Maite walked down the middle of the cobbled street, oblivious to everything around her. Miniature lightning bolts flashed from her eyes. Her fingers sparked with electricity but she barely felt it. Her heart was numb. She thought seeing Kepa die once would be the hardest thing she would ever experience. She was wrong.

A French soldier burst onto the street in front of her, his rifle raised but shaking in his hands as he yelled. “Arrête, sorcière!” Maite kept walking as if the man – perhaps, maybe no more than a boy – wasn’t there. Sweat poured down his brow as he pulled the trigger. The musket made a loud bang and a cloud of smoke as the musket ball flew from the mouth of the rifle toward Maite’s chest. Maite kept walking as the ball approached, disintegrating as it hit the electric field surrounding her. And stil she kept walking. The young man screamed as he frantically tried to reload his musket, pulling out his powder horn. But Maite simply walked on by. The boy turned and yelled “Arrête!” one more time. Maite turned, the expression on her face never changing, as she touched the boy’s cheek. A shock of electricity poured from her arm through her finger and into the boy. His body fell to the ground, stunned. 

Garuna’s voice echoed in the back of her head. “The logical thing would be to eliminate him.”

Though Maite had just lost her lover, and she knew that killing this boy would be temporary at best, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She shook her head. “Ez,” she whispered, more to herself than to Garuna.

“And this is why you humans will eventually fade away,” said Garuna. “You do not possess the ability to do the necessary. You are illogical.”

Maite forgot about Garuna as more soldiers, maybe five, appeared in front of her. These did not hesitate to fire and soon the street was filled by the stench of burnt gunpowder. Musket balls whistled through the air at her only to explode as they hit her body, the electric aura protecting her from any damage. Still she walked, her steps taking her by the cowering soldiers. At least one dropped his musket and ran. Another attempted to grab her hand and screamed as an electrical pulse swept through his body. 

“They cannot harm me,” said Maite. “There is no need to kill them.”

“They will not stop until you do,” replied Garuna.

Maite shrugged. “And so?”

Maite continued on a rocky path that led up the side of Mount Urgull. She could hear a larger contingent of soldiers behind her, their excited chatter reaching her ears. Every once in a while a musket ball would fly through the air. Most missed by a wide margin, smashing into a tree or ricocheting off a rock, but once in a while one would be true. She could feel the pop against her skin, as it shattered against her, but she simply ignored them. They weren’t hitting hard enough to leave a bruise, much less do any real damage. 

Within minutes, she was at the top of the mount. In front of her stood walls of an old fort. She stopped to look around. In the bay, large ships rested, their canons eerily silent at the moment. She half expected swarms of British and Portuguese to flow from the ships but no one came. She saw the city, smoke swirling from some of the buildings that had been bombarded the night before. While much was different from the city she was about to call home, there was still much that was familiar. She almost smiled when she realized there was no McDonald’s nor Starbucks in sight. But, the musket balls that began pelting her body brought her back to the present. 

Maite turned to see maybe twenty or more soldiers at the edge of the clearing. They were shouting at her and each other in French. Muskets fired and balls burst as they neared her. She knelt down and touched the ground with her finger. A burst of electricity spread through the wet earth in an instant, finding the soldiers and snaking up their bodies, which convulsed briefly before falling to the ground. The few soldiers who had been in the back and standing on rock, and thus insulated against the shock, dropped their muskets and fled down the hill.

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