Prince of Attania, 2

Attan watched Elea play tag with Greg and Meetoo on the pier. It made her seem childlike again, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Her laughter turned into a shriek as Meetoo used wind to lift her off her feet long enough for him to catch her. He used wind; he didn’t become it. A month ago he wouldn’t have understood the distinction. Attan sighed. He found himself doing that a lot lately.

“Why aren’t you out there running around too?” His uncle Daniel, Attania’s Enforcer and sometimes inventor, slid down the rail to sit beside Attan. Attan shrugged, not really sure himself. Yesterday, he’d been disappointed to realize they weren’t actually leaving for a few more days. By the time Reg got there with Elea, and they’d toured the three ships which were waiting for them, it was too late to get underway. They spent the remainder of the day figuring out who would go on which ship. Attan had been closeted with Daniel and Reggie, planning their strategy, and by the time they were done, Greg, Meetoo and Elea had gone off to get something to eat and then, with nothing better to do, to play. “Go,” Daniel urged, pushing Attan off the railing. Attan transformed rather than fall into the sea, and streaked over to where Meetoo still penned Elea in his arms.

“Need a rescue?” Attan asked, lifting one brow.

Elea giggled, and nodded.

Greg stalked over to stand beside Meetoo, mock-serious. “It’s two against one now,” he taunted. “Meetoo can do anything you can do—better!” With that, he grabbed Elea’s elbow and Meetoo’s arm and pulled them after him. “Run!” he yelled. The three of them took off down the pier towards the water.

“Good plan, Greg!” Attan called after them. Where were they going to go?

Elea glanced at him over her shoulder. Oh, right. He was supposed to rescue her. Attan transformed, to water this time, and washed their feet out from under them, scooping Elea up as the others lost their grip on her.

“Get him!” Greg yelled.

Meetoo transformed to water, too, but Attan just absorbed him. He became wind, and Attan, still cradling Elea in his insubstantial arms, took wind form as well, and surrounded Meetoo’s essence with his own. Meetoo’s essence fluctuated wildly, but Attan easily contained him, until at last Meetoo took back his physical form on the pier next to Greg, panting for dramatic effect. “He’s too strong,” Meetoo said. “I give up.”

Attan set Elea down a short distance away, materializing next to her. She was grinning widely, and so was he, Attan realized. That had been fun.

“Fine!” Greg called. “Next time we’ll win!” He and Meetoo put their heads together, already planning ‘next time.’ Attan asked Elea, “Do you want to go for a walk? There’s a beach not far away. It’s pretty there.”

Elea nodded, and Attan led her past the plotting boys, through the small dock town towards a beach he and Meetoo had spotted from above the day before on their way to Palmer.

They sat at the beach as the waves broke gently over a small stone wall a few yards out. No one else was there. Attan had half-expected Greg and Meetoo to follow them, but they hadn’t. “Are you ready for this?” he asked quietly. He had never meant for Elea to be dragged into this.

“Are you?” Elea clasped her arms around her knees. She began humming softly, and Attan recognized the melody, though it didn’t tear at him as it had previously. “We sing spirits to the sea. I never thought I’d bring one there.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you’d stay with me,” Elea reminded him, though she softened it with a wistful smile. “You’re the spirit, Attan.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s out there, where we come from?” Attan asked.

“Not really. I’m who I am, and so are you. Isn’t that enough?”

It wasn’t. Attan stared out to sea as the light slowly faded. “We should get back.” He walked her to her ship, where she had a room next to Meetoo, who waited impatiently just in front of her door.

“I’m hungry!” he complained. “There’s dinner in the big room downstairs. Come on!”

Elea let Meetoo drag her away. “Won’t you come have something to eat with us?” she asked Attan, who shook his head. He wasn’t hungry. He rarely was. Attan found his own quarters and lay down on the narrow bunk. Tomorrow their adventure began.

As he often did at night, Attan let his essence expand as far as it could across Attania. He felt the pulse of the land like a beating heart, and it comforted him. He hoped Stenson was wrong, and that by going to see what was on the other side of the barrier, they weren’t ruining what they already had here.

He touched the ones he loved in passing: his father, his mother, Zeph and the twins, Lorra. The list got longer each time. Most didn’t sense his brief presence; Jet did, as did Meetoo. Attan merged through them, glad that they felt him on some level, even if it was subconsciously. Eventually, Attan returned to his physical body, which needed its sleep. Tomorrow would be a big day.

They passed several fishing vessels on their way out to deep water the next morning. Fishermen stopped what they were doing to stare at the three large ships which suddenly filled the horizon. Reggie’s team, which included Daniel, had designed the ships flat and wide, since they didn’t know what they would encounter once the passed the boundary of the known seas. Family could control the weather, so they weren’t worried about storms.

It was curious that sailors all around Attania never ventured more than a few dozen miles out form shore. It just wasn’t done, and no one had ever questioned it. Attan couldn’t help wondering if perhaps that was Stenson’s doing—as Aylard or as one of his earlier incarnations. Stenson certainly didn’t want them to press the boundaries.

Elea was on the middle ship with Meetoo. Daniel was on the last ship, although currently he was high above it ensuring they had a good, steady breeze. Although the ships were motorized, they planned on using sails as much as possible because they were not sure how long they would be out at sea.

Originally, they had intended to launch the three ships simultaneously from three different points in the south, west and east, but Jet had decided it was safer for them to travel together. Attan agreed. If Elea needed him to help with Meetoo, he could be there in a flash.

The plan was to circle Attania, stopping at accessible ports to resupply as necessary. At first they would stick to the known seas, but they planned to slowly widen the circle to test just how far the barrier would allow them. To Attan’s knowledge, no one had ever sailed completely around Attania before. Not surprising as the Eastern Sea was wild and desolate, and the Northern Sea was cold and dangerous. Most of Attania’s fishing industry was concentrated in the south and west, where the weather was more hospitable. However, now they had Family to smooth the way no matter which sea they traversed.

The first few days were uneventful, with mild weather that not even Daniel had to tamper with. Meetoo got restless and shot over to Attan’s vessel as a ray of light, dazzling the crew though it was broad daylight.

“You’d better not do that when we get closer to the barrier,” Attan cautioned. Though from Reggie’s reports, he would merely get rebuffed in spirit form. “Stay physical.”

“I know. Elea told me.” Meetoo leaned against the railing and looked across to Elea’s ship, which was a speck on the horizon. “I don’t want to go out there.”

Greg came up while they were talking. “Is there a problem?” he asked, at Meetoo’s presence.

“No, Meetoo’s just visiting,” Attan said wryly.

“In that case, Meetoo, do you think you could carry me back to your ship? I’ve got something I need to check.”

Meetoo looked thoroughly confused, so Attan showed him how to make a flitter-shaped cloud. “Like this,” he said. Turning to Greg, he added, “I can take you.”

Greg smiled. “That’s all right. I think Reg is looking for you. I can go with Meetoo, as long as he doesn’t drop me.”

“I won’t drop you!” Meetoo said indignantly. He practiced making a cloud that looked more like a chair than like a flitter, but it would do the job. “See?”

Attan wondered what that was all about. Greg and Meetoo had become friends in the short time they’d known each other.

It turned out Reg really was looking for Attan. He pored over maps of the shoreline. “In a few days we’ll reach the spot where we lost Ricky. I want to make sure these three ships stay well away from the actual barrier, just in case. However, we don’t know exactly where it is. I’m asking you, as Family, to test the boundaries when we get close. I understand that Family won’t—disintegrate—like, uh, physical things. You just won’t be allowed to pass, am I right? We want to get as close to the barrier as we can—safely—so we can map it all around Attania.”

Attan wasn’t sure if any Family other than himself could actually sense the barrier. He remembered that Daniel had felt nothing the time he investigated the colored lights they now knew were elementals. Then again, maybe Daniel just hadn’t gone out far enough in the Eastern Sea. Reg was right about one thing, however. From the reports, any Family who inadvertently did encounter the barrier was repelled and not allowed through, though their physical flitters passed through and disintegrated instantaneously. So sending Family Elementals out would help locate the actual barrier through trial and error.

“I’ll get teams organized on each ship,” Attan said, “and we will send out Family patrols as we travel eastward, until they find the edge of the barrier. He planned to be on one of the first teams himself. However, he had a fair idea of exactly how far the barrier extended all around Attania, from his nightly wanderings. It was over 100 miles out in most spots, more in some, and slightly less in others like the one where Ricky lost his life. But he had no idea how to map what he saw, so Reg’s plan made sense.

As they sailed farther and farther away from the land, Attan felt a sense of disconnectedness. There were fewer free elementals here, in the sea and in the air, and those were skittish and wild. Daniel needed to use all of his weather-working skills to keep the seas calm enough for their ships. Strange lights reminiscent of the elemental lights in Attania’s deep caves flashed intermittently on the horizon at night, and once a creature which looked half-formed crested the waters right in front of the lead ship, making it rock dangerously before Attan and Daniel smoothed the seas around it. It hadn’t looked real, Attan thought. More like something out of a nightmare, though it hadn’t harmed them and had continued unconcernedly along its way. Attan visited Elea after that, to make sure she hadn’t been frightened by the odd creature.

“It’s like some of Emma’s carvings,” Elea said. “Dreams, or the beginnings of dreams.” She grinned suddenly. “Most likely it’s just something we never saw before. Maybe it never comes close to land.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Attan replied. But it got him thinking of Emma’s carvings. Not all of them had been of real things, but all of them had a piece of Attania’s memory within, courtesy of the elementals in the stones which Emma used to carve her creations. He decided he’d take another look at the creature, and whatever else the waters beneath them held, tonight, in lieu of his usual elemental travels.

* * * * *

Jet woke up from a sound sleep. “Attan?” He thought he’d felt his son’s unique essence. With a cautious glance at his sleeping wife, Jet let go of his physical self but he could find no trace that Attan had been there. Maybe he dreamed it. Taking back his body, Jet snuggled closer to Madelyne. It was his week to be in Wister, and against his better judgment, he’d left Stenson to his own devices back in Darcy. Now that the expedition to Attania’s hitherto unknown barrier was underway, Stenson had been uncharacteristically cooperative, even agreeing to stay at the Royal mansion in Darcy until the ships returned.

Jet fell back asleep, and dreamed of the sea.