In the Forest of Light and Dark (38 page)

She hit me again, and I felt myself giving into her unrelenting power. It felt as if somebody had opened up a tap somewhere on my body and my essence—everything I was—was being sucked into her, consumed, like water flowing down a drain.
    
“Don’t worry…” Abellona said and then giggled as she whispered into my ear after drawing me in close to her. “At least when I’m done with you, you won’t have to see what I’m going to do to those hicks over there you call your friends.”
    
I didn’t even hesitate, and I don’t know where I found the strength, but I drove my knee right up into Abellona’s midsection screaming, “Get the fuck off me!” and when I had created separation I kicked her, causing her to fall back away from me.
     Rising to my feet I went for her, flashing through the air and teleporting right on top of her. Once back on her I hit her with a right, and then another. Red waves of energy shooting out from my fist as I connected with her face.
    
Abellona’s head jolted back, and a choked moan came out of her when she came forward resettling herself for me to hit her again.
    
I struck her a third time and then a fourth, the rage welling up inside of me, peaking to a climax and now beginning to erupt.
     Abellona grabbed a handful of my hair as she struggled to maintain herself from my onslaught.
     I hadn’t noticed it at first, but in my torrent of erupting hatred we had both come up off the ground and were now floating above the forest floor.
     I hit her again and again and I felt her power begin to drain into me just as mine had drained into her a moment ago.
     Striking her yet again I watched as her eyes rolled up into their sockets.
     “GO TO FUCKIN’ HELL YOU FUCKING CUNT!!!” I screamed at her as I landed one final blow to her bloodied face. And when my fist landed with her nose there was a great flash of light and I was thrown from her by a wall of heat and energy.
     I don’t know how long I was down after that, but when I had picked up my head I was back on the ground. It had taken me a moment to regain my vision, but when I did I saw that the birch tree that’d been directly in front of me while I was pummeling Abellona now stood ablaze. Its branches engulfed in flames lighting up the area. Other branches were lying around me on fire, and autumn colored leaves were floating gently to the ground smoking and smoldering.
     Stretching out from the base of the burning tree where the lightning had struck now stood a fissure cleaved opened several feet wide and billowing steam. Red fires glowing from down deep within.
     Abellona lay prone about fifteen yards away from me, but I could see that she was beginning to move and come too. I sat upright and watched her as I struggled to catch my breath, my breathing heavy and belabored from my outburst.
     Abellona picked up her head and looked at me; her long, black hair matted with blood and dirt, and was now clinging to her face. She smiled that ugly little smile of hers at me and lifted up her hand slowly. Nestled in it was a crop of my blond hair that had been torn out of my skull from its roots when the lightning had struck separating us.
     I put a hand up to the side of my head and felt the sore bald spot where my once long and golden locks had been anchored.
     “Looking for this?” Abellona said, smiling at me as she held my hair up even higher.
     I just returned the smile and held up my other hand. “Looking for this?” I asked her as I let her see her golden medallion dangle from my fingers.
     “What? No.” Abellona panicked as she pressed her hand to her chest, searching for it, the color draining from her face from its absence. She then pulled forth her tunic looking down at her chest only to see it missing.
     “No,” she said to herself softly, then pausing in shock. “Give that to me, it’s mine.” She called out to me flushed with terror.
   Standing up, I looked over at my mama, Tucker, Owen, Terra, and all the other witches, who each by then had gotten to their feet after the lightning strike. They were all now grouped among an army of cats who were hitching and riving in a cacophony of meows and hisses.
     “You want this?” I asked Abellona as I neared her and the fissure that lay between us, which had grown ever-wider in diameter since the lightning strike.
     “Yes, give it to me. Please!” she pleaded with me while still on her knees. “Give it to me and I’ll let you and your family go. You have my word.”
     “Your word,” I said mocking her words. “What the fuck did I tell you an Abbott’s word is
worth
to me? You had your chance. Now go to Hell
where you belong.” I say this to her in a pitiless tone and then I threw her Medallion down into the fissure where a sudden eruption emerged from deep below, causing fire, smoke, and steam to blow forth up to the surface.
     “NO!” Abellona cried out. “Nooooo, You fucking bitch!
I'LL KILL YOU!
”
     From her crouched down position Abellona blinked out of existence only to reappear, having teleported across the fissure and was now standing before me.
     The fissure burped and expelled gas along with thick, black smoke which caused the ground to quake. From behind Abellona a wall of fire, ash, and soot rocketed skyward lending her a demonic look.
     I stood before her unwavering in my resolve readied to take on whatever she could throw at me.
     From somewhere behind me, I couldn't see it, but I could hear it, my mama, Terra, and the other witches began chanting, their words causing Abellona to cringe and become aggravated, her bluish light beginning to fade.
     Abellona screamed at me in anger, her voice now raspy and hoarse but still strong enough to echo throughout the forest. She then raised her clenched fist to me and came rushing forth ready to swing.
     I didn’t budge. I didn’t even prepare to defend myself because I had an overwhelming sense of calm flowing through me. A calm that could only come from knowing she couldn’t hurt me.
     She swung at me violently over-and-over. Each blow failing to reach its mark as waves of energy shot out before me absorbing her punches in a shield of crimson colored light.
     Seeing that her efforts to strike me were in vain only seemed to enrage Abellona even further. Screaming and flailing about like a lunatic, she gave it her all, like a child throwing a temper tantrum determined to get her own way.
     Soon though, she began to tire as each desperate lunge became met by an even more powerful wall of energy that seemed to grow in strength as it radiated from me.
     Abellona then dropped down to her knees before finally giving up to exhaustion, her coal-black hair disheveled and hanging over her face. I watched her then take several plangent breaths before pushing back her hair and looking up at me. Slowly she got back to her feet, staring at me intensely with hate-filled eyes. She then glanced over at my mama, Tucker, Owen, and the other witches, then back at me.
     “I'll be back.” she then said to me with pure venom in her words.
     “No… You won't.” I replied back to her confidently.
     And, with that, the strays began pouring forth from behind me, Midnight leading the charge. She shot passed me like a shadow on the forest floor jumping onto Abellona's tunic and sinking her fangs deep into her neck. Others then quickly piled on as Abellona screamed, trying desperately to shake them loose. Soon more cats filled in ready to pounce on her, causing the area behind me to become bottlenecked with them.
     Abellona began to stumble back as the weight of the cats began bringing her to the point of collapse.
     From between my legs I could feel one of the felines rubbing up against my battered shin and I look down seeing that it was Casper. I then reached down, picking him up where I brought him to my chest and began stroking his soft, puffy fur.
     Abellona's cries soon became muffled by the steady stream of cats pouring onto her that was becoming rapidly so thick that I could no longer see her through them. But as the mass of hissing fur began to rock back and forth, I knew that deep in there somewhere, in that core of pelts she was beginning to stumble, eventually succumbing and falling backwards. She had run out of room behind her and had hit the fissure slipping over its edge, then disappearing into the fires below, taking the cats down with her. The rest of the felines then still continued to pile forth into the intense heat of the crevasse as if they absolutely wanted to make sure that she made it into Hell. As if it were so important to them that they were willing to sacrifice themselves to the fire.
     The last of the cats spilled forth into the earth and the fissure then gave one last burst of heat and smoke before going silent—dormant.
     As I held Casper snugly against my chest I peered down into the hole that was now no more than a couple of feet deep and looked as if it had never even had a fire in it.
     The burning birch tree at the far end of what was the fissure had by now dwindled down to just a few smoking limbs and a scorched mass still standing upright out of the ground.
     I turned and faced the others, but when my mama looked at me, I suddenly felt small again, and a plethora of emotions began pouring from me as I shambled over to her. She pulled me close, hugging me tightly, and I began to sob uncontrollably.
     My mama, then repeatedly whispered to me that everything was going to alright… That it was all over now, but it didn’t matter. I was inconsolable.
     Casper, who I stilled carried and was nestled in between us let out a little soft meow abruptly catching me off guard and making me smile and laugh a little. With my breathing still hitching I raised him up to my face to feel the warmth of his fur on my skin.
     “You’d think that after seventeen years of selfishly keeping her to yourself you would introduce me to my granddaughter.” A voice then said calling out from behind us.
     I turned around to see a woman standing there before us in the moonlight. She had beautifully long, raven-dark hair and her eyes pierced the night’s veil like neon jade. I had recognized her instantly from the photographs in our house. She was my Grandmother Lyanna, and her very presence lit up the surrounding forest basking everything in a warm loving glow.
     At her feet lay the forlorn body of Midnight—small and still, a shell of the lively feline she once was.
     “Hello, Mother.” My mama hesitantly said to her. “You know that you could’ve just come down to Alabama anytime you wanted to see us. I never kept Cera from you. You didn’t have to go through this whole elaborate scheme to bring us back here.”
     “Alabama was never your home, my child. Mt. Harrison is.” My grandmother said back to my mama tenderly. “Besides, you know what would’ve happened if I had ever left here.”
     “And,
that
was the problem!” My mama quickly snipped back. “We could never leave. We always had to defend this place…
And for what?
It wasn’t even our fight. It was between this girl and our ancestors who lived here almost three hundred years ago. And,
who
were we protecting anyways, a village of people who hated us?” my mama said now lashing out in anger—emotion filling her voice.
     “That wasn’t their fault, you know that.” My grandmother told her, trying to ease my mama’s temper.
     “It wasn’t my fault either.” My mama went on. “I just wanted to be normal. I just wanted to be like everyone else. When other girls were self-conscious about their bodies changing, I had to be self-conscious about fire or electricity, or
God knows what
else
shooting out of mine. Do you know what that was like for me growing up? Being a kid and always being afraid of some witch—some dead girl who lived out in the forest plotting to kill you.”
     “Yes, I do. And, I’m sorry. But thanks to Cera here, it’s all over now and we can talk about the past later. But right now all I want is to see my granddaughter.” My grandmother said this as she opened up her arms to me so I could come to her. “Cera, come here—let me see you, my child.”
     I walked over to her and she hugged me firmly. And while I stood there lost in her arms I could feel her warmth and love flowing into me like a current.
     As I hugged my grandmother, from behind her I began hearing the sounds of something popping and then a moment later, coming up through my feet I could feel the ground begin to vibrate. I slowly pulled myself away from my grandmother’s shoulder so I could peer around her at the forest beyond. What I saw coming up from the ground was the strays, digging themselves up from the depths of the earth.
    
What the…
I thought, but the words never came to my lips. I turned back to look at Tucker and Owen but they just stared forward locked in a daze, still in shock over the night’s events.
     One by one the cats emerged from the earth only to take a few steps and then lay down dead on the forest floor. Soon after each had rested for the final time, a small orb of light would then emerge from their mouths and begin ascending upwards towards the night’s sky.
     “Is that…” I murmured. “Is that…”
     “Their souls,” My grandmother said, finishing my thought. “They’re free now. Free of Abellona’s curse thanks to you, my dear.” She then kissed me atop my head. “Where did you ever get that blond hair from anyways?” she inquired.
     I didn’t answer her, though. I just watched as cat after cat clawed its way to the surface only to slump over and release its light trapped within. It took what seemed like an eternity for all of them to finish out, and in the end the forest floor had been carpeted with their bodies.