Prince of Attania, 2

Attan found Tommy Merrell and Charles Wyling, the Enforcer’s son and the former Queen’s son respectively, in the lowest level of the mansion. Technically, Charles was his uncle, although all the royals used the word ‘cousin’ to denote relationships simply because there were so many of them. Charles used to be Charles Estee until Jet became King. Then any other children of the former King by law had to take their mother’s name instead. Only the current King’s offspring bore his last name, and only until one of them became King himself. Attan wondered if Charles resented him because of it.

“Hey, it’s the little Elemental!” Tommy teased, when Attan solidified in front of him. Neither Tommy nor Charles could be called little anymore. They both towered over Attan, long and lean. Tommy was older than Charles by a few years, but they did everything together, not surprising considering how their parents were always together. As the youngest in their respective households, the two of them still lived at home.

Attan grinned. Tommy and Charles were just big kids. “What are you doing?” he asked.

He’d found the older boys in the bowels of the mansion, in the basement below the basement. There was a library down here, though this wasn’t it. They were in a small parlor illuminated by elemental light which sprang up evenly from the stone floor. Attan wondered if his cousins could see the elementals they so easily manipulated, but they didn’t appear to.

“Drinking.” Charles grinned up at Attan and held out his cup. “Want some?”

Attan backed away, making Charles laugh.

“It’s good.” Tommy tipped his cup in Attan’s direction.

“No, thanks. What else are you doing?”

They both laughed at that. Then Tommy leaned forward. “Do you really want to know?”

Attan nodded eagerly.

“We’re plotting a way out of here so we can go meet some girls.”

At Attan’s blank look, the two older cousins snickered, thinking him too young to understand their meaning. But that wasn’t why Attan had gotten confused. “Why can’t you just go?” he asked. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t transform into Elementals and sneak out that way.

Tommy and Charles looked at each other. Tommy sighed. “We’re being punished. We have to stay in the library until my father comes for us, and he’s busy with his meeting right now.”

“What did you do?” Attan asked with wide eyes.

Charles grinned. “We snuck out to see girls.”

Tommy laughed and poured himself another drink from a glass bottle on the side table before sinking back down into his plush chair.

“But this isn’t the library,” Attan said.

“It’s part of it. I don’t think my father realized the door to the King’s private study was unlocked.” Tommy scrutinized Attan carefully. “How did you get in here, anyway? I know the outer door to the library is still locked.”

The library door, Attan remembered, was a massive slab of oak set tight into its frame to protect the precious books from the damp. Attan hadn’t needed doors, or openings of any kind. He sometimes forgot that regular Elementals could not do what he and his father could—flow through seemingly solid objects like walls and locked doors. “Oh,” he said. “Um, I think the meeting must be over.” He’d felt a frisson in the air; the free elementals all around them broadcast the change. Someone was coming.

“Oh crap.” Hastily, Tommy shoved the half-empty liquor bottle back into a cabinet and stuck their cups under the chair. “You’d better get out of here, Attan, unless you want to get in trouble too.”

They rushed for the inner door which connected the study to the larger library, hoping to make it there before the Enforcer found them where they weren’t supposed to be. Attan wished them luck. He disappeared through the ceiling, materializing one level up in the basement proper.

This level was divided into rooms which might be guest rooms but at present housed some of Merrell’s enforcers. Attan came face to face with an off-duty guard, squeaked, and disappeared again, this time reappearing in the mansion’s large kitchen.

“There you are!” A short—by Family standards—woman pounced on Attan and gave him a hug with one arm while she rubbed the top of his head familiarly with the other. “What a handsome boy! I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Attan squirmed in her grasp until she let him go. “Who are you?” he asked warily. She wasn’t Charles’ mom; Attan had met the former Queen before. She must be a cousin if she was in the King’s mansion. “Were you at the meeting? Do you know my Dad?”

The woman laughed. “You can call me Lorra—for now. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other now that I’m to live here.”

“Lorra.”

With relief, Attan saw his father stride into the kitchen.

Lorra smiled. “You have a lovely son, Jet.” She reached out to tousle Attan’s hair again. “I hope one day my son will be just as handsome.” With an airy wave of her hand, she turned to leave.

Attan stared after her curiously, but Jet helped himself to a cold lunch since they’d missed it earlier. “Have something to eat,” Jet mumbled around a mouthful of food. It wasn’t a suggestion. Attan pulled up a chair and began making himself a sandwich.

“Is she your Darcy wife?” Attan asked.

Jet choked, swallowed, and replied firmly, “No.” Then more honestly. “She wants to be.”

“She’s nice.”

“I thought you were going to find your cousins,” Jet grumbled, uncomfortable with the present conversation.

“I did, but Tommy’s father came and I had to leave. Dad, why can’t Family date non-family girls?”

Jet raised his eyebrows. “Is that what those boys were up to?”

Attan shrugged. They hadn’t said, but Attan couldn’t figure out why else they would not be allowed.

Jet put down his sandwich. He let his physical self go and merged through Attan, who was quick to do the same, and somewhat slower to take back his body.

“Can non-family do that?” Jet asked softly, picking up his sandwich and stuffing the remainder of it into his mouth, chewing with obvious relish. Attan left his own half-eaten sandwich on his plate. “That’s why.”

Attan understood that all too well. He felt it every time he merged through Greg or one of the other non-family kids at school. There was nothing there like there was in Family. Yet Uncle Reg was fun, smart, lively as any Family. He just didn’t have that elemental spark which Family all had. Uncle Ben, too. Dad had many, many non-family friends and it didn’t bother him that he could not merge with them. Why not girlfriends?

“But what does that have to do with it?” Attan asked.

Jet chuckled. “Eat your sandwich. There’s no attraction between family and non-family.” At Attan’s blank expression, he added, “You’re too young. You’ll understand when you’re older—which you’ll never be if you don’t eat.”

Reluctantly, Attan picked up his sandwich. “Lorra is Family,” he reasoned. “So you can date her, right?”

Jet rolled his eyes. “Not you too,” he muttered.

After their hasty lunch, Jet had more meetings to attend with Merrell and Attan was left on his own again. It turned out that his cousins hadn’t been trying to date non-family girls after all. Tommy was horrified that Attan had even thought it possible. “I mean it’s possible,” Tommy tried to explain, “just not—I’d never—I couldn’t. . .” he gave up trying to explain. “Anyway, we’re not in trouble anymore. Dad says I can take you to Arden if you’d like to go.”

Arden was a school for royal Family; at one time, it had been the only school for all the royal cousins. King Jet had changed all that when he instituted schools all across Attania for Family and non-family children to learn together. However, most of the royals still sent their children to Arden. Attan was the exception because he attended the integrated school in Low City where he lived. Merrell’s concession was to have his son Macek run the Low City school personally, to ensure Attan’s education was up to par with what was offered at Arden. In actuality, Low City’s school surpassed Arden’s in that it allowed Family to work together with non-family. Arden had not yet adopted that still controversial project.

“We’re moving back to Arden anyway,” Tommy explained. “Dad, Sephira, Charles and me. Lorra Graves is taking Sephira’s place in Darcy.”

“To be Queen there?” Attan asked, since his father wouldn’t talk about it.

Tommy grinned. “You don’t miss much, do you? It depends on the King, though. He hasn’t taken any other Queen besides your mother yet, and you’re already what? Ten? Everybody is pushing him to have more heirs.”

“Then I’d have brothers and sisters,” Attan said. “I always wanted a little brother or sister.”

Tommy and Charles exchanged significant looks. “Come on, little Elemental. We’ll go to Arden, but first we have a stop to make downtown.”

“In Darcy? But won’t you get in trouble again?”

“No, turns out that’s not why we were barred from downtown Darcy after all. As long as we stay away from the center, we should be fine. The girl’s school we’re going to is in a really quiet section. We won’t be long. Then we’ll go straight to Arden.”

They went as wind, and Attan found out that the two older Elementals did not have the stamina to keep to their elemental forms for very long. By the time they got to the downtown area, both boys quickly took back their physical forms. They were like his mother Doll, too used to being physical beings. Although they understood the mechanics of transformation and enjoyed the utter release that merging brought them, they thought of themselves as physical beings first. It was an eye-opener for Attan.

“We walk from here,” Tommy said. “Stay close. It’s not far.”

Attan followed behind his older cousins, staring up at the gleaming, tall buildings of downtown Darcy. Shops were open for business yet the sidewalks were curiously empty of people. The usual traffic noises drowned out any other sound, but when Attan glanced down a side street, he saw a huge crowd gathered in front of an official-looking building. “What’s that?” he asked.

Charles slowed down to look. “It’s one of those gatherings,” he said after a moment. “Come on, we should get going.”

“What kind of gathering?” Attan asked. Now that he concentrated, he could hear the people in the square a few streets over. “Can we see?”

Charles and Tommy exchanged another one of those looks. Attan knew what that meant. He wasn’t going to get to see what was happening. So he took matters into his own hands, dissolving into shadow and scuttling down the side street towards the gathering, barely noticing Tommy’s alarmed shout.

His cousins ended up following him, wrapping shadow around themselves rather than becoming shadow as Attan had done. It served the same purpose, however. The crowd didn’t notice them. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have noticed them if they had come boldly into their midst. All their concentration was on the speaker on the top step of the building and the five Family he had lined up beside him.

Attan felt a concentration of elementals in the square, drawn as he was to the commotion, he supposed. But maybe not. Attan felt something more and his attention fixed on the five people on the steps. Their—essences—were wavering. Drawn forward without thinking, Attan left Tommy and Charles behind in the crowd as he swirled among the Family on the steps. He felt their joy, the ecstacy of leaving the physical behind and embracing their true essences. He knew it, he lived it. He---felt the moment when they chose to relinquish their bodies completely and join the vast current of elemental energy which was Attania at its very essence. And he wanted to join them!

NO! Attan felt the essence he knew as his father surround him and anchor him to the world. He loved his father, and his mother, and he had things to do that he needed a physical body for, but oh, it was so tempting just to let go forever, just to be. He let himself be led away by the combination of Jet, Merrell, and a few others he recognized as cousins.

The commotion was over; the crowd was breaking up. Attan took form near Tommy and Charles, who had kept to their physical form, although they were no longer hidden by shadow. Merrell glared at them both equally, and Jet pulled Attan close to him as if holding him would keep him in the physical word. It would, now. Attan had scared himself as much as he had scared his father. So easy, he thought. So tempting.

Charles looked scared, too. “Now we’re in trouble,” he said glumly.