by Sophia Sharp
Light as I’ve never seen it burst from the crystal in my hand. It was pure and white. Everything disappeared under its powerful glare.
I didn’t know where I was. My body floated in a sea of pure white. It pierced through my closed eyelids and went through my skin. I was weightless. I couldn’t tell which way was up or down. Direction was meaningless. The bright light pressed itself tightly around my body, like a second skin. It was tight, tighter than anything I could imagine. The pressure increased on my chest until I couldn’t breathe. Every second, the pressure increased, until I knew I would be crushed into absolute oblivion. Nothing existed in this place. The light was determined to keep it that way. I was an intruder; a leaf swept into a roaring river with no hope of escape. The light pressed against me, tighter and tighter, until it burst through my skin and devoured my body into nothingness.
I was floating, this time in darkness. I couldn’t feel my body. I had no body. All that existed was my consciousness. There was no beginning and no end, no destination and no origin. It was an abyss of pure darkness, stretching forever in all directions and nowhere all at once.
A flickering in the distance caught my attention. I looked that way with no eyes. A series of straight bright lines, connected at perfect angles, appeared there, far away. They wavered for a moment, threatened to be consumed by the dark, but then sprang back into place. In this void bereft of hope, these lines were my only guidance. I went to them.
As I got closer, I recognized the shape. It was the outline of the crystal I had used. It fought against the control of the dark. They called to me. I came closer, but distance was not what it appeared, here. One moment I was within reach, the next, hundreds of leagues away. Time was immaterial as I fought to get closer. The lines wavered once more, nearly overrun by the black pitch, but forced themselves into shape. Yet they were weaker this time, as if made of mist. I knew I had to get there, now. One more oscillation and they would be gone forever, and with them, my chance of salvation.
I thrust myself forward, not knowing how I did it or what propelled me. The frame of the crystal was now in front of me. It was fading fast! It was my only hope. I threw myself in.
A searing pain coursed through my mind as my body was reconstructed. I felt every piece snap into place, every molecule and cell that formed who I was built itself into a recognizable shape. My torso formed beneath me, followed by my limbs, my head, my hair. I flexed sore muscles that felt as if they had been unused for ages, and was gripped by an intoxicating euphoria. Suddenly I had eyes, and could see again.
I saw myself, lying on the ground of the forest, clutching that tiny crystal as if it were my life line. And so it was. But how could I see, if I were right there? Panic came over me as I realized the body on the ground was entirely lifeless. There was no color in my cheeks, no rhythmic rise and fall of my chest. I was there, but I was here, too.
From high above, I floated toward the still body. I reached out with my hand, and saw that it was no more than a thin vapor. I touched the body, and was jolted down into it.
My world turned to black. This time, there was no thought.
Chapter Seventeen – A Latent Ability
The first part of me to regain feeling was my head. And the first thing I felt was pain. Pain, and immense pressure, running from the bottom of my neck all the way up to my temples. It was like my head had been stuffed full of cotton, and then stuffed some more. I opened my eyes slowly. The tiniest movement threatened to send a wave of unbearable pain across my forehead. It was dark. All I could see above me were the thick branches of many trees.
“Tracy? Oh thank god.”
My ears screamed in protest. The noise was deafening. It sent another surge of pain through my head.
“Not so loud,” I said in the barest whimper. My entire body was numb, like an appendage that had lost circulation and fallen asleep. I tried to push myself up. My arms refused to respond.
“No, no! Stay right there.” The voice was softer this time. I recognized Madison. Her head popped out above me. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been through hell and back,” I groaned.
Surprisingly, she grinned. “At least you’re sentient now.”
“What… happened?” I managed. “Are we still… in the forest?” I knew that was a stupid question as soon as it left my lips. I could see the trees above me.
“A ways away from the fire, but still in the same clearing,” she told me.
“What… happened?” I asked.
Madison looked over her shoulder, and patted my arm gently. “I’ll go get Liz. She can explain everything.”
“What…? No, wait!” I started to protest, but she had already gone.
As I waited, lying on my back like a vegetable, the feeling returned to my body. I tested my toes, flexing and relaxing them in turn, then moved my fingers. They seemed to be working fine. The strength came back to my arms, then to my legs, then to the remainder of my body. The pain in my head was already starting to fade, although it was still an order of magnitude worse than any migraine. I heard approaching footsteps to my right, and slowly rotated my head in that direction. Liz was coming toward me, looking relieved and furious both at the same time.
“Do you have any idea what you did today?” she asked as she knelt down beside me.
I blinked a few times, thinking back. Memory of what happened earlier was… splotchy. I remembered coming out to the lake, and meeting Liz there. I remembered a fire, powerful and all-consuming, burning in the middle of some type of clearing. In fact, I could still feel its heat against my body. Wait. Heat? There was something else that gave off heat. A crystal, one that had nearly burned my hand to a crisp. When I thought of that, all the other memories came crashing back. The blue light, the desperate fight against Ashley, and the agonizing time in that ever-shifting void.
“Oh yes, you remember,” Liz said as she watched my expression change. “You probably have no idea what it was though, do you?”
I looked at her, and felt anger bubbling up. Whatever it was, it had threatened my life. Liz was the one who brought me here. This was her fault!
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Trust me. I had no idea Ashley would react that way.”
Wait. That meant she knew what Ashley did? Then again, how could she not? She had been the one to show me the crystal in the first place, and the one to get so excited when I explained what I felt with it in my hand. The crystal seemed key to everything.
“You need to explain,” I said simply. “Everything.”
“Everything?” she blew out a breath. “Where to begin? You’re special, Tracy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re special, and so am I, and so are Madison, Eve, and Ashley.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you think? Do you think just anybody would have experienced what you just went through?”
“I… don’t know.” It was all too much to think about. My head still hurt.
“No, Tracy. There aren’t many people in the world who have the ability.”
“What ability?”
“To use the crystals!” She sighed. “Maybe I’m being too harsh. I keep forgetting you’ve never been exposed to this before, that you don’t know anything about them, yet. Let me start from the beginning.”
“Please.”
“Remember at the party, when you found me senseless on the floor?”
“Yes…?”
“Do you know what happened before that?”
“You’re asking me? How on earth would I know? I wasn’t there!”
“Not to me, Tracy, but to you.”
“Oh.” Could she be talking about the blue light? Then again, what else was out of the ordinary? “I saw some sort of light. Streaming out from under the door. It covered everything in that room. Time seemed to, I don’t know, sort of… stop. Nobody could move under the light. Not even me.”
“But your mind still
worked. Right? You could still see what was going on around you, still think and perceive what was happening?”
“That’s right. How do you know about that?”
“That’s your super-sensitivity, Tracy. Each of us has it.” She motioned behind her, where Madison and Eve were now standing. I hadn’t even seen them approach.
“But not as strongly as you,” Eve put in. “You’re the most powerful we have ever seen.”
“Most powerful what?” I asked. None of this was making any sense. I pushed myself so I could see all the girls at once. My muscles were stronger than before.
“Careful, careful,” Liz said, gently pushing me back down by my shoulders. “You don’t want to over-exert yourself yet.” I tried to resist her, to show I was better, but her grip was strong. I was forced back down.
“You have to tell me what’s going on,” I said. It felt like I had stumbled upon some sort of secret coven!
“Actually, that’s not far from the truth,” Liz laughed, and I realized abashedly I had spoken that last part out loud. But it was her answer that scared me more.
“Just who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Liz, and that’s Madison, and that’s Eve, Tracy. But, of course, that’s not what you meant. What we are, are crystal seekers. As are you.”
Crystal seekers? It sounded like some sort of gypsy, new-age mysticism. I said as much.
“You won’t be so dismissive once you learn the truth,” Liz said ruefully. “You see, there are special types of crystals that exist only on Traven Island. They aren’t found anywhere else in the world, as far as we know. The one I gave you earlier was one of them. A weak one, and very small, but, still, you managed to draw on its power.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That feeling you described to us, Tracy, of your hand going on fire? That was you awakening the power of the crystal.”
“But it’s just a piece of rock,” I said. “What type of power can it possibly have?”
“More than you can ever imagine,” Liz said longingly, half to herself. Then she snapped her attention back to me. “It’s not just a piece of rock, Tracy, and you’re not just a regular girl. There’s something different about you, just as there is about all of us. It allows you to tune into the power of the crystal.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not that difficult, really. The crystals harness a particular type of power. How it came to be, or where it came from, none of us pretend to know. What we do know is that we’re able to draw upon that power. Each of us – you included – is able to do that to unlock the power that’s contained within.”
“What are you talking about? I never claimed to unlock any sort of power…?”
“Ah, but you already have. You’re just not aware of it yet. It comes as naturally to you as breathing does. It wasn’t like that for all of us. Some, like Eve and Ashley, had to train their minds to draw the power.”
“Ashley’s here?” I said, and a surge of panic rose up inside. I remembered what she’d done to me, or rather, tried to do. I dreaded meeting her while I was in this condition.
“Relax,” Liz said, “she’s out cold. That’s your doing, too. You could have killed her.”
“What? But… she attacked me!”
“And you fought back, and won. Do you really think the struggle you went through was something ordinary, or normal? You drew upon the power of the crystal to defend yourself, and I must say, did a mighty fine job.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I saw it play out before my own eyes.”
“You… saw it?
“We all did. I don’t think any of us was expecting Ashley to react the way she did.”
“If I had known,” Madison put in, “I would have never left you alone.”
“Alone? But you were right beside me—”
“But you were the only one who had the crystal in her hand,” continued Madison. “That allowed you to fight against what Ashley was trying to do to you.”
“And what was that, exactly?”
“Oh, you know. Maim you beyond recognition. Maybe even kill you,” Liz said conversationally. All I could do was stare. I knew Ashley had hated me, and I suspected that she had tried to kill me, but to hear it confirmed by Liz, to hear it out in the open, was like a slap in the face. What had I done to provoke her so? “I went for my crystal, but by the time she had the power flowing through hers, there was nothing left for me to do.”
“Wait,” I said, putting two and two together, “when Ashley activated the crystal, that was when I saw the blue light. Right?”
“Bingo,” Liz said. “Whenever a crystal is activated, your mind goes into overdrive. You know how the brain works. Right? Neurons fire in supremely complex patterns, giving rise to thoughts?” I nodded. Something like that sounded similar to what I’d learned in science class. “Well, when a crystal is activated, neurons in your brain start to fire considerably faster. It doesn’t happen to just anyone, of course – just those of us who can draw power from the crystals. Because your brain is working at a significantly increased level, everything around you appears to stop completely. In reality, though, nothing really stops. Time flows the same as before. The slowdown is just an illusion that’s created when your brain works so much faster than before.”
“What about the blue light?”
“That’s the visible aura from the crystal,” Liz answered. “It’s what allows you to draw power from a crystal. Our minds are in tune with the aura which renders it visible to us.”
“So then, back at the party—?”
“Was when I activated a crystal,” Liz finished for me. “And when you came looking afterwards, we first realized you might be like us.”
My head was spinning with all this information. It was coming out of nowhere. It was totally unexpected. And yet, on some intuitive level, everything was falling into place. The strange occurrences were making more sense than before. I didn’t know whether to be frightened, excited, or relieved.
“But I still don’t understand one thing,” I said. “What does activating a crystal actually do?”
“It gives us power to change the world,” Liz said longingly.
“What?”
“You already experienced it firsthand. You even described the feeling to us. The flash of fire in your hand? That was the crystal waking the latent ability within you. And when you fought off Ashley? That was you drawing on the crystal’s power. You saw what she did with the bonfire.”
“Then…” I gulped, reliving the memory, “…then all of you saw what was happening with the flame?”
Liz nodded, as did Madison and Eve. “We all saw it, but were powerless to interfere, since none of us had our own crystals within reach.”
“Lucky for you,” Eve spoke up, “you managed to absorb the energy Ashley was controlling with the crystal in your hand.”
“This is crazy!” I said, pushing myself up. The headache had finally subsided enough for me to think clearly, and my muscles were now strong enough to support me. I went on hands and knees, then pushed myself up onto my legs. I wavered for a moment, thinking I’d fall back down, but steadied myself just in time. Liz and the two other girls watched me silently. “All of you are crazy!” I exclaimed. “This isn’t… normal.”
“Of course it’s not normal, Tracy,” Liz said smoothly, “but neither is what you are.”
“What I am, apparently, is enough to nearly get myself killed!” I shuddered at the memory of the perpetual void.
“After sickness,” Madison said quietly to Liz. Liz nodded.
“What’s after sickness?” I asked cautiously.
“Your mind goes into overdrive when another crystal is activated, anywhere around you,” Liz explained. “Usually, nothing happens past that. But if you’re the one to use the crystal, , and you draw too much power… well, the activity of the brain becomes exponentially higher. Unless you train yourself, your brain, it just can’t
handle it. You get hallucinations, OBEs, and the mesh holding reality together seems to fade away.”
“OBEs?”
“Out of Body Experiences,” Madison chimed in. “Everyone’s is different.”
“You mean… all that I felt before I woke up?”
Liz nodded. “Some of us see visions afterwards, others swirling arrays of colors, and yet others nothing at all. It all depends on how experienced you are, and how much energy you pulled through the crystal.”
“I still don’t understand what using a crystal does. Why would you want any of that?”
Liz smiled knowingly. “Why don’t we show you?”
I hesitated. There were too many secrets here. Even with everything I’d been told, I felt like I was just barely scratching the surface. Too little of this was making sense, and too much of it contradicted every iota of common sense I had. I nearly died after what Ashley did. How did I know any of this was going to be safe? And that experience in the void – the after sickness? – was more than just a simple hallucination. I knew, deep down, that I could have been lost forever in there. No, this was all too much for me.
“I don’t think so,” I said quite strongly. “I’ve had more than enough for one day.” I stepped backwards, away from the girls, set on leaving. “What’s the way back?” The forest was dark, as night had fallen a long time ago.
“Tracy,” Liz said quietly, stepping toward me. “Now that you know about us, you can’t just run away.”
“Oh? Well you can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to!”
“We’ve shown you a secret that we have sworn to guard with our lives. You can’t simply turn your back on that.”
“I never asked for it!” I spun around, striding to the edge of the clearing. Every direction looked the same. I could barely make out the shape of the girls behind me, or the shadows of the trees in front. I was keen on leaving, now.
“Even if you run, you won’t get away,” Liz said quietly.
“Watch me,” I retorted. I knew I had come from here somewhere. I searched through the edge of the trees, seeking the path back.
