Prince of Attania, 2

Greg wanted nothing to do with Attan for the first few days after their disastrous outing. Fortunately for Attan’s grand plan, they were still partners at school, so Greg had to talk to him sometimes.

“What good is that going to do?” Greg asked in general as pairs of students winked out of sight.

For answer, Attan grabbed shadow—their assignment for today—and wrapped it around the both of them. You didn’t need to be an Elemental to do it; any Family could manipulate shadow.

“Oh, I get it!” Greg exclaimed softly. He could still see out, but no one else could see in. “Why don’t we just look like a dark blob?” He couldn’t see any of the other Family/non-famiy pairs who had seemed to disappear completely when the Family partner invoked shadow. “Shadow’s dark, right?”

At least he was talking. Attan replied, “Shadow is the absence of light. It’s all around us all the time, we just don’t notice it.”

Cousin Macek would have been proud of his answer. It meant that Attan had been paying attention to all those tedious lessons. But Attan decided to take it even further. Greg was finally talking to him again, even if it was about school. “Without light, there would be no shadow, but with enough light, shadows disappear. See?” Attan said, abandoning shadow to become light. His white radiance immediately blotted out everyone else’s shadow too and made Greg cringe and cover his eyes. Oops. Not what he had intended. Attan took on physical form again and wrapped shadow around both of them. “See?” he repeated weakly. “The light that’s usually around us isn’t very strong, so even though you don’t see them, shadows are everywhere.”

“Attan.” Macek’s voice was grim.

Slowly, Attan let the shadows dissipate. He left Greg standing by himself in the middle of the room and went to receive his punishment.

“You could have blinded your partner,” his teacher admonished. “Greg, are you all right?”

Greg nodded, and followed Attan across the practice room. The other pairs of students, visible once more, watched avidly to see what would happen to Attan this time.

“Get back to work!” Macek snapped, and one by one the pairs winked out of sight. Macek turned back to Attan. “What am I going to do with you?” he said in exasperation.

“It’s all right. Attan was just answering my question,” Greg said, making Attan look at him in wonder. Greg was defending him? Attan grinned.

The other students had edged closer to hear Attan’s fate, and suddenly Macek glared as if he could see through their shadow illusion, or maybe it was only his teacher’s instinct. “Practice is finished!” he decided. All the students groaned. If practice was over this early, it meant they would have to do regular classroom work instead. They shot murderous glances at Attan and Greg as they filed out of the practice room on their way to the study room.

Greg slid into his seat next to Attan. “Maybe you and I can practice that shadow thing on our own,” he suggested.

This is what Attan had hoped for! “At your house?” he asked.

Greg gave him a crooked grin. “Sure. We can play tricks on my brother and sisters.”

After school, Macek pulled Attan aside when he would have followed Greg. “Just a minute.” When the other students had all left, Macek put his hands on Attan’s shoulders and sighed. “I really ought to punish you, but how? Attan, you can’t release to an Elemental state because you feel like it. Not among non-family. Greg could have been hurt. That’s what these lessons are all about, learning to work together safely with non-family. Please be more careful.” He gathered Attan to him and gave him a hug before briefly letting go of his own physical self to merge with Attan. No further words were necessary. Among Family it was okay.

Attan ran to catch up with Greg, worried that the boy would go home without him. He caught up, breathless, just as Greg reached his father’s truck where he parked it every day and waited for Greg to finish school.

“No fish today?” The old man pushed back the hat that had been covering his face and hopped down. He eyed Attan without comment.

“Not today,” Greg said shortly. He opened the passenger door and waved Attan in. Attan scooted over to the middle. “I invited Attan for supper.”

Greg’s father raised his eyebrows in surprise. So did Attan. He had to eat dinner there?

“It’s okay with his—“ The old man hesitated. “—parents?” Attan’s parents were the King and Queen of Attania.

“Yeah, my Dad’s away and my Mom won’t mind,” Attan said. He saw the brief glance that passed between father and son. Yes! There was something going on. Attan just had to figure out what it was.

“Don’t you have one of those, those new inventions the rich people have?” The old man waggled his fingers near his mouth. “You can let your mother know you are coming with us.”

“Communicators? No, my Dad won’t let me have one. He says I don’t need it.”

“So no one knows where you are.”

Attan didn’t understand the question. There were elementals everywhere, in every form, who knew exactly where Attan was at any particular moment. He supposed Greg and his father were talking about physical beings, however. “No. But it’s all right. I can go where I want.” It was true. He could. He remembered what his cousin Macek had said. “But right now I’ll go with you,” he said quickly to reassure them.

Greg lived on a farm with a big white house, a barn, and several smaller buildings some distance back from the main house. His mother was a large woman with the same red hair as Greg—and mostly the same face, if Attan looked past the wrinkles. She crushed Attan in a huge hug and insisted he sit at the kitchen table and have a snack. She set out a slab of apple pie on a plate and looked at him expectantly.

“Thank you,” Attan mumbled, and took a forkful. It wasn’t bad. He ate another bite.

“Come on, I’ll show you the barn,” Greg said. He had wolfed down his entire piece of pie and drained a large glass of milk in the time it had taken for Attan to try two bites.

With an apologetic smile aimed at Greg’s mother, Attan followed Greg out of the kitchen. The pie was good, but Attan doubted he could have finished all of it. The barn was dark and full of dust. It smelled bad, too. Attan followed Greg around as he tended to his chores. “I thought you were farmers.” Attan was still marveling at all the different animals, some in stalls but many roaming free. He sidestepped a curious cat who had rubbed up against his legs.

Greg paused. “We are. My brother mostly runs the farm now. You’ll meet him tonight at supper. Now . . .” Greg clapped his hands together briskly to get the dust off them. “Let’s go scare my sisters!”

Attan was more confused than ever. “Your sisters?”

“They’re over by the chickens. Come with me. I’ll show you.” Greg scowled as Attan made to follow him. “Not like that—they’ll see us! Use the shadow thing we learned in school today to hide both of us.”

Attan grabbed shadow, wrapping it around them. Greg peered at him inside their shadow cocoon. “You’re sure no one can see us?”

“As long as you don’t stand in direct sunlight,” Attan whispered back. Greg took that as permission to proceed, and Attan scrambled to keep the shadow around them as Greg slunk around the corner of the barn.

He didn’t know what he had imagined, but not that Greg’s sisters were grown women, or very nearly so. One of them, the oldest by the look of them, hung laundry on a line. Another peeled potatoes into a pot by the back door of the house, while the last two, the youngest by the look of them but still older than Greg or Attan, tended the chickens in coops on the far side of the barn. None of them looked up as Greg and Attan moved among them.

Greg snatched eggs right out of one of the girls’ baskets, and when she didn’t notice fast enough, he snatched away the whole basket. Then she screamed. All the sisters turned around at her scream. Unfortunately, the scream had startled Attan also, who lost his grasp on shadow, and for a moment they flickered into visibility. Attan strengthened the shadows almost immediately, but it was too late.

Greg sat down hard on the ground, holding his sides, laughing. His sisters could hear him but not see him. That did not stop them coming forward, to Attan’s dismay. “What should I do?” he whispered anxiously to Greg.

Still laughing, Greg gasped out, “It worked! They can’t see us.”

He must not have realized Attan had let go of the shadows momentarily. “But they can hear us,” Attan pointed out.

“Run!” Greg shouted, jumping to his feet and running out of the shadows and around the corner of the barn. Attan, startled, stayed where he was, still covered in shadow.

The girls converged on him. As soon as their questing hands touched him, Attan lost his hold on shadow and became visible.

“A little boy!” One of the younger girls exclaimed. “A Family boy!” She touched Attan’s black hair. “Greg, you get back here with my eggs!” She yelled so suddenly that Attan lost his hold on his body and faded into invisibility. “Oh no you don’t!” the girl muttered, waving her arms through the space where Attan had been. She was Greg’s sister, all right. Attan remembered his promise, and became physical so she could catch him.

“What do we have here?” Another sister strolled over to take a look at Attan. “Is this Greg’s little school friend?” Like her younger sister, this one brushed Attan’s black hair with her hand. “What’s your name, little boy?”

Greg came back around the corner holding out the basket of eggs in front of him. “He’s the Prince.”

“Prince Attan?” The oldest pulled back to get a good look at Attan. “I suppose he is. I’d heard he went to your school. He looks littler in real life.”

“You’d better leave him alone,” Greg advised, handing off the eggs to the sister he’d stolen them from. “He’s the most powerful Elemental in Attania.” He glanced at Attan, the other part of his sentence unspoken in front of the sisters he was trying to impress: if Attan didn’t mess up. Attan got the picture and grimaced, grateful Greg hadn’t noticed when Attan dropped the shadows.

“Him?” The third sister looked skeptical. She tickled Attan under his chin. “But he’s so small! Come on, little boy—show us what you can do!”

Attan glanced at Greg, who gave him a slight nod. This was the time for showing off. Attan made a mini-tornado swirl the dirt around their feet, to the girls’ squeals of delight. He let fire dance on the palm of his hand, and made flowers out of light and shadow, which he handed off to the girls. They only lasted as long as he touched them, fading soon after the girls took hold of them, but while they lasted, they were impressive.

All the girls wanted to sit next to Attan at supper. He learned their names: Betsy, Farra, Joan and Lacey. Farra and Lacy were twins and had the same red hair as Greg and their mother. The other two had brownish hair, as did Greg’s older brother Tom, who came in with several other farmhands. Attan still marveled at the differences between non-family. It made each of them unique in a way Family could never be.

Tom scowled at Attan from his place at the far end of the big kitchen table. “What’s he doing here?” he asked.

Attan, trying to fend off the sister on either side of him who each kept popping bits of food into his mouth, stilled at the hostility in Tom’s voice. Greg spoke up. “I invited him. He goes to my school. He’s the Prince.” He gave his brother another one of those looks, and Attan wondered if Greg was defending him or saying something altogether different.

“Just one more bite.” Lacey coaxed a crispy piece of chicken between Attan’s lips. He obediently opened and chewed, not knowing how to gracefully decline. His stomach flipped as it occurred to him that this might very well be one of those chickens he saw outside earlier. But he managed to swallow the piece. “We’ve got to fatten you up,” she said with a satisfied smile.

“He’s Family. They don’t get fat.” Tom, the older brother, said flatly. “Are you sure it was a good idea inviting the Prince to our home?”

“Yes,” Greg and his father answered together. “He’s Greg’s partner at the school. They are learning to work together,” Greg’s father continued.

“Greg’s partner is the Prince? How did that happen?”

“I chose him,” Attan said, hastily grabbing his glass of milk so he wouldn’t have to eat any of the potatoes Farra was plying him with. “We’re friends,” he added.

Tom glanced sharply at Greg. “Friends, huh?” He dug into his plate and didn’t wait for a reply.

“Leave the boy alone, Tom,” Greg’s mother said. “He’s here as our guest.”

Attan’s stomach rumbled. He reddened. This usually didn’t happen to him. “Uh, I need to use—do you have—I have to go—“ He rushed away from the table in the direction Greg’s father pointed out. By the time he got back to the table, the girls were already clearing away the remains of supper and threatening dessert next. Attan looked at Greg in appeal.

“So . . . Prince Attan.” Tom had moved his seat next to Attan’s. “Would you like to come out to see the fields? There’s still enough light.”

Attan didn’t like the friendly tone of Tom’s voice, so different from his earlier hostility that Attan didn’t trust it. Neither, apparently, did Greg. “He’s not coming out there today,” Greg said with finality. “We’re not ready yet. We still have some practicing to do.”

Ready for what, Attan wondered.

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride back into town,” Greg’s father said, to a chorus of protest from the girls.

“But I wanted him to try my cake! And there’s ice-cream!”

Attan shook his head. “No, that’s not necessary. I can go my own way.”

“Elemental way, he means,” Tom muttered with a glare at being thwarted. “Let’s see it, then.”

Attan had kept to his promise long enough. He had maintained human form for most of the day, with unpleasant physical results. He was tired, and whatever mystery Greg’s family was hiding could wait until another time. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told Greg.

Then he disappeared, becoming wind so he could get home fastest. Before he left, however, he swirled gently around the large kitchen, observing the girls’ dismay at his abrupt departure, and Greg’s brother Tom with his arms crossed as Greg’s father spoke rapidly and earnestly in his ear. Only Greg had no reaction, which was a reaction in itself. Greg knew Attan better than any other non-family. Greg probably knew Attan had not left yet. Attan would have to be very careful in the future.

Because Attan planned on returning. Oh, he wanted to see Tom’s fields, but not necessarily with Tom present. Greg might guess what Attan had planned, but he couldn’t know for sure. All in all, it had been a very confusing day.