Earth

by Jae Vogel

  Dion had expected something like this. Karanzen was showing him his latest form, or as much as he could on this plane. The cloud of insects continued to buzz with all manner of wasps and bees. He saw it was made up of things that stung and bite. This was how Karanzen scared the stuffing out of troublesome kids he’d picked up inside the mall. One look at what was behind the surface of him and no one was ever the same again. Dion doubted the officer had done this too many times, but it was effective. However, Dion was aware of his true form and knew he couldn’t hurt him physically without bring down the wrath of the mall managers.

  The cloud began to coalesce again and soon Karanzen was back to his human form. He sat back on his hands and smiled as Dion, assured he had put a bad scare into the young man.

  “So you show me your true self?” Dion said to him. “What am I, some kid with a dog-eared copy of The Egyptian Book of the Dead? Seriously, officer, I would expect better from you. Can I go now?”

  “Out of here!” he screamed. “Get out of my office now!”

  “No problem, Officer. And don’t worry, your little secret is safe with me.” He shut the door behind him and heard books flying across the room, hitting the walls.

  “I think we need to go outside,” Dion said to Lilly and Emily as they left the security offices.

  “What happened in there?” Emily asked. “I can’t believe they are going to let those monsters go.”

  “They will discipline the cleaners,” Dion said to her. “Don’t worry about that. He’s more afraid of you talking than anything else. The cleaners weren’t ever supposed to do what they did.”

  Outside the mall they found a fountain, sat on a bench next to it and watched the water spray. It was a few minutes before Dion said anything.

  “Whoever built this mall wants its location quiet,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the ghouls get fired over this. There are plenty of other earth elementals they can bring in here to do the job of taking care of this place. I’m sure there are plenty of gnomes and trolls who would be glad to move in and do the job.”

  “Why do you think they wanted to trade the map?” Lilly asked. She had the pack to one side of the ground and her foot was resting on it.”

  “They realized what they did after Emily was grabbed. They needed something to use to justify it and the map was the only thing they knew about. One of them figured out what it was after they ditched it. They found out we had it when we went down to the subbasement. They decided to make a trade, but tried to use a changeling instead of the real Emily.”

  “I could still be down there,” she said, her body shivering. “You have no idea how scary it was down there. I never want to go anywhere near that mall again. I’m not sure if I’ll ever want to go around any mall in the future.”

  “This one is different,” Dion told her. “It’s built to be the junction of several planes. I don’t know exactly why it was built here, but my parents suspected the reason.”

  “You haven’t talked much about them,” Emily said. “Did they have the same powers as you do?”

  “Don’t think of it as powers,” Dion told her. “Think of it as talent. Dad had Air and Fire; mother had Earth and Water. I think I might be the first in generations to have all four elements with the possibility of gaining the fifth.”

  “Will we be able to get back inside?” Lilly asked him.

  “Officer Karanzen didn’t threaten to keep us out, so I guess the answer is yes. We’ll still be watched. He tried to scare me inside his office, but he found out I don’t scare easy.”

  “I’m scared enough,” Emily finally spoke up. “I’m going home. Lilly, you can stay here with him, but I want to get out of here. Call me later and let me know how everything turned out.”

  Emily grabbed her purse and waltzed down the parking lot. In a few minutes, they saw her driving away in her car.

  “Can’t say I blame her,” Lilly said. “After being kidnapped by ghouls and hauled underground. I don’t think they did anything to her, but still….”

  “They didn’t because they wanted to use her as a bargaining chip. Other people captured by them weren’t so lucky. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to bring them here, but in retrospective, it was a dumb plan.”

  They strolled across the outside of the parking lot and stopped to look at the new theater, which was placed outside the mall a few months ago. This theater had two whole screens and sported a big marquee out front with the name of two popular films. One had something to do with sharks that ate people and the other the exploits of an ambulance crew in Hollywood. Lilly didn’t think either of them looked interesting.

  “You ever go to the movies?” she asked Dion, her hand slipping casually into his. Lilly felt herself grown attracted to the strange man and really wanted to help him find his parents. She didn’t really know what she was doing right now, but wanted to see it through. It was almost like being inside a made-for-TV movie. At any minute, she expected there to be a commercial break.

  “Not too often,” he said, securing her hand in his. “But I never liked the smell of popcorn. Mom and dad took me a few times when I was smaller. Since they disappeared and I moved in with my aunt and uncle, I don’t get out that much. I spend most of my free time in the libraries, trying to find out who is behind the mall and what secrets it might hold.”

  Lilly turned and looked back at the mall. “You really wouldn’t think it could be such a mysterious place. Looks like any other mall from the outside. But according to you, it’s the home to all kinds of elementals.”

  “One of the reasons it was built was to lure and trap them,” he explained. “They might fire the ghouls from their jobs as cleaners, but they’ll still be there, just doing some work where they don’t have contact with the humans. Whoever built the mall wants the different elementals to stay put. I don’t know what they’re planning, but I’m sure they need all the power the elementals possess to make it happen.”

  “What else can you do with fire elementals?” she asked him. “I like the demonstration you did this afternoon. Can you do another?”

  “I guess. Hand me the lantern,” he told her.

  Lilly picked it out of her bag and passed it to him. Dion took the lantern in his hand and activated the ignition switch. Soon, a small flame was burning inside the lantern. He watched it, touched the lens of the lamp with one hand, and carefully unscrewed it. As the sun’s rays began to hide behind the trees, which lined the parking lot, trees that were very new and supplied by a local nursery, he removed the lens and sat it on the ground.

  Lilly watched with fascination.

  The flame inside the lantern was burning a bright blue color. Dion turned down the regulator on the lamp and let it burn intensely hot, so hot Lilly could feel the heat from where she sat. He reached inside the lamp and placed his finger on the flame.

  Lilly jumped back in fear. But he wasn’t injured in the least bit. Dion withdrew his hand and held it up to Lilly for her to examine.

  On the end of his index finger, a blue flame danced up and down his hand. The flame moved with its own intelligence and seemed to have a will of its own. She watched the flame form into the shape of a man and, as Dion turned it over, the flame danced around in a circle in his palm. The flame began to dance faster and faster, soon it was a large flame, which appeared to engulf his entire hand.

  “How do you do that without getting burnt?” Lilly asked him.

  “It trusts me,” Dion said. “And I trust in it.”

  Dion placed the fire elemental on the ground and let it dance over the green grass. Nothing was burnt beneath it, but the flame grew larger still. Lilly sat there in wonder as it increased in size, larger than she could possibly imagine. The flame took on the form of a lizard and walked around the ground beneath them, exploring its world. She turned and looked at Dion.

  He made a few passes in the air and mumbled some words that didn’t appear to be in English, and the fire elemental stopped its motion.
As Dion spread out his hands, the fire creature began to shrink in size. Soon it was down to the size of a small flame. Dion reached over to pick it up. The flame jumped into his palm and he took it back over to the lantern, where he returned it. The flame burned a brilliant blue again; he reattached the lens to the lantern, then reached down and turned it off.

  The flame was gone.

  “That is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen,” Lilly said.

  She looked up at his brown eyes and kind face. Lilly felt something stir inside her. Where had this man been all her life? She was sick and tired of boys who would try to tell her anything to get what they wanted from her. She’d never fallen for their idiotic claims. She had one guy who took her to the drive-in telling her he was in love with her. “No,” she had told him, “you are in love with it.” She’d left the car and phoned her parents at the concession stand who picked her up an hour later.

  “You told me you inherited most of your ability from your family,” she said to Dion as they walked outside the mall hand-in-hand. “How does that work?”

  “My paternal grandparents were Auriel and Raphela Bach,” he explained to her. “Grandfather had the ability to work with the earth element, and grandmother the air element. On my mother’s side of the family, my grandparents were Gabe and Michael Briluth. Grandfather Briluth had the power of water and grandmother the power of fire.”

  “When my father was born,” he continued, “he inherited the power of earth and air. When my mother was born, she inherited the ability to work fire and water elementals. And I inherited all four abilities.”

  The mall was built on what had been a farmer’s field, so there was no need to chop down very many trees. The landscapers arrived one day unseen and set up their plans as the heavy machinery worked to dig the foundation. It was a big event when it happened and the town had no special ground breaking ceremony. When the shovel was symbolically pushed into the ground from the builder, it became so hot the he dropped it. This should have been the first warning something wasn’t quite right with the mall. No one thought much about it and the construction continued on as planned.

  The first section to be built was the large clock in the center of the mall. The clock tower rose above the level over everything. It was seen all over the landscape. It was the first thing anyone noticed as they approached. The tower housed the administration offices of the mall, but, oddly enough, there didn’t seem to be any way inside it. The architect explained to the building codes inspector later that the doors would be installed at a future date. A few envelopes with enormous sums of money had allowed the plans to be approved.

  The night watch on the site quit after the first week. He claimed there were weird ‘things’ that roamed it at night and he wanted out. After the building crews noted the construction materials were never bothered, they quit looking for night watchmen. Unknown to them, a few trucks had appeared one night carrying thieves who wanted the building supplies. They never returned. No one ever went to steal from the building location again.

  The mall had a series of boxes buried all over the site, but few people knew about them. Every month, for a period of four, someone would make an appearance in the early morning hours, just before the workers arrived, dig a deep hole in the ground and plant a box. They would make sure the previous boxes were not disturbed and continued on their way. Each box continued something, which fixed that part of the mall to an element. Since they would be covered by tons of dirt and concrete, there was little concern the boxes would be disturbed.

  “My grandparents on my father’s side of the family came over from the old country almost a hundred years ago,” Dion continued. “My father came along late in life. They were in their fifties when he was born and he was the only child. They told me there were all kinds of innuendo as to who his parents really were, but he was just late coming along. A change of life baby, if you will. They felt he might inherit one of their abilities, but it turned out he had both. When he was just a baby, they had him out in the stroller and a gust of breeze would blow every time he wanted the bottle. When he got older, he would play in the sand box and cause sand castles to rise out of the ground. Scared the crap out of the neighborhood kids, he once told me.”

  Lilly looked up at him with attentive eyes.

  “We’ve been element workers in our family for generations. No one knows where the talent originates. But we have it. Hundreds of years ago, people would come to us for help. To get a wind to send a ship out to sea, bring the rain down, start a fire, or just make the soil churn so that it would be fertile. Every now and then, one of us inherits the power of several elements… but it’s rare. So far, I’m the only one who has inherited all four elements. And I don’t know of any of us who has the ability to work the fifth element.”

  Dion stopped and turned towards Lilly.

  “I was taught from an early age to keep quiet about my abilities. The last thing my parents wanted was to see me in a scientific lab or prison camp. It’s not easy holding it back. My dad talked about the time some bully pushed him on the playground at school and he almost had the earth swallow him up. The kid was up to his neck and going down when dad forced him to apologize. The school claimed it was a sinkhole and filled it in, but dad and the other kids knew better. He was never bothered again.”

  “My mother almost burnt down the house when she was a toddler. She found out the elementals were fun to play with and made a whole bunch of fire spirits dance. By the time her dad unleashed a rainstorm inside the house, the kitchen table was on fire. She was like my dad, a double elemental worker. When she became old enough to date, one of her boyfriends tried to get a little too familiar with her and found himself under a rainstorm for two hours. He couldn’t understand why only he was under the cloud that drenched him and no one else.”

  “My maternal grandparents also came here from the old country in the Balkan Mountains. There are entire villages of elemental workers over there, or at least there were before the wars broke out. We’re scattered all over the world now and I think it’s better that way. It helps us survive and we don’t have to worry about bothering each other. You have too many elemental workers in a given area they can start getting on each other’s nerves. It’s a miracle we marry each other, but it works out better that way, I’m told. I don’t know much about my great-grandparents, but I’m told only the husband in each union was an elemental worker. It’s the way it normally happens.”

  “A lot of time the wife or husband doesn’t know their bride or groom is an elemental worker, but they find out later. It’s a nice talent to have around the house and we learn how to make it work for the other. I’ve met a few families where the wife was an elemental worker and it doesn’t cause any issues. My other aunt and uncle, for instance. My other aunt is my mother’s sister and is a fire worker. She uses her ability to keep the house warm if the furnace isn’t working. I wish you could use the ability nonstop, but it tends to wear you out.”

  “My parents taught me how to control the elementals when I was very young. You start with small abilities, such as what you just saw with the fire elemental. Only an Elemental Grandmaster can confer you full abilities and they have to see proof you know what you are doing. It’s why I need to find the Elemental Grandmasters here in the mall. Only they can give me the permission to use my abilities. Until then, they’re only good for small tricks… like knocking over cards.”

  “How did you parents meet?” Lilly asked him.

  “They were introduced by each other’s family. Where they come from in the old country, arranged marriages are common. Since double elemental workers are so rare, the elders decided they should marry to see if a full elemental worker could be produced. I know it sounds like I was the product of a breeding program, but my parents have always loved each other. When they found out I had all four abilities, there was a flurry of interest in the community of elemental workers. They hadn’t had someone with my talents in hundreds of years. They’v
e seldom had a person who could work the fifth element and I think the elders hope I’ll be the one.”

  “You keep talking about this fifth element,” Lilly said. “Tell me more about it.”

  “It’s the aether, the force which binds it all together. It’s the root of the power of fire. You can do all kinds of transformations with it if you have the ability. From what I understand, there have only been a few of us who can work this element. You need to have the ability to work all four before the fifth can even be attempted. It’s why they have such interest in me. If I can work that element, it will be a huge break-through.”

  They walked a little further, hand in hand, and watched the sun set some more.

  Lilly couldn’t believe she had spent the entire day with Dion; her parents would want some kind of accounting when she returned. However, for the time being, she didn’t really care. The important thing was that they were together and he’d revealed his abilities to her. Lilly had always known the world was full of magic, but she didn’t have any way to prove it. Now she did. And his hand felt good around hers.

  “We need to figure out a way back in there,” Dion said. “It will close soon and I have to reach the Earth Element Grandmaster. We were so close several times, but it doesn’t count unless I reach her and she bestows the ability on me to use the earth element. If she doesn’t, I’ll never be able to do more than party tricks.”

  “So all these incantations and spells really do work?” she asked. “I saw you make some passes in the air when the fire elemental appeared.”

  “Look,” Dion said, his face growing serious, “this isn’t something from a Hollywood movie. All that nonsense you see on TV, forget it. These are very powerful forces I can manipulate and I only do it because I have their trust. Try to use an earth elemental to find a buried treasure and you’ll have a mine collapse on you. Walking on water can be accomplished, but it’s no parlor trick. You have no idea the level of concentration it takes me to do the simplest of things. So just forget what you might have heard about flying broomsticks.”