• Ky awoke in her bed. Lazily, she began to open her eyes. The sun was shining through her window, and Ky could hear Mrs. Grove bustling about her room. Still foggy with sleep, Ky let her heavy eyelids shut once more as she began do drift into a dream.
    “Wait,” Ky thought as her brain began to kick into gear,”If Ahnna is in my room, and the sun is high enough in the sky to shine through my window..... I’m late for Mr. Zaphnin’s lesson!”
    Ky jolted upright. Aching pain flooded her head as the memories of what had happened in Roklem’s room rushed back to her. She groaned and collapsed back on her pillow. Mrs. Grove quickly rushed to Ky’s side.
    “Ah, so you’re finally awake,”she said in a rather relieved tone,” I was afraid you were going to sleep for weeks.”
    “How long have I been here?” Ky asked as she rubbed her temples in an attempt to rid herself of her horrid headache.
    “Only a couple of hours, love. I’ve been here the whole time, tidying your room. But I see you’ve gotten yourself a mighty nasty headache,” said Mrs. Grove, noticing Ky’s discomfort, “ Don’t worry, love, Ahnna’s got just the thing for you.”
    Mrs. Grove disappeared down the stairs, but returned shortly. Ky liked the motherly side of her maid that called Ky “love” and referred to herself as “Ahnna” much more than the side that called Ky “Miss Kyrene” and insisted on being referred to as “Mrs. Grove”.
    “Now, sit up and drink this, love,”said Mrs. Grove as she offered Ky a small vial of green liquid.
    Ky gladly accepted the drink and gulped it up quickly only to discover it had a vile, sour taste. By sheer willpower, Ky kept herself from gagging and swallowed the mouthful.
    Suddenly, Ky’s world began to grow fuzzy as she grabbed on to her mattress in order to keep her balance.
    “What was that?”she asked with an oddly slurred voice.
    Each of Ky’s eyelids seemed to way a ton as they slammed shut. She slumped against the headboard of her bed as Mrs. Grove answered, “Boiled Timpwood root, it relieves pain, but is known to cause drowsiness.”
    Ky thought she heard a male voice she could not identify calling her name from far away before she lost all contact with the outside world, and fell into a thick, drugged sleep.


    * * *


    Village on fire, people screaming. Mad dash to find parents.
    Worry, fear, anxiety. Where could they be?
    There they are, relief, joy, happiness. Want mother to hold me.
    Want father to say everything is alright.
    Soldier, fear, screams, anguish.
    Dead.
    Pain, anger, rage.
    Revenge.
    Anger, glass, running, scream.


    Ky jolted awake. She was surrounded by utter darkness, and it scared her. She was about to scream for Ahnna when her eyes began to adjust. To her great relief, she was in her room. It must have been in the middle of the night, for there was barely enough light to make out the edges of her furniture.
    As her nightmare wore off, Ky noticed two things. First of all, it was very hot in her room and she was twisted up in her covers sweating up a storm. The second thing was that she was overwhelmingly hungry. Realizing she must have slept through dinner, Ky got out of bed and pulled on a pair of loose pants and worn out slippers. In an attempt to cool herself down, Ky grabbed a large wooden hair clip on her way down the stairs and pulled her hair up into a messy pile on the top of her head.
    Rather quickly, Ky tiptoed her way past the servants’ sleeping quarters and into the kitchen. When she reached the “leftover” rack, a loud growling noise sounded out of no where and almost made Ky jump out of her skin. She turned to see Joe snoring away on a low straw mat.
    “ I wonder if Joe ever leaves the servants’ quarters,” thought Ky, “ I know I’ve never seen him anywhere but here. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen him leave this kitchen.”
    “ It would be a rather boring life to never leave this kitchen,” thought Ky absent mindedly as she devoured a hunk of half-eaten bread, “Think of all the wonders of the world you would miss if you stayed in one room your entire life.”
    Ky rummaged through the contents of the rack, eating bits and pieces of this and that.
    “But who am I kidding? I don’t know anything about the wonders of the world. I mean,” Ky thought with a small chuckle of self pity, “I’ve only been outside the palace walls, maybe three times, tops.”
    Ky could tell that the main course at dinner had been bean soup, and since cold bean soup is never appetizing, the pickings at the leftover rack were rather slim. Despite this, Ky was still able to find a sufficient amount of edible food to satisfy her stomach. With nothing else to do, Ky trudged back up to her room to sleep.
    At first, sleep seemed like an impossible feat, but Ky somehow managed to drift into a sweet dream of an adventurous life outside the palace walls.
    Hours later, Ky was awakened and treated to breakfast in bed. Because of the events of the previous day, Ky was allowed to skip Mr .Zaphnin’s lesson, but she wasn’t able to skip her school tutoring session with Mrs. Grove or Roklem’s class. Ky had hoped that Roklem would come to her room for her lesson because of the stress it would put on her body to walk the whole way to his class, but, to her disappointment, she found herself making her daily trek to his room in the castle.
    Even though Ky had passed out from weakness only a day before, she didn’t find it hard to run up and down steps, through corridors, and up to Roklem’s door. Surprisingly, she felt more energized now than she had for days.
    When Ky reached Roklem’s room, she pushed open the door and found Roklem standing in front of her, with a serious look on his face instead of writing at his desk as he usually was. Without saying a word, he directed her to the three stools near the fire and Ky sat down on her favorite. Without losing his stiff expression, Roklem sat down beside her and began to question her.
    “What did you see yesterday before you collapsed to the ground?” Roklem asked.
    “I don’t know, I guess I saw...”Ky stammered out.
    “ Miss Rose, it is of the utmost importance that I know what happened to you yesterday. Please, Kyrene, I need to know what you saw,” said Roklem.
    Ky took a deep breath to compose herself, and then slowly began to answer.
    “ I saw a burning village. It was night and most of the huts were on fire. There was a battle going on. Armed soldiers were attacking the villagers. This is going to sound crazy, but I..” Ky paused and breathed deeply again before she continued, “I, I wasn’t myself. I mean, I wasn’t in my body. I know it sounds crazy, but when I caught a glimpse of myself in a broken mirror, I had the body of a nine-year-old boy. I can’t tell you how I know I, or he, was nine. I just know it. I couldn’t move, but I moved anyway. It’s hard to explain; it was like I was a puppet being controlled by someone else.”
    Ky paused and looked into Roklem’s eyes for any hint that he understood what she was trying to say. He managed a faint smile, silently urging her to go on with her story.
    “I, or he, was running down the dirt road between the rows of huts looking for his parents, shouting all the while. I, or rather, we, found them just in time to see them be killed,” Ky stopped, trying not to cry,” I felt his pain. I felt his sorrow as if it were my own. I also felt his hatred for the soldier that had killed his parents. I felt his rage and need for revenge as he grabbed a piece of the broken mirror and ran at the soldier. It was horrible. I, I came back to my own body before the boy reached the soldier. It was so awful,” Ky stopped as her voice cracked and she began to cry.
    To her great surprise and utter relief, Roklem showed the first sign of emotion she had ever seen as he reached over and hugged the sobbing girl. She cried into his cloak as he tried to calm her down.
    “What that boy did was wrong. Revenge is never the right path to take. It is okay to be angry, but never to act solely on one’s anger. If you give into anger, you give into revenge, which in turn, brings violence. Before you know it, you’ve lost yourself in a cage of evildoing. The only escape from that path is forgiveness. If we learn to forgive one another, peace will break the vicious cycle and we will be free. I know the choices that boy made were not yours, but you lived through them and you felt his emotions. You must forgive the soldier,” said Roklem.
    Ky’s body stiffened.
    “Forgive the soldier? How could I do that? After all the pain he put that boy and me through, why would I forgive him? He got what he deserved, didn’t he?” she thought.
    “Just forgive him,”Roklem said.
    Reluctantly, Ky thought,”I forgive him.”
    Nothing happened, so she thought it again, “I forgive him.”
    Ky thought that same phrase over and over again until she really meant it. As she put her heart into it, and even said it aloud, peace began to replace all the twisted emotions her experience had left in the pit of her heart. As her hatred, and anger disappeared, so did the reality of her experience. The more she forgave the soldier, the less she felt as though she had lived the young boy’s experience, and the more she felt as though she had read about it in a book.
    Ky stopped crying and pulled away from Roklem’s hug. He instantly shifted from the warm, fatherlike figure back to the stiff teacher Ky was quite familiar with. He stood up and began to explain what had happened to her the day before.
    “Yesterday,” Roklem began,” It took you about two minutes to read my glow. As soon as you read it, you collapsed to the floor.”
    “But I couldn’t have collapsed right away, I was in that boy’s body for a lot longer than two minutes,” Ky protested.
    “I understand that Ky,” Roklem replied, “The reason it felt like a long time is because you read my glow magically instead of non-magically, as you should have. You delved much deeper into the reading process than you should have been able to, so when I sensed it, I was alarmed.”

    “I, used magic?” Ky asked with a breathless voice as she staggered backwards with unbelief, “That’s impossible.”
    “Exactly why I was so alarmed,” explained Roklem, “When you collapsed, I realized what was wrong. Now Miss Rose, I understand that this may be hard for you to grasp, but yesterday, your body was invaded by a foreign consciousness.”
    Roklem paused to let the gravity of his words sink in.
    “You mean, someone took control of my body?” asked Ky softly.
    “Yes,” Roklem answered.
    “So could whoever took over my body do it again if they wanted to?”
    “I’m not sure. The magic I used on you after you collapsed was quite strong, but if you have any strange dreams or thoughts that don’t seem to make sense, notify me right away,” Roklem said.
    “Yes, sir,” Ky agreed.
    Roklem’s class continued and he quizzed her on the third chapter of the book he had given her, but Ky couldn’t help feeling that something had changed. She felt less interested in magic and more scared than excited. She left his class with a sick, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. Why did someone try to take over her body? Ky didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to find out.