by Gabi Moore
Lilly squeezed his hand.
“Hello, Dion,” the Naiad sisters greeted him as the stepped down to the bank on the stream.
Dion consulted his map as soon as he left the van and discovered the best way to enter the mall without being seen was to travel down the stream and enter a concrete pipe.
“Hello, Ladies,” he responded to them as the water elementals surfaced on the bank in front of him. They appeared in their natural form as beautiful young women covered by their long hair. Not hard to believe the sailors of old risked disaster on encountering them. Even his friends tried not to stare at what was in front of them.
“Are you comfortable down here?” he asked. “I know it’s not as isolated as your rock in the ocean, but I didn’t think you would be disturbed too often.”
“We miss our boyfriends already,” Dirce told him. “And we scared people last night.” She was the first one to fall for a local boy yesterday and her sisters followed as a matter of course.
“Scared them off too,” Cynae, added. “They came down here to be alone and didn’t expect to find us sitting on the bank.”
“I didn’t think they could see you,” Emily said, holding Sean’s hand.
“Only if we don’t want them to see us,” another one of the Naiads told her. “By the time they were down here we didn’t notice them. Guess we gave them quite a scare because they took off quick.”
“Which reminds us,” Cynae asked. “When are our boys coming back? We are so very lonely in this place.”
“Give them another day,” Dion told the elementals. “And don’t go find them, although I know you could do it.
“Why not?” Cynae asked him.
First of all, you’ll scare people. Second, they need time to work up cover stories for all of you. Keep in mind you were the ones who put the glamor on them.”
“But they were so cute,” Ismene, the youngest one of them, said. “We couldn’t help ourselves.”
Dion had spent some time the evening before talking with his aunt and uncle about what might happen today. They were understanding and concerned about him. His uncle wanted to help, but Dion let them both know that he had to do it with his own abilities. His friends would be there for him, but they were only to assist and not find the elemental grandmaster for him.
“Fire,” his uncle Rich repeated to himself several times. “You’re going after the most dangerous of the four today. Be careful. My brother will have salamanders ready.”
“Salamanders?” his aunt asked, as she tossed her hair back. “How dangerous can salamanders be? I step on them all the time by the wood pile.”
“Different kind of salamander,” his uncle explained. “Fire elemental salamanders. They can burn down anything in their path. They’re almost little dragons. Be careful, Dion.”
“I intend to be careful,” Dion told him. “Besides, I have Cynae and her water elemental sisters to back me up if it gets out of control.”
“A lot of good she’ll do you if the salamanders unleash flames before they can arrive. I’ve seen those things do some serious damage to buildings. I still see them dance in the flames of burning wood. They’re everywhere.”
Dion assured his aunt and uncle he would proceed with caution, then showed them some of his new abilities by causing miniature tornadoes in the back yard and summoned a waterspout in the swimming pool.
“I know,” he told him. “Parlor tricks any stage performer can accomplish, but wait till I have the fifth elemental ability. Then I’ll have my parents back for sure.”
“One more ability to go,” Dion reminded Lilly that evening as she took her home. “Then the fifth elemental power and my uncle will not be able to stop me from freeing my parents.”
He pulled into the driveway to Lilly’s house and killed the engine. They could hear the sounds of the neighborhood in the darkness: radios, TV’s, parents calling to children. A thousand different lives lived in a thousand different realities. It was still early spring, but the air was warm enough for most people to open their windows and let the fresh breezes into the homes. Most of the houses were built on a single plane with a basement if they could afford one. A few houses had fireplaces and some had them in the basement too. Most of the houses were built twenty years ago in the big rush that accompanied the end of World War 2. Plans were in the works for another express ramp to connect the next suburban cluster to the city of Scipio.
Lilly touched Dion’s hand. “Will you want any of us to help you when you get your parents out?”
“That is one I have to do totally by myself. I can’t risk taking any of you with me when I go into that clock tower. It’s too dangerous. I don’t know if the map works inside it. Only my uncle knows what is inside the tower. He should since he built it.”
Dion turned to Lilly and wanted to tell her how much he appreciated her being around him. She’d been quiet through most of their adventures together and he didn’t feel it was right to keep her involved in his quest to obtain all his elemental powers.
However, the moment he opened his mouth a B-52 bomber flew over the neighborhood. He could hear it coming and closed his mouth. All through the neighborhood, people would place their phones down or groan because now they’d be unable to hear their favorite show for the next sixty seconds. This one was low and the ground rumbled as it passed overhead. It was a reminder to him that no matter how deadly the forces controlled by his uncle might be, there were deadlier forces at work in the world. Dion was told a nuclear explosion was one of the few places you could see the elementals of the fifth element dance.
Emily and Sean were still under the willow tree an hour after Dion had dropped them off that evening. There was a bench beneath it where they sat entwined around each other. Emily had watched the light come on in the living room after Dion dropped them off. She’d observed her father come to the window and stare at her with disapproval. She knew he really didn’t have anything to worry about, but he was still her father. She wondered how he’d take the news.
“I’d think your mother would be happy to learn you were going to get married,” she whispered in his ear. “I think my dad will be happy to hear it.”
“She’ll give me a lot of grief,” he told her. “She always does.”
“It’s not like we’re the only couple planning to get married upon graduation,” she returned. “I know of four others who have made plans. My grandmother was married when she was sixteen.”
“Your grandmother was brought over from Romania,” he reminded her. “Didn’t you say your grandfather sent a letter and some money to his brothers in Bucharest and told him to go find him a suitable girl?”
“Yeah? So what is wrong with that? They’re still married after sixty years.”
“Because she never did learn English and stays in the house. Ouch!”
Emily pushed him to one side. What was wrong with him? He’d pledged his eternal love to her yesterday and she to him. Was it fading already? It seemed like they were in some kind of a movie, which continued to repeat itself over and over again with these trips back to the mall. One more trip tomorrow and then?
Dion had the previous evening on his mind when he led his friends down the bank to the secret entrance into the mall’s subbasement. It was still dark, so they were forced to be careful about where to step. Even with the Naiads in the water splashing around, they still had to avoid any slippery parts of the embankment.
“I’ll bet you wish I was a water nymph,” he overheard Emily say to Sean. “That way you could keep me in your mother’s fishpond.”
“Naiad!” he heard a voice call from the water. “Don’t forget we want to be called Naiads.”
“Naiad,” she corrected herself. “He’d like to have me quiet and some place where I wouldn’t be a bother.”
“Emily,” Sean repeated to her. “Sweetheart, we have the rest of our lives to be together. Let’s not get started off the wrong way.”
“Lives?” Lilly said to them. “Does that
mean what I think it does?”
“Yes it does,” Emily said. “We’re pre-engaged.”
“You have to get a ring for that?” Dion stopped his transit and looked at them. What on earth had he provoked by keeping those too around him? Lilly turned and sighed at him with her big browns too. A few minutes away from the entrance and his companions were discussing marriage. What was this world coming to?
“Yes,” Sean said to him. “Didn’t you hear?”
“They just started selling them at the big jewelry store downtown,” Emily let them both know. “I’m sure we can find a place in the mall to sell one. Right, Sean?”
Sean leaned over and kissed her. “Let’s get Dion through his quest first, and then I’ll find you the pretty ring.”
“Pretty ring? Pretty rings?” he heard the Naiads echo from the stream. Any discussion of shiny objects attracted their attention. “We get pretty rings from our boys too?”
“Now see what you started?” Dion laughed. “We get through this and the chess club will be furious at me.”
Chapter 3
The entrance to the mall loomed ahead, just next to the culvert where the stream continued on its passage to the river. A small wall was built from concrete and stone next to the pipe to keep out accidental swimmers. A gate ran across the front of the pipe, but it was unlocked and swung open when the figure that stood watch over it saw Dion approach. It was difficult to see who stood next to the gate. Lilly put her hand over her mouth when she saw the form of a ghoul still in his cleaner uniform. Two more stood next to him.
“Don’t worry,” Dion told her. “They work for me now. They have ever since I acquired full earth elemental powers.”
Still with bad memories from her experiences with the ghouls the first time around, Emily shivered and hid behind Sean as they passed by them. The ghouls waited until Dion and his friends were inside the ledge of the concrete pipe and then fastened the gate behind them. One scampered over to the ledge and opened a hidden door on the side of the concrete pipe. He produced a flashlight and shined it into the passage inside it.
Dion led the way and continued into it with his friends behind him.
The ghoul cleaner with the flashlight stayed in front as his two companions locked the door again. It would be a long trip down the passage into the subbasement of the mall, but they were inside the perimeter. The security team could do all it wanted to keep him out of the parking lot, but Dion was inside the mall, no matter how far from the main shopping area. It would be another task to find the Fire Elemental Grandmaster.
The tunnel was quiet and no one said a word during the long walk to the subbasement. Lilly held tightly onto Dion’s hand. Sean and Emily stayed close together and as near as they could to Dion. There were no lights in this part of the tunnel and, should the one flashlight be extinguished, they would have no way to find their way out. The only sound anyone could hear was the slow drip of condensation from the top of the tunnel. It was very damp inside the tunnel and it had to have been built as a secret access point during the recent mall construction. The concrete walls were too fresh and appeared to be poured in sections. This meant that Dion’s Uncle Seth knew about the secret entrance to the mall.
The moment Sean decided to say something was the moment the tunnel came to an end. Before he could say a word, the door to the mall appeared before them. The ghoul in front produced a key and unlocked it. He swung the door open and placed a pair of mirror shades over his eyes. Sean glanced back and saw the other two ghouls also put on their shades. It occurred to him this was the first time he’d seen the ghouls without their mirrorshades. He knew the bright light hurt their eyes, but they had good vision in the dark.
“They see into the infrared spectrum,” Dion explained as he noticed Sean watch the ghouls place their shades on. “However, too much light of any kinds throws off their balance and hurts their equilibrium.”
They were in a small room next to a ladder. The room was made of poured concrete and led upwards through an opening in the ceiling. The room where they had emerged had very little light inside it. The ghouls opened the door next to them, which led to the ghoul’s part of the subbasement, and went inside. The last ghoul stopped and waited until Dion handed him some coins. Then he joined the others and left the humans inside the antechamber to the rest of the subbasement.
It was a brief climb up the ladder to the next level. Here they found a larger utility room with rows of chart data recorders that monitored the electrical power of the mall. It was still underground, but was directly under the red, or fire element, part of the mall. Dion pulled out his map and laid it on a desk. He pushed aside several rolls of blueprints left over from the contractors who built the mall. There was plenty of light in this section and his companions elected to sit down on several chairs next to the table.
“Are we close to the main floor?” Lilly asked him as she watched Dion pour over the map given to him by Mr. Jehuti. The map was special and changed its display of what stores were rented and which were available for merchants. It had a complete listing of the power lines, which ran through the mall and displayed all the internal access tunnels. It even displayed special passageways through the mall that could change their entrance and exit points if you knew how to work them. The map was priceless and given to Dion with the strict understanding it was never to fall out of his possession. Of course, the forces that wanted to keep him from locating the elemental grandmasters had taken possession of it several times, but Dion managed to get it back each time.
“We’re right under it,” he told her. “At least according to the map. All we have to do is find the passage in the next room to our right and take it up to the next level. We’ll emerge right behind an escalator and no one should notice us this time of day. All we need to do is find the Grandmaster and then we can all go home.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Emily said to him. “All we have to do is follow your plan and it will all go smooth. Why don’t I believe it will happen the way you just outlined?”
“Because it never does,” Sean said. “One of those things you can guarantee about this quest. But I have assurance in Dion getting us through it all.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Dion said as he studied the map. He rolled it up and placed it in the jean jacket he’d worn every day. “At least we know where we are in this place. I’d hate to be forced to find my way around here without this map.”
“One thing I did want to ask you,” Emily brought up. Today she’d dressed casually in a jean skirt with sandals and a tube top under a sweater. Sean had worn his thick boots just in case they were needed.
“What’s that?” Sean said. He took Lilly’s hand and felt how nervous she was today for some reason. Why was she so quiet?
“Where do you find your way around on the map? You don’t have a compass with you, do you?”
“The map knows true north. There is a directional sigil in one corner which always tells me where to point the map so it orients correctly. Maybe someday all maps will come with one, just not from an elemental source.”
He finished his speech when the air in front of them began to swirl. Lilly jumped back and Sean grabbed Emily for protection. Dion faced the swirl and closed his eyes. He didn’t have any control over this elemental, which meant it was one of his uncle’s. It didn’t feel to be an aether elemental, which meant this was a fire spirit. In the enclosed space, this was not good as there was no source of water he could unleash on it if the thing was sent to do them harm. He found enough air slypes in the big room to blow it out if he needed to, but it was best to see what this thing wanted before he did anything else.
The swirl turned into a flame, which fused into the image of a small figure. Because it was burning, the fire creature didn’t have a steady form. This one couldn’t be a salamander; it had to be another, less powerful elemental. Dion stood his ground and decided to see what it would do before sending the sylphs against it.
“Dion Bach?” the
creature spoke. “I am addressing Dion Bach?”
“You are,” he confirmed and waited. All it would take would be one command to blow it out, but too much oxygen at once on the fire had the possibility of sending it out of control. “What do you want?”
“Your uncle wanted me to tell you that he’s willing to release your parents if you transfer all your powers to him.”
So this was the reason for the small fire elemental. Dion’s uncle realized he was inside the mall and couldn’t be stopped. He was desperate to make the trade. But Dion knew that if he gave his uncle those powers, no force on Earth could stop him. He would be giving the launch codes of a nuclear missile to a mad man, someone who craved unlimited power.
“No deal,” Dion told the fire spirit. “Tell my uncle he is to release my parents at once before I will consider any further deals with him.” Dion stayed on his guard. He felt the air sylphs gather around him, ready to pounce if given the command.
“I will relay your message,” the fire being told him. The burning image slowly disappeared and was replaced by a pile of ash on the floor.
“So what was that about?” Emily asked Dion. “I was worried for a few minutes that we had a real problem on our hands.”
“It was one of the smaller elementals. They make good messengers if you can keep them from burning things down. My uncle employed that one to make me an offer. He won’t like the answer I sent, but it’s his problem, not mine.”
“He knows we’re here,” Lilly said.
“That is evident,” agreed Dion. “We simply need to figure out a way to get into the rest of the mall without drawing too much attention to ourselves. We’ll be forced to take a direct route.”
“Now that you’ve seen a fire elemental, what do you plan to use against them?” a voice called from across the room.