The Elementals

by Saundra Mitchell

  The auditorium stretched back a hundred yards at least, the balcony nearly as long. Gold-decked boxes hung on either side of the movie palace. A dome rose above the seats, its spokes banding toward an ornate cap.

  Standing on a scaffold to replace burned-out bulbs, Caleb told one of the other fellas from maintenance that it reminded him of St. Peter’s Basilica.

  “You’re something rare, ain’t ya?” the man said, laughing as he went back to his paints and brushes.

  The question left Caleb cross. There wasn’t anything rare about knowing that. Anyone, idiot or genius, could go inside the basilica, as long as he felt like standing in line for his turn. Butcher or barber, deckhand or priest, they let anybody have a look if they wanted one.

  When Caleb caught the first passing ship out of Baltimore, he ended up in Liverpool. For a while, he worked the shipyards, then figured out he could go farther if he worked the ships.

  As a tender, he shoveled coal and grew pale as a cave fish—not that anyone knew. Black dust peppered his hands; it slipped into the weave of all his shirts. He worked his way up from the bowels and the boilers, into maintenance, and eventually crew.

  But always on freight ships. The liners that raced the Atlantic carried people, East Coasters, newspaper readers. And it was a long time ago, what happened in Baltimore, but people had good memories for murder.

  So he went on ships full of bananas and books, stuffed with crates of unnamable goods and bottles of irreplaceable wine. And those ships went everywhere; he’d seen the world. He’d stood in St. Peter’s Basilica and stared into its dome. It was all heaven up there in blue and gold, angels and saints gazing back down.

  That’s what it was like on a ship, on deck. Nothing but water below and heaven above. Hard work eased the constant tension in his blood. Hammering ice off a deck was good, clean distraction. Hauling ropes burned his aggression down to an ember that needed no tending.

  Come shore leave, he could always find a boxing ring that would take him, ’til the next ship set out for Persia or Anatolia. He’d still be on the water if not for the war. He was already hunted for somebody else’s crimes. He wasn’t about to go down with another Lusitania; like hell would he die for somebody else’s scrap.

  If things were right in the world, if there was justice in it, he’d have been at home in Baltimore with his wife. With his life, the one he was supposed to have. The one he was promised. The one she stole from him.

  Shooting Thomas Rea was an accident. Burning the rowhouse, that was incidental.

  Too bad Caleb was the only one who saw it that way.

  Eight

  Amelia woke with a start, bursting out of dreams of fire to stare into the dark.

  She’d had that dream too often of late, of the sun growing until it consumed her. It stretched brilliant arms across the sunset, gathering her in tendril fingers. Instead of reducing her to ash, she became part of the flame; she twisted with it, disappeared into it. It wasn’t a nightmare. That’s what made it terrible.

  But that’s not what woke her.

  Fire still danced on her skin, heat that dissipated when she threw the covers back. Something was wrong. Missing, but she couldn’t place it. Though the house was shuttered, closed to wait for the next tenants, it was too quiet.

  Slipping from bed, she found the floor cold under her feet. That chased away the last of her heat. Wrapped in one of Nathaniel’s old shirts, she pulled on her robe and took her time with the tie.

  The walls seemed to stretch too high. The moonlight through the windows shone too bright. Unnerved by the quiet, she rounded the bed and stood at Nathaniel’s feet.

  With his face buried in the pillows, Nathaniel was nothing but a dark figure in the sheets, one that smelled faintly of musk and bay rum.

  Slipping her fingers under the covers, Amelia trailed across the rough curve of his heel, up the shapely curve of his calf. Every inch of him was as familiar as her own body; she scored him gently with her nails.

  He shifted beneath her touch. Still sleeping, he reached for her, hand skimming through the emptiness she’d left in the bed. At once, he sat up. His mussed hair fell in a wave across his eyes; his expression soft and smeared from sleep. Lips still, he spoke to her all the same.

  What’s the matter?

  Unexpected relief flooded through Amelia. Like some part of her had doubted their connection for that moment. Squeezing his ankle, she said, Something’s amiss.

  Nathaniel scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked around. There was nothing boyish about him now. Hard angles informed his jaw, and a refined edge smoothed his brow. Only his eyes were the same, narrow and dark; his mouth still lush when he pursed it, concentrating.

  I don’t hear anything, he told her.

  At once, Amelia stiffened. It wasn’t the quiet. It was the stillness. The rhythm was gone. It began the day Kate was born, a constant thrum that marked their days together, fading only when they were apart. When their family was complete, it had a pulse of its own—and that’s what had stopped.

  Realizing it at the same moment, Nathaniel threw off the covers. Together, they hurried down the hall. White sheets fluttered as they passed, ghosts of furniture now forgotten.

  Footsteps whispered in the dark, echoing through the nearly empty house. Reaching Kate’s door, Amelia didn’t bother to knock. She already knew, but needed the proof.

  The bed was empty.

  Reaching back, she clutched Nathaniel’s arm. See if Handsome’s still here.

  Nathaniel kissed her hand when he peeled it from his arm, then disappeared down the hall. Long stripes of moonlight cut the path in jagged edges. While he looked outside, Amelia searched the remains of Kate’s room. The camera, gone. The tripod, left behind—

  A hot, fresh wound split her when she pulled the covers back. Kate’s little pillow, the velvet one Zora had sewn to welcome her to the world, was gone. Though it was threadbare, worn smooth from little hands, it was still precious. The one thing that always meant Kate was at home.

  At the same moment, Nathaniel murmured into her, Handsome’s not in his cage. Sinking to her knees, Amelia pressed her face against the mattress and started to cry.

  They’d raised a creature insubstantial and untamable, a daughter of fire and wind. Their beloved girl, from nowhere and everywhere, was gone.

  ***

  Deep in thought, Julian set the table for dinner by reflex alone. The kitchen was more crowded than usual, with Zora turning fried chicken while Charlie’s fiancée, Marjorie, whipped parsnips by the basin. Charlie himself minded the biscuits, not that they really needed minding. It kept him close to his girl.

  They all may as well have been in the next county. Julian rubbed spots from forks, his thoughts churning and repeating. His mother had a secret, she had a gift. Had it come on her the same way his had, in the throes of disease?

  A haze softened most of his memories of being sick, the edges faded pale and indistinct. But he knew—from memory or from the telling of it—that she’d come down with polio too. Not near as bad—she could walk, but the disease had sapped some of the strength from her hands.

  That’s why he did most of her churning, her cranking—he was the one who ran the laundry through the wringer, the one who ground the family’s coffee in the little black mill.

  Was it a trading? His legs, her hands, for their gifts? An accounting by God, to pay for the loss? Except that didn’t make sense. He couldn’t feature a celestial ledger that tallied disadvantages and paid out magic.

  By that logic, Helen Keller should have been able to transform wheat sheaves into gold while gliding above them in sorcerous flight.

  Less fantastically, it didn’t explain his father’s gift, though Julian had to admit: he hadn’t seen Emerson change the earth. Part of him discounted it completely.

  “Is that Sam?” Marjorie asked. She leaned toward the window, uncertain laughter lacing her words. “Goodness, what’s he done to his hair?”

  Julian turn
ed as Sam came through the door. He hadn’t just cut his shaggy hair. Gone were his dungarees, replaced by the olive drab cotton of a doughboy uniform. His hobnailed boots clicked on the bare floor. Throwing his arms out, he turned to let everybody get a look at his taped-up britches and the tight fit of the jacket across his shoulders. “What do you think?”

  “Real funny,” Charlie said.

  Zora paled and put her tongs aside. The chicken hissed on in the hot grease, imitating the sound of rain in the distance. “I never thought I’d say this, but I certainly hope you’re mocking your brother, young man.”

  “No, ma’am,” Henry said, coming in the door behind Sam. He wore the same uniform, had the same haircut. It didn’t suit him at all.

  Julian watched his mother wind herself tight. New steel slipped into her spine, and she drew her shoulders back as if she might march off to the Western Front herself. Instead, she marched up to Sam and Henry, oblivious to the fact that they towered over her.

  “Have you both lost your minds?” she demanded.

  “It was coming anyway,” Henry said. Shifting uncomfortably, he tugged the hem of his jacket. “Once they called Charlie, it was just a matter of waiting ’til it was us.”

  “Anyhow, Papa said it’s all over except for the crying,” Sam insisted.

  “If that were true, they wouldn’t need the draft, now would they?” she snapped.

  “This way, we get to pick our specialty. They don’t shoot the signal corps, Mama.”

  “It’s a war, Samuel. They shoot everyone!”

  The Birch farm had always been a peaceful place; the boys got loud, but the parents had never needed to raise their voices.

  Henry looked to Charlie for help. But if he thought Charlie would defend them, he was schooled otherwise.

  Crossing his arms, Charlie nodded toward the fields out back, to the farm. “Bad enough I have to go. Who’s going to bring in the corn this year? Who’s going to mow the hay? Julie sure can’t.”

  The words stung Julian. A little at first, but the ache spread like blood on tissue. The rest of the conversation turned to noise in his ears. As he slipped from the kitchen, he heard them going on about sending pay packets home to hire farm hands, and how Sam wasn’t even old enough to be conscripted yet.

  Julian came back to the table for dinner, but it was an ugly meal, full of make-believe. Everyone used their best manners and flattest voices. The food tasted like ash, and no one laughed, not once. Not a single time.

  Julian couldn’t look at any of them. He’d failed his parents by default, lost Elise before he even had her, and couldn’t measure himself by his brothers anymore. The truth was, they’d suspended him in a perfect bubble. Acted like he was the same as them, but secretly believed he never would be.

  So that night, he stayed inside while his parents and brothers argued over coffee on the back porch. Something about the night air, or maybe darkness, made it easier for them to yell themselves hoarse. It also made it easier for Julian to steal the two hundred dollars his mother kept in a coffee can above the stove.

  Shutting up his bedroom, he left by the front door. It was morning before anyone realized he was gone, and by then, he was on a train bound for Chicago. From there, he’d head west. The scent of honeysuckle and the memory of the siren, the girl he’d always seen against an ocean sunset, beckoned.

  She was as good a compass as any.

  ***

  For most of the passengers onboard, the train’s gentle sway was a lullaby. Men in smart uniforms had come through hours ago to douse the lights in the car, leaving Kate to sit awake in the dark.

  She couldn’t even lean her head against the window. Mollie had claimed that seat and now dozed against a backdrop of scrub-dotted mountains. Even Handsome slept. His talons cut into the back of Kate’s seat. Every so often, he’d shuffle his wings, a dark harbinger over her shoulder.

  Kate wrapped her arms around her pillow and sighed. If she could see the ocean, things would be so much better. The first time she’d stepped foot in San Diego, she felt a familiar caress on her skin—the same touch she always felt when she held off time.

  There was the smallest part of her afraid that she was heading in the wrong direction. What if this was the last summer she’d see him? What if they were meant to meet? What if she should have stayed in San Diego or boarded a southbound train for Mexico?

  The questions spun round and round in her head. Staring at the ceiling only made her think. Thinking made her worry. Worrying made her doubt. It grew like a knot in her belly, filling her with a terrible, unraveled skein.

  It could take weeks to get her film back from the developer. Without The Lady of Shalott to show the studios, she had nothing. They’d have to make do in the meantime, but Kate had no idea how far her little bank roll would go. What did it cost to let a room? How much would they pay for two breakfasts and dinners a day?

  Mollie could get work straightaway at a dancehall or a movie palace—they loved having pretty girls up front to lure customers. Whether Kate was pretty enough for those jobs, she didn’t know. But since she only had the clothes on her back, and those clothes were her father’s, she thought it unlikely she’d be hired to dance for dimes.

  The knot grew a bit more, because she realized she had no idea what boys—what anyone, really—did for a living. She’d never had a permanent home, never attended classes in a schoolhouse. Her world was made of nomads and artists, expatriates and wanderers.

  Daddy sold paintings sometimes. He and Mimi hired themselves out to create art for the World’s Fairs. They never had to pay train fare. Only rarely did they rent a house—there were friends enough the world over to keep them through their travels.

  Until that very moment, in the hushed warmth of the train, Kate had never considered whether her family was poor or wealthy, or how they got by. They simply did, and now she suspected it was by a magic she didn’t possess.

  An uneven beat flickered through her heart, and she folded herself more tightly into the seat. The flicker raced through her again, and Kate couldn’t catch her breath. There was a weight pressing on her, and it threatened to flatten her completely. Reaching across the armrest, she nudged Mollie.

  “Are you awake?” she asked, knowing she wasn’t. Kate shook her again, shushing Handsome when he stretched his wings wide above them.

  Mollie wriggled a bit and mumbled, “What?”

  Leaning closer, Kate whispered to keep from waking the other passengers. “What sort of work do you think might suit me?”

  “You’re a director, goose.”

  “No, I mean until then.” The armrest dug into Kate’s ribs, and she nudged Mollie again. “It’s not a joke; we’ve got to get by until our reel is finished.”

  That made Mollie lift her head. “I thought we finished it this morning.”

  “The photography, yes.” Kate curled over the armrest, wishing very much she could lay her head on Mollie’s shoulder. “I’ve got to send it to Eastman to develop. It won’t take long, but . . . oh no.”

  Wary, Mollie sat up. “What?”

  “They have to send it back. What address am I going to give them?”

  Cutting Handsome a dark look, Mollie stretched herself in her seat until she was smoothed out and entirely awake. Though she didn’t seem worried, she was as serious as Kate had ever seen her. She asked, “How much do you have?”

  “A bit more than a hundred dollars. And it’ll cost fifteen dollars to have the reel developed, so figure that in.”

  Mollie scribbled in her palm with her fingernail. “A furnished flat is expensive. A boarding house is much better. Cheaper, and they feed you sometimes. Some of them do. We’ll say you’re my brother, so they won’t argue about renting to us. You look young enough.”

  An unnerved shiver ran up Kate’s spine. She hadn’t even considered that. There was so much to know, so many things to plan for, and it was suddenly, overwhelmingly obvious that she had not the first clue where to start.


  Fortunately, it seemed Mollie did. “We should buy a paper, first thing. There will be ads in the back. We’ll go through them all if we have to. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Some of the knot loosened. “What about jobs?”

  “There’s all sorts.” Mollie closed her hand and smiled. “If there’s a boardwalk, we should try there first. Even if it’s sweeping up or selling popcorn, it’ll be more fun than a typing pool.”

  “You’re so clever,” Kate said, her admiration spilling out in three little words. But it was all true. Mollie knew everything important. She was an extraordinary actress too.

  It couldn’t have been sheer luck that they met when they did. Kate had been going to Palais de Danse since the fair opened its doors; hundreds of times at least!

  It had to be fate that she’d found Mollie there on her very last visit. Or destiny, or providence . . . something more than happenstance, anyway. Muses didn’t sprout from fig trees; they didn’t fall from the sky.

  Catching Mollie’s hand, Kate squeezed it and swore, “This will be wonderful.”

  Squeezing back, Mollie relaxed against the window again. “I’m going back to sleep. Unless you’ve got another crisis brewing?”

  “I don’t, I swear,” Kate said. But she didn’t let go.

  It was a long way to Los Angeles, and she needed her lucky charm.

  Nine

  Emerson stood at the back door, considering his boys.

  They wandered the yard in their uniforms, talking low and casting furtive looks at the house. The preacher was coming, and Marjorie’s parents, too. There were roses in the boys’ buttonholes, and a white-flour cake was cooling in the window.

  The wedding was never going to be grand, rushed as it was. But it should have been merrier. Emerson whipped the bowl of buttercream as Zora tried to brighten the kitchen. She unfurled her nicest tablecloth and stared into the distance while she did it.

  Sometimes, her gaze would stray toward Emerson, revealing the raw, wounded animal she’d trapped inside her apron and best Sunday dress.