Prince of Attania, 2

Attan entered the village cautiously, as if Tom Jadock could actually sense him or know that he was here without Attan physically manifesting. What was it about Tom Jadock that unnerved him? He was human, without a doubt. But free elementals gathered around him; Attan sensed them even if Tom could not. Why? Why did they flock to Tom? Was it truly because of his mother?

He watched Tom for a while before he made his presence known. The man was staying in Tark’s house, though Tark sat sullenly by the cold firepit, eating a cold breakfast by himself. Where were the rest of the village men, Attan wondered. He expanded his consciousness until it flowed out across the entire village, merging with other elementals as he expanded. There.

With a jolt of surprise, Attan spied a giant vehicle on the seaward side of the village, hidden by a stand of trees. It looked as if it had traveled only so far on the main road before getting stuck on the smaller path which led to the village. Here, also, were the rest of the men from Elea’s village, working hard to widen the path so that the giant vehicle could move forward. Attan had never seen anything like it. But he had seen tracks similar to the ones the vehicle left behind it—up on Jadock’s mountain, where old Renn and Greg had been doing similar work to widen the road. So it was connected to Tom. The question was: what was it, exactly? And where had it been all this time?

Attan pulled his consciousness back in tightly; he needed to talk to Tom if he was going to find any answers. He merged through Tom, reassuring himself yet again that there was nothing there, no spark to indicate elemental presence. Tom never felt it. The other elementals around them swirled into Attan, broadcasting their welcome.

Tom sat up slowly when Attan materialized. As usual, he seemed completely unaware of the elementals zinging in and out of his body as he sat there. “So the girl did find you after all.”

Attan didn’t bother to answer the obvious. “What do you want?” he asked.

Tom swung his legs over the side of the cramped bed. “What I’ve always wanted,” he said, with a wave of his arms. “To talk to them.”

So . . . not completely unaware. Tom knew free elementals were there, even if he couldn’t sense them. “Why?”

Tom sighed. “Not this again,” he said. “I thought we had already been through all that.”

“And I thought you were fine being one of the Sons of Men,” Attan said. “How did you escape?”

Scowling, Tom started pulling on his clothes. “If you know that much, you know that I was a prisoner. What was I supposed to do? Wait until they decided to kill me? It wasn’t my fault.”

“Did Greg have anything to do with your escape?” Attan asked bluntly.

Tom gave Attan a calculating look. “I thought you two were friends. Don’t you trust your friend, Prince?”

“Did he?”

“How could he? I was locked in a cave! In the dark! I have no idea how I got out of there. I went to sleep, and when I woke up I was by the sea. I didn’t wait around until someone came back for me.”

Tom’s words chilled Attan. Who else but Family, and an Elemental at the very least, could have freed Tom from the cave Attan’s father had put him in? Tom could be very manipulative, as Attan had reason to know, but Attan could think of no possible circumstance where one of the Family would willingly aid Tom Jadock.

The free elementals surrounding them manifested in agitation, picking up on Attan’s unease. Flashes of light strobed through the little room, and answering thunder boomed outside. Attan took a calming breath. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. “I’m here. Now what?”

But Tom didn’t answer right away. He finished getting dressed, then pushed open the door which led outside. The sky, which had momentarily darkened menacingly, shone clear again. Tark looked up from his place by the firepit. His eyes widened at the sight of Attan by Tom Jadock’s side.

“I told you to stay away,” Tark grumbled underneath his breath as Attan sat down next to him.

Tom reached down and grabbed a pot of tea which hung suspended over the cold firepit. “Do you mind?” he asked Attan.

With a thought, Attan lit the fire, watching it crackle merrily under the blackened kettle. He could have easily heated just the tea in the kettle, but he was feeling contrary. Why should he go out of his way to help Tom? Tark moved a flatter pan which held the remnants of his breakfast out of the fire.

“I want to talk to the spirits directly,” Tom said at last, leaning forward intently.

The fire pulsed. Once, twice. Then the flames shot straight up, incinerating the remaining wood completely. Fire elementals combined with air and were rapidly pulling in other elementals. Too many. “Watch out!” Attan yelled, letting go of his body and expanding his essence to absorb the wildly fluctuating elementals. The fire abruptly snuffed out. Darkness clapped down over the morning sky, and Attan reappeared, shaken to the core. The two non-family never knew how close they had come to death.

Tark lay sprawled on his back in the dirt, while Tom Jadock cursed and shook out his hand. He had spilled hot tea all over it when the sun went dark. Served him right. Attan had caught wisps of the free elementals’ agitation. Against all rationality they seemed to be responding to Tom’s words. Impossible.

A part of Attan’s consciousness merged with the sentient elementals who did, indeed, wonder what it would like to . . . be physical. Awful, Attan sent. Uncomfortable. Painful. Confusing. But they caught his other emotions also: satisfaction, pleasure, love. Several of them joined together, separating from Attan and the rest of the elementals. A wobbly, partially-formed humanoid shape coalesced in front of Tom.

Tom laughed in astonishment. “You did it!” he cried out, as Attan formed next to the creature.

Attan stared at the creature the combined free elementals had become. It looked like him, which he supposed made sense, if the free elementals were using him as their template. Tom lunged forward, as if to grab the new creature, and it dissolved as if it had never been. Tom cursed. “Bring it back.”

But the newly physical Elemental re-formed again a few feet away, staring at both Tom and Attan with wide, dark eyes.

“No!” From far away, Elea’s voice echoed down the side of the cliffs. Attan could see her running towards them at a reckless speed. Immediately, the new Elemental’s form wavered and disappeared, and this time it did not re-form. Attan followed its example, disappearing in a gust of wind as he swept up the mountainside to hopefully prevent Elea from killing herself on her plunge down the nearly vertical cliffs. He circled Elea as wind, using its elemental force to slow her headlong rush.

She knew him; she always knew him, whatever his form, and she allowed herself to be cushioned. Attan gathered her and, more carefully, her companions, and deposited them gently next to Tark and Tom Jadock. He took back his physical form in time to hear Elea begin the song of sending. “Stay,” she urged him. “Don’t let go of your form.” Her song pulled at him him, as her companions joined in, the five women forming a circle around the now cold firepit. Attan felt the free elementals respond as Tom repeatedly asked what was going on. Elea didn’t have the breath to say.

Attan also felt the agitation of the free elementals. They didn’t want to leave, this time. “You need to stop,” he told Elea, as they didn’t have a voice. Her song fractured them back to their individual elements, and pulled them towards the distant sea. “They don’t want to go.”

Tom heard, of course. He took matters into his own hands, grabbing Elea and clapping a hand across her mouth, effectively stifling her song. “No you don’t,” he grunted.

By this time, the free elementals were past the point of agitation. They whirled through the air and the earth beneath their feet, causing it to buckle and foam. Both Tom and Elea fell together, and only Attan’s quick thinking firmed the ground underneath their feet before they both were buried by the upheavals. Tark was not so lucky; he ended up buried alive below the surface of the earth with half the women who had accompanied Elea. Attan could either save them or rescue Elea from Tom’s clutches, where she struggled violently to free herself.

Attan couldn’t let them die; he ripped open the earth, scattering earth elementals in his wake, as he raised all the non-family who had been buried on a pillar of air. Tark coughed, and jerked wildly as he realized he now hung suspended in mid-air. Attan carefully lowered him to the earth a good distance away from the still-rumbling ground near the firepit. Some of Elea’s companions weren’t so fortunate; her mother survived, coughing and rubbing dirt from her eyes, but another woman Attan didn’t recognize hung limply in the air. He hadn’t been quick enough to save her, and she had suffocated.

Elea scrambled to her feet, putting some distance between herself and Tom Jadock. “They must not take form!” she called breathlessly to Attan. She began singing the song to send free elementals back to the sea. She had told Attan once that that was what they truly desired, but he’d been a part of these elementals up until moments ago, and he knew they hungered for sentience as much as he or any of his Family did. Closing his eyes, he made a decision: if the free elementals were sent to the sea, then he would join them, for whatever good it would do. He let his physical fprm slip away.

At once, his elemental form felt the inexorable draw towards the sea. Peace, surcease, ending. He wanted it, maybe even more than he wanted this physical life. The elementals who joined with him clamored in his mind: regret, anticipation, confusion. Which was right?

“Attan!” Elea’s wail brought him back. He had promised to stay. He took form again in time to see Tom Jadock speaking into a communicator. In the distance, the large vehicle started up, crushing vegetation underneath it as it moved towards Tom and the center of Elea’s village.

“Elea. Hold on. I’ll take care of it,” Attan said. He plucked Tom up, ignoring his gasp of fright, and pushed him bodily through the air towards his monstrous vehicle. The townsmen of Elea’s village hung behind its tracks, as the vehicle crashed right over the uncleared portion of road towards Tom. But Attan threw Tom towards the machine instead, slowing his descent at the last possible moment so that Tom lay sprawled across the top of the big vehicle, which creaked to a stop.

Amazingly, the free elementals who had so briefly taken physical form now re-formed in the grass next to Tom’s gigantic machine. Each time it reformed, it held its shape more steadily, though it still had yet to speak. Attan knew it was still mostly an amalgam of many elementals with a common purpose, not actually a separate entity, though that was a fine point to make.

Tom slowly pried himself up and turned to face the new creature. “Welcome,” he said gravely. “I’ve been waiting a long time to talk to you. Now . . .” Tom glance significantly at Attan and the rest of Elea’s villagers who ranged in a loose ring around his giant machine. “Destroy these people who tried to destroy you, and come with me. I will teach you what it means to be human.”

The being made a strangled sound, and stumbled forward. It reached out towards Tom, and Attan felt its desire a moment before it bore fruit. He was too late to stop it. The creature flowed into Tom, and Attan felt the shock as the combined elementals who comprised it realized there was nothing recognizable inside. Tom was non-family, unreachable, unattainable. Their combined cry of despair tore reality apart.

The shock wave rippled across the valley, obliterating everything in its path. Attan only just had time to scoop up Elea, her father, and as many of the townspeople as he could before the wave hit them, too. Tom crumpled before its onslaught. The intimidating machine shattered into a thousand pieces, taking most of Tom’s men who huddled inside it with it when it fell apart. Trees splintered, vast pits opened in the solid earth, and even the mountains shook. When it was over, immense cracks scored the sides of the cliffs. Of Tom and his men there was nothing, not even a stain to mark their existence on Attania’s earth.

Attan settled the townspeople down by the remains of the firepit. The elementals hadn’t meant to cause such destruction; it had just happened. It was what happened when elementals felt human emotions. He conveyed that to what was left of the free elementals. A shimmering in the air presaged the newly formed Elemental’s reappearance. He/it stood forlornly gazing at the damage he/it had created. A burble of dismay escaped it. It hadn’t meant to destroy the one it thought of as its creator: Tom.

Attan took pity on it and merged with it as he would merge with one of his own Family. He tried to explain what had happened and why, and for a moment it was uncertain whether or not the newly formed Elemental would lose control again. But it didn’t. It firmed up its physical body, so like Attan’s own, and tilted its head, waiting for Attan to tell it what to do next.

Tark trudged wearily up to Attan and clapped him on the shoulder, startling the new Elemental, though it kept its form. “Looks like it’s over for now,” Tark observed. He glossed over the fact that several of his own townspeople lay dead, and several more were hurt. Their village lay in pieces, as most of the dwellings had been built right into the rock faces of the cliffs.

Attan might be able to do something about that. “Wait by the fire,” he said, and he disappeared, taking the new Elemental with him. Together, and with the help of the other free elementals who had not chosen to combine into one form, they shored up the unstable structures and made them whole again. By the time they returned to physical form, Tark and the surviving villagers had gotten the fire going again, and sat around the rippled earth that now surrounded the firepit, singing softly.

“There will be trouble,” Tark said. “The people who made that thing will come looking for it—and him.” And Tom had communicated with someone right before everything was destroyed. Attan had assumed it was his men waiting in the vehicle, but what if it wasn’t?

“We’ll deal with it when it comes,” Attan promised.

Elea sat, staring in the direction of the southern sea, and she didn’t speak, even when Attan slid down next to her. The new Elemental slid down next to Attan, imitating him. “I’m sorry,” Attan said. “They didn’t want to go.”

Elea shrugged. Her own people had died instead. And there was no coming back for them. “What will you do with him now?”

“Eh?”

“He’s your responsibility now. He has no idea how to be a physical being. You’ll have to teach him.”

The new Elemental looked with interest at Elea. “Eh?” he echoed.

Attan laughed, but it was strained. “I guess I will,” he replied. “Will you be all right here?”

Tom Jadock was dead. Attan didn’t know how he was going to explain that, or explain this new Elemental he had suddenly acquired. Elea’s village wasn’t likely to remain secluded for much longer. The aftershocks of the Elemental’s emotion were still resonating through the land. Attan was sure other Family would take notice.

Elea smiled bleakly. “I’ll be all right.”

Attan stood. The new Elemental stood, too. “You’ll need a name, now that you’re physical,” he told the creature, who made a little interrogatory noise. “What should we call you?”

The creature blinked, and Elea giggled. “He looks like you,” she said. “How about you call him “Me, too?”

And so Meetoo was named, and Attan found himself a parent at the ripe old age of fourteen.