Free Kinetics: In Search of Willow by Arbor Winter Barrow

her eyes and
breathed. I felt something open inside my mind. The link. I
concentrated like Willow taught me and grasped at it. Like a river
flowing through a backed up dam I found myself drowned in thoughts,
emotions, ideas, convictions, colors, images, imagination, and
above all else the sense that I should know something.
    I couldn't figure out what that thing
was, as I reached for it, Willow's head and hands pulled away
abruptly. I hadn't been aware that I had closed my eyes, but when
she was gone I was surrounded by the darkness of my eyelids. I
opened them only to see the greasy haired man from earlier with an
arm around Willow's neck. His other hand was a rolling ball of
compressed electricity.
    "Willow!" I stepped forward ready to--
to do what? My hands shook and even though these people said
somewhere under my skin was a power; I didn't know what it was or
even how to begin to use it.
    "Move and she loses her pretty face."
The man smirked and dragged Willow back a few more
steps.
    "Eugene, don't worry." Willow said.
Her face was going red, and tears were starting to leak from her
eyes. Her link was wide open, filling me with reassurance. I
brushed it aside.
    But my legs were frozen. Even as the
building rocked from explosions and screams, I couldn't move. I
didn't know what to do. My mind was a roaring chasm of nothingness.
The link that Willow had worked hard to teach me was the only thing
I could sense. Her mind was terrified, but she didn't want me to
get hurt, and she wanted me to not worry.
    A woman appeared with whoosh of
outward air out of nowhere and sprinted toward the man. "Grey!" She
screamed. At first I thought she was going to attack him, but she
leaped onto his back and wrapped her arms around his neck. Instead,
as her grip on him tightened, they literally vanished with a snap
of inward rushing air and a rapidly fading glow.
    "No!" I cried out and stumbled
forward. The instant that Willow disappeared I felt her
ever-present link get ripped away. It hadn't been there just from
when she started to teach me this link; it had been there with
every laugh and every dream. She had always been there for me in
the silent dark nights when I thought I was alone. I had never
noticed before just how present in my mind she had been. And now
that it was gone, there was a hole, a jagged, biting hole in the
fabric of my mind.
    I rushed to where they had vanished,
but it was no use. They were gone. The questions running through my
head outnumbered the answers. Why her? Why take Willow? As little
as I understood about this place and these people, why take
her?
    I knelt to the ground where one of
Willow's hairclips had fallen and picked it up. The little blue
flower shook with my hand. I clasped my fist around it and searched
the room frantically for an answer. This quiet hallway had been a
sanctuary for whatever Willow had impressed on my mind through the
link, but she was now gone and I couldn't save her.
    But I wasn't alone. I jolted up to my
feet and sprinted out of the empty hall. Mom, Dad, they would help
me. They would help Willow.
    I stumbled out the door, stepping on
something soft. A body. I lurched back and stared into the lifeless
eyes of an old man. Blood covered his face and back where slender
gashes made crisscrossed markings all over.
    I coughed and looked up to see people
limp on the floor or crawling over debris. The hole in the ceiling
let in the false joy of a sunny day.
    "Willow!" I heard someone scream.
Willow's mother came running through the bleeding and sobbing
throng with tears rolling down her red face. "Eugene! My baby, have
you seen my baby?"
    Words lodged in my throat and I
couldn't speak. She grasped my arms and squeezed till it hurt.
"Where is she?"
    "They took her." I croaked.
    Mrs. Patterson wailed and fell to the
ground. "No! No!"
    I shuddered and knelt next to her.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I said, as she weakly pounded her fists on
my chest. I felt my insides crumbling. Willow was gone.