Children of the Elementi

by Ceri Clark

  Using her nails she scraped along the bottom. At the corner she located a small hole. Fitting her fingers through it she pulled. The bottom of the safe gave way to show another space beneath. Now the vibrations increased in intensity. They must have been encased in lead she thought. Grabbing a cream silk pouch she threw it at the men standing by her as if it burned her fingers.

  “There they are!”

  The tall man just laughed catching it.

  “You won’t be so dismissive when you get some of the profits from this baby!” But Kiera was ashamed, she had promised never to use her talent for anything illegal. She never told her aunt about the jewelry thefts - or any of her family. It was between her, her father and that horrible man.

  On their way out, she saw a dying orchid beside the door. For some reason she felt compelled to touch the failing plant. For a second she felt dizzy as pure energy leapt from her finger. Confused, she stared at it. It seemed to be a little healthier than it had before. She shrugged her shoulders. She must have imagined it.

  Since that time, she had met that man countless times. She had learned to dread his approach, his gravelly voice. That first job appeared in the papers the following week. Her aunt read it aloud to her while her father was out. Kiera remembered that day clearly, when the paper reported that the orchid had miraculously recovered. The owners of the house thought it was strange the burglars would leave a healthy plant instead of their dead one. Her aunt had laughed at that. Why worry about a plant when they lost thousands of pounds in jewels?

  Afterwards, Kiera had tried it again on some dying plants at the end of the camp. It took several tries but she found that she got stronger each time. Soon she was able to heal trees by a thought without even needing to touch them. From that point on every house she went to she made any plants she saw in the buildings healthy. The paper thought she replaced them but she knew better. It was the least she could do.

  She hadn’t done badly out of the arrangement. It wasn’t as though any of those families were poor, Kiera reasoned as she tried to justify the memories to herself. They, no, she needed the money more. After each job, the man had given them some money. She would always hide away a third for herself. Her father wasn’t around when the men brought the payment, so he never knew what it was. She was sure the man with the scar knew she kept some back but he never told her father if he did.

  Dragging herself away from her memories, Kiera made her decision - it had to be now. It was time to go. She had just turned fifteen and she was heartily sick of the life. She had already put some of the money in an account and she knew where to go for a passport.

  Her ability to read minds had come and gone often over the years, but it had given her some useful information. She knew how to pick locks, where to fence money and most important of all where to go for that all-important passport.

  She knew the system but she also knew where to go next. Her aunt had told her of some family in the UK she could stay with. She needed to go to an English-speaking country she reasoned, and England would be the easiest to get to. If she stayed in Ireland her father would be able to find her eventually. The traveler community was not that large.

  Stuffing the passport in with a spare set of clothes, she took one more look at the room. She wouldn’t miss it - any of it. Not even her father. Her only remaining tie, her aunt, had died last year. She was finally free. Slinging the backpack over her shoulders, she made her way out to her new life.

  Getting through customs concerned Kiera the most. She needn’t have worried though; Campbell’s mind had told her the name of the best forger in Ireland. Even so, passport control just waved her through. She didn’t even have to open it!

  As she strode through the station she contemplated her next move. She had to find her family. Taking a couple of hundred out of the cashpoint Kiera scanned the station for signs. The tube station was across the hall. Knowing the family was in Enfield she planned to take the Piccadilly line straight to Oakwood. Her cousins lived next to the park there.

  She should have accepted Aunt Clara’s offer. She had wanted to contact them before she died but Kiera had always refused. She didn’t want to think about what would happen when Aunt Clara wasn’t around anymore. If they didn't talk about it, it wouldn't happen. Life doesn't work that way she thought sadly. Standing on the platform, Kiera chewed her lip, pushing back the emotions. She missed her. She knew the Jelleys would let her stay. Her aunt had told her how close she had been to her sister when she was younger.

  Kiera took out her address book. She could read now. It had taken torturous months but her aunt had insisted on the lessons once she found about the thefts. Kiera had kept her vow to herself never to tell her aunt, but the wily older woman was wise enough to know that one day she would have to move on when she was old enough. To survive on her own, she would need to be able to read.

  It had taken her a long time to get this far, finally to have independence. Kiera stepped on to the train and settled back in the seat.

  The tube train soon filled up, and people of all types were packed in like sardines: business workers, tourists, housewives and shoppers. The acrid smell of so many people cramped in together was difficult to ignore. She wrinkled her nose but after a few minutes she got used to it. At each station more and more people joined the train. It was getting more and more difficult for people to get on and off.

  Seated at the end of a row of seats nearest the door, Kiera had just enough space to ignore the discomfort of the other passengers. A woman, obviously pregnant, leant against the glass screen on her left. She had one hand holding on to the grips and her left-hand holding a paperback. As they reached Oxford Circus, the door began to open and close repeatedly. It jolted Kiera from her stupor. Realizing the discomfort the woman in front must be in, Kiera half-rose to give up her seat. Before she could, a tall man dressed in a scruffy creased pinstripe suit realized he was about to miss his stop. He began to elbow passengers out of his way with one arm and use his briefcase as a battering ram with the other. People began to shout as his briefcase hit thighs and elbows. He ignored them, desperate to get off.

  The pregnant woman standing beside the door looked up but she didn’t stand a chance. There was no room to get off and she didn’t have time or the space to move out of his way. Kiera winced as he twisted and elbowed the woman in the stomach. The woman’s gasp of pain resounded loudly in Kiera’s mind. She felt as well as saw the woman collapse against the blue metal post.

  Instinctively Kiera touched the woman. A flash of awareness greeted her - the baby was in trouble. She could feel the baby’s heart miss a beat. The pendant under her shirt began to throb. Surprised she stared at the crystal at the end of its leather cord. That had never happened before. The distress of the baby once again called for her attention. Without knowing why, she placed her hand again over the woman’s stomach. Using her new awareness and fleeting telepathy she reassured the fetus. At the same time, without knowing how, she erased the damage the man had done. As the woman hit the floor she knew the baby was all right. The mother would not even suffer a bruise.

  Where the woman fell, a sudden vacuum was created. The man didn’t even stop to see who he had hit but moved on shoving people out of his way, frantic not to miss his stop. As he ran on to the exit, the rest of the carriage emptied.

  A student sitting on the opposite seat to Kiera saw the woman collapse on the floor. Rushing across to the expectant mother, the boy pulled her to her feet. Concerned, he stood in the doorway calling for a guard to get help. Sure the pregnant woman was being taken care of, Kiera leant back exhausted. Her whole body ached but she knew what she had just done was right. She had saved a life! She had not just imagined it, she had felt the tiny life and because of her, it was alive. The mother would never know, but she did. She smiled. Maybe she could atone for all she had done.

  A few hundred miles away, Jake and Mirim faced each other on the corner by the school. Jake was staring at Mirim in disbelief.

>   Jake felt it first. Connected to the Matrix, Mirim experienced it only a few seconds later as it travelled through the psychic link.

  “Did you feel that?” she breathed. She felt the tingle of raw power leave her senses.

  “Yes.” He said slowly.

  “Someone used power! We need to find the other lost children of the Elementi. That had to be one!”

  Jake squinted back at Mirim, “Lost children of the Elementi? That sounds like a bad sci-fi movie.”

  “A what? No, one of the Elementi. You are one, I am one. There are three others. I am from the family representing air; there is still earth, fire and water to find.”

  “What am I ?” He demanded.

  “You, you are the spirit element. Your family’s color is white. You represent the focus of all the powers. You can wield all four, but you do not have as much of any one power as we do individually. You are however more powerful for having all four. We need you to complete the Matrix. There are five points, four on the outside and one in the middle - you. Without you, the four elements can do a lot, but without you, neither Aras nor the Magi can be defeated.”

  As the Matrix transferred the coordinates of the energy surge, Mirim gazed into the distance, “I have the coordinates of where he or she was. From the data I downloaded from your networks, the power was most likely used on a train. I need you to concentrate on the power to find it. Now you know what it feels like you should be able to focus on it. Let the power draw you to it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Mirim held back her impatience. She had grown up with the Matrix so she knew how to use it. She had forgotten the younger boy was new to it.

  “Listen, follow my thoughts.” She hadn’t done this since before her mother died. It was dangerous. You had to trust the other person implicitly. After this, he would know her better than she knew herself and vice versa.

  Taking a deep breath, she reached out with her mind. Feeling her mind touch, Jake tentatively reached out with his. Memories flashed back and forth to each other at lightning speed. He caught her intense loneliness of being alone in the Citadel for years and the grief at her mother’s death. How could she bear to be alone for that long? In his mind, she learned the thirst to find out about his parents, his heritage. She also saw the grief of losing his adopted parents and the wonder he felt at what was happening at that moment.

  After the initial exchange, they turned to look at Jake’s core of power. Visualizing it as a thin thread of power snaking through his body, she showed him how to match the power they had both felt against the four different colors making up the white cord. Tweaking each strand, they resonated at a different frequency. As Jake experimented on the green color, he knew he had it.

  “That’s the Earth element. She has an affinity with nature. She will be able to recognize metals or just make things grow better.” Mirim explained.

  She drew him along the yellow thread that kept her in contact with the Matrix mind back on Eleria. Fear gripped him as winds buffeted them in the no-space between worlds. He felt himself spin out of control, his mind was fragmenting and darkness began to encase Jake’s mind. He was blown one way then another, there was no up or down, just endless night.

  “Keep your mind focused on the yellow thread!” Mirim’s voice admonished as if from a distance. Getting a hold of his mind, Mirim gathered him in her psychic embrace. Her skills were tested to her limit as his consciousness seemed to slither under her grasp. Finally stalling his spin, she sensed the Citadel near and dumped his mind through the conduits to the main crystal controls into the full mind meld. Now Mirim, Jake and the Matrix combined to make one vast but still incomplete mind.

  “I couldn’t do this on my own.” He heard wonder in her thoughts. “I needed your abilities to do this.” He knew how she felt - literally. He felt like he knew everything - could do anything.

  He found his awareness spreading out though the planet of Eleria. Everywhere he looked there was crystal. He was the crystal. He understood how each crystal formed a part of the whole mind. “Wow, this is amazing.” The Matrix couldn’t think on its own. It used their minds. It was a partnership going back thousands of years.

  He could sense it was grateful and even happy for him to be there. He felt an insane reciprocal happiness. It felt like home. The Matrix accepted him without any reservation. He now knew that Mirim, the Matrix and the others would be closer than any real family could ever be.

  “Jake, you need to find that other element!” Her call brought him back to reality.

  Leaving behind his own white cord so he could travel back if he needed to, he followed her by instinct. As his energy flowed into the Matrix, it multiplied. What he gave was given back to him threefold. Power called to like power and he felt himself moving at a great velocity back through the no-space to Earth. Still part of the whole, he found himself hovering above a girl. She could be no more than sixteen or seventeen at the most. She had long dark-brown hair. She was startlingly beautiful. She appeared to be sleeping on a train. As he watched, someone woke her up. This was the last stop on the line, the man told her. She twisted to look through the window at the sign for confirmation and nodded sleepily. After thanking the man, she left the train. Jake made a note of the name, Oakwood.

  Mirim instructed the Matrix to disconnect their minds and to send them bodily to Oakwood. If they hurried, they would hopefully be able to catch her before she went any further.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: SHENELLA

  Shenella squinted into the far corner of the Great Hall. Marta and Ecu were leaning towards each other by the buffet table, obviously talking in whispers even though no one would be able to hear them in the general din even had they been talking normally. What could they be talking about? Really, if you are going to plot something, don't act as if you are! They are spending far too much time together, she thought. What are they doing?

  She was shocked at how quickly Ecu was rising at court. It seemed everywhere she turned he was there with that sly grin. And the way the First Adviser was dismissed - no good could come of it. She could already see Aras’ other advisers getting restless. He was talking to them less and less each day. That could only cause trouble.

  The advisers were powerful people in their own right. If he continued to ignore them, it would betray his weakness. It was only a matter of time before someone took his or her chance.

  She could understand that Aras would favor Ecu a little. After all, he had lessened his headaches when no one else could, but this was ridiculous. How could a simple healer rise so high? Of course, she answered herself, he was no simple healer! He was also a magician as well as a scholar, all that drivel about his ‘research in the Great Library’ on his first day. The Council had been advisers to the throne for decades. One adviser she believed had even served under the first Aras - her fiancé’s grandfather.

  From her vantage point in the corner, Shenella had an uninhibited view of the entire room. No one paid any attention to her sitting by the doorway. It was as if she didn’t exist to them. If they thought about her at all, it was probably like the throne that Aras sat on each and every day she mused. There, important because he needed something to sit on but in itself not worth thinking about. Part of her of course was grateful. She wasn’t stupid. People disappeared or died regularly in the court for being noticed. She had no discernible power as the Magi recognized it, so she was not considered a threat. There were benefits to being invisible but it did irk her sometimes!

  Ecu moved away from Marta and began to work his way around the different factions in the room. She began to notice it yesterday. First, he spoke to the head of the merchants’ union, the lowlanders. The islanders were next and now he was talking to the Ambassador to the Merpeople.

  Although it was not recognized or even visible by the Magi she did have some of the old power. And now, she thought, this was the time to use it. Shenella sidled up to the table nearest Ecu. The combination of her status as being the future consort
to the Emperor and her power to stop people noticing her was a potent one. She imagined a shield protecting her from people’s minds. Either one makes me invisible, she thought with a wry smile. Maybe next year when we are actually married I will be someone. She shivered at the thought. Yes, but at what price?

  She was close enough now to study the Ambassador’s features. She had never seen this man before. One of the servants had told her earlier this was his first time in Naven. He looked just like anyone else in the room but Shenella knew better. The only visible difference to the casual observer was his hair. It had a strange greeny-blue tinge to it. His face was ordinary, grey eyes, aquiline nose and a balanced jaw.

  The way he held himself though showed her he was younger than most of the other ambassadors. He seemed confident but there was an undertone of nervousness about him. In his twenties she guessed. Merpeople were rarely seen outside their own domain. They coexisted peacefully with the islanders, spending most of their time in their underwater cities before having to go back to land.

  All the other Ambassadors were probably in their second to third life cycle. One of the perks of being or helping the Magi was mind transference to another’s body when the original reached old age. It was the reason they were all so good-looking she supposed. There was no reason why they would choose ugly people to take over.

  I wonder what happens to the people they were, she wondered. Are they still in there? Or was their consciousness pushed out to be eaten by the Gods? She shivered. At least she would never suffer that fate. Without warning the Ambassador looked her way. He stared straight into her eyes and gave her a small smile. He winked.

  Startled, she averted her eyes. He could see her. Mechanically she picked up a sweet cake from one of the silver platters beside her. One of the first warnings she had heard when she arrived a few years before had been that it was unwise to eat the food laid out in the Great Hall. The funny thing was they all thought it was poisoned. Stupid, each person thought that one of the others had poisoned the food so no one bothered to do it. Besides she had seen one of the castle’s tame crows eating one of the cakes earlier and it would have been dead by now if it was tainted. She took a bite. Ugh, it tasted like sawdust. The cooks obviously didn’t bother to make their sweets tasty for the same reason.