Tales of Olsen

12

For the next two days, I had to deal with Alexander in our personal space. He had insisted that we call him Alex, but I had decided only to call him Alex when he didn’t irritate me.

“Come on Eloise,” he said as he tried to teach me something about energy control.

“Why do I have to learn this?” I asked

I had been trying to learn all these new things about myself as quickly as I could, and he wasn’t making it easy; especially not today.

“Learning how to hone the energy within yourself and refocusing it is the most important thing you need to learn,” he said

“Then why do I have the medallion?” I asked

“You need it because it ties your life force to this Earth and it’s also powerful enough to destroy it.”

I looked down at the medallion which I had kept hidden in my bedside table drawer since I arrived. Holding it in hands felt like holding a heavy rock but it invigorated me in a way that both excited and terrified me.

“Fine let’s go through it again,” I said refusing to fail at this.

All my life I had accomplished one task after another with ease. Learning languages was as simple as saying my ABCs and now I realized that it was because I knew most of them from my past lives. I didn’t understand failure simply because I had never failed at anything I had ever attempted.

“You need to focus on the medallion,” he said covering my hand with his

Once again, I was overwhelmed with the emotions he was feeling but I had taught myself how to ignore them.

“And then what?” I asked

“Then you need to pull from it,” he said releasing my hand, “pull from it and try to reroute the energy into me. You just touched me, so you should be able to direct the energy towards me.”

I closed my eyes and slowly tried to do what I thought was right, but nothing happened. I tried again and once again nothing happened.

“You can do this,” he said

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the voice in my head telling me that I was doing it wrong. I didn’t have a clue how to do what he was asking of me, but I would try until I got it. Slowly, as I focused on the medallion in my hand, I felt a spark of fire in my stomach. It grew from a spark into a tiny fire and for a moment I thought I would become inflamed.

“Control it,” I could hear Alexander whispering

I took deep breaths and tried my best not to let the power overtake me. Slowly, the fire crept over my body and I opened my eyes to look at Alexander. He stood at the other end of the room with a look of complete surprise on his face.

“What did you do?” he asked he asked as if he couldn’t believe what was happening.

I felt a bit confused

“I, I did what you told me to,” I replied

“Stop,” he said carefully taking a step towards me

“What’s wrong,” I asked in confusion, “what did I do?”

He took another tentative step towards me

“Eloise,” he whispered taking another tentative step, “you need to stop whatever it is that you’re doing,”

“I only did what you told me to do!” I cried enraged

Suddenly the room felt hot and my vision began to blur just before I saw Alex lunging after me and knocking the medallion from my hands. I fell to the floor and he fell next to me. It took me several seconds to catch my breath but when I finally did, I looked up to see smoke floating above us like a cloud all around the apartment.

“What happened?” I asked a bit confused

“I made a mistake,” he said looking around and shrugging

“Who’s burin..” Jordan asked standing in the doorway of her room looking down at us, “you two burnt the apartment down?”

With a flash of his hand, Alex cleared the room of the smoke and Jordan nodded respectfully.

“Carry on,” she said walking back to her room

She had promised to use my training sessions as her opportunity to study and so she hadn’t been around for most of the craziness.

“What did you do?” I asked sitting up and pulling my knees in and looking over at Alexander who was still sprawled out on the floor.

“I was wrong to try to teach you these things before unlocking you,” he said

“Unlocking me?” I asked

He shrugged, and it seemed as if he didn’t want to tell me something.

“If I unlock you, all your powers become yours,” he said, “but you become easier to use. Keith can’t use you until you’re unlocked.”

I nodded although I didn’t truly understand what he meant by being unlocked.

“What’s Olsen like?” I asked, “do all the people there have the same powers you do?”

He looked over at me and smiled.

“Olsen is beautiful,” he replied, “much more beautiful than Earth and the people there are the purest species of what you call human beings.”

“So why is Keith like that?” I asked

“He’s been corrupted,” he replied, “I can’t blame him, our mother was the first to die and he was closer to her than I was.”

“I see,” I replied

“The loss of the person you love can do terrible things to people,” he continued

“Why do your powers work here?” I asked again

“I don’t have powers,” he continued, “here on Earth these things are thought to be powers, but in Olson, this is normal. Just as you use your hands to write, we use our minds to create, and to destroy.”

This was the first time he had ever spoken about his powers in a negative way.

“And what about the powers you think I have?” I asked

“I think you have no idea how powerful you are,” he said, “once when we were young, you destroyed a whole family of dogs in the palace with just the snap of your finger. You made the poor things disappear.”

I covered my mouth with my hands

“Puppies,” I gasped

He laughed

“Yes, you were much less affectionate then,” he continued

Alex looked on wistfully and I wondered what thoughts were running through his mind

“Alex,” I said, “what if I’m taken and there’s nothing we can do.”

“I won’t allow anyone near you,” he said, “I am your protector.”

I smiled knowing that as much as he thought he was different from the ‘human’ men, he was almost exactly like them.

“But what do I do?” I asked, “The fate of the world is at risk if I can’t save them.”

He bit down on his lip.

“We’ll figure things out as we go along,” he said, “for now I want to teach you a bit about Keith.”

“Why’s that?” I asked

“If you understand him,” he replied, “then you will empathize with him.”

I shook my head in confusion.

“Here on Earth if one man is a threat to the society we remove him,” I replied, “why are you protective of the man who could possibly end the Earth as we know it?”

He shook his head,

“You’re too concerned with what he’s done Eloise,” he continued, “you should be more concerned with who he is and why he’s doing all this.”

I still didn’t understand.

“He’s not so different than you,” he said, “you destroyed a whole family of puppies because one bit you. In your anger, you took them all out and decided never to allow yourself to become hurt by an animal again.”

“Well, yeah,” I replied, “it’s drastic, but I mean I’m not the same person.”

Something flashed across his face and I wondered what he knew about me or the past me that he wasn’t telling me.

“Whatever happens,” he said, “life makes villains out of all of us, some are just worse at dealing with it than the rest of us.”

“What about you?” I asked, “is that the same for you?”

He looked over at me and smiled,

“You would be surprised the things I’ve done for love,” he replied, “even you would think I was a villain.”

“That’s impossible,” I joked, “you’re practically Gandhi to me.”

He laughed

“You should get to your studies,” he said standing

“We’re done?” I asked

This was the shortest training session we’d had thus far.

“Yeah, I can’t do much more until you’re unlocked, and I don’t think you’ll be up to that today.”

I nodded and reached across the floor to pull the medallion into my hand. It lit up as I touched it but went dull again when I pushed the energy away from me. I needed to study but there was a high possibility that I would spend the rest of the night thinking about everything Alex had said.