Witches in Training (#2 in the Witches Trilogy) [rewrites ongoing]

Chapter Thirty-Two: Rae and Keets

VERA

The world started to topple when my best friend decided to Skype our worst enemy.

Except, if you stay on, the world didn't exactly topple, it wasn't exactly Skype, and get this-it wasn't exactly our worst enemy.

But let's backtrack a bit.

*

Ever since that incident at the lake, Kieran has literally not said a word. No one can get anything out of him. He moves as swiftly and as purposefully as ever, but silently, quietly, without uttering a single thing. It scares me.

Something happened back there. Something about that light from his shoulder. Something that, when he was weakened beyond any magic, revived him enough to save everyone. Where did he get that energy from? What revitalised him? And most of all, what did he apologise for?

"Are you sure these things can hold?" Kami asks worriedly for the fiftieth time.

I look tiredly at Kieran, who doesn't reply. "Yes, Kam. I'm sure." She's referring to the protective spells that Kieran-with some help from me and Shaun-put up around our new campsite-the burned out Education building. It's literally a campsite, actually, a blue fire flickering in a circle of stones. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it.

"Is Shaun back yet?"

"Not yet." I say, glancing out. "I still think I should've gone." I brace myself instinctively for Kieran to say a bunch of stuff about it not being safe, but it doesn't come. He just stares broodingly at the fire, playing with the ashes around the edges like it's tissue paper or something.

"It'll be fine." Kami says reassuringly for a girl who's been freaking out about our protective spells all day.

"I hope so... Keets, what is that?"

I realise he hasn't been playing with the ashes. He's been rearranging them. Into a spectacular black art piece. It's a girl's head-and-shoulders side profile, a cold, slightly regal, distant look about her. She has shoulder-length hair and even in the ashes, radiates power. It takes me about five seconds to recognise her. "That's Raelynn." I whisper. "Kieran, that's amazing."

His fingers have created a perfect replica of the girl, but not exactly like I remember her from three years ago. She looks older, more mature, as if it's her presently. In fact, I have a chilling feeling that if I were to see her now, she'd look exactly like that. "How did you do it? How did you know.... know what she looked like, so perfectly?"

He doesn't answer, of course, but frowns at her image, his eyes glassy and far away. Just below her shoulder, he rubs in a tiny mark. I sit down beside him to gaze at it. A mark... on her shoulder? How would he know? Or is it-

-his own? 

Surreptitiously, I glance at Kieran's shoulder. However, he's wearing a black shirt, which doesn't betray anything. I look back at Raelynn's picture. I knew Kieran was good, but I never knew he was this good. I wonder what goes on in Kieran's head, what it's like to be him, this powerful prodigy of a twelve year old who's as lost in reality as I am in his magical world.

Kieran stares intently into the fire, watching the embers, the flames. I get the sense he doesn't miss a single detail. For some reason, the fire intrigues him.

A few minutes later, I know why.

A shape starts forming in the fire. The flames curl into a recognisable outline-one of a human. Kami watches in a sort of trance as flickering tongues of fire succumb to a silhouette of a girl. The exact one that I just admired in ash.