Elemental Hunger

by Elana Johnson

  Something pricked at my gut. Something that hurt. Something like losing more than a best friend. More like losing an opportunity I should have been guaranteed.

  A girl from Cat’s old dorm became his Watermaiden. Her hair hung in glorious ringlets of gold down to her waist. My hair, about two shades darker and a million times less curly, would never compare.

  But it didn’t matter. The Unmanifested round had started.

  My name wasn’t uttered by the first Firemaker. Or the second. Or the third. Tension settled across my shoulders. Jarvis still wouldn’t look at me. He knew how much I wanted to be on a Council. To feel that bond, that camaraderie. We’d talked about it so many times. He’d told me I’d make a good Educator. I said he’d make an excellent Councilman. My meaning was clear. I wanted to serve as his Unmanifested Councilmember.

  His silence had made his meaning clear. I felt it deep inside. Still, I hoped. Jarvis was my best friend. Surely he’d pick me.

  On his turn, his gaze finally settled into mine. We breathed in together; exhaled. Fire smoked under my skin. He didn’t look away as he said, “Elizabeth Nox,” in a strong, sure voice.

  Her name, and not mine, sounded like betrayal.

  The wind welcomed me to the forest. It danced through the treetops, almost producing a tinkling sound to accompany the pounding of my feet.

  Pain and loss and hurt and rage seeped, seeped into every step. The darkness inked the horizon, the glowing lights of the school a mere memory now.

  Leaving campus was against the rules, but I didn’t care. As soon as Jarvis had said her name—not mine, hers—I’d fled. I didn’t stop at my dorm for my running shoes, for my brown hooded sweatshirt, for anything.

  Maybe if I ran fast enough, I could escape the awful sound of her name—hers, not mine—echoing in the chamber, echoing in my head.

  Steam rose from my skin, my blood boiled, and before I could contain it, fire dripped from my fingers the same way the tears slid from my eyes.

  I couldn’t outrun that part of myself.

  But I wanted to. Holy hot blazes, I wanted to.

  See, girl + Firemaker = genetic freak = a secret that could kill me if it wasn’t kept.

  “Gabby, you’re on service tonight.”

  Cold dread filled my stomach with the cook’s words. Service meant face-to-face contact with Councilmembers. Possibly with Jarvis—and now Liz.

  I’d managed to avoid service duties for the past three months. I just couldn’t face my former friends. Not here, not in the dorms. Not ever would be fine by me.

  I made my eyes glaze over as I gathered plates, bumped through the door, and served the Elementals in the dining chamber. Gather, bump, serve. Gather, bump, serve.

  Colored silks blended together. Blue, violet, orange, white, black. No yellow. Thank the sparks.

  “Table twelve,” the cook said, dishing up my last service for the evening. Gather, bump—

  The Councilmembers sitting at table twelve all wore yellow.

  “Hi, Gabby,” Liz bubbled at me as I placed her food in front of her. Warring emotions battled inside. Guilt because of my resentment of her appointment. I should’ve been happy for her. Her life had improved dramatically over the past few months.

  As an Unmanifested Councilmember, she didn’t have to work in the Laundromat anymore. Her hands—once red and chapped—were porcelain and shiny, her nails perfectly polished. She’d been busy learning to read and write. I could tell, because she held her fork with less awkwardness, like the Elementals did who’d learned to hold a quill as children.

  Her hair was plaited into a crown, something she definitely hadn’t done. Her face had been painted by delicate hands. All the work of a servant. Liz probably hadn’t lifted a finger to do more than feed herself in three months.

  Jealousy raged through me, though I wished it wouldn’t. Now that she was part of a Council, she enjoyed the same treatment Elementals received from birth. This was why the Unmanifested pool of candidates was the biggest at every selection ceremony. Anyone would want the lifestyle of an Elemental, even if the role of the Unmanifested was the most unsavory: Administering the judgments of the Councilman.

  Along with the guilt and jealousy came a wave of anger I couldn’t contain. The plate in my hand absorbed the heat from my Element, but the Airmaster I served didn’t seem to notice.

  I practically dropped Jarvis’s plate in front of him and turned to leave.

  “Gabby,” he said.

  “Don’t,” I clipped out. It hurt, hurt to walk away without talking to him.

  Again, his silence followed me as if it was all he had left to give.

  After work, after curfew, after the school and the city of Crylon slept, I dressed in my only pair of jeans, my running T-shirt, and my brown hooded sweatshirt.

  I heated the bars in the gate, wrenched them apart, and set my feet loose in the forests beyond.

  Jarvis had introduced me to the freedom behind the fence surrounding the school. Last fall, when my Element was only a few weeks old, Jarvis and I wove through the trees during one of many illegal jaunts through the forest. The leaves crinkled beneath our feet, glorious reds and golds against the damp earth.

  He chatted about his courses; I told him about the tilted axis of the earth and how it created the seasons. He filled me in on the politics of the selection ceremony; I complained to him about my work in the kitchens.

  I desperately wanted to ask him about his Element. I danced closer and closer to the subject, asking him things like “What happened after you Manifested your Element?” or “What kinds of things can Firemakers do?”

  His feet kept crunching the undergrowth, but he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye. He stepped; I stepped. Our fingers brushed.

  He didn’t pull away; neither did I. It felt clumsy and awkward, but then my fingers settled between his—and I couldn’t detect a temperature difference. I wondered if he could. Part of me had wanted him to know what I was. The other—louder—part wanted to yank my hand away.

  But still another, larger part simply wanted to hold hands with Jarvis Manning. So I did that.

  “Firemakers can do all sorts of things,” he said, his voice low, conspiratorial. “There’s the whole fire thing, of course.” He smiled at the ground where his eyes were trained, but somehow I felt that his smile belonged only to me. “Sometimes we can heat without flame. Some Firemakers can control flames that aren’t theirs. Some can tell which type of wood is burning simply by the smell of the smoke. You know, things like that.”

  “More,” I breathed. “Tell me more.”

  And he did. He said that some Firemakers could sense the firemaking ability in others. They could feel the Element inside, tell how far away the other person was, how strong of a Firemaker they were.

  “Can you do that?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer for several minutes. We crunched through the leaves, hand in hand, the wind adding to the symphony of sound in the forest.

  “Not all Firemakers can sense the fire in others. But all Elementals can summon,” he said. “And that’s sort of like detection.”

  “Really? I thought summoning simply meant the person had to prove their Element.”

  “Exactly. And then you’ll know their power, right?” He cast me another sideways smile and squeezed my hand.

  Sudden panic seized in my stomach. What if he could sense my firemaking ability? I stewed and fretted over that, noting that he hadn’t answered my question, for the rest of the walk. As I tried to smother my spark deep inside, my contributions to the conversation became clipped two-word sentences, but Jarvis didn’t seem alarmed.

  When he kissed me just before we returned to the school grounds, I forgot about keeping the fire dormant. His touch caused such heat to explode inside of me, no matter how much I wanted to push it back.

  Sometimes Jarvis came running with me, but in the three months since he hadn’t chosen me, I’d gone alone. Always alone.

  Now I p
ounded my frustration and loneliness into each footstep late at night. I ran and ran and ran, hoping to leave behind the memories of Jarvis. I finally succeeded by switching my thoughts to the advanced history lessons I’d been enduring since declaring my interest in the Educator track. The boring topics cooled my fire enough to return to the school.

  I smelled the smoke before the grounds came into view. The intoxicating scent swirled in my senses, awakening that part of me I hadn’t quite learned to control, even after trying to outrun it. I slipped through the gap I’d made in the fence and fixed it before sprinting toward the corner of the southern barracks.

  The orange glow of fire painted the sky, exciting me even as dread seeped into my awareness. I peered around the corner, the delicious flames filling my view. I took two steps before pulling back. Fire meant danger. Even I recognized that.

  “Blazes,” I cursed. Thick smoke curled around the northern barracks, forming clouds that shaded the moon.

  I pulled my hood over my hair and shrank into the shadows. My skin tingled with the dancing flames. My breath came out in white puffs as I watched the other students clustered together in the absolute cold. I wasn’t welcome in any group, not now, not ever.

  Much as I tried, I couldn’t help how the sight of the leaping flames relaxed me. Chaos raged as smoke poured from the second floor windows. Round-faced girls in ash-covered nightdresses stood in a circle around the burning building, singing.

  Watermaidens.

  I wished I could hate them. But most were as nice as they were beautiful.

  Water gushed from the ground. The Watermaidens raised their hands, focusing their Element to quench the wild flames.

  I swallowed my disappointment at seeing the fire die.

  Liz stood with her new friends. Her Council. I looked away, bitter disappointment coursing through me. My emotional wounds hadn’t healed, even after three months. Seeing her twice in one night didn’t help.

  “Gabby.”

  I sensed the fire in Jarvis before he emerged from the alcove in front of me. “Jarvis.” I kept my emotion from infusing my voice. He didn’t need to know how much I wanted to talk to him, how much I loathed him, how much I missed him.

  He wore all black, his usual everyday uniform. He smiled, revealing his white teeth. “Kilpatrick, you’ve always been so Unmanifested.” Jarvis’s dark eyes harbored an edge of amusement.

  “So have you,” I replied, playing this familiar game, aching from the three long months of separation. He’d be leaving in just one month. I was almost used to life without him. Almost.

  With a snap of his fingers, a whirlwind of fire snaked from his wrist to his fingertip. The light made his dark eyes seem endless. He leaned in and examined me more closely. “You been running again?”

  I pulled back. Someone without firemaking power shouldn’t be able to tolerate flames so close. Besides, he already knew the answer to his question, so I asked, “How’s Liz?” I barely got the name out; my throat felt tight, tight.

  “She’s fine.”

  And with that, we’d exhausted our conversation topics. Funny how we used to walk together several times a week and had never hit a lull of awkward silence.

  Jarvis blocked my view of the fire and refused to look anywhere but in my eyes. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I finally met his gaze. “To what do I owe this honor, Firemaker?” I almost bowed, the way non-Elementals often did with their superiors.

  He blinked at my formality, then his eyes softened. “You’re in trouble.”

  The air filled with dirt and fire and smoke. I couldn’t breathe. Did he know?

  “Gabby?” So many questions hid behind my name.

  “I didn’t do anything.” I glared at him, chest to chest. I stood almost as tall as him, despite being a year younger.

  Jarvis pointed behind him, toward the fire. “Someone said they saw you.”

  I clenched my fists to keep the fire—and anger—inside. “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Someone was seen in the corridor after curfew. Wearing a brown hooded sweatshirt.” His gaze slid over my incriminating clothes and back to my face.

  “So no one else in this school has a brown sweatshirt?”

  “No,” he said simply. “No one else breaks curfew.”

  “You do.”

  “Gabby, someone was seen in the northern barracks. And now they’re on fire.” The way his voice lowered, the river of concern it carried, lit a flicker of fear deep inside.

  “No,” I whispered. “I don’t—I mean, I’m Unmanifested.” Even as I spoke, the fire danced inside my body.

  “The advisor of the northern barracks sent for you. People are looking everywhere.”

  No matter how hard I tried to push it back, the Element burned upward, licking my stomach with a fiery tongue. Inside my jeans pockets, my fingertips smoldered.

  “The northern barracks are stone,” I said, desperation lining my voice. “I couldn’t have lit them on fire, even if I was Elemental. Which I’m not.”

  He tilted his head. “Gabby—”

  “Why?” The question just burst out. “Why’d you pick her when you could’ve picked me?”

  Jarvis raised his fingers to my cheek. I yearned to lean into his touch, but I kept my back ramrod straight. He looked at me, really looked. Through my defenses, through the three month separation, straight to my core.

  “A Council can’t have two Firemakers,” he whispered.

  I backed up as two weights flattened against my chest and pressed, pressed against my ribs. “No. You don’t—”

  “I can sense the fire in you, Gabby. I felt it in January too. Felt it last fall when you Manifested. I wanted to choose you—”

  “Stop,” I choked. That resentment had already been dammed. I couldn’t re-live it, couldn’t harbor any more anger than three months’ worth.

  “If I didn’t pick her, she’d end up working in that laundry until she died,” he whispered. “You—you have a chance at something else.”

  Again, shame raged with guilt inside. Jarvis was right; Liz had a chance at life because he’d chosen her for his Council. I’d tested into the Educator track—I could do that. It just felt like living someone else’s life.

  “No.” I shook my head. His version of “something else” didn’t match up with mine. All I could envision were city walls and the threat of exile. No way Councilman Ferguson—the only authority in Crylon that could approve a new Council—would allow me such a thing. I’d heard enough rumors to know that genetic freaks didn’t get to choose what happened to them.

  “Gabby, please,” he pleaded. “I can feel your fire.”

  “Only boys are Firemakers,” I whispered, as much agony in my voice as he held in his.

  A wry smile decorated his mouth. “Manifest.”

  My power jumped, ready to explode out. I squeezed my eyes closed and bit down hard. But the Elemental power I possessed had been summoned by a Firemaker, a Councilman. The fire roared in my head, and I pulled my hands out of my pockets so I wouldn’t incinerate my only pair of jeans.

  In the next moment, my fists erupted in hot flames. The rush ended, and I opened my smoking hands to reveal a burning ball of embers resting in each palm. Jarvis’s long fingers encircled my wrists. Only another Firemaker could touch me so soon after an Elemental release.

  His black eyes glinted in the tangerine light of my Element. “Run.”

  I didn’t look away from Jarvis. Fat snowflakes landed on my nose and eyelashes, sizzling on my skin. Inhaling through my nose, I examined my options.

  I couldn’t stay in school—not with people looking for me and the accusation that I’d lit the northern barracks on fire. I couldn’t stay in Crylon. No one would accept me. See, freaks were dealt with quietly, even though we all knew where they were sent—outside the walls.

  Jarvis and I knew an even greater significance to his declaration to run. On one of our walks through the forest, we’d discussed a particular Firemaker he’d lea
rned about in his Elemental training. He’d never told me much of his studies, claiming it was against the rules. I believed him, because my Educators had been adamant about keeping my lessons secret too. The Councilman wanted to control all information in Crylon, and that meant keeping it fragmented.

  But Jarvis had told me about this Firemaker, because she was accused of killing a man and taking his ability for her own.

  “It makes no sense,” Jarvis had said. “You can’t gain another’s power. They’re genetic.”

  “Right,” I’d said, nodding. “So what happened to her?” I’d been beyond interested in learning more about this person, but I hadn’t wanted Jarvis to notice. My heart pounded too hard for the leisurely walk, and I had to work hard to keep the sparks from raining from my fingertips.

  “She claimed her firemaking Manifested, just like a man’s does. Councilman Harley didn’t believe her. Condemned her to death.” He paused, his eyes focused on the ground, and frown lines forming between his eyes. When he spoke again, I could barely hear him.

  “She should’ve run away,” he said. “No one should have to die because of something they can’t control.”

  That was the first time I thought I could confide in Jarvis about my Element. Yet somehow, my lips stayed tightly closed. We walked in silence, letting the wind sing its song through the treetops.

  Just before we returned to the school, I asked, “So was she guilty of killing another Firemaker?”

  “I don’t know,” Jarvis said. “But if she was a Firemaker, she didn’t become one by stealing another’s power. That just isn’t how it works.” He shook his head, his dark eyes sparking with lightning. “She should’ve run away.”

  I heard those words again in my head now, as the snow drifted down, as I looked into Jarvis’s intense eyes.

  “Jarvis, please,” I said, hating myself for how childish I sounded. I shivered from the biting wind snaking down my collar.

  “We’ve talked about this before,” Jarvis said. “Your only choice is to go. I was sent to find you and bring you to Advisor Kingston.”