Prince of Attania, 2

Stenson sighed loudly and finally moved away from Attan’s small breakfast table. “Does he have to do that?”

“Eat?” Attan looked up from where he sat, cross-legged on the bed, pressing various buttons on his communicator. “He likes it.”

Meetoo had two bowls in front of him: one with strawberries in thick cream, and the other with mixed grains sweetened with honey. He alternately dipped his spoon into one bowl, then the other.

Stenson had long since finished his own bowl of grains and was anxious to get out of Attan’s extremely cramped little house. He kept to physical form—hence the eating—because the young Prince was too astute at gleaning information from him when they were in Elemental form. And that was another problem: whenever Stenson took Elemental form, so did Attan. Occasionally, so did Meetoo, but far less than Stenson would have wished, considering that not long ago, Meetoo had only been elemental.

“He likes experiencing different sensations,” Attan offered, as if he’d picked up on Stenson’s thoughts, or at least his expressions. Attan tossed the communicator aside. “We can go on ahead,” he said, hopping off the bed. Attan hadn’t eaten any breakfast; he rarely did. Stenson sometimes wondered how he kept hold of his physical form with the small amount of food he consumed.

Even since Daniel left Midver, Attan had been taking Stenson with him and Meetoo, teaching them both how to grow things in Midver’s sandy soil using their elemental abilities. Stenson didn’t see the point, except as an object lesson on why he’d failed when he drove a truck full of vegetables here from Low City. Midver didn’t need extra food with Attan and Meetoo around. Tom’s information had been wrong about that. Meetoo didn’t see the point, either. He grew what he liked to eat, and didn’t really understand how other people might want it, too.

Stenson didn’t mind these little diversions. It passed the time, and eventually the young Prince would let down his guard. Then Stenson would leave, and take Meetoo with him. He was confident he could retrain this newest Elemental before he was totally corrupted by Family.

“Attan! Good morning!” Elea waved from across the village center. “Emma’s looking for you!”

Stenson shuddered. It bothered him that the new Enforcer felt comfortable enough leaving him here with just this Family kid and—these people—to assure he remained until Jet had time to get here. Granted, the kid was stronger than he’d thought possible, considering his origins. But these women had a hold on him he would not have believed if he hadn’t experienced it. And they routinely sent elementals across the void—which should have been impossible. He tried to steer clear of them, but the blind woman, Emma, kept following him around, pestering him with questions about her Tom.

Attan changed course and headed for Elea. Stenson reluctantly followed them as they made their way towards the small chapel at the edge of the village. Attan led him through the main room, which was sparsely filled with a few worshippers from the village, and down a flight of stairs at the far end. “Emma, you wanted to see me?” Attan asked.

The blind woman, Emma, looked up and smiled. “Hello, Young Spirit, Old Spirit. Please, come in.”

Stenson sat uneasily on a bench next to a worktable full of half-carved stones. Had the woman just guessed he was with Attan? His eyes lit on one of the pieces, and he started. Badly. He plucked it off the table and stood in one quick motion. “This is—this is from the cave walls!” He glared at the woman. “You’ve trapped an elemental in it!”

He would have smashed the rock with his power but Attan stayed his hand. “It’s all right,” he said steadily. “They chose this.”

They? Stenson looked around the small workroom. Most of the stones glowed softly with one color or another. “How do you know that?”

Attan smiled and shrugged. How do you not know it? “They told me so,” he replied, and Emma nodded gravely beside him. Attan picked up another of the pieces, this one with a glowing red center. “I carved this one,” he told Stenson. The center pulsed the deep red of fire, reminding Stenson that, whatever else Attan might be, he was still an abomination.

The elements in the various stones, like their counterparts which lined the walls of Attania’s many hidden caves, brightened at Stenson’s touch. But he couldn’t sense them beyond their simple manifestation as color. He gazed at the statues lined up on the worktable: a delicate bird with wings outstretched glowed faintly blue at its core, a wildflower so vivid yellow it looked real, a slender branch cradled leaves of fire which pulsed red and orange. The young Prince had captured the elemental essence in each piece he had created. But Attan was not the main stonecarver here. Stenson turned to regard blind Emma once more. Most of these carvings were hers. Yet she was human. And blind. “Are you telling me she can sense them as well?” he asked incredulously.

Attan nodded. He set his carving next to the wildflower. It was a fanciful creature, not real, with red-tipped wings and a gaping wide mouth. Grinning, Attan disappeared, and the tiny mouth belched fire as the thing’s body glowed red-hot. A moment later, Attan reappeared, still grinning proudly.

Emma chuckled. “The Young Spirit is teaching these spirits to misbehave!” she said with mock-severity. “Usually they’re content to just rest in my carvings.” She turned her milk-white eyes on Attan. “That’s what I needed to talk to you about. I’m out of stone.”

“Great. Mr. Stenson and I will go look for some more for you,” Attan said. It would be easier to show Stenson that the glowing elementals in the stone chose to inhabit Emma’s carvings, rather than merely telling him.

Attan turned to wind, Stenson’s element, and seeped through the walls of the lower level. At least Stenson could do that. Most of the other Elementals, the ones who had started as Family, still could not move their essences through solid objects. Attan figured it was because Stenson remembered his origins. But why couldn’t the older Elemental still sense the free spirits all around them? He merged with Stenson, feeling the other’s slight trepidation. If it was Meetoo, he would have dissipated into his various elements by now—explosively, no doubt—but Stenson was mainly wind, and had the stability of centuries of being both physical and not.

Stenson was old! Before Stenson, he had been Aylard; before Aylard, he had used many different names, different identities. He remembered much more than he’d let on to Jet all those years ago. The reason he could no longer sense free elementals was because he’d become too human—a thing he would never consciously admit, but Attan read it clearly in the merge. For all his talk of being a ‘pure’ being, he identified with non-family more than Family.

Attan took back form once the caverns got large enough for him to stand. All around him, the walls glowed with stripes of colors. He put out his hand to touch one, sensing the elemental within, cool and serene. When Stenson took form beside him, Attan took out his chisel and carefully chipped away an area of blue stone. “Touch here,” he told Stenson. “Can you feel it? No? Then go into it. You’ll see what I mean.”

Attan waited while Stenson let go of his physical body and entered the piece of stone. He came out with a look of awe on his face. “I felt it! I merged with the elemental inside the stone!”

“You see? It wants to be there—it wants to be formed into something beautiful.”

Stenson reverently touched another stripe of color. “I see. . . it makes sense now. They hold memory.” He glanced quizzically at Attan. “How did you--?”

“I went into them,” Attan told him. “Traveled through them. I—feel elementals. Memory? What do you mean?”

Stenson waved him off. “Let’s gather the ones that your stonecarver wants.”

Attan had to show him a few times how to sense which ones were ready to be transformed into something else. It wasn’t so much about choosing colors, as taking elementals who wanted to move to another level of existence. Interesting. Stenson realized he would have to be more careful when he transformed. He didn’t want the young Prince to uncover all his secrets just yet. But perhaps this unique Elemental boy, neither all physical nor all elemental, might suit his needs better than a newly-created one after all.

They returned to Emma’s workshop with four good-sized pieces of stone, which she gratefully accepted, stroking each stone lovingly in turn. “These will do, oh yes, they will,” she murmured before taking up the blue one. “This one will be a waterfall, I think.”

Attan looked up, and so did the woman, to Stenson’s annoyance. “My father is here,” Attan said briefly.

They walked up the stairs and through the chapel, rather than transforming. Jet waited for them on a little bench near the town’s new well. He didn’t have any enforcers with him, but then again, the King of Attania was reputed to be the most powerful elemental user of them all. He had no need of enforcers.

Jet straightened up as they approached. “Aylard,” he growled, coming to his feet. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Stenson held out his hand. “Jet,” he replied. “Aylard no longer exists. Please, give me credit. Call me Jim, Jim Stenson. Did you really think I would leave for good? I told you my plans for this world.”

“And I told you mine! I thought we’d come to an agreement! Now I find you’re doing things behind my back, subverting my people, feeding them false information! I told you I wouldn’t interfere if you wanted to convince Family to release! But this goes beyond everything we talked about—you have involved non-family!”

“You made your bargains with Aylard First,” Stenson said. “Not me. I have my reasons for doing things my own way.”

“Right. You’re creating your own super-Elemental army, or trying to! Where’s Meetoo?” Jet glanced around. “Didn’t work out the way you expected, did it?”

Stenson smirked. “It’s working out. So what are you going to do now?”

“You tell me.” Jet scowled. “You’ve met my son. He won’t allow you to slip away anymore. Whatever you do from now on, you do it out in the open with our full knowledge.”

“And your consent?”

“That remains to be seen.” As fast as Jet’s temper had risen, it subsided, and Jet cast a wry grin at his old adversary. “Why don’t you start with explaining just what it is you’ve been up to?”

They had gathered quite an audience by that point. Elea, Emma, and most of the townspeople stood around them waiting to hear Stenson’s response.

“You’re not going to like it,” he said with a sigh.