Pushing a string of energy deep into the earth below her, she pushed Freddie’s energy down the string and out into the surrounding earth. It was working; unfortunately, the relentless throbbing in her head made judging the effort she needed to use very tricky. As she pulled at his energy Freddie staggered, his sword dropping from his hand. Conlan froze, concern and confusion on his face. Freddie turned and looked at her, his panicked look turning to understanding. Conlan followed Freddie’s gaze and cold fury filled his face. Clearing the distance between them in four long strides he grabbed Eleanor by the collar and dragged her to her feet.
“Stop it!” he hissed.
Still trying her best to pull energy from Freddie while at the same time push it down into the earth, a task akin to patting her head and rubbing her tummy with two sets of arms at the same time, Eleanor was only able to react to this new development with one emotion: terror. Conlan looked back at Freddie, who was now on his knees taking rapid, gulping breaths, giving an even stronger impression of her guilt. Conlan turned back to her, jamming the point of his sword into the soft flesh under her chin, pushing hard enough to break the skin.
“Whatever you’re doing, stop it, now… or I will end you,” he snarled. Eleanor believed him. Having heard the commotion, Amelia and Will came running through from the main cave. They took one look at Freddie on his knees gasping for breath and Conlan millimetres away from killing her and reached their own conclusions. Will rushed over to help Freddie and Amelia started yelling.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know the pain you’re causing or do you just not care? Freddie has done nothing but help you. Conlan should push that sword right through your sick little brain!”
“No!” Freddie ordered. Not releasing the pressure on the sword, Conlan turned back towards him again. He was still on his knees but he looked far better, his breathing returning to normal. “She was trying to help,” he continued, looking ashamed. “With Eleanor not being conscious much the last few days, my energy levels have been raising. I’ve tried to control it, but… There’s a good chance Eleanor just saved your life.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this sooner?” Conlan asked.
Freddie hung his head. “My thinking becomes different as the energy levels rise. I get paranoid, fearful… angry. It’s like all my common sense leaves me.”
Conlan removed his hand from Eleanor’s collar at the same time as he took the sword away from her chin. She dropped into a heap at his feet, trembling violently and hating herself for it. She watched the steady drip of blood from the cut under her chin as it began to form a puddle on the floor. There was pain, but it just sort of merged with all the other pain, which she was becoming worryingly used to. Having returned Freddie’s energy level to a more even keel, she pulled her energy strings back as Will came and crouched down in front of her, firmly pushing a pad of material under her chin to staunch the blood. Eleanor looked into his deep-blue eyes.
“When did I become the enemy?” she whimpered. She felt lost, like the world had just turned upside down for no reason at all. Will gave no answer, but Eleanor felt an energy string gently push up against her. Reaching out with a string of her own she wrapped round it, and Will’s cool, calm presence entered her mind.
I know you’re not the enemy
, Will said, his voice echoing.
The others do, too. You just gave us all a nasty wake up call. I don’t think we realised just how dangerous this was going to get. How dangerous we were going to get…
Eleanor felt him leave her mind and detach his energy from hers. He was still looking at her with emotionless blue eyes and she realised that this was for Amelia’s benefit. Eleanor felt profoundly grateful to him for offering her what little comfort he could.
Eleanor was so miserable, she was desperate to escape. Amelia’s open loathing exploded if Eleanor so much as caught her eye. Will was careful not to get involved, while Freddie’s uncomfortable misery mirrored Eleanor’s own. Conlan just did not seem to care; distant and distracted, he seemed to want to spend most of his time on his own, brooding. Freddie came to the rescue, taking her up to the high lake, where she would lie on her back in the snow and just concentrate on her energy. She was going to learn as much as she could, knowledge was power and with it she could ensure she never accidentally hurt anyone again. At first Freddie had tried to talk to her, but when Eleanor made no attempt to respond, he eventually gave up, following her around in silence.
It was up by the lake that she first felt it. Finding her favourite spot Eleanor settled herself back into the snow, watching the clouds roam the sky above her. She lay still, not really thinking of anything, when a thought popped into her head.
Spring is coming!
Eleanor sat up. She looked slowly at the frigid, white world around her. There were no outward indications, no evidence that could have brought her mind to the conclusion that spring was coming. Logically it must come at some point, but this thought had brought with it a certainty, an excitement that spring was imminent. The excitement was not her own – she knew that for a fact – because spring meant the snow would melt and the Protectors and Enforcers would be coming into the mountains looking for them. Spring held no excitement for her.
Fearing for her sanity, she closed her eyes, concentrating on her feelings and turning them over in her mind, looking at them from every angle. As she did, she felt it. She brought it into her conscious thoughts; it was a faint energy string connecting her to the Earth. As she focused on the string it strengthened, vibrating slightly, and the stronger it became, the more information flooded into her mind. She could feel the different types of rock in the ground beneath her, each with stories to tell, and she could feel the seeds and living things of the Earth sleeping, dormant, waiting, sensing that spring was coming. It was their collective excitement she could feel – it was the Earth’s excitement at the thought of rebirth and creation. The effort of pushing her energy string deep into the earth became too much and she relaxed, retracting it. Then on a whim Eleanor tried pulling energy from the Earth and was delighted to find this required almost no effort at all. She felt her energy string pulled deep, spreading out like roots of an ancient tree. She had not had to push, she just had to take slow, deep breaths and hold her concentration. Unlike Freddie’s energy, which always made her feel like she was burning, or Will’s, which had made her feel a little like she was drowning, this energy felt totally natural to her. The green energy ball she imagined in her stomach began growing, stretching, and Eleanor became aware of the unlimited energy at her fingertips; the sense of power was intoxicating.
Distracted by the feeling of omnipotence, she did not notice just how much energy she had accumulated until it was too late. Eleanor discovered that her body was not meant to hold such a large amount of energy; there were side effects. The symptoms came slowly at first, a tingling in her extremities and then numbness.
I have to release the energy
. She pushed it back into the ground, but there was too much. Numbness turned quickly to agonising pain, like acid running through her veins. She gritted her teeth together to keep from yelling out, terrified what might happen if Freddie heard her scream, and she released the energy at him by accident.
Could I release the energy? But where?
She had done it with Will’s energy; all she had needed was something to focus on, and unfortunately that had been Conlan.
So, no focusing on human beings… What about something inanimate?
The pain was making it difficult to think, but she pulled herself upright so she could see the lake in front of her with its thick lid of ice. Focusing on a spot in the middle, she released all the energy. It was not the steady stream she had felt when she had released Will’s energy. This felt more like flinging a rock with all her strength.
The result was spectacular. The inches-thick ice exploded upwards fifty feet into the air and a deafening, cracking boom echoed around her. Before it had died away it was joined by the gunshot cracks of huge ice chunks and water falling back into the lake. The acid pain drained away and she sat panting, watching in stunned silence as the ice finished falling into what was now a cavernous hole in the middle of the lake.
Freddie came to crouch at her side. “What the hell was that?”
“That was me. Or rather the power I direct,” Eleanor said, turning towards him. Freddie was looking at her, concerned.
“Eleanor, you’re bleeding.”
“I am? Where?” She had not felt any injuries and she was too far away to be hit by the ice. She instinctively rubbed a hand under her chin, but that injury had healed over days ago.
“Your eyes are bleeding,” Freddie whispered. Eleanor raised a shaking hand to her eye and rubbed the back of it into the socket. She drew her hand back and looked at the bloody smear.
“Must remember there are side effects,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Freddie, I need to experiment and I need you to keep a safe distance.”
“You just exploded a lake. What if you exploded a rock face down on top of you?” Freddie asked.
“I’ll be careful, but this will be easier if I don’t have to worry about accidentally exploding you.”
Freddie nodded, but he did not seem particularly happy about it. “How come you get the power to explode stuff and I just turn homicidally psychotic at the drop of a hat?”
“Actually, I think we all have similar power, but I need to practice to be sure. Besides, you might turn homicidal, but you’ve not actually killed anybody yet, have you? I’ve taken two lives, quite possibly more since I got here, not to mention what I did to Will and Conlan, and I have no out-of-control energy to blame it on.”
With Freddie out of sight down the pass that led up to the lake, Eleanor began. As she practiced, the days became warmer and the sun felt stronger.
Spring is coming
. The confirmation of what the earth had already predicted amused her, until she remembered that this meant the Enforcers were coming. Then fear gave her focus, purpose. Her experiments were not just idle knowledge-building exercises; she planned them around being able to use her abilities to fight, if it came to it. She tested pulling small amounts of energy, pulling large amounts, draining it back and exploding it out. Through careful observation she realised that the weak string that constantly linked her to the earth acted like an overflow pipe, helping to keep her energy balanced. She also realised that in extreme situations the overflow pipe would reverse and pull energy from the earth.
Maybe this mechanism is faulty in Freddie…
Eleanor worked out how to pull tiny amounts of energy from the earth and then release them in small bursts, but there was very little control, and once released there was no calling it back, like a bullet from a gun, she was painfully aware of what would happen if she unleashed this on a person.While she could ‘aim’, after a fashion, she usually devastated a far larger area than she intended. And the power was immense.
As she lined up rocks along the edge of a rocky outcrop which held mute evidence of previous explosions. She took a deep breath and began pulling energy from the earth, enjoying the feeling of having it build inside her. She relaxed a little, opening herself up to the world around her; she liked this feeling, like anything and everything was possible.
“Eleanor!”
His voice. Angry, demanding. She spun round. Conlan was stood barely ten feet away. Startled and frightened, Eleanor felt her hold slip, releasing the energy as Freddie came charging though the pass. Leaping, he crashed into Conlan, pulling him down to the ground. The mountain wall behind where his head had just been exploded outwards. The rock and dust rained down on them, gradually stopping. There was silence. Images of Freddie and Conlan’s crushed, bloody bodies sprang into Eleanor’s mind as she ran forward.
“No, no, no!” she moaned, pulling the rocks from them, ripping her hands on unyielding stone in her desperate attempt to reach them.
Thankfully the explosion had been powerful enough that the rocks were not all that large, but there were a lot of them. She saw Freddie first, his body laying protectively over Conlan. She shook him gently, and then disregarding everything she knew about first aid, gripped him under his arms and hauled him towards her, cradling him. His face and hair were grey with dust, a red snake of blood slithering slowly from his hairline to his chin.
“Freddie? Freddie… please, don’t be dead, please, Freddie, I’m sorry. Freddie…” she begged. Movement in her peripheral vision made her lift her head. Conlan was struggling to get up, the dust rising in clouds around him, making him cough. Eleanor felt an irrational anger. What was he doing here surprising her? It should be him lying motionless, not Freddie. Then the guilt hit her. Feeling the bottomless pit of despair open up underneath her, she clung to her friend and sobbed softly, begging him to live.
Freddie coughed suddenly, convulsing slightly in her arms. He blinked open his eyes and smiled weakly. Eleanor felt relief wash through her.
“I’m sorry, Freddie. Thank you, thank you for saving Conlan again.”
Freddie chuckled. “We seem to be doing this as a favour for each other a lot.”
“Eleanor?” Conlan said tentatively. His anger was gone and he sounding wary, frightened even.
“What?” Her voice was hard, empty; not really caring what he wanted.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
She raised her head. “Tell you? No, Conlan, I don’t want to tell you anything; however, if you have questions you want to ask me, I might decide some of them are worth answering.”
“You’re angry with me.” It was a flat statement, with no indication as to how he felt about this fact.