elemental 01 - whirlwind (2 page)

Her grandmother shook her head. “Aira, I know more people among the elemental elite than you do. There’s much more to it than that. There’s talk of a judgment day. Some of the younger families are exposing themselves to regular humans in a way that can’t be tolerated, and the elder elementals are getting restless. There’s talk of wiping out families.”

Aira was surprised. She had heard about the elder elemental families—those who persisted through generations, whose status was as firmly founded as an ancient noble line. Those families wanted to take firmer steps against the elementals who endangered everyone else by showing off their abilities. She never dreamed anyone would want to obliterate an entire elemental family. The number of elementals had shrunk over the past hundred years as elementals increasingly moved into regular society. They traditionally held themselves apart, keeping lines pure and maintaining power amongst themselves. The abilities of elemental magic were sometimes very strong, which made them dangerous for untrained, unprepared individuals. They were also terrifying for anyone who didn’t understand them—who didn’t know they were simply a trait one was born with. Elementals had taken great care that references to them specifically were limited in any information that was ever published about the occult or the paranormal.

“So, there’s a lot of tension. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything for me.” Aira said.

Her grandmother shook her head again, looking worried as well as sad. She took a deep breath and sighed, looking away from Aira briefly and then making eye contact once more.

“You are the strongest of all of the elementals in this family aside from me.” Her grandmother said slowly. “That makes you a target for all the disgruntled families. When you come into your abilities fully, you’re going to be as strong as I am, and it will take you some time to get accustomed to the increase in power. It’s dangerous. I need to prepare you before you come into your inheritance.”

Aira absorbed the news. She knew she was strong, other members of her family who exhibited elemental traits had not developed as rapidly as she had. She had moved beyond the simple exercises her cousins struggled with quickly, mastering her abilities as they emerged. She also knew when her powers developed completely, she was going to have a great deal more to master. It would be more difficult than ever to maintain secrecy as a member of the community and to retain control.

“Am I really that strong?” Aira stared wide-eyed at her grandmother. She hadn’t considered the level of her strength in years, since she had stopped competing with family members because her grandmother had insisted she was just showing off.

Aira’s grandmother nodded slowly. “There are other things we need to talk about, but I think right now a cup of tea and a piece of cake is what’s needed most. Then you need to get some sleep.”

Aira knew there was no arguing with her grandmother, no way to insist she wasn’t hungry. She also knew better than to offer to help. Her grandmother stood slowly, folding the recliner back onto itself and shakily getting to her feet and walking slightly unsteadily into the kitchen. Her grandmother could still get around, but advanced age stiffened her joints. Her body was less responsive than it had once been, but it was expected. Aira’s grandmother, however, was proud and refused to let anyone help her.

Aira took a seat at the kitchen table, twirling a lock of her long brown hair around her finger, and watching as her grandmother closed her eyes a moment, murmuring something to herself. The older woman touched the kettle on the stove and Aira smiled to herself. She knew the little trick her grandmother performed to ensure by means of magic there was enough water for two cups of tea. She moved around the kitchen, taking mugs from a high shelf in the cabinet, then pulling sealed jars of herbs from a rack and adding them to the bottom of the cup while she waited for the water to boil.

Aira knew whatever her grandmother was putting into the mugs, it would be sleep-inducing, and shortly after the “bedtime snack” we would be more than ready for bed. The subtle manipulations of her grandmother had occasionally frustrated her as a teenager, but as her restlessness had increased, along with her abilities, she had often begged her grandmother for a few sachets of the tea to drink on nights when she particularly needed to sleep.

One of her grandmother’s gifts—a result of the way she applied her elemental abilities—was an uncanny knowledge of herb-weaving, an ability to know exactly what ingredients to blend into a soup, a tea, or a wound dressing , to get the results she desired.

***

Aira was deep in thought as she watched her grandmother slicing pound cake to go with the tea. She had grown up knowing magic existed. She had laughed secretly at her peers as they experimented with Wiccan practices, knowing that kind of magic was an echo of what she was learning and the skills she was developing. She smiled as she remembered the time she terrified a coven-mistress, in an display of youthful pride, by calling the wind with a whistle on a perfectly clear and stagnant day…all because the coven-mistress had insisted she just “didn’t have the magic” in her. It had been something of a victorious moment—being able to display some measure of her ability—but her grandmother had given her hell about it afterward. Aira still remembered the scolding she had received: “What good does it possibly do for you to attract attention to your abilities? Don’t you realize you could have gotten yourself killed? That was a damn fool stunt and you know it.” At the time, the reprimand stung. Aira hadn’t even put her abilities to full use. Gradually she noticed the reactions to her more ‘normal’ elemental traits and realized that she was regarded by normal humans as something of a freak and that a fear of her could lead to danger – not just for her, but for all elementals.

Aira’s grandmother brought the tea and cake to the table and they ate as Aira asked questions about her grandmother’s garden between bites to avoid sitting in silence. The tea was slightly minty with honey-rich floral tones mingled in the warm brew. While Aira didn’t know what was in it, she savored it slowly, with bites of the moist cake. By the time she finished off her tea and cake, she was thoroughly sleepy and barely had enough energy to get her suitcase out of the car. Her grandmother preferred to sleep in the recliner, so Aira wished her a good night as she passed the front living room on her way to her bedroom at the back of the house.

She changed into a nightgown and crawled between the crisp, fresh-smelling linens on the bed. She fell asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.

Chapter 2

Aira awoke the next morning feeling changes in her body stronger than ever. She knew the energy from the land around her grandmother’s home was partly the cause, but it was also a result of the culmination of her abilities emerging. Her limbs tingled, her mind buzzed. She took a deep breath and waited for the moment to pass, for the sensations to ease away. She had felt them increasing as her body prepared itself.

Her mind focused as she became fully awake. The wind howled outside the window like the onslaught of a rainstorm, shaking the trees and sending eerie shivers through the bushes. Aira inhaled deeply and the wind began to calm, humming a quieter tune.

Part of Aira’s training had been to learn the ways her elemental alignment manifested itself as well as the qualities that were common in the various elemental types – water, earth, air, fire. Her grandmother, as a water-aligned elemental, had a talent for gardening, an extreme affinity for growing things. She also possessed the ability to heal others. Her nature was fluid like the water, almost perverse and with intense emotions and heady resentments. Along with those intense emotions, she had a profound intuition. There had never been anything Aira could keep secret from her grandmother. Even when her mother hadn’t caught her, her grandmother called when Aira had done wrong to chastise her privately. And when she was hurting, the compassion her grandmother offered had been a soothing balm for Aira’s nervy nature.

Aira, however, had aligned with the air. She’d always had a boundless supply of energy. Where her grandmother was quiet and almost passive, Aira had been boisterous and active, her mind leaping from subject to subject. She came to understand her inability to stay still was a result of the magic coursing through her. Just as the wind can create an infinite supply of energy, it seemed Aira could as well. It was as much a part of her as her ability to understand any language. An ability she had put to good use, studying linguistics in college and becoming a freelance translator. Although every language in existence was easily interpreted, she’d always been careful to hedge the number of languages she could translate.

Her high energy was put to use through an instructor teaching her archery and fencing as appropriate (and at least slightly ladylike) pursuits for her abilities. As she had come into adolescence, elemental qualities became increasingly more intense, Aira’s restless nature transformed into anxiety. An intervention on her grandmother’s behalf was needed to help her balance the overwhelming stress before it got too far out of hand. Aira knew she would never be completely free of the mentally taxing pressures of her abilities, her grandmother’s healing powers had given her relief on more than one occasion.

As she had gained command of the more “normal” traits associated with her elemental alignment, Aira’s grandmother had also helped her cultivate more magical components. She had flown for the first time—on accident—at the age of twelve. Only for a few moments, but falling from a tree inspired her – in a panic – to lift herself before she hit the ground. She had taken the scolding for disobeying rules in good stead, particularly since her grandmother had told her not to climb the tree to begin with. When it was done, however, her grandmother fought back a smile and told her wryly she might as well learn to fly on command if she was going to do it.

Aira practiced that entire summer, slowly raising herself up off the ground until she was able to reach the top limbs of the tree she had fallen from. Flight was not an easy trick to manage, but it was one of Aira’s favorite talents. As an air elemental, she was also able to communicate and control creatures of the air with relative ease. As a teenager, she lured bees to her grandmother’s house to pollinate the flowers, and learned the calls of birds in the area, becoming friends with robins, threshers, mockingbirds and more. She had stayed up late one night, communicating with owls that haunted the darkened boughs of a nearby tree until she finally understood them. While she did not have her grandmother’s level of psychic intuition, Aira had excelled from an early age in divination, reading tarot or playing cards to get an understanding of the future. She also studied the use of other tools of the trade, including a crystal ball that had been given to her at the age of fifteen by an aunt.

Aira had no real notion of what the final manifestations of her abilities would be. She knew her grandmother, as a young woman, had been formidable. The prediction her grandmother had made the night before, that Aira would be as powerful, was both thrilling and nerve-wracking. She couldn’t imagine what she would do with the level of power her grandmother possessed with such grace and subtlety. Her grandmother had hinted once that, while Aira was clearly air-aligned, she had distinct weather-related talents that came from the family’s history of water elementals. The rainstorms that she was able to summon—sometimes unconsciously—was one manifestation of that trait, and Aira was uncertain if she wanted that particular part of her talents strengthened. She told herself firmly over and over again that whatever gifts she received in the final transformation into a full elemental, she would learn to use them as effectively as the ones she had first developed as a child.

***

Aira rolled out of bed. It was nearly impossible to linger being as restless as she was. Even though the crackling, electric tingles running up and down her limbs didn’t subside once she was up and moving around. The smell of coffee and a lavish breakfast floated on the air to Aira’s room. Her grandmother likely knew she was already awake, and her grandmother wouldn’t remain patient for very long. Aira didn’t bother to change out of her nightgown, she brushed her hair and washed her face in the bathroom before walking to the kitchen.

Her grandmother was seated at the table waiting, a cup of coffee in her hand and a feast of a breakfast laid out: scrambled eggs remaining warm in a cast-iron skillet, a platter of sausage, freshly made biscuits with a crock of butter and a jar of homemade fig preserves, and yellow grits swimming with butter. It was a breakfast Aira had eaten hundreds of times, and still the comfort of the routine was undeniable.

The only short period in Aira’s life when she had been scrawny came between the ages of twelve and thirteen during a growth spurt. That growth spurt left her lanky, which made her self-conscious enough to avoid the boys she’d been attracted to in middle school. Her grandmother had explained to her time and again—her words falling on deaf ears—that as her magical nature began to assert itself over the human realities of her genetics, she would become more woman-like. At age fourteen, she began to fill out. Her curves intensified. By the time she left for college, she had “blossomed” into a woman with a true hourglass figure. She was the envy of many dorm mates and the desire of voracious frat boys. The years of martial arts training came in handy a time or two. Aira had never slept with any of them against her will.

“You must have been having interesting dreams,” Aira’s grandmother stated calmly, sipping her coffee. Aira sat down and doctored her coffee, adding two spoons of sugar and a healthy dollop of cream from the pitcher her grandmother had placed by her mug.

Aira smiled wryly. “It’s been getting more difficult to control the wind while I sleep,” Aira admitted, taking a sip of her coffee and savoring it before she considered the feast in front of her. She felt the intent green eyes watching her and fought down the urge to squirm.