by Ellie Margot
“Because I want to make sure you all know the seriousness of your mission here,” said Alluette. Her severe expression reinforced the truth in her words.
It was hard for Riette to see her mother as the leader of the Elves of Vitan. Her mother was the one who cooked with her, kissed her bruises as a child, and tucked her in at night. She was the woman who kept the world a real place when it should have come to an end when her father passed.
Yet there were other times, like this, when Riette could only see the leader in her. Her mother’s long white hair stood out in stark contrast to her dark skin and against the green of her clothing.
“Pair up with different elements,” Blaine said. “Fire, Wind, Water, Earth. Find a partner before I give you one.” His voice was like everything about him, unnecessarily harsh.
Riette groaned inwardly.
“Guess we can’t work together,” said Corin, but the unasked question of whether or not Riette really counted as a fire still hung between them.
Since Corin was a fire, Riette’s earth side could make her different and a fine pairing, but someone having two powers was too new. No one knew how to act right now. No one ever had to deal with more than one power—Alluette being the only exception as their queen.
Corin walked away before Riette could respond. She easily found herself a partner with Mekhi, and Riette felt a twinge of jealously. Not because she didn’t want her cousin with her but because it was so easy for Corin. For both of them.
Everyone found partners quickly. There were less and less people to choose from. Riette swallowed.
Don’t worry, and don’t fucking panic. Riette turned to look for Cassian. Since he was a wind power, they would be fine.
She didn’t make it two steps.
“No, no, Princess, you’ll work alone,” said Blaine. His voice was a grunt, and the smile on his face cut deep grooves in his cheek like a knife was being pushed against his skin.
Riette cautioned a glance at her mother, expecting her to say something, but she was met with silence.
She wanted to show Blaine all of the curse words she knew, but she wouldn’t act out with her mother there. Not even when everything in her screamed to do so.
“You’ll go first,” said Blaine. He had stopped smiling, except for in the creases of his eyes, and there was a darkness to it that Riette didn’t like.
“So I will,” said Riette. The tone made the words seem respectful when underneath rumbled something entirely different.
The students gathered around her. A circle formed, and a stage made of people was constructed. Riette was left alone as its center. Each person had a clear vantage point to watch Riette rise or crumble. Having all eyes on one person was unusual for that type of trial, but not unheard of.
Every so often, a test would happen, but Riette was in her wheelhouse then. The earth powers in her broke the ground in her hands and beneath her feet, just as she asked it to.
The other set of powers in her didn’t listen as well. And that could be a big fucking problem.
Chapter 2
Every eye felt like a pinprick and every breath like a judgement. The air inside the circle of Elves around her felt different to Riette. It felt charged. Electric. Dangerous even.
Blaine set a massive stone at Riette’s feet, something almost as big as she was. Riette caught her mother’s eyes above the rock, but Alluette didn’t smile. She wouldn’t. There was too much on the line, even if the words weren’t said out loud.
Riette couldn’t embarrass her. She wouldn’t.
“Break it,” said Blaine. He had his hand under his chin with his eyes focused intently on her.
Riette took a breath and placed her hands on the stone. Power brewed deep inside of her.
The magical tattoo that depicted her elemental power on her right shoulder tingled with the energy. She wanted to reach back and rub it in an attempt to calm it down, but she couldn’t do that in front of everyone else without showing her lack of control, and she knew it wouldn’t affect it. Energy didn’t work that way. Riette had to find the control within herself. Touching it would do nothing.
The energy was pulling strings inside her. It was a rearrangement of parts to suit a new purpose. Then things clicked in place.
A hissing sound filled the silence, the sound of matter on the edges of being ripped apart. The force jumped from her fingers into the stone, cracking it. Pieces fell off, and chunks lay at her feet. In a moment, what was once whole was in bits all around her.
Riette had overdone it, but she wasn’t embarrassed. He’d said break it. She obliterated it. He called her out. She fucking answered.
A breath passed. Then another. Blaine’s face went still, but there were yells from all over the room. One person let out a “whoop,” and others followed.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Blaine, but even his voice couldn’t quiet them. Not for a full minute afterward.
The power in the Elves was a tragic thing typically. The power inside each Elf had become a trickle, a whisper of a thing.
In Riette? It was a roar, but after the awe came a quiet, and in that quiet was the truth: there was something in her abilities that made them fear her.
“Now burn the remains,” Blaine said. His voice spoke with a finality that the tremor in his hands belied. No one saw it but Alluette. No one else would have thought to look for it, either.
“But it’s stone. It would take levels—”
“Burn the stone, Riette.”
Riette cursed under her breath. She closed her eyes. The power stirred. The strings inside her were different now. Varied. They were jagged edges inside of her that only showed themselves when something primal in her wanted them to appear.
If she was angry, they came. Even if she didn’t want them to, they would come anyway.
Now, when she needed them? Nothing stirred.
“Now,” said Blaine. His voice was tinny and clipped with impatience.
“Blaine,” said Alluette. These were her first words since announcing the test. The crowd looked to her, to both of them. Even the fire Elves were quiet.
Riette looked up but didn’t hesitate. She focused back on the stone.
She hated being told what to do, but she refused to bow down, either. Her mother said she was destined for a purpose, and having this second power, however fucked up it made her, must mean something. It had to.
The crackling started in the room. It burned and bubbled like a brew of everything angry inside of her. The fire flared to life in her hands, flickering brightly, and gasps were dragged out of just about every person in the room.
Under her direction, the pieces of rock flared a bright red like hot steel before they darkened to the color of coal. Breaths felt like they were being ripped out of Riette’s chest as she watched the destruction of the pieces in front of her. They burned until the noise was unbearable, a strong hiss, and then the rock ignited, making the room even brighter because of it.
“That’s enough, Riette,” said Alluette. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried, and Riette stopped the flow inside of her.
The rocks still sizzled in front of her, the sound easily heard because the crowd was now quiet. They waited, but no one knew quite for what.
Riette looked at Cassian in the crowd, and he smiled at her. Riette smiled back.
“Who’s next?” asked Blaine. The moment left them, and Riette moved to stand by Mekhi and Corin.
Another group came up. They looked sheepish, like they didn’t want to follow that show. It was clear no one knew what to do with what they’d witnessed.
Practice went on for hours. The day grew longer, less eventful, and Riette ignored the eyes looking at her as she trained by herself. Soot still colored her skin from the practice. They were all sweaty, their bones, muscles, and minds tired from exertion when she met with Cassian and Mekhi afterward on the patio of the common practice hall, named the Center officially, but the Ruins to those who used it. It was the only tree in use th
at showed wear because of all the elements at play at all hours of the day and night within it. The three of them stood flanking the large window on the quieter side of the structure. Although there were others in the space, they were busy in practice, and Riette could almost pretend they were alone. Corin was also there, which was something Mekhi celebrated more than Riette did.
“That was next level,” said Corin. “How did you even do that?”
“Our little girl here is amazing,” said Mekhi, grabbing Riette by the shoulders.
“Stop, stop. She can’t afford to get a bigger head.” Cassian had a smirk on his face.
Riette looked down at her new outfit. On a whim, she had gotten clothes to look more like the fire Elf she was becoming. The greens and browns were replaced with reds and black. There were metal accents where previously there were none.
“Bite me, Cassian.”
“I’m allergic,” he said. She laughed, even when he didn’t. Cassian didn’t share his laughter too often, even though his dry humor was the main thing that had gotten Riette to smile after her father had left this plane.
“Are we meeting there after practice?” Riette asked the group.
“Meeting where?” asked Corin. Her face was flushed from exertion. She was full fire, at odds with Cassian’s wind, but she was committed.
“Riette’s dad’s old house,” said Mekhi. He didn’t look at Riette’s face because he knew what he would find there: signals to not say a fucking thing.
“Don’t you have homework?” asked Cassian.
“Don’t you have someone else to mother?” asked Corin.
Riette and Cassian shared a look over her shoulder.
Corin let out a sigh. “All I need to do is water my lieng, and I’m good. Can I go? Am I welcome?” She directed her last words at Riette, since everyone knew who in the group made most of the big decisions. She too had a lieng, a Vitan tree sapling, but he was older and less needy because of it.
Riette bit her lip before looking up and letting out a sigh of her own. “Yes, you can come, but I’ll meet all of you there later.”
“Where are you going?” asked Mekhi. His instincts to keep a constant lookout for his cousin, by blood and by oath, weighed on him.
“My second home,” said Riette.
It was dark by the time Riette vined to the last territory. The Forest of Elan seemed large unless it was all you’d ever known. Then, it seemed impossibly small and growing smaller with every other breath she took.
On this outer edge of the territory of the world as they knew it lay the graves. Riette practiced here. She bonded with the Vitan trees here. Her lieng was here when it wasn’t in her room. Her peace was here as well.
Because in this outer territory were the two things that meant the most to her, the tree that her grandmother had become and the grave where her father would rest before he met his next life.
The vine unfurled her to the root level below. The trees towered far above her head from this level. One only visited when they wanted to remember the dead, be they in the ground or in the oldest Vitan trees.
When her feet hit the ground, a peace Riette didn’t experience anywhere else settled over her, broken only by the part of her world that was getting harder and harder to ignore.
From here, more than anywhere else in Vitan, one could see their world burning. The fire, not made by any of their hands, was slowly claiming the only thing that mattered, the Vitan trees themselves.
If someone didn’t want to see it, they wouldn’t. It was spreading, but it hadn’t yet claimed anything fully. But if someone cared, if they wanted to pay attention, they could see the ashes and scorched matter surrounding the cracks of the trees in the distance while embers burned in the grooves. The fire within it could tear their entire world apart. If it spread. If it claimed more than just a small taste. Yet, the most frightening part of the fire was that Riette didn’t know its origin, and no one who would tell her the truth was alive to say it.
Her grandmother’s tree, the graves, the ground that held her father were the closest to the damage. That killed Riette on a level that felt ever more real.
She felt her tattoo glow on her shoulder. The sizzling wasn’t in her hands yet, but the tattoo was the first step. The chaos her power brought was often a close and dangerous second. She needed to burn off the energy before it destroyed something, before her own kind of fire appeared at her fingertips and the world she saw burning was by her own hand.
She yelled because she could, screamed until she felt like her lungs would bleed from the pressure. She made a fire in her hands that would stagger anyone who saw it, and she cursed not knowing why the other fire was burning and whether or not they could win the war against it.
She did all these things until the tree she cherished most picked her up in its vines and dangled her above the Esper ground she pounded on. The tree—her grandmother—shook her, not enough to hurt her but enough to put her grandmother’s words in Riette’s head.
Stop it, child, the action seemed to say. You’re being dumb and ruining my peace.
Moments passed while she hung helplessly. Great. Held hostage by a tree. The only thing that could make this worse was if one of the fire Elves discovered her in this ridiculous situation. Or worse, Mekhi or Cassian. A huff escaped her lips, a semblance of laughter, and with it, her energy shifted finally. It changed little by little until the darkness that could have claimed Riette’s very soul became something different and she was herself again.
The vines lowered her to the ground and slowly unwound from her legs, leaving Riette to stand on shaky feet. It didn’t escape her that she’d just touched a point where she could have lost herself forever.
And to remind her she was still there, a vine slapped her on the ass. Riette laughed, and the wind blew through the trees as if her grandmother was laughing with her.
A moment passed and one more after that. Riette dropped down to sit in silence, pulling a calm into her core until the trees rustled behind her. She shot up, standing at alert. There was nothing for her to fear in Vitan that she knew of, but knowing that and feeling safe were two different things.
Alluette walked into the opening. She must have landed in a clearing just inside the forest.
How long has she been watching me? She didn’t ask the question aloud.
“I knew you’d be here,” Alluette said. She closed the distance between them with long strides only someone of her height could manage.
“It’s home.” Riette knew how dark that sounded, but she didn’t care. Home to her was where the people who owned her heart were, and those people were her grandmother and father in the earth.
Alluette took a breath, her chest filling with air in front of Riette’s eyes before she spoke. “It’s an anchor.”
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“No, I’m telling you there’s more to life than hiding in the woods.”
“It’s spreading,” Riette said. She wanted the previous line of conversation to be over before she spoke words she knew she would regret.
Alluette glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes narrowed. She looked down before finding Riette’s gaze again.
“That’s not your concern.”
“Not my concern?”
“You need to worry about ruling.”
“What if there’s nothing left to rule? What if the world keeps burning around us until we lose everything we know?”
“You don’t know what you speak of, child.”
“Because you won’t tell me,” Riette countered.
“You want to save the world? Learn how to be the hero it deserves.” Her voice echoed through the trees around them.
The wind rustled again before settling.
Alluette touched Riette’s cheek before turning and summoning a vine. The vine wrapped around her mother’s core, down her body, and up again.
Riette watched her mother until the trees took her away, and when the wind came back, ruffli
ng her hair and blowing through her clothes, she didn’t stop staring.
She didn’t stop the fire inside of her from burning. The tattoo tingled on her shoulder again. Newly formed flames licked her palms, and she didn’t try to quiet it or the storm inside of her.
Would her father have walked away like that, leaving more turmoil in his wake in the process? Would he have told her to stay safe and let the problems work themselves out?
Be a hero? Riette didn’t need to be told twice.
Chapter 3
“This is bullshit,” Riette said. Her footsteps echoed in the small space. Her father’s childhood home was modest. His less than opulent upbringing was evidenced in the shabbiness of the quarters, the dirt in the corners, and the scratches on the walls.
The others, who had been there for hours already, looked up at the sound of her voice.
“Which thing is bullshit exactly?” Cassian asked. “You need to be more specific.” It would sound like a joke to someone who didn’t know him, but the slight wrinkles on his face that he was too young to have were showing.
“I got the talk again.”
“If you don’t know how little Elves are made by now…”
“Shut up, Mekhi,” Riette said, but the venom in her voice was missing. He was the only person in Vitan who could make her laugh when it was the last fucking thing she wanted to do.
“Mother came to see me.”
“While you were communing with nature?” Mekhi asked. “That’s rough.”
“Communing?” Corin asked. She pouted. She wasn’t used to not knowing something. In fact, she made it her business to know at least a little bit about a lot of things.
“Riette likes to visit the grave site,” Mekhi whispered.
Corin’s eyes widened. Sure, she had lost people in her life too. Everyone had. But visiting the dead was something people did to let go, not to have a chat.
“What did she say?” asked Cassian.
Riette swallowed. “It doesn’t matter what she said. What matters is what I saw.” She took another breath before continuing. “The trees are burning.”