Hello, everyone! I'm back, with a new story! This one's called "Speak Life", and it's inspired by the new TobyMac song of the same name. (If you haven't heard the song yet, I advise that you try to listen to it soon. It's a great song.) Anyway, enjoy!
Erica
woke to darkness so pitch-black she could feel it. It felt like spiderwebs on
her skin, tickling and sticky. This, for some reason, thoroughly annoyed her.
Her
annoyance was immediately followed by a half-dozen questions. Where am I? Am I dead, or am I still alive?
What am I doing here? Are there others here? Why is it so dark? Most
pressing of all was the last question she thought of. And who am I anyway?
The
realization that she couldn’t remember anything except her name was accompanied
the cold pinpricks of fear. Erica tried to shrug the fear away, but the
question remained: where was she? Who was she? This bothered her even more than
the darkness. She had a life, didn’t she? Or she’d had one, if she was dead.
She should be able to remember it.
Erica
took a deep breath, and was pleased to find that breathing still seemed to
work. She pushed herself to a sitting position, and felt her hands press
against cold, rough stone, like the floor of some medieval dungeon. Then, just
to make sure she could, she called out, “Where am I?” to the darkness. As she
spoke, a grey glow formed in front of her face for a moment like frosty breath
on a midwinter morning. The glow quickly disappeared, fading into the pressing
blackness.
Erica
frowned. This is odd. Even without
her memories, she felt sure of that fact. She tried again. “Anyone else here?
Hello?” Another glow, this one a bit larger than the first, though it lingered
no longer. Erica frowned. “Come on! If there’s anyone out there, I just want to
know where I am!”
A sigh
came from somewhere in the blackness. “Very well.” The words appeared as a pale
blue swirl that floated into the darkness some distance before disappearing.
“Give us some light!”
What
happened was not so much light breaking away the darkness as it was the
darkness growing transparent enough in one spot that Erica could see. About ten
feet away, three people sat: a sleeping boy no older than six, an old man
seated on a stool with his back against a stone wall, and a young woman a few
years older than Erica herself. They were quite obviously family, perhaps a
grandfather and his grandchildren.
Erica,
however, cared not for this. She could see someone else, and that someone else
seemed to know something about where they were, and that was all that mattered.
“Who are you? What is this place? Where is
this place?” Instead of forming a cloud, her words appeared like tiny fireflies
that zoomed away and circled the young woman’s head before disappearing.
The
young woman sighed again. “I am Emraldra. This is my brother, Lukas, and my
grandfather, Markus Key. We are three of those who have wandered into this
place and cannot find our way out. As for what and where this place is, we
cannot tell you.”
Erica
frowned. “What do you mean, you can’t tell me?”
“I mean
what I said.” Emraldra raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We
cannot tell you, for we do not know. It appears as a castle, but if it is a
castle, it is impossibly large. I have walked for a week without reaching the
other side of it. I cannot tell you where it is, for I do not believe it is
anywhere.”
Erica
crossed her arms. “It has to be somewhere, and it has to have an end. Nothing
is infinite, and everything has to have a location.”
“Then
perhaps this is nothing.” Emraldra shrugged. “I have told you what I know. I
can tell you no more.”
Something
inside Erica suddenly snapped. “You really aren’t very smart, are you,” she
spat. “You live here. I’m willing to bet that people you know have died here. And
you don’t know where you are. What kind of idiot are you?”
Each of
Erica’s words appeared as a fiery ball before her lips. They flew towards
Emraldra like arrows from a bow, striking against her and exploding like tiny
fireworks. With every word that struck her, a wound appeared on Emraldra’s
arms, back, or face as if someone had struck at her with a knife, or perhaps
with a whip. She bore it without a sound, though her face contorted with pain.
Erica
didn’t even notice until she’d finished her tirade. Then and only then did she
see Emraldra leaning against the wall, blood oozing from her cuts. Erica’s eyes
widened. “What- What happened? Who did that to you?”
The old
man glared at Erica as he stiffly rose from his stool. “Who did that to her?”
he growled. “You did that to her, fool girl. And don’t you dare do it again.
Emra never did anything to you. She’s too sweet-hearted to. She tried to help
you, even. And you hurt her for it. You’re lucky, fool girl. Lucky I don’t have
the breath anymore to give you twice what you gave her. Don’t you know that if
you speak hate, you speak hurt?”
Now it
was Erica’s turn to be on the receiving end of those fiery balls. Again and
again, pain rippled across her arms or back. The darkness grew solid again as
she crumpled to the ground. She curled up in a ball, hoping to protect herself
from most of the strikes, but by then they had stopped. “I didn’t mean
anything,” she whispered. “I just wanted to get out of here. Can’t someone tell
me how to get out of here?”
Erica had
spoken so softly she could barely even hear herself. She didn’t expect anyone
else to hear her, and so didn’t expect an answer. She didn’t hear one either.
But something from the old man’s torrent of angry words had stuck in her mind. If you speak hate, you speak hurt. Speak
hate, speak hurt.
Abruptly,
Erica realized what had happened. Words
are more than words here. No. That’s not right. They’re still just words. But
you can see what they do here. That’s what happened. I yelled at her. And
instead of the effects staying inside like they should, the hurt showed on the
surface.
And
if that was true, the opposite should be true. If words brought pain and
darkness, couldn’t they bring healing and light too? But how do you heal with words? Then, suddenly, Erica realized the
answer. She didn’t know how she knew it. She just did. And she knew what she
needed to do.
She
pushed herself into a sitting position, doing her best to ignore the
lightning-bolts of pain that shot through her. “I’m sorry,” she called into the
darkness. Her words formed a stream of golden vapor that floated away and
disappeared. “Emraldra, Mr. Key, even Lukas if you know what happened, I’m
sorry. I didn’t know-” She stopped herself. “No. I did know. That was why I
said them. But I shouldn’t have. I realize that now. Mr. Key, you’re right. I
had no reason to yell at Emraldra. No excuse for saying what I did. I deserved
every word you threw back at me.” She swallowed hard. “I hope you’ll accept my
apology. And maybe, even though I don’t deserve it, you can forgive me.”
Five
minutes of silence passed. Then ten. Erica wondered if her words had been heard
by anyone. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe Emraldra and her family had left. Then,
suddenly, Erica heard Emraldra’s voice. “I forgive you.”
The words
appeared in the form of a golden glow that flowed towards and around Erica
before disappearing. The pain from the word-induced wounds eased. And
Emraldra’s voice came again. “I forgive you. How could I not? I have made the
same mistake many times. And I have been forgiven to it. I cannot withhold the
same mercy from you.” Her voice grew soft. “Speak love, speak life. Speak life,
speak light. Speak hate, speak hurt. Speak hurt, speak darkness. We all have to
learn it. And yet, it seems, if we do learn it, we always seem to forget when
we most need to remember.”
As
Emraldra spoke, the darkness finally lifted. Erica could see her surroundings
now: grey stone walls and floors, extending twenty feet in each direction
before coming to a wall. In each wall was a door, and directly across from
Erica, behind Emraldra and her family, was a stone staircase. She could see
Emraldra, her wounds healed but scars remaining. Erica knew that she had been
healed as well. Hurt or heal. Death or
life. Funny what words can do.
Erica
stood up and shook herself. Slowly, she crossed the empty space between herself
and Emraldra. She extended her hand to the older girl. And, smiling, she said,
“Let’s find a way out of here.”
Her
words glowed golden.
In other news, I will be doing NaNoWriMo next month. For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. It takes place every November, and there's a summer version called Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm very excited, both because I'm using a plotline I've been wanting to write for a while and because I got permission to do it officially this year. (There's an actual site for it where you can sign up, upload your word count, and get free copies if your book if you "win", aka meet your goal.) Also, I applied to be a writer for The Scribe Magazine,a teen creative writing magazine. Anyway, that's about it. Thanks for stopping by!
- Sarah
