The Sleeping Girl

Chapter Twenty

"Is it really over now?" asks a small voice. Chloe. She's looking at me from the bed, hands clutching the thin sheet nervously, eyes darting around frantically. They keep going back to look at the bloodied remnants of Ebony lying on the floor.

"I wouldn't say that it's over," I say, sighing, wishing that I could tell her that it was. But alas, 'tis not so. "But Ebony is dead, gone for good. She won't be bothering you anymore. And I do suspect that her minions will be weaker now without their leader."

"Good," says Chloe, mouth pressed determinedly into a thin line, eyes gleaming.

I peer at her curiously. "Doesn't it bother you at all? I mean, she was your mother figure for quite some time. And you didn't know her true nature, this is bound to bother you. We are only human after all."

"No," says Chloe, her voice surprisingly strong. "She was never my mother. I mourned the loss of my mother, but that's not her. Ebony killed my real mother, my only mother. She's a monster, plain and simple, and I'm so so glad that she's dead. Thank you, Keela. Thank you so much. You saved us."

I blush furiously, twirling a strand of hair around my finger. I'm not used to this type of recognition. "Well, it wasn't all me. I mean I had quite a bit of help..."

"No," says Mike, cutting in. "Give yourself some credit. You are capable of more than you know. You were the one who defeated Ebony, when all three of the rest of us failed to. I mean, she almost killed me!"

"Hey yeah," I say, turning around to face him, scanning him up and down, suddenly remembering. His shirt is still soaked with blood, as are his palms, and the ground where he way lying, but the boy himself seems fine. "How are you not dead? Or at least injured..."

He laughs good naturedly. "Do you want me gone really that much?"

"Of course not. But last I left you, you were bleeding to death on the floor. I thought for sure that you were a goner, and it very nearly killed me to think of you like that. I mean, I'm glad that you're not dead, but how are you up and standing? Remember what bad shape you were in after the dark sprites? Did you suddenly develop healing powers?"

"Of course I remember. I'm not going to forget that anytime soon. Kiki, I think it was you. I think that you healed me."

"But how? I wasn't anywhere near you, not like that time that I healed you, or tried, anyways, after the sprite attack, or when I healed Chloe just now."

"Mike is right," interjects Carmela. "You are more powerful than you know." She gets up confidently from where she was sitting on the floor, the same place the fell after Ebony was done with her. "You should have seen yourself just now, when you flung all the debris from the ceiling away. First of all, the fact that you did that in and of itself is amazing. But your body! You were literally glowing.  I daresay you were even brighter than Ember. All of that excess goodness, all of that light that you emitted flew off of you, and landed on us. It healed Mike, it healed me, and I suspect that it helped Chloe too. In fact, you should try to fully heal her now. I suspect that you could."

I look down at my hands. They look perfectly normal, could they really have been glowing? "I tried healing Chloe earlier, remember?" I remind Carmela. "It helped, but I couldn't heal her all the way. I'm not that strong."

"Yes, you are," she insists firmly, nodding her head enthusiastically. "I bet that you're the most powerful human on Earth right now. Actually, I don't bet that, I know that. Defeating Ebony made you stronger; it brought out all the strength and power that you didn't know that you had. Keela, you can do anything if you set your mind to it. Don't put yourself down. You're gonna be doing great things for a while, might as well start now."