Elemental Origins: The Complete Series

by A. L. Knorr

  My head cocked at the sound, searching for its source.

  "Euroklydon." This time it came from somewhere else, and now louder.

  "Euroklydon, Euroklydon!" This time it was a bellow of fear and it was joined by many others like it was a cry of ‘fire!’ Every cry had come from the members of the security team or our dig labor. I stood there frozen in surprise, as did every one of the dig team members. The security team and laborers began to run. At first they seemed frantic and directionless, but then began to head toward the vehicles. They snatched up hats, weapons, backpacks, things were hurriedly tossed into the back of two Jeeps. The cries of ‘Euroklydon’ lessened, but it was a word that hung in the air, laced with fear.

  "Wait!" It was Ethan, putting up a hand and looking around at the chaos, aghast. "What's happening?"

  "Euroklydon!" was the only answered cry, spoken as if it should be reason enough to vacate the premise immediately.

  Jeeps roared to life and drivers jammed the accelerators, pulling the vehicles through the camp and in wide circles, kicking up sand and knocking over three tents. A large tub full of precious water was knocked over and went gushing across the desert floor, sucked up by the greedy sand in mere moments.

  "Wait! Please, wait!" Ethan ran after the Jeeps, floundering in the sand and falling to a knee.

  "Wait! Where are you going?" Jesse had joined in the call and put a hand out alongside the closest Jeep as it screamed by him. He ran for a time, following the tire treads, his hand up and his voice calling, begging for them to stop.

  My jaw hung open in shock.

  We watched our entire security team and our local labor disappear over a dune in the horizon. They’d left only the van and one other Jeep. A couple of face masks caught in a gust of wind blew across the desert sand, rolling like small tumbleweeds.

  The vehicles reappeared as specks on a dune in the beyond, only to disappear again for good. Jesse stood there watching the horizon for a time, his fingers laced over the top of his head, elbows jutting out and shoulders lifting and dropping with his breath. He turned and followed the tire tracks back to us, his dark eyes flashing to me momentarily, the dark slashes of his brows drawn together. He bent and helped Ethan get to his feet.

  "What just happened?" Ibby cried, her hands flying to her cheeks. "I don't understand what's happening."

  Finally, my legs moved and I joined Ibby as we approached Jesse and Ethan. Sarah and Chris emerged from their trench, pale and shocked. Chris had an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. Everyone seemed out of breath, though only Jesse and Ethan had been running.

  Jesse's eyes were wild with shock, his brown hand clutched his heart and his face mask dangled around his neck. Ethan had a hand over his heart also, breathing deeply, but he looked much less panicked than Jesse. I stared at his face, trying to work out his expression. It seemed he might understand something the rest of us didn’t.

  Ethan's eyes met mine. "Euroklydon," he wheezed.

  "What's that?" Ibby asked, almost screaming in her distress. She took a breath. "Sorry to yell. But what the hell just happened? Why did they all run away?" She spread her arms wide and slapped them down on her thighs with a thwack that proclaimed she was at her wits’ end. "What on earth is a Euroklydon?"

  "It's not a what." Ethan clapped his hat on his head where it sat off-kilter. With his eyes locked on mine, he said, "It's a who."

  Chapter 13

  Ibby handed me a glass of water and I took it, numbly, and drank. Jesse had started a fire in the pit and we had made our way there like a group of staggering zombies and sat down. Ibby poured and handed water to the rest of the group. Looks darted my way like eyeballs were on a timer. Couldn't blame them.

  I sipped the water and sat on a stone with my hoody draped over my shoulders. For the first time since we'd arrived at the dig site, the evening air was cool enough to warrant a layer, but just barely. We watched the flames dance in the desert wind as the sky suggested that it was thinking about dusk.

  "Who is Euroklydon?" I asked Ethan as he set his camp chair in the sand and sat down.

  "I'm not sure I can explain very well." Ethan removed his hat and brushed a hand over his thinning silver hair. "There isn't much to read on it, but the word appears in ancient texts, including the Bible. In scripture, it’s a tempest from the east, a wind of biblical proportions which swept up and destroyed Paul's ship. But it is mentioned in other texts a time or two, more as a kind of deity, a controller of winds." Ethan shrugged. "That's all I know. I'll be looking into it more deeply, I can tell you that.” He paused, meditating, then held up a finger. “Our labor was all from Ghat.”

  “And?” Jesse prompted.

  “But only three of our security team were Libyan, there was one Egyptian, and one from Algeria originally. I only know that because Jody told me. Yet, they all knew the name Euroklydon. Seems somewhat universal to North Africa, at least." He brought the finger to the end of his nose, as he sometimes did when pontificating. "And they all fear it."

  Ibby leaned forward, her sharp pixie's face homing in on me like a compass needle. She propped her elbows on her knees. "How did you do it, Petra?" She paused before adding, "Why you did, that part is clear. And thank you for that. But how?"

  "I don't know," I answered quietly, looking down at my feet and digging at the sand with the toes of my sneakers. I didn't regret what I did, but it had been so public, and so...un-hideable. I couldn't even pretend that it had been anything other than what it was–catching and lifting a massive stone, with what appeared to be just a force emitting from my body.

  "You don't know? How can you not know? You looked like you knew exactly what you were doing. It was written all over you." Her body became more animated, her expression more open. "Don't get me wrong, it was awesome. You are badass, and I am totally intimidated by you right now. But what the—"

  "Have you ever done anything like that before?" Ethan interrupted, shooting a look at Ibby that said: back off a little.

  I opted for the truth. "Not on that scale."

  "But you have lifted something like that before?" Ibby jumped into the opening my words had left. "With your mind?"

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on the sand. "I have always had a low-grade telekinesis. For as long as I can remember."

  Ethan seemed oddly satisfied by this admission, and tilted his chair back in the sand. The front legs came off the ground a few inches.

  "Low-grade?" Ibby barked out a laugh and shook her head. "Unbelievable."

  "Petra." Jesse spoke for the first time since our team had deserted us. I looked up at him and his green eyes were limpid pools that drowned me in compassion. "Something did happen to you…”

  He didn't have to finish the sentence. I knew what he meant.

  In that cave.

  "It makes no sense that you know that," I said. "You weren't there. But you're right."

  Jesse sat back, satisfied. He opened his hands wide as if to say so, explain.

  "Where? What?" Ibby looked from Jesse to me and back again. "I'm confused again. I can't keep up here, people."

  My eyes on Jesse, I addressed the group. "I fell into a strange cave a little over a week ago."

  "You did what?" Ethan's eyes popped and the front legs of his camping chair thudded down into the sand. "How? When?"

  "It was that still night we had. I couldn't sleep, so I got up. Jesse was awake, too. We ran along the tops of those rocks." I gestured to the reddish hulks of stone beyond the campsite.

  "At night?" Ethan goggled. "You could have broken your leg!" He pawed his forehead with frustration. "God save me from kids who think they're immortal."

  "I could have. But I didn't. I slid into a cave and Jesse pulled me out."

  Jesse's eyes stayed on my face, waiting, knowing there was more.

  "Am I the only one who isn't getting it?" Ibby asked after too much silence had passed.

  "What happened in the cave?" Jesse prompted.

  My lips parted, but words seem
ed inadequate.

  "Would it help if we took them there?" Jesse straightened and put his hands on the armrests of his camp chair.

  "I don't know if I could find it again." But this wasn't true. The cave was archaeologically significant. I made certain to remember the path we took on the way back to our tents that night.

  "I can," said Jesse. “I made the journey to that cave three times that night.”

  "Why three?" Ethan asked.

  "I had to get rope to help Petra out."

  Ibby stood up. "Well, what are we waiting for? If this cave has something to do with how you lifted that rock today, we need to see it. How far is it?"

  "Maybe half an hour’s walk. We still have a couple of hours of light." Jesse eyed the horizon. "We'll be slow if we walk on the sand, though."

  "Then we'll walk on the stones." Ethan got to his feet. “Slowly, and in the light of day.”

  I looked up at Ethan with surprise. I hadn't expected him to go along with the idea so quickly. He was responsible for us and a stickler for safety. But there he was, lacing up his shoes. They were all ready, looking at me. I pulled my hoody on and stood, doing up the zipper. I looked at Jesse. "Lead the way."

  Jesse retraced our steps just the way I would have, skirting the sandier tops of stone and using the wider rocks as our path. We walked in silence, eyes down, taking it slow. My mind whirled as we made the journey and I walked at the rear, brooding. I wasn't worried that they wouldn't believe me, for the shattered glass and what they saw happen today was plenty of evidence that my story was not an invention. It was the now what? that had sent my brain into paroxysms of potential scenarios. No one had ever known my secret until I had told it to Noel, my therapist, and now many other people knew, and most of them had gone running for the hills screaming a word I'd never heard before.

  Euroklydon.

  "This must be where you fell in." Jesse's voice snapped me out of my mental musings. Our group stopped where sand coated the top of the rock and broken edges told of a cave-in.

  I nodded.

  Ethan looked into the dark hole and then up at me, horrified. "It's a miracle you didn't get hurt!"

  "I think the miracle was lifting a forty ton block of stone with her mind," injected Ibby. "Not to be disagreeable, but is there an easier way inside? I'm not keen on going down this hole. Looks like a place scorpions would live." She shivered.

  "Just ahead," said Jesse. "There’s a bigger hole right overtop the cave where I found her.”

  We walked further until the oculus over the cave came into view. Jesse rigged up a rope ladder by fastening it securely to a nearby spike of stone. He gestured that I should go first, so I lowered myself back into the strange place. My breath echoed back at me and the sound of my shoes on the cave floor told of layers of grit which had blown inside and coated the rock since my last visit.

  The cave seemed commonplace in the evening light. I moved away from the rope ladder to give Ibby room and scanned the walls. The obsidian stone glittered from its place in the wall and the line of shattered desert glass lay pushed up against the side where I had left it.

  My heart sped up when I saw something that I hadn't noticed before. Lines scratched into the cave walls had been invisible in the gloom of night, but the waning daylight caught the shallow grooves and made them stand out.

  "My heavens," breathed Ethan as he touched the ground and moved aside, almost tripping over his own feet as he stared at our surroundings. "This is remarkable! Is that obsidian?"

  Ibby was kneeling near the wall and leaned her face down to the pile of shattered glass on the floor. She gingerly picked up a larger piece and peered at it. "Desert tektite." She looked up at the stone Ethan had remarked over. "Yes, that’s obsidian, I can tell from here."

  "Wow," proclaimed Jesse, the last one down. His voice echoed through the cavern. "Look at those drawings!"

  I followed the grooves along the cave walls as the team clustered just behind me. Long sprays of wavy lines, some ending in curlicues, blew outward from a central point near the floor.

  "Looks like air," ventured Ibby. "Or wind, rather."

  "Look at the tiny dude." Jesse pointed at a small humanoid figure.

  So low on the wall that the feet nearly rested on the cave floor, was an androgynous figure with flying hair. It had its arms bent and held aloft. A cluster of various sized circles seemed to rotate above its head and the lines of wind started not far from the figure and sprayed out, up, and away in all directions.

  "I have seen wind lines made like this before on other rocks." Ethan removed his hat and wiped his brow. "I believed at the time that it represented the Ghibli."

  "What's the Ghibli?" asked Ibby.

  "A hot, dust-carrying North African wind. It originates here in the highlands of Libya and blows toward the Mediterranean every spring and summer. It's one of the reasons we planned our dig for spring, before the winds kick up.”

  The wind I had inhaled, seemingly without end, had been warm. Had the Ghibli been what I had breathed in?

  Ethan continued, “I understand it is most despised by the locals. Covers everything with sand and fills the air, killing all visibility. It limits travel for months and I’m sure it seems like it will never end, to them." Ethan bent down on one knee to take a closer look at the small figure. "The Ghibli has been known to bury whole cities in one night. It's no wonder the locals fear it."

  The feeling of the wind sweeping through the tunnel and filling my lungs to stretch them to the point of bursting came back and hit me like a locomotive. My mouth felt dry and my jaw seemed locked. The Ghibli had to have something to do with what had happened to me in this cave.

  "Looks like they think it originates from a human," Jesse added, nodding down at the small shape carved into the wall near the floor. He’d taken a small notepad and short scrap of pencil from a pocket and began to sketch a copy of the cave art.

  "Not necessarily," replied Ethan, kneeling for a closer look. "Make sure you get a close-up of that ring of discs, or stars, or whatever they are, please."

  "The drawing could just be the embodiment of a spirit or something," added Ibby, tracing the head of the figure with a fingertip. "Look at the way the hair flies out from the head. Looks a bit mad."

  She was right, it did seem as though the figure was demented in some way. I peered at it, noting that the feet of the figure were just off the floor and its body seemed to have a slight arch in the spine. Is this what I had looked like while I was hovering off the cave floor and receiving the strange vision? I stared at the small figure. Was it supposed to be someone like me?

  Ibby, Jesse, and Ethan were all crouched in front of the wall while I stood back observing the image as a whole. My hands felt cool and I stuffed them into my hoody pockets.

  "What happened here?" Ibby moved back to the broken glass.

  She didn't ask it as though she expected anyone to know the answer. As far as they knew, the glass had been there for a century. I could keep quiet, and no one would know what happened to it. Already a film of dust coated the line of glass chips.

  "I broke it accidentally," I said, unable to even lie by omission. "It used to be a whole piece of desert glass, embedded in the rock just there." I pointed to the empty depression. "It was the same size as the obsidian."

  "You broke it?" Ethan sounded horrified, his face seemed a pale moon in the shadows of the cave. For an archaeologist, leaving so much as a crack in a bone was an offense too great to be borne.

  "I didn't mean to, I—" I took a breath. I couldn't explain how I'd broken the glass without explaining that I'd first been lifted off the floor and changed. So I told them. In as simple terms as possible, and haltingly, painfully aware that I sounded crazy, I explained to them what I had experienced. "I had a sort of vision," I added toward the end of my story. All three of them had been taking in every detail of my story with incredulity. They were amazed, but even so, they handled it a lot better than I had expected. They believed me and th
at was comforting.

  "What kind of vision?” Ethan prompted me to continue.

  "I saw a man in an oasis. Maybe it was the Sahara before the desertification process began. He was a man with light gray, almost silver, eyes. It seemed like he could only move in slow motion."

  "Who was he?" Ibby’s voice was soft, comforting. "Who was the man?"

  "Light gray eyes," murmured Jesse. "Like yours."

  "I had never seen him before," I said. "But—" I swallowed, feeling raw, vulnerable. My eyes flashed to Jesse's and I nodded. "I thought he was maybe my father. There were some similarities in our faces and our hands."

  Ibby put a hand out and squeezed my shoulder, picking up on my discomfort. "What else happened in this vision?"

  "He just mouthed one word." My heart began to pound as the memory came back to me. The strange warning, the urgent directive, which so far I had not heeded because I didn't understand it. "Run."

  It hit me suddenly that it was exactly what the security team and our diggers from Ghat had done—they had run fast and far. But they had been running from me. So why was I being given the same advice? And how could I run from myself?

  Ibby’s, Jesse’s, and Ethan's faces all widened with surprise and their eyes darted to each other and back to me. I thought they looked rather comical, like a set of puppets.

  "Run," Ethan echoed, his voice a rasp. "Run where? Run from what?"

  I shrugged. "I have no idea." I gestured to the drawing on the cave walls. "The Ghibli? You said it comes in the spring and summer, right? It's almost spring now. In fact, the winds have already picked up."

  Ibby was nodding, but Jesse looked doubtful.

  "I've never heard the like," murmured Ethan, scratching his chin through his beard. "Run." His shoulders shook as he gave a disbelieving laugh. "Don't that beat all."

  It seemed to me as though there was something artificial in his words, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe it was his choice of words. I'd never heard him say an old-fashioned phrase like 'don't that beat all,' before. It struck me as weird, like a line he’d been given to speak in a play.