Prince of Attania, 2

Uneasily, Greg’s father watched Attan as he disappeared, presumably to “talk” to the spirits in the chapel. “Are you sure we can trust him?” he whispered in an aside to Tom.

“Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it?” Tom replied, extricating his arm from his mother’s tight grasp. “The King’s son wasn’t my first choice, but he’s what we got, so we’ll have to deal with it.” Tom scowled at Greg, who had resumed his position by the door.

“Hey, he’s the partner I was assigned at that school you made me go to. What else was I supposed to do?” Greg protested.

Did they think he couldn’t hear them? Amazed, Attan swirled through the room with the rest of the free elementals. He wasn’t sure how he was going to convey to the elementals what the humans wanted, but he had promised to try. They have questions, he projected, not expecting much of a response. Free elementals communicated in bursts of impressions—angry, sad, content, bewildered. His own people, those who had become Elementals like him and Jet, and could take on human form, were capable of more, and could transfer blocks of information whole from one Elemental to another. But these elementals were something else altogether.

Attan felt their curiosity. He tried again. They want you to help them, he sent. Make the earth fertile, send rain, grow food. Will you do that?

The free elementals, a mix of water, light, dark, and even earth, swarmed agitatedly around the chapel, showering its physical occupants with bits of rain and dirt as the light level fluctuated wildly. Attan sensed delight, however, right before they all left, en masse, exiting through the very walls of the chapel itself. Attan realized they had taken him literally and gone to fertilize the land.

He materialized to find Tom’s mother staring sightlessly at him again. Did she realize her spirits were no longer in the chapel?

Apparently she did. She started for the main door, pulling futilely at the handle. “Out! We have to go out!”

“Emma!” Greg’s father called out, alarmed at her sudden change of direction.

But Attan agreed with Emma. He went to help her open the heavy door, waving aside Greg who wasn’t sure if he should move or not. “They’re going to help,” he explained.

“Open the door!” Tom commanded. Both Attan and Greg got the door open. Emma spilled out and ran across the village center, closely followed by Renn and Tom. Greg and Attan trailed behind.

Already across the village, grass was sprouting where before only bare earth had been. Unfortunately, grass was sprouting on the walkways and between cracks in the buildings also. Attan would have to have a talk with the free elementals about where not to fertilize. He didn’t hold out much hope of their understanding, however. Attan sighed, and hurried after everyone else.

They had attracted quite a gathering by now, and when they reached the stony barren fields which bordered the single road in and out of their village, most of Midver had followed. Before their eyes, seemingly like magic, the rocky soil bubbled and foamed, turning darker and richer and, in a matter of minutes, green with growing plants. Several of the villagers murmured uneasily, casting wary glances at Attan, the only one capable of such magic, in their midst.

“Is the Family kid doing this?” someone whispered loudly.

Greg elbowed Attan before he could reply. “Let Tom handle this,” he muttered under his breath.

“It’s the spirits,” Emma said happily.

By now tall rows of corn sprouted with ears fully ripened and ready for picking. The townspeople watched Attan suspiciously, but Tom reassured them. “It’s not the Family Elemental. It really is our spirits—the spirits of Attania. They’re going to help Midver. It’s got nothing to do with Family.”

“Then why’s he here?” One of the older men pointed at Attan.

“He’s just a kid,” Tom replied. “A friend of my brother’s. No Family could make this barren land fertile so quickly. It’s the spirits—our spirits!” He hauled Attan over to his side, towering over him as if to prove Attan was only a child, even if he was Family.

But Tom was wrong. Family Elementals like his father and uncle could cause the land to respond just as quickly as these free elementals had. They didn’t, however, because they did not want to frighten the non-family of Attania. After all, their goal was to work together with them for the good of Attania.

“He’ll tell them, and they’ll come and take it all away,” another townsman said, surprising Attan. Why would Family take away their new-found bounty? Then he thought about it, and realized they might, if only to even out the advantage Midver now possessed.

“I won’t.” Attan spoke up. Except for Renn, Tom and Greg, none of these people knew that he was the Prince. They thought he was just Family, and that was bad enough. “I want to help, but I won’t say anything to my Family.” As he said it, Attan realized he had made a decision. He could handle Midver on his own. There was no need to involve the King or the Enforcer. Maybe, when the town was no longer struggling to just survive, he would be able to convince them that not all Family were evil. And, by helping Midver, Attan could learn more about Midver’s own free elementals who were different from any others he had met so far.

The free elementals had not stopped at corn. They flowed over the land in and around Midver, and wherever they touched, greenery followed like a rolling carpet. There would be time enough later to guide them in what the people here needed for crops, but in the meantime, it was astounding to watch the transformation. Attan longed to join them, but was acutely conscious of the suspicious gazes of the townspeople surrounding him. He settled for feeling the free elementals zing through him as they fertilized the land.

Tom grabbed his arm and pulled him a short distance away. “Go back to town with Greg. I’ll talk to them. And kid—“ He bent over to whisper in Attan’s ear. “Don’t leave.”

Attan walked back towards the deserted town center with Greg, leaving the grown-ups and every other living person out in the fields with Tom. Evidence of the free elemental’s touch was everywhere—in the blossoming flowers which sprouted from every bare patch of earth, in the rapidly growing trees where before there were none, and in the vine-draped houses that ringed the town’s center.

Greg led him into one of the houses, which belonged to Emma. Attan gratefully sank down on a low bed, the only piece of furniture in the room beside a rough wood table and two stools. Tiny flowers pushed their way up out of the dirt floor and Attan growled under his breath. “I’ll be right back,” he muttered, before disappearing.

Attan merged with the free elementals, relieved to give up his physical body. He surveyed their handiwork and felt their satisfaction at doing what he had asked of them. Attan gently explained through feelings and images that perhaps they had done too much, and he showed them how they might want to change how they went about making Midver a fertile and prosperous land for their non-family friends.

When Attan returned to the one room house where Greg talked to the air, apparently thinking he was talking to him, the flowers had disappeared from the floor. Outside, in the town center, a small spring bubbled up, quickly spreading into a wide pool.

“Why did you disappear?” Greg confronted him angrily. “Tom told you to stay here.”

“He didn’t say anything about not transforming. Besides, I think I fixed things with your spirits. They get it, now.”

“Not my spirits,” Greg mumbled, looking down.

“About that. Are there other places like Midver? Places where people worship spirits?” The free elementals had all but told him there were, and even Tom had hinted at it. And Attan had seen Elea coming out of the chapel.

“How should I know?” Greg didn’t want to talk about it, and he didn’t want to stay cooped up in the dreary little house with Attan, either. He wrenched open the door and stomped out, halting suddenly when he saw the small pond which bubbled steadily at its center. “What’s this?”

Grinning sheepishly, Attan replied, “The spirits thought Midver could use a drinking well.”

“It’s not a well, it’s a lake,” Greg said irritably. “The way it’s growing, it’s going to flood the whole town, starting with Emma’s house.

Attan suggested a solution, and Greg agreed. It was not that much different from what the two of them practiced at school. Attan disappeared, reappearing as a funnel cloud which deposited a large pile of small rocks near the new pond. He took back his physical shape and helped Greg move the rocks around the bubbling spring before the surrounding water got too deep, using his superior Family strength to lift the heavier stones and his elemental power to seal them. Finally, when the water stayed within the new rock boundaries, Attan gathered up all the excess water and sent it into the air, drying the ground around it. He tried the free elemental’s trick and made grass grow all around the new well, finally stepping back so he could see what they had built together.

“We’d better not tell them you did this,” Greg said, standing beside Attan. “They don’t like Family.”

“I noticed,” Attan said drily. “We’ll just tell them the spirits did it.”

“You really are the same, aren’t you?” Greg asked, slanting a gaze at Attan. “There are no such thing as spirits. It’s all you—Elementals, Family.”

Attan shook his head. “No, it’s really not,” he replied. “Free elementals, the ones you call spirits, are all around us all the time. Maybe long ago, Family came from them, but Family is not the same as the free elementals. You heard about the Family who release their physical bodies and return to Attania as free elementals?”

“You mean like you, and the King, those Elementals?”

“No, not like that.” Attan didn’t correct Greg. He wasn’t exactly the same as his father the King, or Uncle Merrell, or Uncle Daniel or any of the other Family Elementals who could release their physical bodies and return to it. He was more like . . . more like . . . well, more like Midver’s free elementals than like the rest of Attania’s free elementals, anyway. Unlike them, he could take physical form, but he didn’t have to, and if he were honest with himself, he didn’t want to, either. “The Family who release to free elementals don’t remember their human lives and they can never take back their physical bodies. That’s what your spirits are like.”

“Oh.” Greg frowned, trying to comprehend it all. “But you can talk to them.”

“Not exactly ‘talk,’” Attan said. “But, yeah.”

Free elementals had been gathering around Attan while he and Greg were fixing the well. That meant they had finally stopped the accelerated growth on the outskirts of Midver. That meant Tom and the rest of them would be returning shortly. Attan stepped back inside Emma’s house.

Within minutes, people poured into the small town center and stopped short when they saw the well Attan and Greg had built with the help of Midver’s ‘spirits.’ Water bubbled softly in the recesses of the well, smoothing out when it reached the surface.

Greg perched on its stone lip and crossed his arms as one of the townsmen, a grizzly old man, pushed forward. He planted his fists on his lips and glared at Greg. “Was it that kid?”

“That kid has a name—it’s Attan,” Greg said, to Attan’s surprise from where he watched behind Emma’s door. Greg usually wasn’t quick to defend him. Attan thought it interesting that the old man didn’t even blink. Apparently the name of their Prince wasn’t well-known in Midver. That made sense. Attan had seen no evidence of modern conveniences here at all. It still amazed him that some places in Attania were so removed from the rest of the world.

“Attan? Isn’t that the name of the King?” Someone else asked. Attan revised his original estimation. They weren’t far off.

Tom made his way through the group of townspeople, glaring just as angrily as the old man. “No, the King is Roderick,” Tom replied, deliberately missing the point. It suited his purposes better if these people didn’t realize who Attan was. Attan agreed.

“The spirits really are helping us!” A woman murmured in a hushed voice.

“Yes, they are,” Tom replied impatiently. “But they can’t do it all—we need to harvest what they gave us before it goes to waste. Hurry, everybody, gather blankets, baskets, anything you can find. We need to work quickly!”

The townspeople scattered, and Tom strode determinedly to the house where Attan waited. Emma, Renn and Greg followed, crowding into the small, dark space. Attan called forth a globe of light so they could see.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tom grabbed Attan by the front of his shirt. Attan started to fade, his reaction to being startled, but again Greg stepped in, pulling on his brother’s arm.

“Leave him alone!” Greg hissed. “He didn’t do anything—the spirits did,” he lied.

Tom ignored him, and concentrated on Attan. “You made them go haywire!” he accused Attan. “This wasn’t what I had in mind when I asked you to talk to them!”

Attan jerked his shirt out of Tom’s hands and smoothed it down. “I told you it’s not that simple! They don’t think like we do! They just wanted to help!” Attan took a deep breath to calm down. “They understand a little better now, but it will never be exact because they are not the same as us! Family would be much better for this kind of thing.”

“That’s never going to happen,” Tom said sullenly. “I can make it work this time, but next time I expect you to explain it to them better. They need to help when and where I tell them.” He sat on his mother’s small bed and put his head in his hands.

Next time? Attan didn’t get a chance to ask, because Tom’s mother put her arms around her son and whispered soothingly in his ear. “The spirits will listen to you, my son.” She turned her sightless eyes to Atta. “Help my Thomas, young spirit.”

Attan shuddered, not only because the woman unerringly found him though she was blind, but because the free elementals who had followed them into the small house now thronged around and through her, adding their silent plea to her own. He nodded, not because he wanted to but because the free elementals wished it. Emma smiled in satisfaction.

It turned out that the harvest was more that Midver could use. Tom arranged for Renn to return to Midver in a few days to load up his truck with the excess. Renn and Greg left at dusk, because Molly would be expecting them for dinner. Attan made his own way home, turning insubstantial when no one was looking. His own mother would be looking for him, too.

But Attan planned to return to Midver, with or without Greg and his father. He doubted Tom would remain in the small town. He’d gotten what he wanted; the spirits did what Family Elementals had been doing across Attania, but much more rapidly and for Tom’s personal use, it seemed. Attan wasn’t as naïve as Tom believed. There was more to the story than Tom was letting on, and Tom’s profession that he wanted the spirits to aid his hometown wasn’t the whole truth. Where was he bringing the excess food they had harvested? Shouldn’t Midver be able to sell their excess and use the profits to better their own small community? Maybe a few modern conveniences, for example?

Attan didn’t trust Tom. The free elementals in Midver wanted to please ‘their’ human woman, the blind Emma. They did not understand that Tom’s motives were not as pure, and Attan didn’t know how to explain it to them. Truthfully, Emma’s motives were not particularly pure, either. She just wanted to make her son happy.

But Midver did not deserve to suffer. Attan wanted to help, both for the village’s sake and for his own. He wanted to find out more about the semi-aware free elementals, as well as about other villages like Midver, with connections to spirits.

For now, though, Attan wanted to go home. So he did.