Awakenings (Elemental Series - Book 1) (14 page)

“Mom’s with us and she casts off enough light for me to see. We can go into the yard off the deck.”

As I finished, Mom was suddenly flying around my head in a frenzy. Obviously, she wanted me to stay in the house where it was safe. There was no way anyone was going to stop me from helping Hudson and Aunt Grace. I’d been a side-line person for way too long. Maybe tonight wasn’t the right time to decide to get in there and play, but I was going to no matter what. As soon as my decision formed in my head, Mom slowed. She’d realized no matter what she did, I was going, so she gave in. She reluctantly agreed to be my light and look out for us, going in first to make sure wherever we ventured would be safe.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Jen said with a slight frown.

“You’re not the only one thinking it, Jen…Come on, let’s go,” I said as I stepped off the deck into the front yard.

We made our way across the driveway. There was no one around, no noise, no anything.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Did you hear that?” Jen asked.

Instantly, Mom went into overdrive. When I’d been using her as a makeshift flashlight, she’d been glowing yellow-white—now she was red and blue, and flying around like crazy.

“What, Mom, what is it?” I asked as we were coming around to the backyard.

Jen had come up beside me and was trying to see what I was seeing.

“I don’t know what’s wrong. She just started to fly around like crazy. I can usually read what she’s feeling or thinking but I can’t get anything from her right now.”

Jen nudged me in the ribs with her elbow.

“M-maybe she was trying to warn us about them,” Jen said as she pointed to the top of one of the trees bordering my aunt’s house.

Perched high up in the tree was a black form. I couldn’t make out what it was, but the hair which was now standing at attention on the back of my neck told me enough. It looked like a crow but was at least fifty times the size and it wasn’t perched on the tree like I initially assumed… It was hovering beside the tree. Jen grabbed me and tried to pull me back toward the house. I couldn’t move. I was frozen there, like a statue—very reminiscent of my washroom episode at the rest stop.

“So, you’ve finally come home, have you, Jacey…?”

The voice was unmistakable. It was the voice of the onyx-eyed girl. As she was talking, she floated down from the tree tops and hovered about twenty feet in front of me.

“What do you want from me?” I spoke in a voice I barely recognized. Jen’s mouth dropped open, caught off guard by my brazenness.

“
We
want nothing from you.
We
only want you to come to where you truly belong…” the girl said.

“I belong where I am. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you and I want nothing from you. Stay away from me, here and in my dreams,” I shouted.

Mom was hovering over me, radiating blue and red. I read the thought of security from her. I believe she gave me the calm and the steel nerves I needed. As I was reading Mom, Aunt Grace and Hudson came around the corner.

“You know why we’re here,” the girl said to my aunt.

“I do. I also know you’re in breach of the truce, which was set up many years ago,” my aunt shot back at her.

“I’ve broken nothing…I haven’t laid a foot on your ground and I haven’t laid a hand on your kin…” the girl announced.

As she finished, I looked to the ground by her feet and she really hadn’t been standing a mere twenty feet in front of me, she was, in truth, hovering.

“You’ve come a long way on your own,
Seeker
…” Hudson said.

I looked at Hudson and noticed he was glowing red and blue, like Mom. However, he was solid, not swirling, not transparent, not hovering. The palms of his hands were facing upwards by his sides. He was in a crouched stance and his eyes never left the onyx-eyed girl’s face as he spoke. Aunt Grace was glowing pink and yellow. Her stance mirrored Hudson’s except not so … aggressive.

As Hudson finished his statement, the girl looked up to the sky over Aunt Grace’s house. It was black. Not black like night, because it looked as though the black was undulating, it moved, it hovered. When all of us looked up, it became completely obvious she had definitely not come alone. There was at least fifteen more of her kind dressed in the same black garb, floating above our heads. While we took in the spectacle above us, Mom went into action. She began to swirl around Jen, Hudson, Aunt Grace, and I. She was moving so fast I couldn’t keep track of where she began and where she ended. Her colors were a blur of red, blue, and purple. No one else, including the floating troop over our heads, winced when she began circling us. It was obvious I was the only one who could see her.

“It’s in your best interest
you
and
your kind
leave,” Aunt Grace shouted.

“I think we need to talk,
Grace
…” the girl chimed. She’d said my aunt’s name like it had burned her tongue.

“Now is neither the time nor the place. You know how things are done.” Aunt Grace swept her hands before her and above her. “You know where these meetings are to happen. I advise you to leave before the Sentry arrives, and you start a whole new war.” Aunt Grace finished with a look behind her and to both sides.

“We come not to war. We come to gain knowledge of Jacey and what she has to offer that so many of your kind have lost. We come so she can see what it is to know real power and what a true calling is,” the girl announced. When she finished, there was a shift in the sky. It was as though the overhead followers flowed in agreement.

“It’s you, you’re the black abyss…You killed my parents.” I took not only myself but my family by surprise when I shouted out my accusation, not only to the girl standing in front of me, but to the crowd which accompanied her to my home.

“We did no such thing. We are merely the people of Shenuy. We simply observe and report. We do not
cause
things to happen, they just do,” the girl said with a smirk of delight on her face.

I was about to jump out from the invisible protective circle Mom had been keeping around us when Jen took hold of my arm. I was shocked to see Jen alight in a shade of purple with white entrenched throughout her. She smiled at me and I calmed down instantly. She had her hand on Hudson’s shoulder as if she was holding him back also. I felt a surge of strength and took in a deep cleansing breath.

The onyx-eyed girl was indifferent to the exchange of words. She tried to move closer to me, her eyes burrowing as though she was looking right through me. In the same moment, I heard Aunt Grace’s breath catch. I grabbed my right hand…It felt as though it were on fire. I looked down into my palm and the symbol which had been seared into it during the washroom episode was burning a bright crimson red.

Aunt Grace was by my side in an instant, placing her hand into mine. Suddenly, my hand was cooled. I looked into her eyes and I could see it, even though she was trying, and trying fairly hard to hide it, that she was in great pain.

The enormity of my anger over the last couple of days came up from the pit within me. I looked away from my Aunt and faced the girl head on. She reached for my hand, but something was keeping her from me.

The barrier between her and I was Mom. She was protecting all of us from this girl and her fire-riddled hand. But the girl had no idea why she couldn’t get any closer. Her obliviousness to what was going on empowered me. I now knew something she and her kind didn’t. I had the protection of spirits passed, my Mom.

I smiled at the girl and that completely infuriated her. I took all of my anger and let it gather in the pit of my stomach. I willed her and her kind gone, and as I did, the anger I’d built up started to move into the palms of my hand. Aunt Grace let go of my hand and stood back, staring at me in awe. I was now glowing, like everyone else around me, except I wasn’t a mixture of one or two colors, I was
every
color, like all of my dreams…how they all started, in a kaleidoscope of colors.

I put both hands out in front of me, closed my eyes, and concentrated, thinking of my parents, my aunt, my brother, and everything I’d lost in the last couple of days. I opened my eyes and was stunned. I was again in a time warp of my own just like the ones I’d been experiencing whenever Mom came to talk to me. This time she continued to swirl around all of us in her brilliant colors of blue, red, and purple.

I heard her voice. “Trust yourself, Jacey, this is
who
you
are. This is what we have all fought to keep you safe from, the evilness of Yietimpi.”

“You have no power over me. You and your kind are what I have been born to—” as I was finishing my thought, a power so great, so foreign to me, blasted outward from my hands towards the girl and her cohorts in the sky above. As it flowed from me, everything became blurry and I began to lose consciousness. I fell to the ground and everything started to turn black…it was like staring down into a black tunnel. Right before everything went away, the pinpoint of light I had been focusing on to stay alert turned into crystal blue eyes… as they stared down at me, I slowly pulled myself back to consciousness.

I instinctively knew we were out of danger. The power which had come from me had somehow vanquished anyone who wasn’t supposed to be here. I let out the breath I’d been holding onto and gazed into the kindest eyes I’ve ever been blessed to be in the presence of.

“I knew you’d be here. I knew you wouldn’t leave me on my own…” I said as I raised my hand to his face—a face I couldn’t quite make out, but knew would always be in my mind. I then completely lost consciousness. The last thing I heard before nothingness took over was the voice of my blue-eyed protector.

“Please don’t leave me again, Jacey.”

As the darkness took over, every color I’d ever experienced came to me. All of them seeming to want my attention as I was falling into my own oblivion. Then, in a flash, all around me there was darkness, and time stood still.

Chapter Eleven

Secrets unfold
A story stays untold
Wanting explanations all around
All in time.

“J
acey, Jacey wake up,” I heard yelling in my ear.

“She’s here, she’s here.” It was Jen.

“Jacey…” Now Hudson was yelling.

“We must get her into the house,” Aunt Grace commanded.

I tried to open my eyes and tell Hudson I was fine, but for some reason I couldn’t. I could hear them. I knew they were around me, but I couldn’t see them or even feel them. It felt like I was in a sensory deprivation chamber and all my senses were gone except for my hearing. I tried yelling out to them, but couldn’t.

Their voices drifted to the point I couldn’t hear them anymore. Then I started to feel like I was drifting. My body felt as light as a feather. I had no idea how I was moving, but I was.

I floated around in my own oblivion. Time itself seemed to have no bearing on where I was. I was surprised at how I didn’t fight this experience—I felt quite at peace. As I was suspended in my own nothingness, my family’s voices started to pierce through to me again.

“Here, put her on the bed,” Aunt Grace said.

“Should we call a doctor? I’ve never seen her like this,
ever
,” Hudson said.

“We’ll make her comfortable here and then…we’ll see. Maybe Bronson could come over and check things out,” Aunt Grace offered.

As they were talking amongst themselves, I let go and felt myself slip further into my own non-being, until a voice whispered from behind me into my ear and said, “Hello.” I spun around to see who it was, but there was no one there.

Again.

“Jacey.” I spun around again. This time I could feel my heart in my throat. The darkness which had enveloped me started to recede.

Everything was starting to come into focus. I felt my hands come up to my eyes and cover them. Light started to break its way through my fingers. I slowly took my hands away from my face and found myself in Aunt Grace’s childhood bedroom.

I looked around the room and something seemed different from how it looked before. It was decorated like a baby girl’s room. There was something very familiar and comforting about it. I walked around and touched everything.

There was a pink changing table with yellow and purple flowers. There was a dark brown crib with pink frilly bedding. There were rainbows and flowers all over the comforter. On the walls of the room were murals of children playing and beautifully colored symbols. I turned and walked across the room to a pink dresser. It had a huge mirror on it and in its reflection I could make out the bright yellow walls.

I then noticed the floor was covered in a plush white carpet. My breath caught as I came to fully understand where I was. It was the room from my dream. The one where Mom had been looking into the crib and seeing two of me—without warning,

“We need to talk,” the voice said again, only this time I recognized it, the person talking to me was
me.

I got closer to the dresser and peered into the mirror and saw myself, but it wasn’t really me. This version of me had the same round face and deep brown eyes, but her hair was a different color. I reached up to the mirror and tried to touch her. My reflection
did the same. As my hand got closer to the mirror, my palm started to burn again. I took my hand away from it and looked into my palm. The symbol of the Seeker was ablaze again. I looked into the mirror and my reflection was now
not
doing the same thing I was. Her hand was still up to the mirror and the look in my reflected eyes was a yearning which tore at the center of my being.

“Who are you?” I asked as I stared into the mirror, still grasping my right hand.

“You don’t know?” the reflection asked, sounding slightly hurt.

“I could guess you’re me, but I’m starting to think there are a few things about me even I don’t fully get. So yeah, it’s a possibility you’re me—but me in another life, or something like that.” I knew I had started to babble, so I stopped and looked at my reflection, waiting for an answer.