life—that was the moment she could learn this bitter element? According to the stone, though, it made sense.

  WATER

  THE ELEMENT OF LIQUID AND ICE. THIS ELEMENT IS MOSTLY CONTROLED BY SORROW. TO CONTROL THIS ELEMENT YOU MUST CONTROL YOUR SORROW.

  “What does this mean?” Aaron asked.

  Kiethara blew a few bubbles out of her mouth before biting her lip, musing on her answer. What did it mean? She had never gotten the answer completely right before and now the desire to do so reached an all-time high, morphing into a craving for redemption from the mishaps and challenges that have made her stumble. It was the last element, and her last chance.

  “You can’t be…overwhelmed by the sorrowful situations you are put through. The element of water is connected directly to despondency, so how you react to your sorrow is exactly how the water will react. The more you control one, the more you control the other.”

  “Excellent, Kiethara,” he said. “Your answer is correct. Your emotions are interlocked with your power more than you could ever imagine.”

  “Why?” she asked, gazing up at the stone. Aaron chuckled.

  “The fault is mine. I had collected so much magic, when I was alive, that is, that I couldn’t find a sufficient way to disperse it. It took a while, but I finally discovered my complex emotions to be the answer. I do not wish to breach too far into this subject, though…one day, you will know the story well enough. You can use your magic because of your emotions and that connection was born with the birth of the forest.”

  “Oh,” she replied. The words seemed inadequate, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She was a bit incensed at him brushing off the topic for another time, again.

  “To the surface, Kiethara,” he ordered.

  Kiethara turned around and made her way to the center of the lake, to then rise to the surface. But then her eyes fell upon her mother’s grave. She suddenly froze.

  “Aaron, wait…” Kiethara said. She gazed at her mother’s grave with a sense of longing, torn between the terrifying possibilities.

  “Yes?”

  “You said I could talk to my mother. Could I try? Try that? Now?”

  “I…suppose you could, but it takes serious magic. I do not know what you heard before…” He sounded doubtful. Did he think her insane?

  “I had asked ‘How did I do?’ or something as that. And then her voice answered ‘Just fine,’” she told him eagerly.

  “Well, you can try.”

  Kiethara took a deep breath of the lake water. Fear and anticipation made her stomach clench and her crystals light up. But there was no wind to blow down here.

  “Mother? Earthaphoria?” she called out in a rush of bubbles.

  The sweet voice answered immediately.

  “I’m sorry—” Earthaphoria’s voice started, very faintly, but then it faded as suddenly as the powerful rushing of a stream carried the salmon away. Kiethara staggered back a step.

  “Did you hear that?” she gasped.

  “Yes,” Aaron said, nodding. “That was your mother.”

  Kiethara fell silent, overwhelmed with confusion and grief. Aaron’s tone was withholding; it told her that he would provide her with no more explanation to what this was.

  Just fine.

  I’m sorry.

  Those were the words she had and, although they were accompanied with a bitter sorrow, she would accept them with gratitude. She would cling on to them.

  “It seems your mother does not like the way you found out about Gandador. I suppose that’s what the apology is for,” Aaron told her.

  Kiethara didn’t say anything, but made her way to the surface. As she clambered onto the grass, her body chimed with aches and pains that nearly crippled her. She sighed. It would be a long night.

  “All right, Kiethara. Let’s get started,” he said. He stood closer to the lake than he normally did. She followed his example.

  “I know you’ve gone through a lot today, but I need you to think back. From today’s attack I want you to pick one memory, one moment, which caused you the most grief.”

  With a suppressed sigh, she closed her eyes.

  Gandador’s pale face filled her head, obliterating the happy, sensual feeling she had been enjoying moments before. It was twisted into its usual smirk, sending ice through her veins as well as fire.

  But all of a sudden, it changed.

  Actually, it shifted its angle, its perspective. It changed from the Gandador she had known to the Gandador she now knew. It was a different light that her enemy was bathed in now. She still undeniably hated him, but every other feeling was confused. The ice in her veins turned to fire and the fire turned to ice. All because she now knew that he was her father.

  How? How was it possible that those two could have loved each other? The thought was enough to ignite grief.

  With that thought, Kiethara opened her eyes.

  “Now, Kiethara. Hold on to your sorrow. Focus on the emotion and let it flow to the river.”

  Aaron’s words were a bit confusing, but she tried her best to make sense of them. She released what she thought was magic and sorrow, the two entwined together, and directed them towards the water.

  “Feed them into the water, take complete control,” he instructed.

  Kiethara did so.

  The water of the lake seemed to brighten some; she focused on one spot in particular. Her father. Her mother. Her father and her mother. The thought helped feed her magic with the appropriate emotion.

  The surface of the water twitched up for a few seconds. It created a small dome of water, bubbling up with a prospect that made her heart flutter in anticipation. It became a couple inches wide, but then it sunk back into the water with a quiet splash.

  Disappointed, she turned to Aaron. “How was that?”

  “It was something, at least. Perhaps you need a stronger memory. You can’t only feel sorrow; you have to be filled with it. Try again.”

  So she needed a different memory, then. What else could possibly be more disturbing then that crucial fact she had been enlightened with? Her mother dying, perhaps, but she couldn’t even remember that.

  Wait! Her mother!

  Just a few moments ago she had heard her mother’s sweet voice, which itself has been filled with woe. Those words of apology had almost made her cry.

  She closed her eyes, slamming them shut, while at the same time blocking out any other feeling that threatened to grab hold of her concentration. For once in her life, she wanted nothing more than the grief of a daughter’s early loss to overcome her, something she had been pulling away from for as long as she could remember. It was as though she were trying to teach herself not to swim, not to reach up from the flood she had been fighting. But alas, it was working, and her heart grew heavier.

  She opened her eyes and gazed upon the same spot of water. She found her magic and projected it, letting it flow.

  A small sphere of water lifted off the surface. It hovered in the air before them, shimmering and sparkling in the dulling sunlight. Her eyes widened to the size of the image before her.

  It fell back down.

  Frustration overwhelmed Kiethara. Why couldn’t she do anything more than that? Why couldn’t she hold it for any longer? She had the emotion, the source, and the fresh wounds to correlate with her power. Was she too weak to handle a simple thing as sorrow? Her hands burst into flames.

  “Easy, Kiethara,” Aaron soothed. “You are doing extremely well. Why don’t you get some well-deserved rest?”

  Kiethara didn’t utter a word to him, but took his advice and stomped out of the clearing. Previous rage at the betrayal of Aaron began to resurface. On top of that, her body was throbb
ing everywhere. Her stomach ached from the blow to the gut, her legs felt like jelly from their recent strain, and her head pulsed because…well, because of everything. After every blink of her eye she had to fight to pry them back open again. Her feet dragged, but she didn’t have the strength or the mental willpower to pull herself into the air.

  Her body, her magic, and her mental determination were exhausted. She wanted to give up. And what better way to succumb than to succumb to blissful sleep?

  Kiethara reached her clearing and threw herself into her hammock. She allowed not a single whisper of a thought to pass through her head. She numbed as she rocked.

  Finally, sleep came, ending the longest day she had ever lived.