Air

by Terra Harmony

  “That was exhilarating!”

  “Yeah, well just come back when called next time,” I scolded her with my hands on my hips. “It’s time for you to finish your part of the bargain.”

  “In a hurry to get somewhere? You won’t be going far with all Alex has done. Are you sure you are not a prisoner there?”

  “Alex and I have an agreement, don’t worry about me.” I held up my hand for her to take. She hesitated only briefly, and then consented. Just as with the air elemental, I felt my body tingling with energy starting at my hand and moving rapidly through my veins. I could feel the knowledge in her mind and sensed it becoming a part of me. I allowed myself to explore, finding memories and powers she wasn’t necessarily transferring to me willingly. Finally I reached a barrier. I could tell there was still much to discover behind it. She dropped my hand.

  “You’re holding back.”

  She shrugged. “If I gave you everything now, what else would I have to bargain with?”

  Smart woman.

  It didn’t matter, I felt sufficiently overloaded as it was. I would need time to practice with my new powers, before absorbing more. “Fine. It’s time for you to go. I’ll call you when I come back, but in the meantime, stay out of my head. Next time I want to talk to one of you…you –”

  “We call ourselves Shades.” She interrupted.

  I paused. “Shades?”

  “Yes, Shades – like shadows, spirits, apparitions.”

  “Ok. Next time I’d like to talk to a Shade who knows all about the one who controls the Gaia’s powers.”

  “Controls?”

  “Not the Ardwyad, but the one who controls the merging of powers between elementals and the Gaia; the one who can add or subtract to the Gaia’s energy.” I was trying to refer to Shawn, without knowing if his position within the organization had an actual name.

  “Oh.” She understood. “Not every Gaia has one of those, but there are a few in here who might know. I will find the best.”

  I began ushering her to the wall opposite the stairs. “And, why are there only female Shades? I have reason to believe the athame has touched males, too.”

  “The athame does hold male personalities. They are just separate, somewhere inaccessible to us. It separates us out to keep the balance. If the athame starts to hold an overwhelming amount of female or male power, it will start to release power from one side to balance itself out.” She paused as she realized which way we were facing. “The stairs are on the other side.”

  “I know. That side is, well, let’s just say temporarily closed.” Before she knew what I was doing, I waved open a large slit in the wall and pushed her off the ledge. I quickly closed the wall, even before I heard the loud splash down below. She wasn’t going to be too happy with me, but there had been no other choice. I waited for the chatter and heightened energy coming from the rest of the Shades to subside. I wouldn’t want them to take that momentum and find some way to push themselves into my protected ledge. Once satisfied, I lifted my arms and found Alex staring me down.

  “Took you long enough.”

  “I had a few more items of business to take care of.” I held my cuffed hands out to him, “Mind releasing me?”

  “I’m tempted to leave you just like that. It would be far less trouble for me.”

  “Just curious, did you see me use my hands when I created that fun little wind cocoon around you?” My threat was obviously worse than his, because my hands and feet were freed in seconds. “That’s better. Now, tell me what you’ve found out about the islands.”

  Chapter 24

  Sun Tzu - it

  “Both the Heard and McDonald Islands and the Southern and Antarctic Lands sit smack dab in-between Australia, Africa, and Antarctica.” Alex assumed the position of an important lecturer, using the kitchen counter as his podium, looking down his nose at his only pupil – me. “Recent satellite imagery, and communications I’ve been able to collect from each of the islands, show no indications that Shawn is there. If he is, he’s covering his tracks extremely well.”

  In our usual custom of working until we were dead tired, we were still at it by one a.m. He continued, raising his voice slightly over the noise of our second pot of coffee brewing. “In fact, I don’t think we will know quite where Shawn is until we get there. In any case, we have few options as far as transportation and have no choice but to visit the Southern and Antarctic Lands via a French oceanographic ship. It travels there four times a year from Reunion, an island just east of Madagascar.”

  I groaned, “Not a boat…” Seasickness plus seven months pregnant was not a good combination.

  “The next ship is scheduled to leave in four weeks.”

  Make that eight months pregnant. Alex ignored my griping. He was getting good at that as of late.

  He babbled on, “The French Southern and Antarctic Lands is French territory with no permanent population. Those there are either military personnel, other civilian officials, or scientists.

  “There is a merchant marine fleet with cargo ships, tankers, and other carriers, which provides potential transportation to the Heard and McDonald Islands, if we determine Shawn is there.”

  “And the boats just keep on coming.”

  “The Heard and McDonald Islands are uninhabitable and barren. There is no population.”

  My ears perked up. “No people - sounds like my kind of place.”

  “Sounds like Shawn’s kind of place,” Alex retorted. “At least one where he can plan, run operations, and conduct experiments in relative peace. It’s a nature reserve. The islands are bleak, rocky, ice-covered, and actively volcanic.”

  I flashed back to the Galapagos, another nature reserve with very little population. “I’d bet you anything Shawn set up shop there.”

  “Ok then. We have about a week and a half to prep before travelling to Reunion. That will give us two weeks to find a way onto the boat leaving for the islands.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And what, exactly, does ‘prep’ consist of?”

  “Well, I need to take inventory of gear we’ll need, clean and service it, pack, arrange our travel plans…”

  “Ok,” I said, “And what will I be doing?”

  “You, my dear, will be doing your thing.”

  “My thing?”

  “You know, your magical thing. Practice. We should expect to be at a major disadvantage. We will be outnumbered, probably more inexperienced, and we’ll be on their turf. You need to prepare yourself for every possible magical scenario. Be able to defend against any attack. And, you need to find a weakness. Find something he won’t be expecting. This will be a no-hostages mission, Kaitlyn. If we go, we go to take him out. If we fail, we keep going until the last man is standing, and then we go again. You need to be ready.”

  His words resonated through my mind but the one phrase that stuck out was ‘major disadvantage’. He was so right. I needed to prepare and I knew just how to do it. I whipped into action, heading for the door. “Call Micah and let him know the plan.”

  “Where are you going?” He called after me.

  “I need some privacy.”

  “Your own room tonight?”

  I stopped and turned around in the doorway. “No – my own head.”

  He started to disagree.

  I stopped him short, “I need to do this, Alex. It will be the only way we can win. I need knowledge and experience, fast. The only way I can get it is through those women. They’ll help us fight the battle. They’ll give us the numbers and Shawn won’t be expecting it.”

  He eyed me carefully weighing the consequences, but the strategist in him prevailed. “Ok, Sun Tzu. But I will be checking in on you, and not a word of this to the others until they need to know.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Agreed,” he said more hesitantly.

  We parted ways. Before heading to our shared room, I stopped to help myself to the only computer with internet access at the Chakra. Located in a dark, clos
et-sized office next to the guard’s room, I knew access was spotty at best. Still, I had to make plans for myself and for my baby. It took some time with the slow connection. For days, I had made sure to take several rolls of photographs, claiming I was documenting changes in each element after magic was used.

  "Why can't you develop them?" Alex had asked.

  "Sorry. Doctor's orders. The chemicals are bad for the baby." I’d answered.

  It might've even been true. Sounded logical enough to me. He didn't check with the doctor, and he didn't know I spent just a couple of minutes each day producing 40 or more pictures of puddles, rocks, leaves, and whatever else was on my way to my training spot for the day. Rarely did I even take the time to look through the eyepiece before I clicked away. And so, I had extra time during the day to practice and time in the evening on the computer when I could be sure Alex was locked away in the darkroom.

  I was only interrupted when the doctor came by wanting to play internet poker. The first time he caught me I had looked like a bumbling idiot, trying to come up with some reason I was on the computer. Every time thereafter I always left a screen up on a baby naming website that I could quickly switch to.

  "What have you come up with so far?"

  Speak of the devil… the doctor stood in the doorway, once again interrupting valuable prep time. I released a tense breath. "What do you mean?"

  He sat down in the large armchair that took up half the office and crossed his legs. "Names. For the baby."

  "Oh, right. Well, um, we have some ideas but we're not sharing. We don't want, you know, opinions and that kind of stuff."

  He stayed silent, with his hands folded in his lap. He wasn't leaving.

  "I mean, not that we don't trust or respect anyone's opinion, or your opinion, for that matter, but Micah and I just want to keep the debate between us. For now."

  The doctor nodded his head once. It gave no indication he agreed, was annoyed, or even that he cared. He definitely wasn't leaving.

  I feigned a yawn. "Well, maybe I'd better turn in for the night."

  "Yes, yes." The doctor jumped on the chance to encourage me to leave. "You need your rest, of course."

  I said good night, and mouse clicks could be heard once I barely made it out of the room. Annoying.

  Chapter 25

  The Black Mamba

  This was going to be a rough night. Pouring over Shawn's manual was not my idea of fun. I had put it away for the past month, keeping it hidden in a box in Alex's closet, under a pile of foul-smelling boots. Not that I was trying to hide it from anyone – well, except maybe myself - but every time I entered the room, I could feel it. Its tainted energy oozed out from the crack at the bottom of the door and crept toward me. It never quite reached me, but it certainly beckoned, following me like a sunflower follows the sun.

  Tonight I asked Alex to retrieve it while I set up an area in the grass just outside the sliding glass doors. I wanted to be at my strongest, surrounded by the elements that worked with me. Piles of soft, tilled dirt from the garden, buckets of water from the Chakra well, lighted candles – enough that they provided ample reading light – and last but not least, air. Tonight it smelled fresh, with the slightest hint of sweet fruit. I looked around, satisfied. No tricks tonight – not by Shawn, not by the manual or any of his other tools, and not by the Shades inside me. I sat down inside the circle and reached for a toffee nut cookie, by far another necessity to face the battle ahead of us.

  I braced myself as Alex entered the elemental circle with the manual.

  "Geez, you'd think I'd just presented you with an angry black mamba."

  "You don't know what's in that thing."

  He threw it at my feet. It landed silently.

  Memories of what I had read so far were already causing the bile to rise in my throat.

  Alex took a deep breath. "You don’t have to do this."

  I looked at him – Alex was going to do it anyway, with or without me. We needed to finish the document and understand Shawn’s intentions. It was the best way to fight him. I smiled, good old Alex, stuck in some sort of crazy time warp where he was constantly preparing. I looked back at the document. We were safer going at it together. Go team.

  "Ok." I touched the streaks of ash left by the dying man who gave the document to me, shuddered, and then opened it quickly. I skimmed the table of contents, spotting our target for the night and opened it to that page. The title read, One Less.

  Alex leaned over. A quick scan of the summary at the top, and Alex muttered, "Dear God."

  A list of the largest manmade disasters that had occurred over the last century filled the page, accompanied by documented evidence of natural disasters taking hundreds of human lives that occurred shortly thereafter. Shawn was seeking a connection. He studied the distance between each manmade and natural disaster, both in time and in space. Correlations regarding intensity and methods were analyzed. Residual effects after each disaster were recorded.

  "How long has he been working on this?" Alex asked, obviously appalled.

  "At least since Sarah – possibly before." I looked up at him. "Did you know Sarah?"

  Alex shook his head. "Not very well. We didn't really end up working together a lot. Shawn kept her to himself."

  "Well, let's just get through this. Look here." I pointed at the next page. "April 1986. Chernobyl. The nuclear meltdown in Russia. It released 400 times the amount of radiation than the Hiroshima bomb."

  Alex tracked my progress. "In August of that same year, Lake Nyos in Cameroon released 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide that had been trapped under it. It suffocated 1700 people. Shawn thinks it was the planet's reaction to Chernobyl.”

  "What caused the release of toxins? Maybe a manmade accident?"

  "No. Says here possibly triggered by a landslide or earthquake. Some think a heavy rainstorm the day before had something to do with it. All of that was natural. This was the first known large-scale asphyxiation caused by a natural event."

  I leaned back, away from the document to think. "It’s like the planet reacted to a release of a chemical compound with another release of a chemical compound. Only this time it targeted humans."

  Alex nodded. "Could happen again – he included a report that documents the natural barrier there, the dike, is weakening. If it gives way it will flood villages in Nigeria and release even more carbon dioxide into the air. Lake Kivu in Congo, 2,000 times larger than Lake Nyos, has the potential for the same event."

  "Where is Chernobyl compared to Cameroon?" I asked.

  Alex ran inside to retrieve a world map. "The location isn't the same, but Chernobyl and Cameroon are close to the same longitude line."

  We were silent.

  Finally I spoke, "Let's move on, maybe the other connections aren't as viable."

  Alex read now, "Another air pollution event. In June 2003, the al-Mishraq fire in Mosul, Iraq. 1.3 billion tons of sulfur dioxide released into the atmosphere."

  "What was the planet's response?" I asked.

  He went back to scanning the page. "A heat wave in Europe that same summer was responsible for 40,000 deaths. That was the hottest summer on record in the area since 1540. All of the countries in Europe were affected, even some outside of it. There were extensive forest fires in Portugal, 1,500 heat-related deaths in the Netherlands, and melting glaciers in the Alps caused avalanches and flash floods in Switzerland. 2,000 people in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland died from the heat that summer, too."

  "Again, the events didn't occur in the same place, but they weren't all the way across the world from each other either. Next." I prodded Alex on, not wanting to look at the manual.

  "The Exxon Valdez. In March of 1989, 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Alaska's waters. There wasn't one massive event in response, but rather several small flooding events in the US. All happened in 1989; the Texas flood in May, Louisiana flooding in November, and Tropical Storm Allison in June which caused severe flooding in t
he Southern US. Casualty numbers weren't high but damage to infrastructure, crops, and businesses were extensive. And he hadn't even finished researching this one – there could have been several more flooding events that year."

  "But what about all the manmade disasters that didn't evoke a reaction from the planet? Like here –" I leaned over to him, pointing. “1984. A chemical plant in Bhopal, India. A tank holding the toxic compound methyl isocynate overheated and released it. It was heavier than air so it rolled along the city like a fog. It was a poisonous avalanche that killed 20,000 people or more. There are no massive natural disasters recorded that same year or the next."

  Alex looked at me. "20,000 people? Not to mention those that survived and probably have hideous health problems? I don't know Katie - sometimes our own disasters are enough punishment."

  I took the papers from him, giving him a break. "Here is another one without consequence. The Centralia, Pennsylvania underground coal fire doesn't show any reported natural disaster afterward." I scanned ahead "Oh. Shawn attributed this to the fact that perhaps the coal fire was fanned by the planet. In 1962, local fireman set fire to a landfill, a common practice at the time. The landfill sat on top of an abandoned strip mine, but somehow, veins of coal retained the heat even after the fire was put out, and continued to smolder for two decades. Eventually, a fire underground flared up, and left untended, opened up a 150-foot sinkhole in the small town in 1981. It has been burning ever since."