Earth (32 page)

“Terra? What’s going on?” Jodi asked in a
whisper.

“I’m not sure,” I said, my voice a little
breathy after all the gasping. I reached a hand out to touch Jodi’s
shoulder and found no resistance whatsoever. “Let go of me,” Jodi
looked like she wanted to argue, but I locked eyes with hers and
said, “I just want to check something. Let go of me.”

She did what I asked and I reached out again
to touch her and the resistance she had felt was suddenly there,
keeping me from touching her. I closed the distance with a little
effort and held on tightly to her. “Ok, now try and touch my
shoulder again.” Jodi reached out to me and her hand slid
effortlessly through the air and laid gently on my shoulder.

“What does that mean?” Jodi asked. I didn’t
know if Steven could see the difference but I didn’t explain it
right away.

“Maybe once we force an opening through the
shields the channel is open and it’s easier to make contact?” I
knew I was speculating, but I had nothing to base this on. “You two
try to touch each other.” I said, waving my hands between Steven
and Jodi. They each lifted their free hands in front of me and
reached out to each other. Just two inches away their hands slowed
and I watched them press the air between them, slowly flattening
it. I blinked and let my eyes go unfocused, much in the same way
you would if you wanted to use your peripheral vision. I could see
the energy between their hands like a live, writhing thing afraid
it would get crushed in their hands. The closer their hands got the
brighter and more solid the energy became.

Finally, when Steven’s fingers slid around
Jodi’s, interlacing them, the energy sparked and wound its way over
their joined hands in frantic excited lines. I could see Steven’s
hand on my shoulder out of the corner of my eye and realized it was
a deep orange and red, like the flames in a fire, and it seeped
down my body like spreading warmth. Slowly, to keep from losing
this sight, I turned just enough to see Jodi’s hand on my other
shoulder. Her energy was brighter and in shades of blue, lavender
and white, the colors I always imagined the wind must be if we
could only see it. Her energy was more erratic, but cooler, than
Steven’s.

I had a spark of inspiration and remembered
earlier that morning in the car. I lifted my right hand, palm up,
in front of me so that all three of us could see what I was doing.
I concentrated hard enough to bring a crease between my eyebrows
until I could feel Steven’s warmth travel up my arm and fill my
palm until it almost, almost burned. I had the sudden urge to close
my hand into a fist and shake the pain away, but I held my breath
to give myself a few more seconds of patience. Just when I thought
I was burning my skin from the inside out, a tiny flame burst to
life in the center of my palm, less than an inch above my hand. I
heard Jodi yelp with surprise. Steven was staring at the tiny flame
with pure astonishment.

I licked my dry lips and lifted my left hand,
palm up, until it was parallel with my right hand. I shifted some
of my attention to Jodi’s cooling, electric energy on the left side
of my body, keeping enough attention on my right so I wouldn’t lose
the tiny flame. I drew Jodi’s energy down my arm, raising the tiny
hairs in goose bumps, until it swirled in and around my hand. It
felt like my hand was swelling with the power, like my fingers
would tear away from my hand. I held my breath again, steeling
myself, but nothing happened outside of feeling the energy begin to
stretch my skin until it hurt. I realized I was waiting for a
manifestation like the flame, but air didn’t do that unless I
wanted a tiny tornado in my hand, and I really didn’t think I could
control that.

I rotated my hand until my fingers pointed to
the sky and brought it closer to my right hand, palm still up,
until my wrists almost touched and I had made a right angle out of
my hands. I pushed the air energy out of my left palm into the tiny
flame in my right and let the fire feed from it until it was round
and glowing, the size of a softball. The air swirled around my
hands and the fire grew and tendrils of flames licked out at the
swirling air. The heat became too much for me to endure. I caught
my breath and knew I had to let this go or burn my hands to
blisters or worse. With that one intake of breath something passed
through me and the fireball shot away from my hands into the grass
about six feet away. As one, all three of us gasped in horror and
froze.

I was on all fours before I realized I had
moved and pushed my hands into the earth, forcing the hidden water
in its depths up to the surface to squelch the fire. With smoke and
ash, the fire drowned in the new puddle until every ember was gone.
I crawled away from them, forcing them to let me go or else to fall
to the ground at my sides. I crawled over to the burned circle on
the ground and ran my fingers over the blackened earth and felt the
pain beneath the surface. I closed my eyes against tears I didn’t
realize were there and laid my hands in the ashes and forced life
back into the soil. I felt the pain edging away from the earth but
it was coming into me, into my hands.

It hurt more than a few second s of burning
grass should have, or at least that’s what I thought. Just as the
thought came into my mind, a memory flooded into the front of my
mind of me standing in the clearing and laying hands on the trees
that had been carved into and used for blood magic. The pain I was
drawing away from the ground under my hands right now was pooling
inside of me with the pain from the trees. I healed them by pulling
the pain and black energy into my body, like pulling a cancerous
thing from them and into me.

I sat back on my heels and raised my hands in
front of my face, staring at them like I should be able to see the
black energy of pain as a stain on my skin, but there was nothing.
I dropped my hands in my lap and let my focus slide to my right.
The bright, warm orange and red glow was gone, leaving little more
than a shadow of the power, but I could feel it like a memory
waiting to be remembered. On my left the lavender electricity was
gone but the swirling cool breeze was there, near enough.

I turned back to Jodi and Steven and saw that
they were both still holding hands. I had let my eyesight focus but
I was pretty sure the energy there was still going strong. “How do
you two feel?” I asked carefully.

“Fine, great even,” Steven said and I wasn’t
surprised to hear Jodi say, “Electric.”

“Let go of each other.” Without asking why,
they both let go and their hands dropped to their sides. “Well? How
about now?”

“The same,” Jodi said with a smile on her
face and Steven nodded an enthusiastic agreement.

“You’re not drained or tired?” I stood up,
brushing the dirt from my jeans and walked over to them.

“No, why?” Steven asked.

“Because I think I just borrowed energy from
both of you.”

The last few classes of our day were probably
the longest classes of my life. It had been so tempting to just
leave school after my little pyrotechnic display, but I was
determined not to draw any undue attention to us and I had missed
enough classes, people were going to start noticing. Jodi and
Steven spent the better part of our English and History class
reminding people of my birthday party tomorrow night. I shook my
head, trying to hold back the nasty laugh I could feel building in
my throat. They were so optimistic about our success tonight; I
couldn’t even begin to think about my birthday. I almost asked when
they had had time to plan my party or get preparations done, but I
knew I had spent enough time away from them in the last couple of
days that they probably had all the time in the world.

I dropped Jodi and Steven at Jodi’s house
after school so we could all make appearances at our houses. We
were all fairly certain that we didn’t need to be near the clearing
until around eleven o’clock. We agreed that I would enter the
clearing on my own and Jodi and Steven would circle around to come
at the clearing from the rear.When dinner was ready, I walked into
the kitchen to fix my plate while my parents did the same. They
were planning on eating in front of the living room T.V., I was
planning on hiding out in my room so everything looked as normal as
possible.

“Hey, honey,” my mom said as I came in.

“Hey,” I was glad to hear that my voice was
as casual as hers.

“Jodi and Steven are throwing you a party
tomorrow night, right?” she asked as she spooned potatoes onto her
plate.

“Yeah, why?”

“You know we always do family dinners out on
birthdays.” It wasn’t a question, but I knew where she was
going.

“Yeah, no worries, mom,” I took the spoon
from her and helped myself to the potatoes. “The party isn’t until
eight so we have time to eat after dad gets off work and get me
home in time to put together my costume and get to Jodi’s house.” I
gave her a vague smile and saw her relax, her shoulders easing away
from around her ears.

“Oh, good. Have you decided where you want to
go?”

“I don’t really care, we can let dad pick.
He’s always pretty tired after work. At least he’ll want to go if
he gets to pick.” I shrugged, turning to leave the kitchen.

“He’ll probably want to go to the steak
house.”

“Yeah, probably. That’s fine with me.” I
shrugged again and made it successfully out of the kitchen this
time, practically rushing to my room to keep from having any more
conversations. I wanted to eat and get some sleep before I had to
sneak out and pick up Jodi and Steven. It was seven o’clock before
I could safely close my door and crawl into bed without fear of my
parents checking on me. I told Steven and Jodi to make sure they
got some sleep before I picked them up.

I rolled over in bed, wide-awake, and saw by
the light of my alarm clock that I had been laying there for thirty
minutes without so much as a yawn. I tried to close my eyes and
fall into a meditative trance to at least relax enough to feel as
if I had slept, but it didn’t worked. I just couldn’t clear my head
enough to start the trance.

I threw the covers back and sat up in bed,
swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. I rubbed my eyes,
grateful I didn’t wear make-up nearly as often as Jodi did. I
slipped to the floor on my knees and crawled into the middle of the
area rug in the center of the room. My dad had gone crazy one
summer and ripped up all our carpet and put down hardwood floors.
At first my mom and I had been happy about it, but the first cold
morning made us see the fatal flaw in hardwood floors. That weekend
we had gone out and bought area rugs and laid them throughout the
house. I took the opportunity to sketch a protective pentagram in
crayon under my rug so that I could meditate and work small magics
without having to draw and redraw a circle of power and protection.
I used crayon so it wouldn’t rub away but at the same time wasn’t
permanent. If we ever moved it was going to be a bitch to clean off
though.

I felt the edge of the circle shiver and
tingle over the edges of my body as I slipped through it. I knew
exactly where the center of the circle was without ever having to
pull back the edges of the rug to check because I spent so many
nights here. I folded my legs into a half lotus position with my
right foot resting on my left leg and let my hands rest lightly on
my thighs. I closed my eyes, tilted my chin up, took a few deep
breaths, and felt my body sink. I stayed conscious enough not to
leave my body in spirit or mind. I had a healthy enough fear of
whatever creatures had already been summoned to affect my dreams
that I didn’t want to be an open door to any other precautions he
may have taken.

A moment later the alarm on my cell phone
went off, vibrating it against the bedside table like a tiny fist
knocking frantically against the wood. I opened my eyes slowly,
rolled my shoulders and rotated my neck to loosen up. Carefully I
peeled my right foot away from my left knee so I could turn
comfortably around to look at the clock. It was half past nine,
just enough time for me to change, arrange the covers on my bed to
hide my absence and crawl out my window into the backyard. I would
sweep around to the side yard and get into my car and off to Jodi’s
to pick up Jodi and Steven.

Since we agreed to take the bare minimum with
us, the car was already ready. I decided not to wear a coat tonight
to make moving easier on me. I wore hiking boots, jeans, a t-shirt,
sweater, and hooded sweatshirt to try and shield me from the cold.
I tied my hair up in a ponytail to keep my hair out of my face and
I was out the window.

“Ok, so are you sure you want to go into the
clearing on your own?” Steven asked from the dark of the backseat.
He wasn’t sitting forward hanging on our seats and that alone
showed me how scared he really was.

“That’s the plan. I won’t really be alone,
you two will come in from behind,” I said, trying to look at him in
the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, but what if he gets to you?”

“Then you guys help. Get Tracy out of the
clearing and get to me.” I tried to sound casual about it, but I
was just as scared. I didn’t like the idea that my only physical
weapon was my athame. In order to do damage with it, the bad guy
would have to be really close, closer than I was comfortable
with.

“I think maybe we should go in with you.
After what you did at school today with the fireball we could get
him from a distance.” Steven said.

“And take the chance of killing Tracy too, or
setting the whole damn mountain on fire?” Jodi interjected, looking
over her shoulder at Steven.

“Yeah, I didn’t mean to shoot that fireball
when I did it, which means I don’t really have control of it. Would
you risk that kind of damage?” I asked, still trying to see him in
the mirror.