Chapter 32
T he second Kyla stepped outside of her grandparent’s cottage, she felt as if she were seeing the world for the first time.
Everything she now looked at harboured a beautiful mirage of colours surrounding it. Everything from people to animals to plants had its own aura that she could now see. The colourful shimmers roughly outlining each living thing constantly changed according to what they wanted, needed, or felt. It fascinated her.
When she closed her eyes, she felt a level of peace and serenity encasing her heart, filling her with warmth and love.
Kyla took her familiar and headed home, her entire world new and refreshed, as if she were born again. Once back home, she wandered out into her back garden to the old willow tree at the bottom. Its colourful aura held a tinge of grey around the outsides which overshadowed the other colours, dulling its beauty somewhat.
The tree had been there ever since Kyla could remember and its size only spoke of its old age. With its age came roots that ran deep and for a long way. Walking up to the tree, Kyla pressed her palms flat against the thick trunk and stilled as a groan vibrated through her mind, almost like an old door complaining of being opened.
She closed her eyes and quietened her mind, allowing the floods of colours to flash through her minds eye, the ever-changing mix of greens, browns, reds, and blues masked with the darkening grey of a slow death. In that instant, Kyla understood that this tree was dying, cell by cell, in a painful undignified death only humanity could bestow upon it.
Kyla imagined its roots, sliding through the dark earth beneath, stretching out like fingers searching for nourishment. Following the vine-like lengths, she skimmed down the veins coloured with red. The closer she came to the ends, the more the groans turned into shrieks of agony, piercing her peaceful mind with shrill echoes of long held pain.
As she came to the open ends of the roots, she saw an array of bright greens and yellows spurting out like an arterial bleed of wonderful energy colours. Beyond that lay nothing but concrete, inches and inches of grey concrete. She understood in that instant that this tree had half of its roots severed when the ground had been dug up to lay the foundations for the houses surrounding it, making Kyla an unknowing accomplice to this tree’s tortured drawn-out end.
Kyla drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had the power to fix this tree, and every other living thing around her. This world carried such beauty, yet humans could do nothing but destroy it.
Envisioning herself picking up the root ends and holding them in her hands like a bundle of straws, Kyla said aloud in her mind telluric currents . Instantly, her mind flooded with a grid map intricately detailed with green, blue, and yellow lines.
Following her gut instinct only, she tried not to focus on what the hell telluric lines were and followed what felt natural and right. With great care, she laid each broken root down onto a new telluric line. As each one nestled into its new home, the screams of agony in her mind lessened as the roots immediately spurted with growth, burrowing into the earth along its new line.
The shades of red around each injured root dissolved and by the time she’d rehomed each cut root, the aura of the tree had lost its grey shadow. When she finally opened her eyes and took her hands away from the tree, she swore she heard a sigh as it seemed to straighten to new heights.
Kyla took several steps back and looked up at the tree, grinning as she realised the depths of her new magical talents. Staring down at her hands, she wriggled her fingers and turned her hands over, wondering if they could be equally evil as they seemed to be healing.
Twelve hours ago, she’d known nothing of this and now, now she had the powers of Mother Theresa and of a nuclear bomb, all accessible through the sheer will of her mind.
Kneeling down on the grass, Kyla pressed her hand against it and closed her eyes as she let out a long breath. Thinking again of the telluric currents, she retrieved her map from moments ago, this time millions of lines all criss-crossed like a crazy spaghetti junction, the jumble of colours and twists and turns almost giving her a headache.
Gran and Grandad , she thought to herself.
In the blink of an eye, a bright purple pulsing ball of energy around the size of a marble shot along the telluric current from Kyla and zig zagged its way through the earth before settling at a point a few miles away that Kyla knew without a doubt was her gran and grandad’s house.
A sinister smirk tweaked at her lips.
Mother, she thought to herself. Tony.
The purple throbbing marble dashed from her grandparents house along the various lines, twisting and turning around the bendy lines. After a good minute or more, it came to a stop at a point that Kyla didn’t recognise.
Street name, she thought.
In her minds eye, a white street sign with black letters flashed before her, spelling out Acorn Drive .
Number?
Two golden numbers of thirty-eight danced underneath her closed eyelids.
Kyla took her hand from the grass and stood up, pulling her phone from her back pocket. Opening Google maps, she typed in Acorn Drive and hit ‘Go’.
The map zoomed in on Minster Arch and pinpointed a horseshoe shaped road with a large green park at the back of it.
Realisation hit Kyla like a sledgehammer. When she’d found her familiar, she’d not only been metres away from them but also their house.
A gentle whine snapped her back to reality. Kyla looked down to see her new friend sat at her feet, looking up at her with big brown eyes full of love and adoration.
“I have to do this,” she said, scratching him behind his ears. “And afterwards, we’ll think of a name for you. When I’m free of all this and my head is clear. Ok?”
He whined again and licked Kyla’s hand.
“You can’t come with me. You don’t want to see what I’m about to do.”
He jumped to his feet and let out a sharp bark, stopping his wagging tail instantly.
“I am doing this. You don’t get a say in it. Got it?”
He dropped his head and turned around, tucking his tail between his legs as he trotted back towards the house. Kyla followed him inside, settled him on a blanket with a bowl of water, and grabbed the car keys, her body filling with the false hope of freedom as she drove towards her target.