I am sure that Elzbeth never meant to teach us as much as she did that day.
I am sure of that, as sure I am of my memory of the look of terror on her face when…
Well, I'll not get ahead of myself just yet.
I felt myself letting go of everything, listening to the Guide that hid in Elzbeth's voice.
When I was ten, twelve even, I thought Elzbeth was special. I thought some secret and twisted god had sent her to guide my brother and I. And I followed her every word, her every instruction, out of respect for her.
But then, I turned thirteen, a most magickal age for me.
My moonflow came, thick and dark red between my legs one night. But painless, not the monster of cramping and agony that my mother and sister and cousin had warned me about.
When I was thirteen, and I sat cross-legged before Elzbeth, listening to another lesson, I learned things she never meant for me to learn.
As I eased into my sacred place of magick, the place of NoPlace as I had always known it to be, something changed.
I didn't get to go to Elzbeth's that much. And Daru'El was being held back as well. Our father had found things for him to do. Our family was trying to grow a new crop, turnips or something. Some sort of underground tuber or root that had the foulest taste, but sold well at the market. So my brother had much work to do in the fields. And when we got free time, we stole away together to Elzbeth's now.
She had taught us so much in six years and more. I knew she felt she had taught us everything she knew.
But I also knew she was wrong.
There were things we had to learn, especially if we were going to make even one of my dreams of the future come true.
In my sacred place, I listened to Elzbeth, guiding my brother and I on what to do, this time. I had listened enraptured to her speak of "no limitations but those we made for ourselves". What a concept!
The only thing that kept my dreams from coming true was…me?
How absurd, my brother had said to me instantly.
How true, I had replied back immediately.
And he had been silent ever since.
I thought on it. I thought of what I wished. Elzbeth had warned us since we were children to be very careful of what we wished for, what was best for the world. I remembered those lessons, and the stories and fables she told us of the tricky gods and spirits that were always around and ready to make careless children's wishes come true. I was always afraid to want for anything. What if it hurt someone? What if it wasn't a good thing to want for, after all?
But now, in this special place, I could make my wishes come true. Really, I could do it ahead of time, and know what would happen before I made it real.
It was the future, in all its possibilities. It was a map before my spirit eyes, each possibility like a river or road, drawn out for me to use a fingertip and follow, to see how 'things' would end.
I gulped, deep inside, at the wealth of that, at the depth of that concept.
I could…know…everything!
It was almost too much for my mind to hold onto. I struggled. I felt I couldn't breathe. Everything, it was so big and overwhelming and burdening.
Everything!
Then, as I felt a weight on my brain heavy enough to crush me out of existence, I heard Elzbeth's voice.
But more importantly, I heard the voice of the Guide.
Each of us is here for a reason.
Just as Elzbeth said we all have magick, so too do we all have a purpose.
And sadly, most of us never know that purpose. It can be as important as being the one who saves another from say, a rushing team of horses pulling a driverless cart down a road at a great speed. Or saving someone from snakebite by getting bit ourselves instead. It could be even simpler, something like being the one who smiled at the right time to the right person, and affecting their mood for the rest of the day subconsciously, without you or they even being aware of it. And that person whom you affect may be very integral to the Time and Space of the world you and they exist in. It may affect them immediately. Or it may come back in years, decades, centuries, down the road that is History. Either way, you have a purpose.
And Elzbeth had one too.
And I knew it, from that point on.
My spirit eyes turned to Elzbeth's voice as she spoke. In my NoPlace, everything from the real world 'existed', just not necessarily in the same form as it did in the material world. Elzbeth's voice showed as a bolt of pink flashing electricity. And I turned to it, aware suddenly of something that had always been there. But that before I had not 'seen'.
It was my first experience with a Guide. Oh, what is a Guide, you ask? Let me tell you, through what I have learned over these many years.
Magick is indeed in all of us. Some of us are doomed to ignore it, forget it, and lose the ability to control or touch it.
Some of us, on the other side of the scale, are destined to nurture it from the minute we become aware of it and onwards, never stopping. It becomes a part of our every day lives. And this day, magick became a part of the material world for Daru'El and I. Without Elzbeth, it couldn't and wouldn't have happened. For a very good reason, a 'guiding force' had been placed in an appropriate person that would come into our lives, the lives of my brother and myself. A 'Guide' is a force just like that, one that exists beneath the conscious world, secret and subtle, but still there. It guides our actions in the direction whatever force that put it there intends.
I turned to one side, floating towards the Guide that was the bolt of electric static wavering towards me. I reached out a hand, and 'felt' the shock of power that traveled this crackling beam. It was then that the Guide became aware that I knew of it.
It became aware of my Awareness.
Again, I touched the beam. But this time, I did not pull away. In my sacred space of NoPlace, I drew the bolt to me, and felt it enter my chest and touch my secret parts, felt it spread wings within my spirit skin and curl around my soul. I absorbed it, breathed it in through my nose and out through my mouth, just like Elzbeth had said to do. Only I knew now that it had never been Elzbeth teaching us. It had been the Guide, the secret purpose that Elzbeth existed for.
I drew it into me, and I breathed and breathed and breathed. The more I touched it, the more it flowed power into my being, the less I breathed out, the less I let go of.
This was something to bring into me, to take inside like food for my soul and to digest for a century or more.
I could feel my real self smiling, my head dropping back, as I breathed in the Guide, all the knowledge and all the power of it.
Some benevolent god had indeed put the Guide within Elzbeth, had instilled her with a purpose. That purpose was being fulfilled, here and now, by my acceptance and even hunger for everything she knew and could give us. Everything she had ever learned, and more, I now knew.
A tear rolled down my cheek, a tear of joy.
And I thought to myself, Daru'El will be so pleased when he finally learns all that I have learned.
As the bolt of power oozed into my being, I felt it being lessened. Everything it had to give me was given. And I tasted things that were not a part of it. Things that were actually a part of the person that was Elzbeth.
That was not right, I knew. So I breathed out the things that tasted of Elzbeth, the personal and intimate things, the things I now know were her memories and experiences and thoughts. Those things I 'let go', as she had taught me to during meditation.
Maru'El!
That was Daru. I turned to him, glowing gleefully. I wondered what he would look like here, in my sacred NoPlace. But before I could, I was jolted out of my meditation by a scream. I opened my eyes.
What have you done?!?!? Daru'El was looking at me, his face a mask of disgust. I looked to where Elzbeth had been sitting cross-legged and serene when last I saw her.
And what was there was not Elzbeth, not at all.
It was she…but not.
It is hard to explain what I felt and thought seeing that kind of…thing…for the first time. She was curled in a ball. Her hands were on her ears, from which flowed copious amounts of blood. Her nose, her eyes, her lips, all blood-covered and frozen in a face of fear and pain. She rocked gently, her mouth an O shaped scream that had long ago run out of air. Every muscle in her body stretched through her skin, as if tensed as tight and hard as rock or bone.
And the look in those bleeding eyes that wept blood drop after blood drop was like nothing I could have ever imagined.
And like nothing I have ever forgotten.
In those eyes, those that had gazed with rosy optimism on most of the world, there was nothing that was Elzbeth.
"You…you did this!"
I looked at Daru. I knew he was right.
"I didn't mean to…It just happened…she was talking…and there was this light, and this other presence….and…I just ate it…"
"You ate Elzbeth???"
"Yes…no…I don't know!"
I began to cry.
Daru stood up and tried to move to sit Elzbeth up, but his hand on her shoulder was like fire to her. And she writhed and squirmed away from him, desperate to avoid contact.
She was no longer a person. She was a mindless thing, existing in pain and confusion and fear.
Daru stayed there, crouching near her, looking at all the blood. He shook his head.
"We can't leave her like this," he whispered. I could hear pain in his voice, and that open disgust for whatever I had done.
I didn't understand it. I found it all so confusing. That lovely rapturous feeling of taking something that was mine to take, that feel of power flowing into me, knowledge and rightness combined in one. It had resulted in this bleeding shell of someone I had cared for so much, that I had thought I didn't have the power to hurt, ever.
Daru'El eyed me suspiciously. He wasn't afraid, no. But he was very much disgusted and angry. Oh he was so angry with me.
"What did you do, Maru. Tell me everything."
And I did. I told him about the thought of the future being a map, of the sudden weight of the possibility of knowing everything.
"You don't know ANYTHING!"
I told him about the Guide, and the revelation that Elzbeth's purpose had been served, in her teachings and her lessons to us. And that I had merely been 'guided' by what felt 'right' to forego the lesson plan and just take the knowledge that had flowed in that strange beam. It had been mine to take, and it had felt right.
"You need to give it back," he said to me, his voice quiet and dangerous.
I scooted away from him, slowly.
"I don't think I can," I said. "And I'm not sure I should."
"What???"
"It was never her's to have to herself. It was put there for us, for me to find and take and absorb. I didn't know she would end up like this, Daru. But that power was meant for us."
"For you, not for me. Nothing I would do is this wicked."
I glared at him, as if he were challenging me.
"Oh no? What about the glory of owning someone, if even for a moment, of taking their will from them. What have I done that was so wrong? Hmm? I took what was mine to take! Whatever power gave this purpose to Elzbeth, it intended that I find it….I just…did something wrong…"
I chewed my lip, looking to where Elzbeth rocked in a growing pool of her own blood, her hands stoppered over her ears as if she could stop the blood flow.
What had gone wrong?
And as I sat there, I remembered. When I drew in the power, when it had begun to ebb…I had tasted Elzbeth's persona. Her life, her dreams, her hopes, thoughts, memories - all of those had rushed through me. I had breathed them in, and then breathed them out. Only, they hadn't returned to her. At the time, it had meant nothing to me. I hadn't realized the importance of what I was doing.
I supposed now, looking at Elzbeth's shell, that I should never have rushed through that essence. I should have just cut the flow, once the power was done.
"Maru'El, do something!"
I looked at my brother, and in his voice heard once again the boy who was so helpless so often. The brother that needed his sister to help him with whatever was holding him back. This was the brother who fell and scraped his knees and only had me to turn to for comforting. This was the brother who had nightmares of monsters a nd Kinde and reached for me in the night so I could pet his hair and hush his whimpering and stroke his cheek until he fell asleep.
His eyes filled with tears. And he was irresistible.
I knew, briefly, that I was acting because Daru'El wanted me to. He was using his ability on me, his power to take a person, a woman especially, and make her do what he wanted because to her, for that brief moment, it felt like whatever Daru wanted was the best thing in the world.
Conscious of that, I was beyond caring. Anything to keep him from crying.
"I will try."
"No, Maru," his voice came to me, as I began to lower myself into my NoPlace.
"Don't try in this. Do this. There is no point in trying, here. She will die if you don't fix what you destroyed."
I felt myself let go of everything, and then pick it up as I always did. My road, my tool, my guide and my NoPlace.
And waiting to greet me was Elzbeth's life.
It wasn't her, per se. It wasn't anything I could point at and say "That is Elzbeth, there". It was all in pieces, all wavy. But it was her, all spread out and mixed up and unsorted. Looking at it, each piece wafting like a mist or like smoke past my spirit eyes, I knew it was all messed up and distorted because it had gone through me. I had breathed it in and rushed it out so quickly, looking only for traces of power left over from the Guide, that I had ruined the 'cohesiveness' of it.
And there was no way to put it together again.
I sighed, and Daru must have heard me, because I could hear him. His voice shook the foundations of my NoPlace.
Fix what you destroyed, make it right!
I knew he was commanding me. And I knew I had to obey.
But Daru'El was asking me something that shouldn't be. This had been 'right', taking the power from Elzbeth. The destruction of her 'essence' had been carelessness and a mistake, but it had been a part of it. I had to take her in, that much I realized as it all floated around me. Some of it 'felt' like pain, sadness and fear, the things Elzbeth's essence was feeling at the loss of its shell. I wished I hadn't done it the way I had done it. But regardless of what Daru said or thought, this had been right.
Taking Elzbeth's knowledge and power had been right.
Daru was finding out what his powers and abilities were. And I was finding out mine.
Slowly, I calmed myself and let out the distress I was feeling over the hopelessness. I knew I couldn't make Elzbeth 'right' again. What had happened was irreversible.
But, I thought to myself, I could give it back to her. At least I could do that.
I turned, floating as I was in my NoPlace. I began to whisper to the suspended pieces of life that were gathered around my body. I don't know exactly what I said. But I knew it wasn't anything incredibly complex, nothing like the sort of thing I would say now, knowing what I now know. I was just a girl-child, a baby mage, really.
So I said what made sense. I told the pieces where the shell they sought cohesiveness with was. And I told them to go to it.
It was that simple.
It was what they did, too.
Slowly, each mist and puff of smoke, dewy fog, left my NoPlace. They just began to move and shift. Then they weren't there anymore.
I brought myself out of my meditative trance slowly, because jolting awake to awareness of the physical realm like I had had to earlier when Daru'El had made me come back was dangerous. It is always best to let yourself come back slowly, unless you are really adept at moving in and out of your special places.
Daru was lifting Elzbeth in his arms, holding her close. She was no longer tense, but rather like a limp doll of cloth stuffed with beans. Her arms hung down, and her mouth was open. The blood on her face was drying. It wasn't flowing or leaking anymore. For that I was relieved.
But she had lost so much.
"Go home, Maru'El," Daru said from Elzbeth's bed corner.
As if he were still in command of me.
I stood and looked at him and he told me to go home again.
He was still in control.
I walked outside. The sun had sunk low, and the woods were becoming alive with the Mystic Kinde's rejected relatives and kin. I had no fear of them tonight, though.
I walked, and would you believe it, I walked with pride.
I had done something incredible.
And for the next short hours, I would know things Daru'El wouldn't know. I hugged myself as I walked, my arms tight over my budding breasts, my face bright with a secret smile.
If my father beat me when I got home, maybe I would feel guilt, then, as I was reminded of the kind of pain Elzbeth must have felt when I had so emptied her.
But for now, I was powerful and strong. I had knowledge. And Elzbeth had been right.
Anything was possible.
There were so many 'anything's' I intended to bring into reality.
Let's see Daru'El dismiss me then! I thought to myself as I walked to our family's house.
Then we will see, won't we!

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K.Skellington.
Copyright © 2001 [BloodWine Productions]. All rights reserved.
Revised: June 30, 2001 .