Prince of Attania, 2

A sharp clang rang out from the stairwell behind Tom as a heavy door swung shut. Out of the corner of his eye, Attan saw Greg herd the few townspeople left in the chapel towards the front entrance. His eyes narrowed, and he let his body turn to wind to the delight of the free elementals who clustered all around him.

“Hurry! Don’t let him get out!” Tom shouted urgently, starting to run. Greg pulled the chapel door tight and leaned against it, facing his brother and the apparently empty chapel.

Angry now, Attan swirled around the room, pulling the free elementals into him and stirring up bits of dirt and dust into his vortex. The elementals did not understand Attan’s anger, and as quickly as it had sparked, it deflated, leaving Attan incorporeal but no longer destructive in the small space. Why do you stay? But of course the free elementals didn’t answer him, nor did he expect them to. They lived in the moment.

“You might as well show yourself,” Tom called out. “You’re trapped in here with us.”

Greg shuffled his feet nervously, but he kept his back against the door as his eyes roved around the darkened chapel waiting for Attan to reappear. “We just want to talk,” he said to the air.

The free elementals sent reassurance through the ambient. They didn’t seem to feel Tom was a threat, so Attan took form on a bench facing Tom, and was gratified to see a flicker of apprehension in the man’s expression. For all his brusque talk, Tom wasn’t used to seeing Family manifest.

“You can see them, can’t you?” Tom asked, coming forward. “I thought so. The others think spirits are something else, but they’re just elementals, aren’t they? That’s why you can see them.”

He could. Not all Family could. Not even the ones who were able to transform into Elementals. Attan frowned. “What do you want?”

Eagerly, Tom said, “Can you communicate with them? I want to talk to them.”

“Why?”

Tom sat down next to Attan. The elementals swirled around him, making Attan blink. “This might take a while. We have lots to talk about,” Tom replied. “Don’t worry, you’re not a prisoner or anything. You can go after you hear what I have to say.”

Attan almost laughed. He could go at any time. The thick doors and high windows were no barriers to him or to the free elementals in the chapel either. Yet they stayed, so he nodded at Tom to continue.

“This chapel is dedicated to the spirits of Attania. For generations, our town turned to the spirits when times were bad.” Tom eyed Attan sternly. “That means when Family came around. No one knew that Family and our spirits came from the same source. If you tried to tell that to these people, they wouldn’t believe you.”

Greg scowled from his place by the heavy door. He was one of the ones who didn’t believe it, either.

“Why did this town turn to spirits in the first place?” Attan asked. He understood why no one associated Family with these spirits. Until very recently, not even Family knew they actually came from elementals.

Tom shrugged. “It’s been that way for as long as anyone can remember,” he replied. “It’s not something we share with strangers. But don’t misunderstand. Most of us don’t think spirits are actually in this chapel.” He raised his eyes to the empty ceiling, blind to the elementals who swirled around it. “This is just a place. Spirits are everywhere.

“My mother used to bring me here when I was a child,” Tom continued. “She would look all around the chapel and talk to the air as if she could really see something. My mother insisted there were spirits in here. I believed her. The rest of the town wasn’t quite that gullible. Everybody thought my mother was a little touched since she lost her sight in the Low City fire. Even my father.” Tom glanced at Greg, but the younger boy stared sullenly down at the floor, his back against the door.

“When I got older, I stopped believing in spirits. Why should I? They were invisible and they never did anything to help us that I ever saw. People started making fun of me after my father left us, calling us crazy. I hated my mother for it—I hated my father too though I couldn’t really blame him.

“It wasn’t until Family started giving up their physical bodies to become Elementals that I wondered if perhaps my mother’s “spirits” were actually elementals.” Tom leveled Attan with a hard stare. “Make no mistake. My mother is crazy. But she saw something with her blind eyes that the rest of us could not.

“I didn’t want to believe it at first—I mean, everyone hated Family for what they did to us. To think that they were the same creatures as the spirits my people have worshipped for generations . . . well, it wasn’t easy. But the more we learned about the new King and his Elementals, the more I started to think I was right. I was hoping to convince one of the Family to talk to the spirits for us, maybe get one of them to transform so we could talk to it directly. Spirits are all around us,” he continued earnestly, not noticing the choked off laugh from Attan. Or maybe he did. “Elementals, whatever you call them,” Tom went on. “They could help us instead of Family.”

“What’s the difference?” Attan asked. “I mean, you just admitted your spirits are really elementals, and elementals are what make up Family, so why not just work with Family instead?”

“Family can’t be trusted,” Tom said bitterly. “They’re too much like us, too human, with their own agenda.”

“My dad isn’t like that,” Attan said, but he understood what Tom meant, even if he didn’t agree with it. “He’s trying.”

“Look, I’m not saying everything the Family has been doing is wrong,” Tom replied. He moved over to the side of the chapel under one of the high windows and patted the wooden bench next to him. Attan came to sit down warily beside him, the free elementals quick to gather around. They zinged in and out of Attan and Tom, although Tom remained completely unaware of it.

Someone banged on the outside of the heavy wood door, making Greg jump. “Damn, it’s my mother,” Tom muttered. “Don’t let her in!” He turned back to Attan. “I am right, aren’t I?

“Look, you’ve got to help us! Talk to the spirits and tell them we have always been their friends. We would rather work with them for the good of Attania than with Family. Tell them that.”

Attan shook his head. You didn’t talk to free elementals, exactly. You knew them, and they knew you, and everything was now. What Tom asked was impossible. “They’re not like you,” he said, adding quickly when Tom scowled, “They’re not like Family, either.”

Tom’s expression hardened. “I don’t believe you. They’re elementals, right?”

Reluctantly, Attan nodded. He held out his hand and the free elementals swirled through it. Attan wanted nothing more than to join them and forget all this physical nonsense.

“Attan!” Greg’s voice, edged in panic, cut into Attan’s consciousness. He steadied his wavering form.

“If you won’t help us, we’ll just have to do it without you.” Tom grabbed Attan’s now perfectly solid arm. “Don’t even think about telling your father or the Enforcer.”

Tell them what, Attan wondered. That Tom’s organization wanted to talk directly to free elementals? Attan hadn’t found out a single thing about the secret base beyond the cornfields or the hidden guns, or even the communicators. What was he supposed to tell his father? “I won’t,” he mumbled, wrenching his arm away.

“Open the door!” Greg’s father pounded on the outside. “Tom, I know you’re in there—if you hurt that Family child we’re all in trouble!”

From outside, Tom’s crazy mother shrieked, “Tom! My Tom!”

Tom growled under his breath. “Don’t go anywhere!” He pointed a menacing finger at Attan. “I’m not done talking to you.” To his brother, he said, “Go ahead, open it.”

Greg pulled the heavy door open. Tom’s mother rushed in and headed straight for Tom despite the fact that she could not see him at all. “My son!” she murmured.

Tom held his mother almost tenderly and eyed his father over her shoulder. “The little Prince is perfectly fine,” he said gratingly. “We were just talking, right, Prince?” The glare he shot Attan went unnoticed as suddenly the chapel burst into streams of light.

Attan stared at the chapel ceiling which moments before had been dark to human eyes but now was shot through with colors, light, wound through ribbons of wind and muted to human sensibilities with shadow. He wasn’t the only one who saw it. Greg, his father, Tom and curious townspeople who crowded the chapel entrance all stared upwards in awe. Only Tom’s blind mother, murmuring endearments to her beloved son, seemed unaware. Or maybe she was used to it.

“Does this happen a lot?” Attan asked. He’d never known free elementals to manifest purposely around non-family.

Tom shook his head. “Never. I’ve never seen this before—are you causing it?”

“No.” Attan raised his eyes to the lights. He wanted to be a part of it. “Do you mind? I’ll come back.” A month ago he wouldn’t have asked, wouldn’t have been able to. His father would be proud of his control. Such as it was. Without waiting for Tom to answer, Attan let himself go so he could join his elemental brethren in their dance of joy, for it was joy, and it was because of the woman. Attan let his amazement flood the ambient.

There was something about that woman. . . . Attan flowed through her as a stream of white light, and although he felt nothing more or less than when he merged through any other non-family, he realized that her blind eyes tracked him as he left her body to merge with the others of his kind. From the free elementals he felt happiness, affection, and a vague sense of possessiveness—she was their human, and they looked after her. Astounded, Attan sent his queries, not that he expected that the free elementals could or would understand. Why? Who is she that you recognize her? Why do you stay?

And the free elementals answered him, turning around everything Attan thought he knew about his own nature and about Attania. This woman was not the only one. There were others, in various places throughout Attania. There always had been. These physical beings changed the free elementals who encountered them, made them more aware, more like Attan—that thought came clear. Attan wasn’t sure he liked that. As far back as he could remember, Attan had always wanted to be more like the free elementals, not thinking, not knowing, just being. He felt amusement through the ambient.

We are, the free elementals sent. And so are they.

Stunned, Attan let himself take physical form. Greg and his father had once again sent the rest of the townspeople out of the chapel and barred the heavy wooden door. The inside of the chapel was still bathed in muted colored lights, outlining Tom and his mother as they stood in the very center of the chapel, both their eyes on him as he appeared. Attan shuddered. Could the blind woman really see his elemental form? It made him wonder about the girl, Elea, he had met on a clifftop, the same girl he’d seen coming out of this chapel earlier. Could she see, too?

Attan faced Tom. “What do you want me to tell the spirits?” he asked, resigned to at least trying.