We had finally cleared the trees. When I found the energy to look up, I came face to face with a familiar sight.
"I have never seen a castle that big," declared Wes, staring across the expansion of marshland at the towering, black-stone castle.
"Well, nice to see you again," I muttered to the castle.
Wes turned to look at me. "You've been here before?" he asked incredulously.
I shrugged. "Yeah, we've met. Briefly."
"Let's get a closer look," Wes proposed, starting off towards the castle. I followed slowly behind, picking my way carefully through the marsh and muck.
It didn't take Wes long to reach the stone wall surrounding the fortress. By the time I reached him, he had already found several notches in the stone, and was preparing to climb them.
"Seriously, Wes?" I said, as I watched my brother scale the wall.
"Seriously, Thema. I want to know what's on the other side."
I rolled my eyes. Typical ten-year old curiosity. "You know, you're going to run out of footholds," I called, folding my arms as I watched him climb higher.
He hollered something back that sounded awfully close to,"Like the same way you ran out of brain cells?" but I wasn't sure, so I didn't comment. Nor did I really care, because, at that moment, I caught sound of a strange, whistling noise, off to the left of me. It sounded very familiar. As the sound got louder, I turned to see what was causing it. And there it was. The same ominous, black cloud that had come after me last time. But as it sped closer, I saw something else: In the center of this cloud, there was a single red dot. An eye. A pupil-less, blood red eye. And it was staring straight at me.
I was getting an awful feeling of deja vu, at this point. "Westley, get down, now!" I screamed, running back up to the wall. Wes turned and saw what I was panicking about.
"What is that?" he yelled, scrambling to climb back down from the wall.
"No time to explain, now, move it!" I was literally jumping up and down, now, as if that was going to make my brother move any faster. Finally, I couldn't stand it. "Westley, just jump!"
He jumped. And when he landed, the thud he made was sickening. Upon impact, Wes yelped loudly and grabbed his ankle.
"I think it's broken," he whimpered. I took one look at the monstrous black cloud speeding towards us, and made my decision.
"I'm sorry about this, Wes." I pulled my brother to his feet, and together, hand-in-hand, we ran. I don't think I ever ran as fast as I did, then. Unfortunately, it wasn't fast enough.
Then came the horrifying moment when Wes stumbled, and we hit the ground, hard. We were right on the edge of the trees, but it's not like they would have saved us, anyway. The smoke creature began to pick up speed when it saw we were down. It seemed to be eyeing my brother, now, instead of me. And that pissed me off.
Without realizing it, I jumped to my feet, and took a stand in front of Wes. My hand, the one that had the weird design carved into it, began to burn with such intensity, that it brought tears to my eyes.
Now, I had always thought, that if I'd been given special powers, and there was some monster racing towards me, that I'd say something cool, like Gandolf in The Lord of the Rings: You shall not pass!!!, or, you know, something epic along those lines.
Instead, all I said was, "I'm so dead."
Then, I raised my burning hand, and all hell broke loose.
There was a sudden flash of intense light, so bright, I had to turn my head away. I caught a glimpse of Wes's face, shining with awe, before the blazed suddenly grew even brighter, blotting out everything with a brilliant glow. Then, came the sound. It pierced the air with such severity, everything seemed to shake. It was the monster. The retched thing was screaming a blood-curdling scream.
And an instant later, there was nothing. No sound, no light, just. . . nothing. For a moment, I figured I must actually be dead. But soon, light crept back into my surroundings. Things began to take shape. And a small voice could be heard, saying my name.
"Thema? Thema, please wake up. Thema!" It was Wes. His worried face suddenly shifted into my focus.
"What just happened?" I asked, still in a daze.
"You shot it!" Wes exclaimed boisterously.
I realized I was on the ground, so I sat up quickly. "What do you mean, I shot it?"
Wes looked like he was about to explode from excitement. "You shot it with a bolt of light! It came out of your hand, and when it hit, that black thing disintegrated! Poof, and it was gone. Like that!" he proclaimed with a satisfactory snap of his fingers.
I swallowed, and turned over my hand to look at it. Startlingly, the lines etched in my palm were no longer cuts, but scars. They looked as if they had been there for years, instead just a few days. The steady, thrumming pulse in my hand that used to be painful, now felt soothing, especially compared to the burning I had felt, only a few minutes earlier.
"Could this get any weirder?" I asked myself. The answer was yes, yes it could. And it did.
~*~*~*~
© B. J. Robertson
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