Chapter Five
I couldn’t get my head around it. I couldn’t really believe it. But somehow it made perfect sense. The lightning had definitely come from within me. I knew it. And I could no longer deny it. The onset of puberty, and my sudden physical and emotional transformation, along with this strange ‘coincidence’… Something unusual was definitely going on. I pressed the phone closer to my ear, and leaned forwards, intrigued.
“Okay, let’s just say that I believe you,” I replied to Aura, “what do I have to do?”
“I’ve only read the book once, and that was when I was thirteen. But since you’re the male Ventus, you have to go and meet the Elementus Populas first. They need to tell you what you have to do next.” She sighed, “Grandpa’s the expert. He’s the one who knows what to do. I just hope he wakes up as soon as possible. I’m finding it harder to control my powers too, and so is Sefarina.”
“So you got power when you were thirteen?”
“No, I found out who we were when I was thirteen. I didn’t get my powers until you began to develop them, which was a few weeks ago, when you finally hit puberty. Do you have any idea how long we have been waiting for you to grow up?? They’ve wanted me to start my training for ages, but no, your body…”
“Please, don’t talk about my body,” I interjected, feeling sick that my sister and I were having a discussion about my own puberty.
“Fine, whatever. I’m just making the point that since you’re the imfa… infra…”
“Ignis Ventis.”
“Yeah, the Ignis Ventis, you are the person who starts everything off.”
I remembered the passage in the book about the Ignis Ventis who ignited the wind within.
“So we can now take charge of our inner spirit?” I repeated from the book.
“Yep. The wind… it’s awakened. Can’t you feel it?”
“No, not really. I only feel anger, sometimes.”
“That’s strange… You’re only experiencing the fire, not the wind.”
“Wait a second,” I pleaded, “Why do I have ‘fire’ within me, if we are meant to be ‘wind’?”
“We are wind, or at least we harness wind. We are the three personifications of the element wind. We can control the wind, and shape it to our will. We also all have another additional, but secondary elemental powers, one from each of the other elements. You have fire to control, which means your powers revolve around lightning and thunder; I have water to temper, which means my powers will be centred on rain and storms; and Sefarina has earth to heal, so she will command the clouds and gales. Separately, we are powerful, but if we work together, we are unstoppable. We have to rely on each other to develop our skills and abilities. If one of us falls behind, then none of us can move ahead.”
I paused, trying to take it all in. My head was spinning and my stomach churned. This was all too weird. I couldn’t quite believe it. Me… a superhero? As much as I had always dreamed about having a superpower, the reality of the entire situation seemed like a crushing weight on my shoulders. I repeated what Aura had said in my head. “We have to work together to save the world…” Save the world from what, exactly? In comic books, the villains are also insane psychopaths who will stop at nothing to kill the superheroes. In stories, the heroes always win. But what if we can’t win? Would we all die…?
I shook that thought from my mind. It didn’t bear thinking about, not yet anyway. Then something else, even more terrifying, dawned on me.
“Does that mean I have to work with you and Sefarina for the rest of my life?”
“Probably.”
“Oh crap…” I mumbled.
“It won’t be a picnic for us either! But we have to do it.”
“Why? What if I don’t want to? What if I just want to play football?”
“Too bad! If we don’t become Ventus Elementals, then everything will be off balance, and the world will be destroyed!”
That sounded like an exaggeration, but I was worried it wasn’t.
“This is too weird,” I responded carefully, “Why didn’t Dad or Grandpa say something sooner? Why haven’t we known about this before now?”
“You just thought you were naturally gifted at sports and loved the outdoors, for no reason?”
“Why would there be a reason?”
“You’ve been harnessing the wind your whole life without knowing it. That’s why you run faster and move better than other people. You can change the wind around you to push you forward, and guide the ball.”
“That’s rubbish!”
“No it’s not! It makes perfect sense! I use the wind to push me through the water: why else would I be such a good swimmer? And Sefarina uses the wind to nourish her plants. She has always known about it, weirdly enough. When Grandpa told her, she just laughed!”
“This is sounding more and more stupid!”
“Ask her yourself. You know she wouldn’t lie to you. We’ve both been waiting for years to talk to you about it. I hate to say it, but she was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to bring it up, and tell you the truth, but she said you wouldn’t believe us, that the fire was blocking your senses, that it was too strong to see the wind within.”
I frowned in anger. That didn’t sound like the sort of thing Sefarina would say about me. She was not the type of person to be negative or unkind, and I couldn’t believe she would say nasty things behind my back, or to my face.
“Bullshit,” I replied, “This whole thing is bullshit.”
“Fine,” Aura sighed, audibly passing the phone over to someone else.
“Hi, Niyol, how are you?” Sefarina’s high pitch whimper was completely different from Aura’s deep bark.
“Sefarina, please tell me this whole thing is a stupid joke.”
“No, Niyol, it isn’t. What Aura said was true.”
“So you didn’t want to tell me the truth because you thought I wouldn’t believe you??”
“Yep. That’s true too.” Sefarina’s matter of fact tone dragged the angry bubble back into my chest.
“And why would you think that?” I interrogated coldly.
“The fire within you is stronger than the wind. It’s not meant to be that way. You need to tap into your true element, since you seem to be only harnessing your secondary one.”
The rage was caught up in my throat. It felt like a spiralling spark of crackling insects. My heart beat faster as I struggled to contain my anger towards my sister. How dare she patronise me? How dare she tell me what I should do?
Suddenly, in what seemed like an instant, I saw bright sizzling light flicker out of my left hand. The phone, in my right hand being held to my ear, suddenly became incredibly hot, so I dropped my hand down to see what was happening. I saw the streaks of lightning hovering over my right hand, the mobile phone beginning to burn up. I dropped it, reeling from the pain, and it exploded on the floor, making me jump, and forcing my Grandma awake out of her slumber. I continued to stare in horror at the branches of white light that evolved around my palms, spinning and twirling, shimmering and fizzing in delight for being released. I tried as hard as I could to swallow the furious energy back inside of me, to avoid an explosion that may kill hundreds of people. A power cut in a hospital would definitely not be a good thing. I closed my eyes and tried my best to focus on something that made me feel happy. At first I thought of my Grandpa, but remembering what I had done to him only made me madder. Then my mind wandered to my Dad. I thought about him tucking me in at night when I was a child. When he read me stories. When he taught me how to play cricket, and football, and basketball. When he came to watch me play matches for the school sports teams, and always told me how proud he was of me, whether or not our side won.
I opened my eyes. My chest floated up and down slowly. I felt peace. I looked down at my hands, and they no longer glowed. I sighed in relief. My gaze suddenly shifted to my melted phone, lying on the floor in lumps of metal and plastic, surrounded by a blac
k powdery outline.
“You’ll have to get a new one tomorrow,” Grandma stated, in her usual cheery matter of fact way. I glared at her in shock. Surely she must have seen what happened?
“Don’t look at me like that, darling,” she scolded, “If you want to play with your lightning, you need to do it outside.”
Ventus Page 5