• Chapter Five:

    Everything was silent for awhile, I mean, the five of us just found five jewels and a note for the chosen ones, and then after I read that note, the jewels intertwined themselves into each of our hands. Plus, our hands still burned.
    Tahlia broke the silence, “What are we going to do? This is not good!” She sat down by the fire.
    Then, Marlo, Sami, and Toby began looking at each other, looking pretty freaked too. I stood on a large rock, then whistled. Everyone got quiet and looked at me.
    “Ok,” I said, “first thing we do is that we need to find out what ‘powers’ we got. Everyone looked for strange markings on your hand.” Everyone did what I said, grabbing flashlights and shinning them on their hands.
    I did the same thing, and I had a purple wave marking marked on my left hand. It sparkled in the moon light, making me gaze at its somewhat beauty. Everyone was quiet, the woods were still. They were all probably shocked, still.
    I spoke again, “Now, what markings do you have?”
    “I have a gold lighting bolt,” Tahlia said, I looked at her hand, and a bright sparkling gold lighting bolt mark was on her right hand.
    Toby held up his hand, “I have a red flame,” I looked at his hand, and he did. It was a large flame on his left hand. It was very cool to look at.
    “I have a green leaf marking,” Marlo said, I glanced over, and there it was, “I think it stands for earth.”
    Sami looked at us, “I have a blue design that looks like wind gushes,” She showed me her hand, and the marking covered her entire palm.
    Toby looked at me, “What about you, Shay? What mark do you have?”
    “A purple rain drop,” I showed him, he grabbed my hand, which hurt, and examined it. He let go of my hand, but it still burned. But, then, my hand felt like I had dipped it in the ocean.
    Sami cried, “My hand! It feels different, like a gush of wind is hitting it every minute.”
    “My hand feels warm, like it’s on fire,” Toby said.
    Tahlia looked freaked out, “My hand feels like it’s full of static electricity.”
    Marlo gasped, “Mine feels like sand,”
    We all realized that we were tired, so it was decided that we would go to sleep, and worry about everything in the morning.
    No one used the tents, we all pulled out our sleeping bags and slept by the fire to keep us warm. Marlo, Sami, and Tahlia were out in a few minutes. Toby was quiet, so I bet he was asleep, I couldn’t seem to fall asleep. I had way too much on my mind.
    What’s going on? I thought, This can’t be real, this has to be a dream. We’re just a bunch of seventh graders, well at least me, Toby, Marlo, and Sami. Who knows how old Tahlia is, I’ll have to ask her in the morning. But still, all of us are kids, we can’t have powers. But, I have a feeling that this was suppose to happen. I better get some sleep.
    “Hey,” I heard Toby whisper, “Are you still awake?”
    I turned over and looked at him, “Yeah, I can’t sleep.”
    “Me either,” Toby whispered, “I’m still thinking about what happened today. This can’t be happening.”
    “I know,” I whispered, “but, for some reason, I have this feeling that this was suppose to happen, everything. Like finding Tahlia, getting these powers, even Johnny getting taken. I can’t even understand what his part is in all of this.”
    “I know, same here,” Toby sighed, “He can’t be one of the chosen ones, there was only five jewels.” He rubbed his chin, what he usually does when he thinks, “Maybe this ’secret evil’ is just using him to get to us.”
    “Yeah, that could be,” I muttered, then I yawned, “I’m tired, lets just go to sleep.”
    Toby rolled back over, and two seconds later he was snoring loudly. I sighed, then yawned. I rolled over, and gently fell asleep.
    -----The Next Morning-----
    I woke up when the sun first came up, giving the campsite a golden glow. Tahlia was already up, and she was cooking breakfast, which was slices of ham in a pan Toby must have brought.
    “Morning,” I said sleepily. Tahlia looked up.
    “Oh hey, Shay,” Tahlia stood up, stretching, “I’m just making some breakfast, it’s not a lot, though. Plus, it took me awhile to find a proper stick to cook with,” she held up a long sturdy looking tree stick. The bark had been peeled off.
    I looked at the stick, “Wow, all the bark, what happen to it?”
    Tahlia pointed to a pile of bark, “I peeled it off, it took about fifteen minutes.” She pulled out a pocket knife, “With this. I had it in my pocket.” I looked at the knife.
    “Smart,” I said, “so, do we wake the rest of them up? Or should we let them sleep?”
    Tahlia looked down at Toby, Marlo, and Sami, “Maybe we should wake them up, so they get their share of breakfast.” We looked at the pan, “I made enough so we each get two slices of ham.”
    I noticed Tahlia had her legs together, as if she needed to go to the bathroom, “Do you need to go, ya know, to the bathroom?” I asked her.
    She handed me the stick, “Check up on the ham for me,” she then rushed off to the area of trees and bushes near the campsite.
    I sighed, “I guess I’ll wake everyone else up,” I muttered to myself, then began shaking Toby, “Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby! Get up! It’s morning!”
    Toby’s eyes fluttered open sleepily, “Oh God, quit shouting.” He sat up, shaking his hair like a dog.
    “At least you don’t have to worry about your hair, it looks like that everyday,” I joked, trying to get him to smile, which worked.
    Toby looked around, “Where did Tahlia go?”
    “She had to go to the bathroom,” I said, then poked the stick at the ham, moving it around, “but we were making breakfast, well, she is, I was just told to watch it while she went.” Toby stood next to me, sniffing the scent of the ham. I heard his stomach growl.
    “I’m hungry,” Toby said, his stomach growled again.
    “It’s almost ready,” I said, slapping away his hand that was moving closer to the pan, “I brought some granola bars, in Johnny’s backpack. Have one,” Toby ran off, “but only one!” I cried after him, sounding like a mom that told her kid that they could have a cookie from the cookie jar.
    Then, I heard Tahlia walking back to camp, smiling and sighing in relief. I waved as she walked to the fire.
    “I got Toby up,” I told her, handing her the stick, “I’ll get Marlo and Sami up.”
    After getting the two girls up, and after we ate breakfast, we all began packing up the campsites. None of us have even talked about our new markings. I wanted to talk about it, but I didn’t know to bring it up. We have a big responsibility, we can’t just ignore it. Well, someone will bring it up once they see the box that had the letter I left in my tent.
    “Hey, guys,” Sami finally broke the silence, “are we going to talk about last night, like, about the markings?” I sighed, at least someone brought it up.
    Everyone stared at her, “Well, we should, Sami’s right,” Marlo agreed, “We can’t just ignore the fact that we have powers now or something.”
    Tahlia and Toby looked at me, “Well, how do we talk about something like this?” I asked. Everyone shrugged.
    Tahlia sighed, “I think we should at least test these powers out.” She stared at her mark, “I think that’s best.”
    Everyone nodded in agreement. Then, we just stood there. I guess none of us knew how to test out this powers.
    “How do we test out powers that we barely know a thing about?” Marlo asked, straight-forward.
    “Well, we could test out Toby’s ‘fire powers’ by trying to get him to set something on fire, like a log or something. And we could test out Shay’s ‘water powers’ by getting her to levitate water.” Tahlia thought aloud, “With Marlo’s ‘earth powers’ she could grow a tree, or something. I don’t know what we could do to test Sami’s ‘wind powers’.”
    Sami lifted her hands, and smile wickedly, “I think I have an idea,” then, it became so windy, everyone’s hair whipped everywhere, clothes flew- thankfully not off our bodies-, and one of the unpacked tents flew away. Sami put her hands down, the wind stopped.
    Everyone’s jaw had dropped, “That works,” Toby said, “ok, Sami tested her powers, now the four of us have to.” He looked over at a dead log, “Hm, time to test the fire.” He shot a single hand up, and then flames irrupted from his hand, bouncing onto the log, turning it to ashes. He then turned to us, crossed armed, waiting for approval.
    “That was awesome,” Tahlia said, “so Toby’s been tested.”
    I tried to lighten things up, “Why does that sound wrong?” I added a small laugh.
    Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. I gave another tiny laugh.
    “Why don’t you go next, Shay?” Marlo said, “You’re water, so, we need to find a lake or something.”
    I then began to think, if Sami could shot wind out of her hands, and Toby could with fire, I could do that with water. I shot a hand up at Toby, I then began thinking about nothing but water, then Toby was drenched in water. He was soaked to the bone, his clothes stuck to his skin.
    “What the hell!” He wiped his wet hair off his drenched face, “Why did you drench me in frickin water! Come on!” He began rigging out his t-shirt.
    I smiled, “I thought you needed to cool off. Fire head.” I ruffled up his orangey brown hair, with a smirk.
    Toby slapped my hand away, “Very funny, too bad I’m not laughing.”
    Tahlia interrupted us, “Can we go on? Thank you. Now I think I should test my powers.”
    “Just don’t use me as something to test on.” Toby snapped, glaring at me.
    Tahlia held up her hands, palms facing each other, about shoulder width. Then, a gold lighting bolt shot from one hand to another. She began moving her hands closer and farther apart, the lighting bolt stayed. Then, Tahlia put one hand down, and the bolt grew longer, destroying a row of three trees. Tahlia balled her hand up in a fist, destroying the lighting bolt.
    “Now, that was awesome,” Toby said. Tahlia did the same thing Toby did, she crossed her arms and faced us, waiting for our approval.
    I turned to Marlo, “Ok, Marlo, your turn,” I went to say, but Marlo was already testing her powers, in secret. She had her hands out, and she had five rocks levitated in the air, rotating in a circle, like a merry-go-round. She looked up, her powers shocking her.
    Everyone came over as Marlo dropped the rocks.
    “I guess we really are the chosen ones,” Tahlia said. We all stood there for a moment, shocked and surprised.
    “Lets get moving,” I said, grabbing a backpack. Everyone followed me, and we began walking farther into the woods, in the direction that my compass said to follow that would get us to the center of the woods.
    Then, something stopped us. A figure stood in our way.
    “Again?!,” Toby cried, Tahlia glared at him.
    The figure walked closer, “I’m sorry to scare you like this, my name is Haven. Is it true? Are you the chosen ones?”