ELANIA

You will not get away with it

An hour later, Elania continued making her way through the boulders, wincingly limping along as behind her remained a trail of droplets of blood. She wanted to get out of there quickly lest she succumb to another attack but she was massively restricted by the amount of pain she was in; pain that was so intense it forced her to stop and take a break every few steps.

She sat down to check her wound and it was a mess. Not only was the piece of scarf completely drenched in blood, but when she removed it to re-dress the wound with a piece of cloth she ripped off her dress’s inner lining, her flesh was discoloured, green like algae. She sighed in defeat and just tied the fresh cloth over, not wanting to dwell on it because she didn’t want to worry more than she already was. Done, she then lay her head back and rested as her whole body continued to ache; her knee, her ribs and of course her shoulder which felt like the creature’s jaws were still on it.

Opening her eyes, she noticed the sky. It was getting dark and so she needed to find somewhere to shelter, a place where she could rest but most importantly be safe from whatever other creatures were in the boulder field, because if she was attacked so savagely in broad daylight, what more at night.

She looked into the spaces in between the boulders and when she saw one that was slightly darkened, she started crawling towards it. She reached it and peeped inside, and saw that it was a closed space. The boulders had formed a sort of cave and it only had two openings; one in the top corner the size of a tennis ball and the other where she was. It was perfect.

Quickly she slid her weapons in and then herself, and when she was safely inside, she secured the space. She grabbed five arrows and pierced them into the ground by the bottom opening, and then wanted to fit the small stone she found inside into the top opening but it was too high and she didn’t have the energy to climb and so she just left it. Completely drained, she then laid down on the ground and blacked out.

Day broke in Wetuana Village and already in the field, was Maron plucking tomatoes and putting them into the basket beside him. The sky was clear and the sun gentle but out of nowhere, a heavy wind blew, so heavy it raised the leaves off the ground and almost pushed Maron to the ground. He stood up wondering, how could there be a storm coming when there wasn't a single cloud in the sky? And like that was not strange enough on its own, the leaves started to circulate him like a tornado.

Suddenly;

“Hello Maron,” a voice from the wind said and Maron’s skin immediately went cold.

“Iris,” he said and she burst out into a loud laugh.

“Oh how lovely, she’s told you about me.”

“I wouldn’t be happy about it if I were you, it’s nothing pleasant.”

“I bet,” Iris’s voice said as the wind blew on. “Ooh you are gorgeous. The things I want you to do to me.”

“Watch your mouth," Maron said firm and Iris laughed. "What do you want? You’re not welcome here. Leave now.”

“I know I gave you time to say your goodbyes but I missed you so. Especially my dearest Elania, she hasn’t been to our spot in quite a while. Was it something I said?” her voice said and she laughed; she knew exactly what she said.

"You threatened to kill us."

"Oh relax it was just a joke . . . Well part of it wasn't."

"The part about you killing her and taking over her life?" he asked.

"That's the one. I mean, it's the only way that we’ll be together."

"There is no we here and there will never be."

"Yes there is and when all this is done, you and I will be so happy together, you'll see," Iris's voice said.

“No, I want nothing to do with you."

"You will fight it at first but then you’ll grow to love me and everything’s going to be perfect.”

"Goodness, you can't actually be serious about this," Maron said, just as taken aback as he was the first time he heard it. He knew of her crazy from what Elania had told him but hearing it with his own two ears was so appalling it made his stomach churn.

"Oh my dear love Maron . . . I have never been more serious about anything in my entire life.”

"No! You have no right to do what you’re doing.”

“Is that so?” she asked as though mocking him.

“Yes! These are our lives, this is our love, you have no right.”

“I feel for the two of you really I do but this is what I want and I’m not going to stop until what I want is mine. There’s nothing wrong with wanting something nice for yourself is there?”

“If it already belongs to someone else yes there is. It is very wrong.”

“Oh hush,” Iris’s voice said and she blew a wind at him that pushed him to the ground. “You have no idea what I’ve been through, you’re the one who has no right.”

“What do you mean I have no right? This involves my life and that of the woman I love, I have all the right in the world.”

“I had love once and it was taken from me; ripped so savagely out of my heart it left me cold and empty like a corpse. Have you ever felt that way Maron? To care the world for something and then to have it taken from you?”

“No I haven’t,” he answered.

“No you have not, it hurts. It kills you slowly and then it drives you mad. It’s like a pain you want so desperately to go away but it doesn’t; it just keeps thumping and thumping and thumping. They say time heals everything, maybe other things, certainly not a broken heart. The pain is one that consumes you and keeps consuming you until there’s nothing left. I had nothing left and I grew cold, and I hated it! I hate it! I feel nothing and I hate it! I just want to feel again. I just want love.”

“Then go and find yours.”

“Do you not think I have tried?” Iris’s voice said, raised and heavy. “I looked high and low for that special something but it was nowhere to be found. Nothing has ever come close to making me feel the way I do when I’m flying, untouchable and so alive, just like the embrace I had grown to fall so madly for did, nothing until I saw her with you. Ooooooh I want that love. I want someone’s heart to beat for me the way yours beats for her. I want someone to hold me the way you hold her. To kiss me the way you kiss her. I want someone to look at me the way you look at her. And when I become her . . . You will.”

“Never!” Maron shouted and stood up. “You can’t just come here and demand things like people’s lives don’t matter, you have no right. This is wrong and it is evil and by the writings of the Holy Scrolls it shall not come to pass. God has spoken against such things, evil shall never prevail, so if you think you’re actually going to get away with this, then you are not just lost but foolish and mad as well.”

“Silence!!” she yelled and Maron quickly covered his ears. “How dare you speak to me like that? Call me foolish? Call me mad? Do you know who I am? The power I possess is one that your tiny little mind will never be able to comprehend, EVER! The mentioning of my rank would send a chill so cold down your spine it would shatter it! I can squish you like an insect in my hand and throw your life away like the dirt underneath my nails. You have no idea who-I-am!” The wind got madder and suddenly, Maron was lifted off the ground like a piece of paper; with his stomach immediately turning to jelly as her wind swooshed him about and raised him higher and higher into the air.

“Iris stop this! Let me go this instant.”

“Let you go? Ooh what a poor choice of words.”

Iris let him go and he fell through the air screaming. She had lifted him over fifteen meters off the ground, upside down, and so should he fall all the way down, it would surely be his death. And it was an inch away from happening too, but then her wind blew underneath him and caught him. Maron gasped as inside his heart thundered like a storm, he was about to fall to his death and saw his whole life flash right before his eyes. Her wind then lifted him about a meter into the air and dropped him, and for a while, he just lay there catching his breath.

“This is nothing compared to what I can actually do sweet Maron, so do not push me. The two of you should even be grateful that I gave you two weeks to say your goodbyes, the others got nothing,” she said as her wind blew on.

“The others,” he said and stood up, as a deep sense of uneasiness held him rigid. “There have been others?”

“There have been a few.”

“How many?”

“Their number is not your concern," Iris's voice answered.

“Yes it is, because you’re threatening us just like you threatened them, how many?"

"Don't worry you won’t end up like either of them because unlike their loves, this one is the one. It will be the one to heal me once and for all, I just know it."

"So what happened?” Maron asked.

“What happened where?”

“If we’re not the first people you’ve done this to then how are you here? What happened? Shouldn’t you be out there living someone else’s happily ever after?”

“I was actually, but it didn't make me feel the way I wanted it to so I got rid of it. The love didn’t quench my desire and so I moved on,” she responded.

"Just like that?"

"Yes, but don't you worry your gorgeous heart sweet Maron, this love will be different, I feel it. Once I become her and you become mine, I will be the happiest woman in the world. Your love is the one that is going to put back the pieces of my broken heart and when it does, it will heal me and I will be alive again.”

“Goodness, surely there must be another way," he said as inside his heart grew heavier.

"No there isn't. Your love is not like the others, it is the purest I have ever seen and I must have it.”

"But it’s not yours to take."

"I don't care! This is about me and what I want not you! This is the only way for the pain to go away and you will not stand in my way. No one will stand in my way. I will get what I want!" she lashed out as her wind blew harder.

"So this is what you do? You see what you want and you just take it?"

"Yes."

"But that is no way to live, you have to respect what people have. It is written in the Holy Scrolls that what God has put together let not man separate,” Maron said.

“I care nothing for those scrolls! Telling me how to live my life; don’t do this, don’t do that, no! I tell me how to live my life!”

“Goodness Iris, He is God. He knows what is best for us because we came from Him. We were birthed out of His Will, we are of Him and so His Words must be honoured.”

“Enough with that!!” Iris’s voice yelled. “I will have your love and that is final!”

"How long have you been at this?”

"Long enough."

"And the others, what happened to them? Where are they now?” he asked and Iris gave a brooding chuckle.

“I think you know the answer to that.”

A cold chill immediately ran down his back. “Lord have mercy, their love didn’t satisfy you and so they died for nothing . . . All of them died for nothing.” His eyes flooded with tears. “You will never stop. You will keep taking and taking until there is nothing left.”

“It really is nothing personal . . . This is what is necessary for the pain to go away and it will be done . . . My will be done.”

“Blasphemy! Who are you to claim the same right as the Great I Am. Evil has corrupted you and if you do not repent and be saved, it will be your doom,” he said. “You’re hurting people.”

"I have hurt too!" Iris's voice said as her wind continued to blow. "I have hurt and I have felt pain, a pain that you can't even imagine. A pain that haunts you and eats at you so mercilessly it pushes you to the point of wanting to take your own life. A pain that I am so sick to death of and want no part of anymore. It has kept me incarcerated like a prisoner for far too long and I will be kept bound by its cold bars no more. The chains of heartache shall fall and the dark shadows of despair shall disappear because I will be free, your love will set me free. It will take the pain away and make me whole, and if it means me having harvested all those lives just to have it . . . Then so be it."

Maron chuckled as he wiped his tears away. “You may have gotten away with it before, but not this time. They may not have known who the Almighty is but we do. He is the All-Powerful and All-Knowing Sovereign God of the Heavens and as long as He continues to shelter us under the shadow of His Mighty Wings, no weapon fashioned against us will prosper. Your evil plan will not prosper, so beware, for the judgment of God is upon you. He sees you and by His Mighty Hand, you will be defeated.”

Iris went mute as her wind continued to blow. “Where is she?”

“You will not get away with it. This time Iris, you will fail.”

“Where is Elania?” she asked as her wind began to blow violently, so violent that Maron could barely keep his eyes open or breathe properly; he had to hide his face inside his shirt. Her wind then grabbed him and lifted him into the air once more. “You will tell me where she is this instant! Or I will drop you and you will die. Where is she?”

“Elania is gone and by the time you get to her, it’ll be too late,” he said and she gave out a massive shout as her wind then disappeared from underneath him and he fell to the ground. Had she lifted him as high as she did before, he would have fallen to his death but she had only lifted him a few meters off the ground and so when he fell, instead of snapping his neck, he snapped his left wrist.

Maron wailed as Iris's wind quickly blew away and began searching the province for Elania, desperately like a mother searching for her lost child. It blew over the cottages and the markets and through the fields and the forests, and even passed old man Jhika’s home too, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Iris gave out another loud shout, not just ticked off but stressed out to the point of wanting to pull her own hair out, just where had Elania gone?

Back in the outlands, Elania was still asleep. Afternoon came and when the ray of light that entered the cave through the top opening slowly moved from the ground to her face, she woke up and sat up yawning. The last thing she remembered was agonizing pain and so the first thing she did was check her shoulder. She was expecting the cloth to be drenched in blood like the half-scarf was but it wasn’t; it was still purple and it only had a few stains of blood on it. She wondered.

Quickly she removed the cloth and when she saw the state of her shoulder, her eyes widened with shock. The green discolouration had reduced to the areas just around the teeth marks that may have still been bloody but were not bleeding. She gasped and immediately checked her other injuries. She softly palpated her ribs and moved her leg gently from side to side, and though there was slight pain in both areas, it was nothing compared to the pain that was there before.

“What?” Elania said wondering on. What happened the previous day wasn't a dream because she had the wounds to show for it, but they weren’t as they were the day before, it was like they had undergone a week’s-worth of recovery in just one day and it completely boggled her mind. She knew the Holy Spirit was with her and was not just going to give strength to His Temple but provide healing to it as well, but she had never experienced His Power like that before, it was amazing. Humbled, she then bowed her head and offered a prayer of thanksgiving, and when she was done, she got herself ready to leave.

She pulled the five arrows out of the ground and put them back in her quiver, and then slid herself out of the enclosed space. Outside, she got up onto her feet, with no struggle at all, and when she was done getting her weapons on, she continued making her way through the boulder field. There was a slight ache to her knee but she just ignored it and walked strong, wanting to get out of the boulder field as fast as she could lest she get attacked by yet another lizard-like creature or something else.

In Wetuana Village, Maron took himself to the community doctor. His name was Dr. Genta and he was fifty years old; a man so skilled at his practice he could treat any patient with his eyes closed. His office was his home and it was filled with all sorts of herbs and concoctions capable of managing and even healing some of the world’s most chronic diseases.

They were in the kitchen sitting at the table and Dr. Genta with his latex gloves on was inspecting Maron’s wrist, softly turning it to the left and then to the right as Maron flinched wincing.

“Mm hmmm that’s a broken wrist,” Dr. Genta said. “And all this swelling, the damage is obviously extensive, what on earth were you doing?”

“I uh . . . I fell,” Maron answered, deliberately keeping the truth from him for two reasons. One, for his own safety just in case Iris had followed him and was listening in on their conversation, and two, because he probably wasn’t going to believe him anyway; a being from a higher class masquerading herself as a wind lifting him high up off the ground and dropping him, he would have thought he was having some sort of mental breakdown. “I was trying to get something off the top shelf when I lost my balance and I fell.”

“Well good news, I have exactly what’s going to fix you right up, bad news it’s going to take a while, with the extent of the damage, it’s going to take about a month to fully heal.”

“It could be two months I don’t care, please just take the pain away. Please.”

Dr. Genta chuckled. “I’ve got something for that too. A good rub of my repair ointment on the affected area and the pain will disappear so fast you won’t remember it,” he said and Maron gave out a huge sigh of relief.

“Perfect.”

He got up and off one of the shelves, he grabbed a tumbler-sized glass container that had the smooth green paste-like repair ointment in it and also a glass jug containing the brown repair concoction. He then placed them both on the table and filled two empty plastic containers with them, separately.

“Alright so here is your medication. The ointment you put on whenever you start to feel the pain and the concoction you take three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening, after a meal. You take this stuff on an empty stomach and you’ll get knocked out for four days straight so be careful,” Dr. Genta said giving him the prescription.

“Got it.”

“Alright, let’s grease this up nice and good for you shall we?”

“Yes please,” Maron said and Dr. Genta scooped a little ointment onto his hand and began to rub it onto Maron’s swollen wrist. He flinched squeezing his eyes but the more ointment Dr. Genta rubbed on, the more his eyes relaxed and he breathed easy. “You are a life saver.”

“Yes I am,” he said and they chuckled as Maron then rested his head on his shoulder and relaxed. The pain was excruciating but just like that, it was fading away and it felt amazing, the relief was so precious it was sweeter than wine.

In the outlands, Elania made it out of the boulder field and continued making her way through the bare desert, with the sun directly above her beaming a heat three times as harsh as it was in the morning. Her candle was burnt at both ends and because she had been walking for a long time with the pain in her knee slowly but surely building up, it had reached a point where she couldn’t ignore it anymore and so she was forced to walk with a limp. And like that was not a situation bad enough on its own, she was literally boiling underneath her clothes. Her sweat was running down her body in streams, not only drenching her clothes but collecting in her boots and soaking her socks, cooking her feet. Still, she had no other choice but to press on and so that was what she did, she pressed on.

Just then, something blazed across her path and she came to a quick stop. It was a shadow and immediately she wondered; did she really just see something or was it just in her head? To make sure, she waited for a little while to see if it was going to pass again and it didn’t, and so she concluded that it was all in her head and continued walking. Of course it was all in her head, she was delirious; she hadn’t eaten or drank water in over twenty-four hours.

Two minutes later, the shadow passed again and Elania stopped, as inside her heart chilled with fear; it wasn’t in her head, it was real, she did see something. Quickly she looked up placing her hand over her eyes to try and see if there was something in the sky but there wasn’t, she couldn’t see anything.

She looked to the left and the sky was clear and to the right likewise. She didn’t see anything but she knew there was something out there, she could feel it in her spirit. She looked down at the ground to see if the shadow was going to pass again but instead she noticed something very strange, her own shadow was growing bigger, stretching outwards all around like an expanding ball.

Her eyes widened as dread immediately began to crawl up her spine like a tarantula, that only meant one thing and that one thing wasn’t good. Just then, a high-pitched squeak came from above and without even bothering to look up to see what the creature was, Elania bolted. She winced and groaned with every two steps she took but she just kept running, there was a creature above her and it was closing in on her at the speed of greased lightning. It squeaked again and upon Elania diving to the ground for cover, the creature grabbed her by her waist with its clawed feet and flew up into the air with her.

Elania screamed, she was raised about ten meters into the air, with the creature’s massive feathered wings sounding like the winds of a tornado. She looked up at it and it resembled an albino bat but it had black feathers all over its body except its face and its chest where three sets of n*****s sat. Also, it had cloudy white eyes and its size was that of a small bus, with its wing span four times the width of its own body.

The creature looked down at her and squeaked, and revealing its razor sharp teeth, Elania screamed, ravaged with despair, they looked like they could slice through her flesh like a brand new knife through a boiled egg. Suddenly, it opened its feet and Elania like a dummy fell through the air and onto the ground where she landed hard on her right side, not only dislocating her shoulder but also hitting the side of her head on the ground.

Elania howled. She sat up holding her shoulder and then held her injured knee but then her head felt heavy and when she reached her hand to touch where the heaviness was, there was blood. The creature squeaked and quickly Elania got up to run but taking just a few steps, it swooped in and grabbed her. It raised her into the air again and at about the same height, it opened its feet and dropped her.

Falling in the same position, Elania hit the ground and this time she didn’t get up. She wanted to but she couldn’t; her skull had been broken open and failing to keep her heavy eyes open, they closed and she passed out. The creature then swooped down and grabbed her, leaving behind a small pool of blood that evaporated in two seconds flat, and flew away with her disappearing into the distance, north-west.

In another part of Wetuana Village, an aggressive wind blew across the sky. It was Iris’s wind and she was still looking for Elania but she kept on striking out. She had searched the whole of five provinces but she couldn’t find her anywhere and it got her so mad off she couldn’t stop groaning.

“Elania!!” she shouted as her wind blew off into the distance, with the leaves in it moving all over the place like they were in a fight. “Where are you?!”