Battle of the Elements

I watched from Alex’s side as he threw a sword at the shield, hitting it straight on the mark. Cheers exploded through the courtyard as Alex mastered the challenge and collected his cash with a smug look on his face. It was the same every Saturday morning – he would train in the valley, just on the border of town, with me watching until some of his friends showed up, that would escalate and soon the whole town would come and make bets on what Alex could do. After he had achieved the impossible he would get bombarded with slaps on the back from his friends. The pretty town’s girls would flirt and say he was amazing and I would leave. I would disappear into the woods and collect herbs for my father. Later I would return to the town and take him home because he would drink too much. That was our Saturday mornings, and I liked them.

That Saturday I sat down below the largest forest tree. Looking around, I checked the area in case someone would wonder through the huge sea of brown and green. After making sure the coast was clear I set down my basket and placed my hand out onto a spot of dirt. With the other hand, I moved my fingers gently and with care. A small plant started rising out of the ground, around my hand and up, winding and swirling until it reached the tips of my still moving fingers. I looked around again, just to be sure.

Then, pulled the plant from the ground and stuffed it into my basket. I brushed some dirt over the dent in the ground where the plant had been. Being an Elemental was a huge secret that no one could know about.

I pulled away from the old tree, the way it felt like I belonged with it and the magical bond that it had around me left as soon as I left the forest. I made my way to the tavern to find Alex with another girl. She was leaning her body onto his and he was sitting down, their faces were almost touching. She was a pretty girl. And I’m sure she was nice, but everything inside me wanted to grow large roots out of the ground and wrap them around her and drag her down into the earth.

I gave a slight shake of my head, banishing any violent thoughts because I knew that if I really wanted to, I could do each and every one of them with the powers I had.

I put a friendly smile on my face and walked towards them. Just as I had expected him to do, as soon as Alex saw me he pulled away from the girl and asked her to leave, leaving us in – a very familiar – awkward silence.

Alex went to take my arm with his but he was sloppy. I dodged out of his way just before he slumped to the floor in a drunk mess. So much for a good Saturday! Using all the strength I could muster I lifted him off the floor and half carried, half dragged him to the horses.

After dropping Alex off at his room I headed towards where my father and I lived. I opened the heavy wooden door without knocking and opened the window to let the light in. My father’s notes lay scattered on his desk in piles of parchments with words scrawled down in lines of research that only my father could understand. He wasn’t home today, he never was on Saturdays. He had a special tradition of having lunch with the king in the royal chambers. I was invited once when I was little, it was fun. They would sit at a table by the window and eat steak and wine – my father never had alcoholic drinks unless he was with the king, and even then, he would never come home drunk like Alex did.

I went straight to my room and sat against my bed. I didn’t really have anything to do in the next– I checked the half broken clock on my wall – 3 hours. My bright green eyes drifted to the photos on my desk. I felt a sense of warmth as the two children smiled at me. Me and Alex. I had remembered that day well. It was the day Alex had saved my life. I wore a white flowing dress and a little flower crown. Alex was smaller than me by a few inches, his dark brown hair was almost covering his chocolate eyes and his smile stretched to the edges of his face.

I remember everything after that photo was taken. I remember when Alex and I were playing hide and seek. I remember running so far away no one could hear me when I screamed. I remember falling down a – what seemed like – never-ending well. I cried for an hour before I heard Alex yelling, then he climbed down the well and helped me out. We went home and he sat with me for hours by my plant collection, letting me bore the hell out of him with explaining all the plants and herbs, their names and what they were used for.

I heard the door open and close, snapping me back to reality. I pushed myself off the floor and walked out to the lounge room where my father had just walked in. His grey, shoulder length hair was messy and ruffled like a madman and his face was deep with wrinkles and there were dark bags underneath his eyes. He embraced me in his usual daze of busyness and went back to his papers. He pushed his glasses up onto his nose and started mumbling to himself as he read through them.

I put the basket of herb that I had collected next to him and got a nod of the head in response. He was always wrapped up in his work. He was a doctor full time and rarely had time for family but I didn’t mind, he was there when I needed him and whenever I lost faith in him he would always have his arms open for me and make everything ok. He wasn’t the best father, but he was all I had.

I had already got one of my books open and had started reading when he said the weirdest thing possible:

“By the way Titania, Johnathan wants you to see him in his chambers in fifteen minutes. He wants to talk to you.” As if it wasn’t the most impossible thing for the king to be wanting to spend some time with me. The king hadn’t really spoken with me since I came to the palace – and even then he hadn’t said anything more than “Hello, welcome to the palace.” he hadn’t even said it directly to me, he just waved at me while he said it. He never looked me in the eyes and was always very uncomfortable around me. I didn’t let it bother me, I’m sure he’s a nice person who has a lot on his shoulders – ruling a kingdom and all – but to have a sudden interest in seeing me, let alone talking to me, was incredibly odd. I had the sudden realisation that it could be about Alex and all the trouble he’s been getting into – bar fights, random women, coming home drunk. If it was about Alex I would have to go. I dressed in my nicest dress – a lilac one trimmed with small white flowers –, brushed my wavy hazel hair so a small section of it was plaited and – just for decoration – plucked a few daisies from my indoor, mini garden and stuck them in my hair and headed off to see the king.

Alex

Why was I such an idiot? Why was she such a good friend? And for the love of the gods why did she always help even when I was terrible to her?

Three questions that I couldn’t for the life of me answer.

I lay on my bed that morning staring at the grey ceiling, wondering what my father would say if he saw me like this – hungover, tired and thinking about a girl I had liked since I was eight years old. Maybe he would lock me up in the palace, I thought. I had been surprised my father hadn’t dropped by yesterday, he always came unless he had other – very important – matters to attend to, and if that happened I always went with him to ‘learn a thing or two about responsibility’ and all that crap. Sundays were the worst days. There was never anything to do apart from sleep or go for a walk, and my father always had something he needed to do.

Knock! Knock!

“What?” I yelled from my bed

“The king wishes to speak with you sire. He said it was important.” A servant – probably.

Huh, weird, I remember thinking. My father never wanted to see me on any day but Saturday – and that was just to point out how much of a disappointment I was to the entire kingdom.

I went anyway, just to settle my curiosity, banishing the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’ from my mind because I could tell – as I walked through the huge, gold encrusted entrance to the throne room - that the cat was already dead.

My father sat high on his large, glorious throne – above everyone else as always. Titania was there. She was standing in the middle of the large room, dressed in her light blue dress - one of her favourites, and mine – and her stunning, hazel hair was out and swept neatly over her shoulder. Her bright green eyes darted to me, then back to the king. I made my way to the middle of the room and stood next to her. The king coughed and cleared his throat “Thank you for coming Alex. Now that you are here, we will begin. Alex, I have begun to tire of your resent behaviour. You are coming home drunk and not taking your responsibility seriously and it has to stop. I had a chat with your friend here” he gestured to Titania without looking at her.

“Her name is Titania.” I stated, he ignored me.

“And she wishes to leave town. I have no problem with that however, it will leave you nothing to stop you from failing the kingdom.”

A shot of pain sounded inside me. She wanted to leave? I looked to her for answers but she turned her head away from me, that was all I would get for now.

The king – oblivious to what was going on in my head – kept talking. “So, I have decided what to do. Are you aware of the rise in magical behaviour around the kingdom?”

Magical. That was impossible. Magic had been banned for eighteen years, since my mother died the day I was born anyone who used magic was put to death or worse: sent off to a laboratory where the scientists conducted tests on them. My father had every magical being slaughtered for reasons I didn’t know. I didn’t know why my father hated magic, all I knew after the few lessons on magical beings is the five states of magic.

“Alex?” Titania nudged me, bringing me back to the conversation.

“Uh, no sire I was not.” I answered.

The king nodded once “Well, there have been strange things going on in the villages. Murders, people gone missing, animal attacks, natural disasters out of nowhere. Things are fine one minute then life endangering the next. It needs to be stopped. Now, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with you. I am starting to tire of your habits and so has the kingdom. The people have spoken and it is my job to take care of this kingdom. Therefore, the punishment for your resent behaviour will be” He cleared his throat “you and three others will be solving these magical behaviours.”

Anger, fear and disbelief came roaring out of my mouth uncontrollably “What do you mean?! Solve the ‘behaviours’? How the fuck am I going to do that? This is a joke!”

“I assure you it’s not. It is my duty as king to do what is best for my kingdom.”

“It’s your duty as a father to do what is best for me! Putting me in life risking situations isn’t exactly what’s best for me!”

He stayed silent. That man, I hated him. He hated me, I was sure that’s why he did it.

I felt Titania’s bronzed hand fall on my shoulder “Alex, it’ll be ok. We can handle it Alex. Just… listen to what he has to say.”

I didn’t look at her. She was taking his side and that wasn’t something she ever did to me. She was always on my side, even when I was wrong. Maybe she wanted to leave so badly she would take any side just to get away. Surely she didn’t like the idea of going into villages to risk our lives putting some magical terrorist to death right? No. She would never agree to something if it wasn’t the best option. I hated my father, but I could never hate this girl. This girl who stuck with me after every bar fight I had, this girl who brought me home every night even when I threw up half of my life on her, this girl who won my heart at eight years old and still – without knowing – has it to this very day. I nodded slightly and looked up at the king.

Very quietly, just loud enough to hear I uttered “Fine. Who else is coming?”

“Your friend.” he gestured to Titania, “A boy who was just put in jail for breaking and entering for his tenth time and a guard to make sure he behaves. You may bring someone else if you please. The journey begins in three days. Pack, say your goodbyes and be ready to leave. Now go.” He gestured for us to leave, we did.

We didn’t say anything to each other on the way to our hangout spot. There was just an awkward silence between us. We reached the spot under the huge tree in the valley outside the palace gates. I loved this spot when I was little. The tree was huge. Its branches like arms reaching up, trying to catch the clouds. The swing was hanging from one of the higher branches. The one I had hung when Titania and I were little, and used to climb the tree and sit on the highest branches and just talk. We had stopped doing that a while ago, when I kissed her in the branches when I was fourteen – she had been fifteen at the time. She pulled away and said she was sorry for not having the same feelings and we didn’t speak for a week afterwards. We hadn’t gone up into the branches since.

Titania

We stood below the tree for a minute or two in silence. I was thinking of leaving when Alex started climbing the tree; he wasn’t as agile as he used to be, a little rusty and when he got to one of the higher branches he couldn’t go any further because the branch would snap but he still looked just like he did when he was a boy.

He looked down at me from his branch, “You coming up?” Which translated into ‘Get up here.’

I pulled myself up onto the base of the tree and started to climb. I was always great at climbing trees. Alex used to call me a monkey until I asked him to stop. It had nothing to do with me though. It was more like the tree was doing all the work, helping me up and carrying me into its arms. I crawled my way to Alex and sat down next to him.

We sat next to each other in silence for a while and just stared at the castle until Alex turned to me. There was something in his eyes that I knew from the last day we climbed the tree. Pain.

“Why do you want to leave?” he asked, the hurt just on the edge of the question.

I looked at him. There was no hiding it now. “I’ve lived here all my life. I want to go, see the world, meet someone, and go on an adventure.” I didn’t look at him when I said it, it’s not like it was selfish of me to want to go. He knows it isn’t selfish, it’s the fact that I didn’t tell him that made him upset.

He didn’t say anything. He just nodded his head slightly until – finally – he just said “So, wanna meet the two poor souls who’ll have us on the journey?” he turned and looked at me with a completely different face, a smirk on his lips and a playful look in his eyes.

A smile spread across my face in an instant. “Sure. Race you to the bottom!” I bolted down the tree.

“Oi! Not fair!” he shouted angrily but it wasn’t really threatening since he was laughing.

They weren’t what I had expected. The two boys were around our age, one had dark hair, blue eyes and introduced himself as Harrison and the other was dressed in a suit of metal armour with a crew cut and a smile who shook Alex’s hand and said his name was Dane before he took my hand and kissed it, causing my cheeks to turn red all the way up to my ears until Alex politely cleared his throat, which must have some sort of code because Dane immediately smiled and backed away, nodding to Alex once with a knowing look on his face.