CHAPTER 3
A Noticeable Difference
∞
“What were you two doing earlier?” Carol Anne asked as they
all sat down for lunch. Carol had made
potato soup and Whitney was shoveling it in as if it were her last meal. Her silver eyes stared at nothing as her
spoon made repetitive round trips from the bowl to her mouth.
“Just messing around,” Tommy said.
“Messing around how?” Carol Anne inquired. “For a while there I thought Whitney was
going to have a heat stroke! She was
laying out there sweating and panting like she was running a marathon!”
“Well,” Tommy said trying to think of an excuse. He knew that he couldn’t be honest with her
because she was very protective and would freak out over the truth. “In a way she was. Whitney’s out of shape mom and we were
jogging together. She needs more
exercise.”
“You mean you were jogging in your head then? I hardly think that’s any way to get her in
shape Tommy! If she wants to exercise
then I’ll talk to Blake when he gets home and we’ll get her a treadmill so she
can work out for real.”
“This is better.
Trust me. Look at the way she’s
eating,” Tommy said pointing at Whitney.
“She’s not going to want a treadmill and working out ‘in my head’ is
just as effective as doing it for real.”
Whitney slid her bowl forward. “More please,” she said. “Bread and butter too!” she added with a
smile. “It’s really good Aunt Carol.”
Carol Anne got up from the table with a smile on her
face. She grabbed Whitney’s bowl,
refilled it and brought it back to Whitney.
Then she buttered a slice of bread and brought that to her. “Well this is different,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard her compliment
my cooking. How come she’s not with you
right now Tommy?” she asked.
Carol Anne was referring to the fact that Whitney wasn’t
currently piggybacking with Tommy.
Whitney almost always ‘rode along’ with Tommy when he was around. She didn’t need to in order to eat, or move
around the house, because she didn’t have to.
She knew the layout of the house so well that she could navigate it
without much effort, and using a spoon in order to eat was no big deal. The reason she wasn’t piggybacking at that
point was because Whitney was reveling in her victory over Tommy and she wanted
to do it without rubbing it in Tommy’s nose.
Tommy knew this even though Whitney didn’t say before she withdrew from
him. She didn’t have to, however,
because Tommy was reveling in her victory too.
He was proud of her.
He couldn’t tell his aunt any of that, however, so he just
shrugged. “I think she’s happy mom. I think she liked working out.”
Whitney continued to slaughter her meal as intensely as a
dog goes after her owner’s shoe when the owner isn’t looking. She dunked her buttered bread into her soup
and tore into it, and it was almost as if Whitney was privy to the
conversation, because she did it with a smile on her face. It was a rare sight lately and Carol Anne
definitely noticed. So did Tommy.
“Well just be careful Tommy.
You know how delicate she is,” Carol Anne said.
We are being careful
mom, Tommy thought to himself as he scooped his own bite. We’re
using fake swords and everything!
Whitney finished her second bowl and got up from the
table. She walked over to the sink,
turned on the cold water, and began splashing her face. Carol Anne got back up, grabbed Whitney’s
bowl and spoon, and waited for Whitney to finish so she could rinse them.
Whitney rejoined with Tommy as soon as she cooled off in the
sink. We gonna finish our battle Tommy? She asked him. We
still didn’t do your round yet. I got up
to twenty three, but I’m curious to see how far you can get.
Well actually sis,
your score was a lot higher than that, he thought back to her. If you
want to figure your actual score then you count every block you made until I
scored my point.
So seventy-three then!
she announced proudly. I already recounted them in my head and I
blocked you seventy-three times!
That sounds about
right, Tommy thought to her with a laugh.
But we do have to be careful. Mom got a little worried about you. I guess you were breathing pretty heavy on
the lawn chair.
Careful! She
responded. There’s no careful in sword fighting!
Tommy scooped the last of his soup and stood up from the
table. Whitney was eager to continue their
experiment, but she wasn’t the only one.
He was too. “We’re going back
out,” Tommy announced.
“Not before you rinse your bowl you’re not,” Carol Anne
said.
Tommy grabbed his bowl and rinsed it. Whitney went to Carol Anne and gave her a hug. “Thanks for letting us have some fun Aunt
Carol,” Whitney said as she wrapped her arms around her aunt.
Carol Anne hugged her back, but she didn’t take her eyes off
of Tommy. “It’s no problem Whitney. I think it’s a good idea for you to get some
exercise even if it is just jogging in your brother’s head.”
Whitney turned her head toward Tommy and smiled which was a
pretty rare sight. Whitney almost never
liked looking at herself through his eyes and, for the past couple of years,
almost never smiled. The family was
trying so hard to keep the talents of the twins a secret that Whitney was
virtually never allowed to go anywhere.
She had been fighting the caged rat feeling for so long that she was
beginning to give up on the idea of having any kind of freedom. It was taking a toll on her and everyone in
the family was starting to worry about her depressed state of mind.
“Yeah,” Whitney said giving Tommy a mental wink as she said
it. “I think I like jogging. I even beat Tommy in a race,” she added as
she pulled away from Carol Anne who seemed reluctant to let her niece go.
∞
“Be prepared to suffer my wrath,” Whitney said to Tommy when
they were back in the arena. The crowd
jumped to their feet and roared their approval at her comment. Whitney drew both of her swords and planted
her feet firmly in front of Tommy who drew his two swords.
“Now who’s the dork?” he asked her.
Whitney smiled at him eagerly, lowered her brow and said,
“I’m only a dork if you beat me, so give it your best shot.”
This was a different version of Whitney than he was used to,
but a part of him liked it. His dreams
were horrifying, but his dreams were trying to tell him something that he
thought was important. They weren’t just
telling him that there was danger lying in wait for their future. That message was there in a very obvious way,
but there was more to it than that. His
dreams were also telling him that Whitney wasn’t who she was supposed to be. Whitney wasn’t supposed to be a naïve young
girl who was coddled and protected. She
wasn’t supposed to be simple, and she wasn’t supposed to be afraid. She was supposed to be fierce, and the one
that struck fear, instead of the one who experienced it.
Whitney’s feline way of toying with him seemed to be
over. She struck out without warning
swinging both of her swords simultaneously, and then spinning backwards to
deliver an elbow. Tommy reacted quickly
enough to deflect both sword strikes, but he didn’t see the elbow coming.
“Uggh,” he called out as he was knocked backward. The crowd roared and stomped their feet in
approval.
“Does that count?” Whitney asked. “Or is it just when I get you with my
swords.”
“Just the swords,” he said through gritted teeth, “but that
was pretty effective. I didn’t see it
coming.”
“You liked that eh?” she asked as she went back to pacing in
front of him. Tommy kept his peripheral
vision on her feet. He knew that her
strike would begin there. “So you’re at
two then.”
Tommy nodded but he stayed focused. Whitney was surprisingly quick. She was way quicker than Jacob had been and
he knew that he was going to have to stay on his toes. He was right.
Her feet began to dance like a boxer as she spun for another
strike. She didn’t spin just once. She used the momentum of a double spin to add
extra force. Tommy took a step back as
she began her second rotation and prepared for the double strike that he knew
was coming. He blocked the first, but
somehow Whitney was a step ahead of him.
After delivering the first blow she reversed her momentum, changed
direction and delivered and undercut blow that struck him in his inner-thigh.
“Point!” Whitney squealed in delight as the crowd hopped to
their feet. The arena filled with a
deafening roar and Whitney waited for the excitement to die down. “You only blocked three! Should I slow down for you?”
It was a good question and Tommy laughed at himself
internally. The day before he had
dominated Jacob as the two of them fought so he knew how Whitney felt. Sure it felt good to win decisively, but
there was also the feeling that suggested you should slow down so that your
opponent didn’t feel too overwhelmed.
“To be honest … maybe just simplify your attacks a
little. I don’t know where you’re coming
up with this skill Whitney, but somehow you’re ahead of me.”
“You mean I’m actually better than you at something?” she
asked with a smile.
And she was. There
was no doubt about that. Her movements
were fluid and graceful, but most of all Whitney moved with a speed that was
shocking. There was no doubt that this
part of Whitney was the same part that he had been dreaming of. There were differences in tactic and
execution for sure, but the speed was there.
Her speed was even recognized by one of the tattoos that she had on her
face in his dreams. One of the runes tattooed
on her cheek was a lightning bolt.
That didn’t mean that Whitney’s skill was the same in the
arena as it was in his dreams, however.
In his dreams it was obvious that she had been trained to fight. Her movements, stance, and execution
demonstrated that. When she fought in
his dreams she fought like a soldier. In
the arena she fought purely by gut and moved by instinct. Tommy didn’t know where she would end up
getting that training. His dreams were
as silent on that topic as they were on how and why she would end up getting
the tattoos, and they were also silent on what the source of their enemy foes
was.
“Somehow yes. You are
better,” he admitted.
“Say it again,” she said.
“I like hearing it.”
Tommy stood there and just looked at her.
“Say it!” she said again playfully. She raised her swords and smiled at him
slyly. “Or I’ll make you say it.”
The crowd cheered at her playful threat.
“You are better,” he laughed. “Okay!
Do it again, just keep it simple wouldja?” he added as he brought his swords
to the ready.
“For now,” she said.
“I’ll just pretend you’re Tom Tom Binks,” she quipped.
Tommy laughed at her stupid joke of comparing him to Jar Jar
and waited for her to resume her strikes.
“I guess I should just start off with a repetitive one two
pattern. I’ll start off slow so that you
can see what I’m going to do and I’ll increase the speed until you can’t keep
up. How’s that sound?”
He saw what she was getting at. It was her speed that he was having
difficulty dealing with and she was offering him a way to increase his own
speed to match. He nodded his
acceptance.
“Now one thing that I see you doing wrong is that you start
off looking at my eyes, but then your eyes move to my body. That’s never going to work. You’ll just end up getting lost. Stay focused here,” she said pointing to her
eyes.
When the idea of creating the arena and practicing with
swords came to him he had pictured himself teaching Whitney what he knew about
fighting. Somehow it was turning out to
be just the opposite. He was standing in
front of her and she was offering her guidance and insights to him. It was a humbling experience, but he had no
choice but to accept what she was offering, and for the most part, he didn’t
want to. As humbling as it was, he was
still proud of her. For the first time
in her life she had found something that she was naturally good at.
Whitney began slinging her swords at him. The pattern that she was using was very
similar to the pattern that a boxer would use on a speed ball. She started off slow so he could get the
rhythm—bringing one sword across her body, followed by the other, then
criss-crossing on the outside of her body, bringing the sword up and over, and
then across again at a downward angle.
Tommy matched her movements and began to deflect her blows.
At first she stood in one place and so did he. They simply continued the pattern, her
delivering blows, and him deflecting them.
She gradually increased the pace as they went and Tommy kept up with
her. She began to slowly move forward so
that he could get used to moving his feet as well as deflecting. He moved back to counter her forward movement
and it almost felt like they were dancing.
“My eyes Tommy—lock in on them. Nothing else exists, but my eyes.”
It was harder to do then she made it sound. His eyes did seem to want to drift to her
hands and it was almost as if he were watching a tennis match instead of fencing
with her. He committed himself to
looking directly at her eyes like she was telling him and before long he could
tell that doing that was helping.
Each time that Tommy got used to the rhythm of her strikes
she would increase the pace. It went
from the slow melodic rhythm of a ticking clock, to the medium pace of a
horse’s trot. Tommy’s confidence began
to increase with the speed of her movements.
When he was used to that she increased it further so that it was more
like two horses pulling a wagon, then four horses. Within five minutes she was flinging her
swords at him like a humming bird and Tommy’s confidence began to drain from
him. Keeping up with her began to get
more difficult and as hard as he tried he knew that if she found it within
herself to go any faster he wouldn’t be able to.
Then the greedy look in her eyes returned and it was game
over.
∞
Carol Anne bent to Whitney’s body with a damp cold washrag
and dabbed Whitney’s forehead with it.
The twins had tried to convince them to go off into the woods while they
‘did their exercise’ but she wasn’t having it.
They could do their ‘exercise’ right there in the living room where she
could keep an eye on them—thank you very much.
And she was glad that she had insisted on it too. Both of them were panting excessively. Both of their temperatures were elevated, and
both of them were very restless in their comatose states. They both needed to have an eye kept on
them. She didn’t like this whole helm
thing or whatever they called it, and she was going to make sure that nothing
went wrong; as much as she could at least.
“Uggh,” Tommy uttered as his body lie on the couch next to
Whitney’s. Carol Anne shot a nervous
glance toward him, but continued to dab Whitney’s forehead.
She didn’t like this.
She didn’t like it at all.
CHAPTER 4
The Black City
And
The Eyes of her Killer
∞
Tommy lay in his bed recounting what he considered to be a
successful day. What? Whitney had thought to him after they retired from the second
part of their session. I let you get to seventy-two! He couldn’t help but to laugh with her
when she made that comment. She was
finding a part of herself that neither of them previously knew had
existed. It was that part of her that
his baseball coach referred to as the ‘spirit of competition.’
He could relate to it because he had that himself. It was that part of you that drove you to be
better than the person or people that you were up against. The part of you that wanted to win and the
part that drove you to strive to become better at whatever it was that you were
doing.
Whitney had it and he was glad that she did. Her last move had been so quick that there
was no way he could match it. He didn’t
think he would ever be able to match that kind of speed and she had told him
why she did it right at that point. She
had done it so that he wouldn’t get to seventy-three. She wanted to make sure that her score was
still at least one better than his.
And the truth was her score was only that low because she
was out of shape. Tommy was athletic and
participated in sports. He worked out at
school, and he followed up by working out at home too. He lifted weights, jogged, jumped rope, and
played in sports every chance he got. He
was in good shape. Whitney wasn’t. She never worked out at all because she had
no reason to. He couldn’t help but
wonder what she would be like when her body got used to it.
He had a feeling she was going to be pretty amazing.
Blake had noticed the change in Whitney too, and he had
realized it almost as soon as he walked through the door.
“I see that someone’s in a chipper mood today,” he commented
as Whitney gave him a hug. The fact that
she greeted him that way was probably enough to clue him in. It wasn’t that Whitney never hugged either of
them. She sometimes did, but it wasn’t
very often. More often than not she
would greet him with a simple “hi Uncle Blake,” and leave it at that.
So it appeared that they were heading into a new chapter in
their lives. Tommy’s only hope was that
it would be enough. Lately sleeping had
become something that he dreaded because every night was filled with dreams of
his sister’s future death. This night,
however, he was looking forward to going to sleep, because they had done
something that might just have the potential to change that.
Tommy closed his eyes and quickly drifted off to the city of
black.
∞
When he opened his eyes again he wasn’t in Burnsville
anymore. Burnsville was so far away that
he would have no idea of how to get back home again—if he had to walk that
is.
When Tommy’s eyes opened he was back in the Black City. That’s the way that he thought of it because
that’s what it was. The entire city was
black. Every wall, every tower, and
every conical spire was made of the same black metallic material. It was a city, but the city existed as one
humungous castle. The castle itself was as
big as the entire town of Burnsville and was cut into a mountain that seemed to
be made of the same thing that the city was.
Tommy didn’t have a body when he awoke. He never did.
His existence in the city was just the perception of it. He had no control over where he went or what
he saw. He saw whatever he dreamed of
seeing and that was it.
At first all Tommy saw were the black walls of a
hallway. He didn’t see any people, or
hear any noises. It was just him
hovering through the darkened walkway.
He drifted down this walkway until he came to a room that he recognized
very well. He had seen it plenty of
times before. It was the room that his
sister was supposed to die in
.
The room itself wasn’t any ordinary room. It was more like a chamber. It was large, had no windows, and had only
the one single door that he drifted through to enter. The only thing in the room was a chair that
seemed to be made out of that same metal that the rest of the city was made of. It was as if the people that made the city
only had one building material to work with.
So everything was made from it.
The really unique thing about the chair was that it seemed
to be a part of the room. It wasn’t as
if the chair were sitting on top of the floor, but a part of it. Black chains stemmed from the floor on either
side of the chair and more black chains stemmed from in front of the feet of
it. As always, when he first entered the
room, there was nobody in it. Then his
perspective would change and Whitney would enter wearing her white tunic, her
bandolier, and of course, the hilts of her swords could be seen poking up from
either side of her head. Her silver eyes
seemed to pierce through him as if he weren’t really there, but that was because
he wasn’t really there. Whoever she was
looking at was behind the place where his perspective began.
Whitney never came into the room alone, but Tommy had a
difficult time putting a name to the animal that came in with her. In essence it was a dog, but it was no
ordinary dog. The shoulders of the beast
were as high as her waist and even though the head of it was dog-like, it was
also not dog-like. It was as if the dog
had been mixed with a lion, and then mixed with a bear, and then mixed with a dragon. It had all of these similarities
combined. It had hair, but only on its
shoulders, neck and the mane that it wore.
The rest of its body had scales like a dragon’s. Its teeth and jaws were long and powerful and
its paws had claws designed for tearing flesh.
“I suppose you are here to question me?” a male voice would
always ask in his dream.
“There is that,” Whitney would always reply. “But I am also here to collect what is not
yours to keep!”
“It’ll take more than one single Prim to get them from
me! It would take an army to rip them
from my soul”
“You know the King actually told me to do just that!”
Whitney informs him. “But the Prim are
busy people and one single Moog doesn’t deserve that much attention! I’ll deal with you myself!”
It’s her final mistake.
Tommy doesn’t understand how it is that Whitney could ever believe that
she could match this creature. At first
he cannot see it because it is behind him, but the thing behind him informs her
that he has a surprise for her. He tells
her that he took something from someone she knows very well. She doesn’t believe him or if she does
believe him she acts like she would love a challenge from him.
Tommy doesn’t know what that something is. All he knows it that the chains break, the
dog is slung backward into the metal wall so hard that it loses consciousness
and the next thing he knows a powerful grey tail is wrapped around her
neck. There are finger-like appendages
on the end of that tail that dig their way into her mouth and her silver eyes
begin to fade to white. He has seen Whitney
move so fast in his other dreams that he cannot believe that there is something
out there that can move faster, but there is something faster. It wraps its tail around her in less than a
blink of an eye and Whitney never stands a chance.
Tommy always screams out to her in his dreams, but she never
hears him, and the next thing Tommy knows he sitting in his bed and he can
barely hear himself screaming, but Carol Anne and Blake hear him and they come
running into his bedroom to see what’s wrong with him.
Its eyes are the last thing he remembers from his
dream. Just before it fades out he sees its
eyes and they are as silver as Whitney’s, but they are slitted like a serpent’s.
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