27: blood bound

vähän väsyneillä fiiliksillä olisi tarkoitus lähteä ruotsia lukemaan. ennen sitä tulin kuitenkin postaamaan vähän flarttia ja tänään kirjoittamani kahdennenkymmenennenseitsemännen (uh-huh!) luvun. sanamäärä kasvoi kohisten ja tarina on 3776 sanaa 50000 vailla. saa nähdä miten tämä prosessi onnistuu nyt koeviikon jatkuessa - onneksi minulla ei ole enää kuin kaksi koetta. :)

 (näköjään mukaan mahtui myös hemuli ja kokouksen pöytäkirjaa... kuten myös vähän aiheeseen liittyvääkin:) vaikkei ehkä tähän lukuun.)

Chapter Twenty-seven

No, my heart said. This is wrong.

Yes, said my logic. It’s not something you can control.

Somehow, in the corners of my mind I returned to my first life. That moment I could understand why Ashley had become so twisted. When her parents divorced when she was twelve, she was a pouting kid who hated the mere sight of her stepfather. She was angry for her mother, angry for loving someone else, because her heart still felt for her father, and replacing that heartbeat with something alien ripped her apart.

Was this what Tristen wanted to show me?

“Tristen,” the woman breathed in her Spanish accent, flapping her heavy-lidded eyes. “We did it this time.”
Tristen pulled apart from her, and I used the second to study the connection between the two. Their eyes burned of a sick passion, something bestial and powerful. There was a magnetic glow in between them, something I felt break when Tristen crashed his full focus on me.

“It has been wise of Severina to warn her council,” he nodded, “But she underestimates me.”
The female figure next to him breathed heavily, a beauty spot heaving in between her collarbones. Suddenly I understood what she was feeling. Relief.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” I asked weakly. “That you’ve finally gotten over mamma? Do you know what she did because of you?” I forced the last words up my throat. “She’s dead now, you know.”

“I know she is,” Tristen said indifferently. It was when I noticed his guardian pendant, too, was gone – it hung between the breasts of the tanned woman in the golden dress. “The moment I committed myself to another woman I felt our bond break. I gave my soul to Barbra and she felt it. It severed her soul from her body.”
I turned my gaze to the latin woman – Barbra, who had turned her attention on her male replica, a man he called Vijay. I couldn’t see her face, but in my mind’s eye I imagined her smile.

“But you, alike your sister,” Tristen continued, “Are very ignorant of those things.”
It was unclear to me what Tristen meant – love, betrayal or death. Perhaps them all. But I was very familiar of one of them.

“You’ve betrayed me. You’ve betrayed this world!” My voice rose to a yell. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but I do. And the worst thing is… you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re wrong. Terribly wrong.”

But Tristen only looked at me as if I had claimed sky being green instead of blue. “And what do you think I am doing?”

My words came out as a stutter. “You’re shaking balance. Taking pieces of Earth and bringing them to Kaiya while this world suffocates and Earth dies. And now you’re taking the Elemental scrolls to have superior control over all the elements.”

Tristen seemed almost surprised, as if he wouldn’t have expected me having such a wide range of vocabulary. “What else?”
 “That’s not what we should discuss right now,” I said. “Maybe you should be more worried about what the council thinks when the scrolls are gone. If I tell them, no-one will believe me. But they will believe the Elementals.”

Tristen’s expression was blank, until very unexpectedly, it broke into a smile – a smile full of pride, not glee.

“I truly chose the wrong child.”
I froze. “What did you say?”
Tristen looked into the distance, as if he was counting how much time he had, before he dashed back to me. His figure blocked out the light and turned his hair into a golden halo. Slowly he reached out a finger as if he was to lift my chin, but instead he stroke my hair, sending shivers through me. As he spoke, something flashed behind his eyes. “You look nothing like her. You look nothing like Joy.”
A recollection flashed inside my mind, the sadness in mamma’s eyes every time she looked at me.

“In turn, while Severina is just like her. You remind me of someone.”

Yourself, I thought. I’m just like you, aren’t I? The hair, the eyes, the logic, the intuition.

Tristen pulled his hand from my hair, now fingering his ring of power. “But there is blind trust in you that should not belong. Without it…“
“Without it what?”

Tristen furrowed his brows. “It would be a use for you to read the Elemental scrolls.”

I gave a dry laugh. “You’re trying to convince me to your side? I hope you’ll at least have cookies.”
Tristen apparently didn’t understand the reference. “Do you know who have written the Elemental scrolls?”
Nothing came in my mind but blank. The guardians, perhaps? But the scrolls were older than that…

“The Elementals themselves,” Tristen answered. “There is no given right to swear, call or depend on the Elementals without knowing their power.”
“But…” my voice shook as my cool control turned into uncertainty. “The Elementals can’t have written anything. They’re… elements.”
“An Elemental,” Tristen began in a casual tone, as if he was reading a definition out of a dictionary, “Is the physical embodiment of an element. In the beginning of the worlds they were the offspring of Energy. Guardians are chosen by their measure of benevolence?” Tristen laughed sharply, “Not likely. They are chosen by their amount of Elemental blood.”
My mouth gaped wide open as if I was to say something, but my confusion blocked out all the words. I had encountered an Elemental, seen Fire with a capital F. But there had been nothing more than flames.

“Many claim to have encountered an Elemental,” Tristen said, as if he had read my thoughts. Perhaps he even had. He, after all, was somehow capable of mind control. “But they are all only reflections. No Elemental has ever shown itself to a mortal, not a single time.”

I shook my head incredulously. “What does this have to do with anything?”
Tristen smiled. “It has to do with everything. If it hasn’t yet dawned to you what I am to do with the scrolls, I would not suggest mentioning our little appointment to anyone.”

I felt the veins on my neck pounding, pulsing blood to my feet and fingertips. My feet weren’t tied up yet. I could kick him. I could stand up and run away. But why was I so afraid to leave?

“Felice,” Tristen called, turning towards his minions. “Come here.”
Fera jogged to my side, and Tristan pulled me from the shadows with a single swift motion. There was a slash on my wrists and I knew I was free. The rope of light crumbled into photons between Tristen’s fingers. We exchanged a blank look, as if he was expecting me to do something. “You still cannot understand,” he said.

I felt like I could punch him right in the face, but the pain in my elbow was blinding. I gave no answer, and Tristen raised his index finger in a familiar gesture. “When I was young, I was taught to build a puzzle before instructing someone else to do it.”

I managed an answer between my teeth. “What the hell do you mean?”

Tristen answered my question with a question. “Do you know what is your sister’s greatest flaw?” He paused. “She thinks she knows everything.”
The words had a shocking finality. With a motion which seemed as forced as he was trying to lift a boulder over his head, Tristen clutched his fists, evaporating into a pure explosion of energy.

For a moment I only stared incredulously at the spot he had been standing in, as if to find a single trace of him: a lock of his hair, a footprint. The feeling of his touch had faded, and nothing was left but the blank walls where the scrolls had once been.

Light scattered on my face, and I raised my gaze as if the ceiling was opening above me. But there was no-one present in the room than I and Fera who had fallen on his knees beside me, light reflecting from his eyes like they were truly silver.

Then, just like in a reverse version of my vision, he bent down to kiss me, as if nothing had changed.

There was a yell, and several things happened simultaneously.

I used my functioning hand to push Fera further from me, rolling away as if I had been compressed under a truck. There was wild passion in his eyes, a feeling which both drew and pushed me away from him. Beside us Talia had regained consciousness, staring at us as if she was seeing something unnatural and inhumane. On the opposite edge of the room Circus had risen to her feet, staring bewilderedly at the empty scroll walls and the disappeared column of color. Next to her, Aes faced my eyes with a heartbroken expression, something I had to turn my eyes away from.

“Get off me,” I spat at Fera. “Leave.”
“I will stay with you,” Fera said incredibly persuasively, his voice rough. “I will not-“
“Hilary,” Chyse began in a blood-freezing tone. “What happened?”

The guardians were in council.

Severina’s expression had been chalk-white as she descended down the staircase together with Tristen and discovered the scrolls had been taken. Most of the guardians had led their shocked councelors home before they disappeared inside their chamber five floors above. Only I had stayed to wait for Severina. I sat in the grass for hours, only looking at the stars and wondering how I had always been unable to locate it anywhere in Kaiya. It wasn’t until I saw him I noticed I had been crying. The ground below was soaked as if it had rained.

“Hilary,” Fera said, emerging from the haze like a ghost. “Are you all right?”

Something snapped inside my head. As he got close enough, I charged full force at him, striking him down. But the most confusing in the situation wasn’t that he dared to come to me like that. It was how I noted I was standing far away from him without actually ever touching him. He had flung across the air as if of his own will, lying on his back in a flowerbed. The absurdness of the situation startled me and I drew back until I almost tripped on a staircase. Fera’s clothes and hair rippled of a sudden wind, and I fought the urge not to spread my arms and hurl him across the yard.

“Of course I am not,” I said. “Stop acting like nothing happened!”
Fera put out a hand to steady himself while standing up, and I flung my hand to trip him over again. “You are the single most sickening person in this dimension! Is there anything you didn’t lie to me of?”
Fera raised his head reluctantly, maybe knowing I would be capable of knocking him over again. “You have the right to be angry,” he said.

I sighed, my throat sore of all the yelling. “Tell me one thing, Fera, if that even is your name. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came here to explain,” Fera said, speaking to the sky. “Please, let me explain.”

I passed a hand over my face wearily. “All right. You can get up, but with conditions. No weapons, no lies, no touching, no kissing. Understood?”
Fera nodded and got up, taking a step towards me. I put out a hand to measure a safe distance. “Stand where my fingertips are. No closer, no further.”
Fera shrugged, but followed.

“Fera,” I began. “It’s not your real name, or is it? Tristen called you something else.”

“Felice,” Fera pronounced awkwardly, as if he wasn’t really used to the name. “Fera is an abbreviation.”
“What does the ‘ra’ stand for? Random?”
Fera pursed his lips together. “Rayne. My last name.”
“Felice Rayne?” I repeated unbelievingly, translating his name into an understandable form. “Your name means ‘lucky rain?’”

“Hilary Messing,” Fera corresponded, “Is not such a shabby name either.”

I raised a finger and a wisp of wind fluttered my hair. Fera zipped his mouth shut. “What else did you lie me about? Oh, that you’re actually a light councelor in training. What’s up with the whole ‘never heard of any Tristen’-bullshit? He’s your guardian! You never even had any amnesia!”
“I can make up to that-“
“No, you can’t. Everything just can’t be made up to with a ‘sorry’ and a kiss. Don’t even think about it.”
Fera closed his eyes as he spoke, and I could clearly see he was struggling to find the right words. “I was part of his plan. In the beginning I did not care, but then, but now-“
“What are you trying to say?”

Fera’s eyes flashed. “What happened in the archives, how I tied you up and told you to stay quiet – I did it to protect you. No matter what you say, I did it to protect you. And I risked my own life.”

For a second I lost grasp of myself, only standing and staring into Fera’s liquid silver eyes. I only managed a weak whisper. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I-“ Fera began, cutting off his sentence as if he changed his course of thought. “I don’t want to work for Tristen. I don’t want to do the things he does. It would take me forever to explain it all, so forgive me. But there is one thing I can tell you. I can help you.”
My eyebrows rose doubtfully. “Help me? Why should I accept it?”
“Because I know Tristen better than you. I understand him. If there is anything that bothers you with what he said, I can try to make it clear.”
A laugh escaped between my lips. “So you’re like my personal English-Tristen-English-dictionary?”
Fera smiled. “I could say that. Please trust me. I know you can. Why else would we be doing this?”

My eyes went down to my hands, and a jolt of surprise went through me. Without me noticing I had taken his hand. For a swift second I thought I saw the razors of his eyes flash, but it was only a memory. I didn’t trust him. But there was something he knew I didn’t, something I had to find out.

“Fera…” I began, slipping my fingers from his. “I believe you. But I can’t trust you. I’m sorry. At least not yet. I don’t know if there is anything I can do at the moment.”

An incredible wave of weariness passed over me and I sat down on the stairs. My cheeks were still wet, my hands shaking. I had never felt as helpless before. “They wouldn’t believe me,” I breathed, looking up at the highest council floor. Light poured from the windows. “Not even my friends would. When I first saw Talia look at me…” I shivered. “Tristen has been messing with her mind. He’s capable of mind control, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Fera sat next to me. “But it is not that simple. The mind is like a door. To gain entrance you need a key, a permission. No-one usually gives it straight. It just needs the right words.”

I stared blankly into emptiness, ignoring the fact Fera might have very well been capable of it too.  I tried to think of something; anything, but mine and Tristen’s conversation only ran through my mind over and over again. I thought of how Tristen had spoken of mamma, trying futilely to fit them together. Joy and Tristen, happiness and sorrow. I know she is dead, he had said. The moment I committed myself to another woman I felt our bond break. It severed her soul from her body.

The tinkle of wind-chimes filled my mind as I returned to my vision. My mamma is dead, my reflection had spoken. Between my ears Fera’s voice magnified and turned visible, into light, the color of his soul when I had truly seen him, in the world as we dreamed it. You lie.

“Father,” I began, my voice as haunted as I, too, was a spirit. It was the first time I called him that. “Can he… can he access the spirit realm?”
Fera raised his gaze, his eyes like breaking glass. He looked at me as if I had asked a question he was afraid to answer.

“Yes,” he answered, and I saw mamma in her eyes.

26: saturday (a day of light)

tätä lukua kirjoittaessani minulla on ollut erittäin suuria vaikeuksia:D sain tämän jo itseasiassa eilen valmiiksi, mutta olen lopettanut tätä ties kuinka monta kertaa eri kohdasta ja aloittanut uudestaan - kuten tänäänkin tein. en ole siis edennyt tarinassa mutta saanut aikaan hiukan siedettävämmän kuuloista tekstiä. melkein pidänkin tästä, näin alkuun. tai noh, en mene vielä sanomaan mitään. :___D

tässä on kappale joka on inspiroinut minua flawlessin alusta alkaen ja jonka jostain syystä kuvittelen aina prologiin.

 

Chapter Twenty-six

“Fera!” I shrieked, but my yell was subsided by the rush of water which only got louder by the second. The surface was like liquid gold and I saw nowhere under. It was still as glass, without bubbling, wavering, like Fera didn’t breathe…

He didn’t breathe.

The surface broke and a golden figure emerged from the water, his ears and nose locked, mouth zipped still. Fera opened his eyes, and they were completely free of harm.

“Spit it out,” I commanded, fighting the urge to knock him down again. “Spit it out, you forsaken idiot!”
But Fera only parted his lips, a dry puff of air warming my face.

“Don’t say you just fell into the fountain for fun,” my face was chalk-white. Fera stayed silent. He was still up to his lap in the fountain water. “You did?”

And then I surged at him, my hands grabbing his neck and shaking him throughout. “Why? Mein Gott, ich hasse dich!”

“You what?”
“I hate you,” I said, but my tone resembled a laugh. “I hate you. Why did you do that?”

Fera smiled through the golden rain. “There was nothing concrete we found of the darkness city, don’t you remember? We only took with us the darkness we had. Now I poured it into the fountain.”
I didn’t know could it have a visible effect, but the water definitely hadn’t changed color. “You seriously had to do it so… suddenly? Even though you might survive well underwater, not everyone does. If I would have followed you, I could have died.”
“But you did not,” Fera said. “Help me up.”

My jaw dropped, but I offered my arms. Fera jumped out of the fountain, shaking the water off his soaked clothes like he was a wet dog. “The sun has risen. It will dry me up.”
Fera was correct. Without me really noticing the sky had turned from cobalt to the powder blue of dawn, and the sun shone on our backs. That was the moment I understood how unbelievably tired I was despite the constant sleep the last couple of days. Adrenaline was in my veins, but the effect wore of incredibly fast. I already felt my limbs losing touch.

“Well,” I sighed, staring vaguely at the fountain. “I guess we didn’t just lay and forget the world.”

Fera only smirked, a vial in his hands. “We must complete our task first. We must take the water to the city of darkness.”

I answered with a nod, but when I concentrated all my strength on drawing the wind, I could only see a faint trace of the wild streets of the darkness city before all lights went out.

When my eyes opened the first thing I saw was myself.

There were smudged circles around my eyes and my body lay in a limp, unnatural position, like I wasn’t fully in control of my own movements.

I knew nothing about time – the hour or the day, but judging on the tint of the light it was already late afternoon. In contrast however, I knew where I was.

The same familiar peaks of the room were all around me, just like in my dream. But this time Fera wasn’t next to me. My eyes went from my left to the right and the only things I saw were emptiness. Very carefully I forced myself up, my body weighing like I was built of metal instead of flesh and bones.

I rose up and stood in the middle of the chamber, studying the floor figures around me. It was completely clear – the perceivable lines had disappeared leaving nothing left but indefinable smudges where the peaks had been. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, Fera was there.

“Fera,” I began in a voice full of uncertainty. “What time is it?”
Fera didn’t answer instantly. He studied me for a second his head in a slight tilt like he had pointed out something new in my appearance. “Seven,” he answered.

“Seven? It’s been eleven hours?”
But Fera said nothing. His eyes were locked on the floor figures. When my eyes got used to the light I noticed they were red – a dirty, faded shade of crimson like dried blood.

“This is the council,” I noted self-evidently. “What happened?”
“You blacked out when we warped to the darkness city,” Fera explained. A recollection came to my mind but my head pounded and I stopped thinking. “I carried you.”
“Whoa. Meine Güte. I’m so sorry-“

“Silence,” Fera said in an unfamiliar tone, and I zipped my mouth shut. “Look around you.”
I obeyed with bewilderment, staring at the same point Fera was. I could see the smudges weren’t arranged evenly, as if some of them were missing. “Your friends are down there. You must help me to open the door.”
“To open the door?” I repeated incredulously. “Fera, if you need to get to the first floor, I’m sure you could only use the stairs…”

But then my eyes flew at the double doors in the very edge of the room, a pair of doors I recognized instantly. They were open and revealed the council gardens bathing in a bright golden haze of the afternoon. They opened to reveal two pairs of staircases both swirling upwards, but none downwards.

“But… this is the first floor. You told me you dreamed of the second floor.”
“I did not lie,” Fera said. “To get down there we must finish the ritual.”

And then Fera pulled a knife; a knife nothing like the ones in Nolan’s home, but a noble, reflective blade with a diamond-wrought handle. Before I could react he had brought the blade down and cut his palm. He pressed his bleeding hand tightly shut, spreading the crimson blood all over. Then he looked at the ceiling and pressed his palm onto the floor.

Suddenly I understood what the smudges in the floor were, why they were the color of dried blood. They were handprints of blood.

“Guardian blood,” Fera spoke, wiping his bleeding hand on his white shirt. “Is the key.”

“Guardian blood?” I repeated. “But I’m not a guardian. This… I don’t know… You said it would be nothing like this.”
Fera’s tone was reassuring as he spoke, reminding me of the way he had cooed me in my dream before reminding me my mamma was dead. “Cannot you see? Your friends have done the same to enter this place. Those are their handprints.”
Aes, Chyse, Circus, Talia. Earth, fire, water, darkness. The words of Aes and the twins ran through my mind. “She, after all, is a councelor in training.” – “He’s the councelor in training.” Was the blood of a guardian trained councelor enough to open the door?

But that had to mean-

“Look,” Fera continued, but I couldn’t hear his voice. My ears buzzed and I stared at my own shaking hands, as if they were already bleeding. “This is the only way… It will not hurt. Only for a while.”

That is not what I fear, I thought, but I was unable to say the words out loud. Fera had moved closer to me, his lips next to my ear. “I can do it for you. I know where to cut.”
“No,” I said, taking hold of the blade Fera had given me, but drying it of his blood first. It was sharper than any kitchen knife I had ever held, and the mirror-like surface reflected my shocked expression. “I will do it.”
“Be careful,” Fera whispered, and without looking, I cut a thin line of scarlet across my skin.

The wound burned as the blood interacted with oxygen, and I felt my head starting to spin. “Look up,” Fera instructed, and despite the stinging pain I raised my expression. From the ceiling another me stared back and I understood. The ceiling was a mirror – in my dreams I had been looking through it. The lines of the floor were shown only through it. Through it I could without trouble see the peak of wind on the opposite side of the chamber as Aes’ handprint. I walked over to the right spot, and closing my eyes, bended over to press my palm against the cooling surface. It accepted my touch as if it had been molded for me.

The air filled of a sudden electric hum and I was pulled aside as the lines on the floor started to crackle as if the floor was breaking. Dust filled the air as the crackles grew large and opened a passageway like a gaping wound into a torch-lit chamber below our feet. Fera took my hand with a smile, and our blood bonded as we stepped together down the hidden staircase.

While studying the chamber a mixed feeling of familiar and foreign flushed over me, like I was staring at a faceless person or a world without colors. The staircase rounded the walls in a hexagonal shape, and an innumerable amount of overlapping lines covered the floor. They reminded me of the lines on hospital floors leading onto different wings: guidelines. Each of them led into a corner of the room, and in every corner I saw one of my friends. Aes was staring straight into my eyes, but his expression was vague, as if he hadn’t noticed me coming. The look of him made me freeze. He looked exactly like the night I had last seen him, like nothing had happened to him. But why was he there? I wanted to run to him and scream until the world would fall around me. But when I took an instinctive step towards him, Fera caged me in his arms, staining my clothes with blood.

“Let me go,” I said, shocked by the calmness of my tone. “I have to get him out of here.”
Fera’s breath was hot on my neck. “We have to do this right.”
I froze. The roughness of his tone made my limbs melt, and I felt my knees giving way. “There,” he instructed, pointing at an empty spot between Talia and Chyse. Just like Aes, they looked exactly like the last time I had seen them – with the exception that Chyse had pulled on some pants. I stared incredulously into his icy blue eyes, and as Fera parted my side to stand in the circle in between Chyse and Aes, I saw something in Chyse’s eyes had changed. They were sharp and somehow very alert – despite his very dead figure, he had never before looked so ready, so alive. Close to her Talia had fixed her eyes on me, but she looked more through me. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Talia-“
As she heard her name, her whole figure flinched and I startled backwards. The very second my back hit the wall the room flashed, and the torches flared alight like igniting stars. Right then I could see the overlapping lines on the floor had changed. Now they formed a hexagonal pattern just like the one I had seen through the ceiling mirror, and a flash like an electric current spread from the center of the room, hitting me with the force of a flushing tide and knocking the strength off my feet. I fell on my knees, and the very second I was out of breath, white spots dancing in my eyes.

As soon as my vision cleared I noticed several things. I felt different, like a pressure I hadn’t noticed until then had been lifted off my chest. The world around me also was different. The stone walls of the staircase had changed into wall-long bookcases filled with countless books of power – maps, notebooks, some as old as Kaiya itself. In the middle of the room was a pouring column of light like a wall of glass, a wall I had seen in a vision. The room was no longer incomplete, and I understood. I had always wondered why the council, a hexagonal building with six ends and six seats for each elemental guardian had only five floors. But it didn’t. The sixth floor existed, only underground – it was where the archives were, a place which only the guardians knew of. But before I could understand why I was there I was already too late.

Next to me Talia had fallen on her back, her unconscious fingers gripping desperately at the empty air. Chyse leaned against a bookcase with closed eyes, and Circus and Aes both reached towards me, like despite their unconsciousness they knew I was still awake. Between them Fera studied the roof above us, his eyes like glass. “It’s time,” he whispered, turning into a blur of black and white. The next second he had pinned me between his body and a staircase wall which pressed painfully against my back. Behind him I could notice the shadows had started to shift, like the ceiling was sealing above us. Something cold and angled grazed my thigh, and I thought of the blade Fera had with him. A sharp pain stung my palm where I had cut it, and before I could fully realize what I was doing, I swung my fist at him. His palm deflected the blow, and my arm twisted in a painful angle. A pulsing pain jolted through my broken elbow.

“Don’t you understand what that means?” I spoke through my teeth. “It means ‘let me go.’”

“I cannot.”
Somewhere above I could hear a steady tone, footsteps. “Let me go,” I repeated. “Now.”

Fera freed my hand from his palm. “I have to do this,” he said, as he jerked my arms up with a single swift motion. “You have to understand.”
A bright bar of light like burning magnesium appeared in between his fingers, but it wasn’t that. It was light. My arms were tied together, and the footsteps got ever closer. Fera’s eyes were wild. “I will never hurt you again. I promise.”
“You’re a liar,” I cried, turning my head away. “I can’t believe you.”
“You have to,” Fera said. From the corner of my eye I could study the range of emotions passing his face – anger, hatred – but also pain. It was like he the world was falling before him, but he stayed only to watch its terrible beauty. His eyes went to the staircase above, and he stood up, letting me go. “Don’t say a word. No matter what, don’t.”

“He’s coming, isn’t he?” I yelled after Fera as he turned his back. “He’s coming to get the scrolls.”
Somehow I expected the world to rumble, but not a single thing happened. The wards are down, I realized. He’s here.

“I hate you,” I said, and this time I meant it. “I truly do.”

“Felice?” Someone questioned, and the familiarity of the voice brought me the chills. “Who are you talking to?”

Fera froze on his tracks, holding something sharp and glittery in his hands. A knife.

“There is blood on your blade,” a female figure noted in a heavy accent. She wore a gracious golden gown which hugged her curves and highlighted her tanned complexion. “Is it yours?”
Fera opened his mouth as if to say something, when a hand reached out from behind him and pushed him aside. Fera closed his eyes and drew back as if he was expecting to be beaten.

But with the sight of me my father only smiled, a pair of amber eyes narrowed like mine when I saw something truly interesting. “What a futile attempt to hide her from me,” said Tristen. “Was she so resistant you had to bind her?”

I leaned back half instinctively, rubbing my wrists against each other. Where the light touched the skin grew hot like I was burned by the sun. “If I were you, I would not do that. Look at your hands.”
I threw my arms powerlessly over my head, a sharp pain hitting my sight. I closed my eyes, and behind them I could still see the afterimage of light. “The more you resist, the brighter it burns. What is your name?”

Tristen approached me with a confident stroll alike Severina’s, lifting his chin in a theatrical gesture of vanity. It had to be forethought. He never does or says anything without further thinking, Severina had said. But everything else in him… just like peeling off an onion skin, under all those artificial gestures and expressions there was a skin which revealed his true self. And under his second skin… he looked just like me.

“My name?” I repeated, even slightly awestruck. If Severina had recognized me only from the eyes without knowing of my existence, my father had to recognize me. “Hilary.”

Tristen studied me carefully, his eyes at my eye level – either at my bridge piercing or irises. “It means ‘joyful.’”
I know what it means, I thought. But why the hell are you interested in a thing like it?

“Well, Hilary, I am pleased to meet you.”

I gave a laugh, and Tristen raised a brow curiously.

“Gott in Himmel,” I half-laughed, half-cried. “Stop this forsaken charade! It doesn’t interest you at all, does it? You’re just irritated because I’m here to thwart your plan of getting the scrolls. Which, by the way, is shitty.”

Tristen blinked as if he didn’t really believe the situation he was in. “I would not include the words ‘forsaken’ and ‘charade’ in the same sentence.”

My jaw dropped. “Go to hell, dad.”

A bright smile lightened Tristen’s features. If I wouldn’t have known what he was up to, it would have been a pleasant sight. “You are a bright one, aren’t you?”
“Enough of this,” I sighed. “If you’re going to kill me, then just get it over with. You’ve already used me enough.”
Tristen arched his eyebrows. “I am not planning to kill you.”

I shook my head incredulously. If I had a chance, this was it. Tristen had planned it all well – he would make sure the council would not know of him being there. But if I could delay him long enough…

“Let’s just… talk,” I said. “You know, there’s some stuff you really should clear up. Like what’s the thing with treating your kids like they were scientific experiments? e. + l. = w.? Or possibly d.? What does that mean?”
Tristen’s expression was indefinable. “’Scientific’ is not the right word to describe what I think of you.”

“Quatsch.”
“Höre auf dich,” Tristen laughed. “Deine Mutter hat dich gut gelehrt.”

“This conversation is ridiculous,” I stated. “Point one: I’m tied up. Free me, and perhaps we’ll achieve agreement.”

Tristen leaned close, and for a second I even believed he would do it. “No,” he drew back, crossing his arms under his golden robe. The rings of power and wisdom flickered on his right hand, but his ring of benevolence was gone. “I am afraid there is no time. But you are lucky to be conscious unlike your friends. There is something I want to show you.”

His sentence ended into a sudden pull of breath like before a deep dive, and Tristen penetrated the column of color like the walls of a soap bubble.

The very same second the walls around us started to shimmer. The six ends of the room wavered, and figures appeared at each empty wall like a flushing tide. My eyes flew next to me where the letters had burned themselves through the walls. They formed readable words, but the mere sight of them was painful, and even though I closed my eyes, I still could see them. No, my lips formed the word soundlessly. I was too late. My eyes flew at Fera, who had his eyes on me as if I was the only thing he could see. Why was he looking at me like that? To him I had been nothing but a tool. Somehow Fera had always been around when one of my friends went missing. Somehow Fera had known the way to the fountain of Light, just like he had known his way to my childhood home. My conscience had always been right. You will hate yourself, it had said. In the end you will.

Why had I not listened?

Inside the column of color Tristen had started chanting under his breath, something which sounded almost like a prayer. “Earth, I thank you for your fields and the gift of life you have given us…”

Severina, I thought. Her image formed behind my eyelids. If I would have concentrated enough, perhaps she would have heard me. And perhaps she did, but no longer understood. Severina, you have to come. It’s already begun.

But life wasn’t logical.

The world was full of odds, norms, consistencies. Human-created rules of order to prevent chaos. Winter lasts three months. The compass points north. Tomorrow it will rain.

“And Light, I thank you for your grace and the wisdom you have given us…”
Life wasn’t a mathematical equation. There was no solution. Perhaps Tristen treated the world that way: as numbers and figures, thinking, that if he knew the premises he could somehow calculate his moves and make the right decision.

But what if there came no winter? What if the Earth’s magnetic field would warp and the compass point south instead? What if the wind currents would turn and rain would never come?

Life was of movement, illogical figures and patterns, lifelines entwining: a constantly morphing entity of parting and departing particles, some that changed direction and went their own way, and some that despite how small the odds were, ended always meeting again.

When Tristen finally opened his eyes they were almost white, glowing with light. “The Elementals, I thank you for balance and the gifts you have given us.”

A blow like a pressure wave made the hairs on my skin stand up, and when I moved my eyes on Tristen the walls around him had dissolved and the glow on the scrolls had died.

For a mere second he only stood there raptly, as if the scenery around him had turned unreal. There was a moment I stared at the ceiling like a starry sky, imagining Severina descending the steps with her flowing platinum hair and taking me in her arms just like mamma had done, telling me all was all right.

Instead I heard Tristen call a command, and the next second I focused my attention on the room the walls were dead and empty, and my father had joined the woman in the golden dress in a passionate embrace.

25: hunting for bounty

pirteillä fiiliksillä tätä merkintää kirjoittelen. minulla on ruokaa, hyvää musaa ja mikä parasta, olen taas päässyt jatkamaan nanoni kirjoittamista! seuraava koe minulla on maanantaina, joten uskon saavani tämän viikonloppuna valmiiksi. nyt minulla on teille huomiseksikin luku postattavana, sillä aloitin juuri kahdennenkymmenennenseitsemännen (kauhea sana!) luvun. tässä teille kuitenkin tämä luku 25 jonka kanssa minulla oli alkuun suuriakin vaikeuksia (mukaan meinasi tulla pakanallisia rituaaleja ja veriuhreja ties mitä. :::D) ohje: vaikka kirjoitatkin nanowrimoa, kelaa tekstiäsi kuitenkin siltä kannalta mitä itse lukisit. nimim. itse en olisi alkuperäisversiota voinut lukea nauramatta. :::D

tässä kuitenkin teille pari biisiä jota olen tänään kuunnellut (despite the fact they have nothing to do what i have written. hohhohhoo.)

Chapter Twenty-five

Thursday afternoon began by a trip to the center of The Cities. Nolan insisted me he had to visit the police station and ask whether they had any news of Circus. During the interrogation I stood aside and thus could register only little bits. Apparently the police forces had began to investigate whether the party had any uninvited visitors. While I sat on a windowsill and hummed a Snow Patrol song, I also wondered which kind of visitors could be uninvited – the Elemental feast wasn’t particularly a council feast. Perhaps they thought some rapist gang was behind the kidnappings. I still had the feeling something else was behind them, but Nolan was impossible to talk to when he was hungry. After leaving the station we marched instantly inside the first oriental restaurant we could find, exiting the doors with so much food it could feed a dragon. Perhaps Nolan planned awakening the fence figures of his neighborhood park.

“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” I said while Nolan searched his pockets for elemental tokens. His meals were piled at his feet, and as he huffed with frustration he managed to knock over a noodle cup. “That we’re actually buying ourselves oriental food while four of our friends have disappeared and one dwells in her teenage angst in Hestia’s palace. I just hope she won’t irritate her like she irritated me.”
“What did she say to you?” Nolan asked. He had bended over his meal containers and stuffed his hands inside them like his tokens had somehow ended up in there. “I am sure she didn’t mean to offend you.”
“It started getting too personal. Do the guardians always believe they can interfere in everyone’s business? They act like they know everything. But they don’t.”

“They are human beings too,” Nolan said, wiping his forehead with his smudged fingers. “At least most of the time. Do you have any more darkness tokens left?”
“No,” I answered, a little stunned by the sudden change of topic. “With the exception of the branding on my hand.”
Nolan frowned. “That won’t go, unless you want to chop your hand off. We have to walk.”
“Walk?” I exclaimed with bewilderment. “You seriously used all your tokens on food?”
“I’m a hungry, hungry man,” Nolan smiled, lifting his containers in his hands, even the ones half-spilled onto the ground. “Now I can eat these while walking.”
I gave a laugh. “Now I’m starting to understand why Chyse’s the smart-ass of you two. When you’re not in that all official councelor-mode, you’re a Neanderthal.”
Nolan furrowed his eyebrows with confusion but gestured me to follow. There were two kinds of people in the world – the ones who hated walking and the others who had no problem in it, even enjoyed it. Another point to prove my awkwardness: I belonged in the second group. I didn’t know of Nolan, but as long as he had his Chinese pork he seemed satisfied. Generally speaking our long walk wasn’t that unpleasant. The first thirty minutes we had a perfectly normal conversation anyone could have gone through, all until for some reason I started to think like kaiyans again. We turned silent and every few minutes I spoke my worried thoughts out loud, all until I noticed I had started to repeat myself. “I’m sorry I bore your brains out. But you probably aren’t listening, or are you?”
“Yes I am,” Nolan mumbled as he swallowed his last noodles. “I understand that you are worried. It’s good. It shows you have empathy.”
As I watched Nolan eat I couldn’t really be angry at him – he was too sympathetic. Overall as we found ourselves from Nolan’s street I felt okay. The feeling lasted until we entered the staircase and found we weren’t alone. “Someone has put the lanterns out,” Nolan said as the heavy door closed behind us leaving us into blackness. “Who’s there?”
There was no answer. In the darkness I could see a little blink in Nolan’s eye – the only light came under the first floor door. Still soundless he left his empty Chinese containers at the brink of the door, rushing up the stairs. His steps fell heavy against stone, and I ran to follow him, but he stopped me. It fell silent as he reached the second floor and there was a sound like matchsticks scratched against a rough surface. The air smelled like smoke, and a light ignited above.

“It’s you,” Nolan said, his voice nothing but a whisper. “What are you doing here?”

I pricked up my ears but couldn’t pick up a response. “What’s going on up there?”
But Nolan answered nothing. Instead I could hear a familiar, blank voice. “I came for Hilary.”
Reaching towards the light I sprinted the stairs up with a few leaps, facing a mysterious sight. A lantern next to Nolan’s heavy doors had been ignited and he stood expressionless over a figure who sat casually on the floor. Under his dark hair I couldn’t see his eyes. Fera. “What-“ I began bewilderedly, my eyes flying on the sight of the two boys. In the lantern light their coloring was same, all shadows and outlines, but Nolan’s figure was buff compared to Fera’s slimness. “Did you break in?”
Fera wiped the hair off his face. “As you can see, I am still here. If I were to break in, I would have found my way inside the apartment. There are several ways to enter a frequently used building.”
Nolan looked from Fera to his double doors, as if he was unpleased to open them in the presence of a nearly complete stranger. “Hilary,” he began with alarm, “Could you please explain this?”
“Jeez, Nolan. It’s not like he’s some burglar who’s trying to loot your machete collection. Relax.”

“What do you mean?”
“Open the door,” I huffed. “Seriously. He wasn’t trying to break in.”
Nolan looked at me questioningly for a second until he turned around and entered his apartment. “All right. Call him in,” he said, but I felt like he left something out like ‘and if he tries anything, I always have something to impale him with.’

The heavy doors closed with resistance, and the insides of the apartment were dark in the twilight. Fera’s eyes went from the tiger pelt to the bone table, but his expression stayed vague. It made me wonder what in his previous life had caused him to be like that.

“You…” Nolan began, his back turned on me, leaning against the windowsill. “You told him he had something to do with your sister, right? Can he be trusted?”
“Nolan-“
“I had not finished yet,” Nolan snapped, and suddenly he was again his official self. “He must be informed of to the council. This can’t go on like this. As long as the council is uninformed it is illegal.”
A puff of air escaped from my lungs and I kept my eyes on a vague target to keep my emotions in boundaries. “Stop talking of him like he isn’t here! We’ll go to the council as soon as we can, already on Sunday. There’s really nothing else we can do.”
I couldn’t see Nolan turn, but he meant his words for Fera. “You said you came here for Hilary. What do you want from her?”
“Let me explain,” I cried. “Please, Nolan.”
“No,” he said, his eyes attached on Fera’s. Fera was still perfectly calm in the situation. He said nothing, but I saw him walk over to Nolan his hands free as if to prove he was unarmed. He leaned closer to Nolan speaking to him in an inaudible tone, and to my surprise I saw Nolan walk away. “I give you five minutes,” he gestured with his fingers, then entering Chyse’s and Rilla’s temporary bedroom.

“You needed to talk,” I began, my eyes tight on Fera’s. I noticed the distance between us had grown smaller unnoticed, and his skin radiated heat like light. “What is it?”
Fera’s eyebrows arched in concern. “This was not how I pictured it.”
“Pictured what?”
“Our meeting. We still have a treaty.”
I glanced over my shoulder with hesitation as if I were seeing through the walls of the room Nolan was in. “What do you expect us to do? In five minutes?”
“The truth is I did not come here to talk. I came here because I was worried about you.”
My eyes widened with amusement as I stepped carelessly backward, my back hitting the wall. “Everyone seems to do that. Well, what? Are you worried Nolan’s going to flay me in my sleep?”
Fera’s eyes went from weapon to another, something glinting in his eyes. “No. I was worried of you because-“

Then I broke off abruptly as Fera’s reflexes moved so fast his moment was a blur. There was a flash and the sound of metal clashing on metal and Fera’s body was holding me back where he had pulled me away. All had happened too swift for me to register. As my senses sharpened, I recorded the sight of a fallen, sharp blade which was something between a dagger and a sword. Light reflected off the silver handle as deadly and sharp, and the weapon stand right over where I had been standing was now empty.

“Did you-“ I breathed, still dazedly, “Did you just save my life?”

“I think I owed you it,” Fera said, and as his breath tickled my auricles I realized how close we were, just as close as we had been in my vision. “After what happened with the fountain.”
“You can’t compare it to that,” I breathed. “I wasn’t dying.” The angled light of the blade reflected a flick of red off the furniture, and a shudder crept through me. Nolan’s home didn’t really rank on the top list of the safest houses in the world. “Now I owe you something.”
Fera recoiled as if I had said something wrong. “Don’t do anything you will regret.”
But as if his words had been only air I closed my eyes and pressed myself even closer to him, so close the lines of our faces entwined-

And the door opened with a cough, Nolan stepping out his face white. His expression was slightly awestruck as if he didn’t really comprehend what he was seeing. “What is going on here?”
“Fera-“ I began, helplessly trying to reduce the quiver off my voice. “I just almost got impaled.”
Nolan’s eyes flew to the blade and a helpless stutter escaped from his mouth. “The blade – you – Fera…”
And then he walked expressionlessly to his blade, steadying it back on the wall, running back inside the room without a single eye contact.

“Is he always that explicit?” Fera asked, a slight smile curving his lips. I answered with a nod. “He has rice in his hair,” he complemented.

I pulled slightly back from Fera, the pain of the heat growing too strong. “He’s the only friend I have for now. Everyone else…”
Fera interrupted me with a gaze, his eyes bright and large. “That was what I was going to talk to you of before-“ he nodded towards the blade, “that happened. That is why I came to you.”
“Don’t,” I said, silencing him with a finger. “I don’t have to drag you in this with me. It’s stressful enough for me already.”
“I already am. I came here because I knew you would be worried of your friends.”
“What do you mean ‘I already am?’ You can’t-“
“But I do,” said Fera. “I’m the only one who can help you, because I know where your friends are.”

“You know where my friends are?” I repeated rhapsodically, blinking my eyes as if to find out whether I was in a dream. “Where? How?”
“I am not sure,” Fera answered vaguely, turned towards the window. He had started to walk around like I sometimes did when I was nervous. “I cannot remember it. But I saw it in a dream. It is said that the things we dream are never completely imaginary. They always have a hint of reality.”
“You have to tell Nolan about this. He can help us.”

Fera looked at me wide-eyed. “He cannot.”
“He can,” I insisted in a clear voice. “You must only tell him what the place looked like and he-“
“It is a round chamber with six peaks,” Fera interrupted, freezing me. “It is the second floor of a hexagonal building almost like a palace…”
His voice trailed off, and I felt the gears in my mind turning. He was talking of the council. I had never seen the second floor completely with the exception of my dream. But what would Chyse, Rilla, Aes and Circus do there? And why them?

“That’s the council,” I explained hesitantly. Something in it felt wrong. “I have dreamed of it too. But are you really sure? If they would be there the guardians would have noticed them in their emergency council yesterday.”

“I am sure,” Fera assured. “But we cannot go there now.”
“Why? Why not?”

Fera took hold of my shoulders as to steady himself, and his voice trembled. "We have to do this right. I know I cannot remember my past or if I have done anything like this before, but it is something that is deep inside me, just like it is inside you. Every element is tied to an opposite pair - earth to wind, water to fire and darkness to light. They long for each other. Before doing anything we must present the elements a gift."
Fera's words visualized inside my head as some sort of pagan ritual with an animal sacrifice. "You're not serious," I exclaimed. "I've been told there's nothing hocuspocus in Kaiya. No pagan rituals whatsoever."
"It's not how you think it is," Fera explained. He stood in the kitchen fiddling absently with a tangerine. "We need to find something from each city and bring it to their opposite pair to please the elements. I assure you, this has nothing to do with a ritual. No lives will be lost."
From Nolan's mouth the words could have been easily associated by some shady council stuff, but as Fera said them they were like world play - any harmless, amused comment. "What?" I asked. "What kind of gifts? What do we have to find?"
"In theory there is nothing we have to find," Fera answered. "Do you remember the fountain of Light? I found my way there without remembering a thing of this world. My senses just lead me there."
I didn't meet his eyes. "Fera... are you really sure about this?"
"Trust me for this single time," Fera pleaded. "I am making you a favor. After this I promise to never ask anything of you again."

My eyes studied the lines of light on the cold stone floor. They drew shadow figures: Chyse, Circus, Aes and Talia tied up in emptiness, their bodies hanging limp side by side. And soon I was to join them too...

"Fera," I began, my eyes studying his expression. It was full of confidence and unquestionable certainty. It made my thoughts rearrange. What had I been thinking? I wasn't going to be next. Unlike the others, I was aware. "I... I'll follow you."
Fera's eyes enlightened. He turned around and took a bite of an apple as he threw the kitchen window open. In a second he had somehow parkoured his way out and stood unharmed on the gravel ground, munching his apple with satisfaction.

"Somehow I feel like I've experienced this before," I said, and with a raise of my eyebrows I hurled myself after Fera, landing clumsily in his arms. "Now I'm hungry," I continued, glancing up at Nolan's window. Somehow I had managed to push it closed while I fell. "I could have at least taken a kumquat with me."
Fera looked questioning as he offered me the remnants of his apple. "Take this. I'm not that hungry."
I took a bite, savoring the juicy taste. Somehow the apples in Kaiya tasted better than anything I had tasted on Earth, and their shade of green was so perfect they could have easily been made out of grass. "These could be straight from the garden of Eden," I praised.

"Actually, they are from the earth city," Fera commented, clearly not understanding my reference. "But I do not think they are good enough to gift the elementals."
"We need something greater," I realized. Fera had told me I could find what I wanted if I tried, but I felt no sort of pull into any direction. I turned my head and saw lantern-lit houses and the shadowy figures of Nolan's neighboring park. I took an experimental step and stared at the fence figures - the dragons and salamanders were all black against the crimson sky. It was already over sunset. I thought of the hourglass in Rilla's palace. The sand would be already reaching Friday.

"Not the most typical Friday for me," I began with a laugh as I approached the fence figures. "Normally I would just sit in café Play listening to music and drinking tea."
Fera followed me, jumping gracefully over a hedge. "Wasn't it lonely?"
"Lonely?" I asked. I had never thought of it like that. I had always enjoyed things as they were, because I had never thought there could be something better. "No. I can't say I particularly enjoyed my life, but I managed. Maybe all what I've experienced with you, all the 'lay with me and just forget the world'-stuff, it's all reminded me of my previous life. Play had been a place where I could hide from the rest of the world, music had been my way to forget. And in my dreams I would fly away and see the world how it was when the layers of artificiality had been scraped out."

Fera looked at me intensively and I realized I had probably said more than I intended to. Sometimes he felt so natural to me I wasn't even aware of him being there, just like mamma had been. And if I ever lost him I would still imagine he somehow was everywhere.

"I wonder what's up with all the dragons," I stated as I noticed it had been silent already for a while - I had done nothing but stood there and looked at him with glassed eyes. "If Chyse would be here he would start some forsaken presentation. ‘Dragons and salamanders are manifestations of the element fire.’”
"You are nervous," Fera began, noticing my awkward laugh. "But maybe correct. This might be just the right place."
He turned his back on me and started hovering around the grounds as a blur of black and white. "This is a phoenix," Fera said, pointing at the hedge figure of a massive bird with spread-out wings and a long tail. "It is a symbol of rebirth. Just like water symbolizes renewal and purity." Fera walked over to the second figure. "This is a dragon. It represents detachment and universality. Like wind."
My eyes flew to the next figure, a salamander. "It's an earth symbol," I guessed, staring at its whipping tail and earth-bound feet. "Every figure here is connected to another element." I looked at Fera who stood at the phoenix. It was almost his size. "But these are hedge figures," I wondered. "And impossible to take away from here. Unless you have a chainsaw somewhere."
"There is something else," Fera said, kneeling before the phoenix as if he was performing a bow. "Look closer. Look for clues."
I walked over to the closest figure, a gigantic lion in a lunging position. The red of the horizon had changed into a cobalt blue, the wall lanterns being the only light. I stared curiously at a nearby lantern. It didn't seem anyhow attached to the wall. Raising up a finger and gesturing Fera to wait, I ran to the lantern and grasped for it, suddenly holding a flaming torch in hand. The torchlight made the shadows of the hedge figures alive. I was now dancing with the beasts.

"Hold the lantern up," Fera advised. "Higher."
"I can't," I said. The air had started to smell of cinder. "Unless I want to torch these figures."
Fera's eyes flashed. "Maybe that is exactly what you need to do."

And then he charged at me and I startled backwards, the lantern flying off my grasp. It struck the figure of the phoenix, and I was no longer staring at a hedge figure. Aflame the bird looked phenomenally real.

"Nolan's going to be pissed," I said, but my voice sounded distant under the crackling of flames. The phoenix burned only for seconds as a bright ball of flames, and suddenly all was left but an iron frame and a pile of ashes. Reflexively I reached out an arm, but Fera pulled it back. "Do not touch. It is hot."
"Yes, mom," I sighed, laughing internally. Even though Fera was some sort of an amnesiac, he had more common sense than I the moment. "Do you think this is it? The ashes of a hedge phoenix?"
"Ashes are often used for purification," Fera said. "There is only one way to find out if we are right. We have to take these to the water city."

And once again - without surprising me this time - Fera pulled out a vial from his pocket, sweeping the ashes inside it. He capped the vial and looked at me, and for a swift second I thought I could see pride in his eyes. He walked over to the closest hedge, lifting his visage to the sky and disappearing.

I ran after him and called his name, and in a swift second wind had pulled me in: the smell of burning changed into a salty scent like the sea, and I was no longer at the fire city.

It took us half of the night to find the rest of the bounty. The streets of the water city smelled of salt and seaweed and reminded me of Venice – water soaked the streets and splashed under my boots as I and Fera ran. Somehow I was beginning to understand what it was like to be drawn to somewhere. My feet lead me instead of my head as the scenery blurred by and I found myself from somewhere without really knowing how I had found my way there. I remember looking down at the moonlit city from a rooftop without recollection of how I had ended up there. Fera had released the ashes to the wind and they had rained down on the city like snowfall. Starlight glittered on the surface of a numberless amount of canals, and it was then when I knew I had to capture the water of the streams and bring it to the fire city, water which was as reflective as a mirror. When we returned to the fire city and warped to the earth city the lanterns had all gone out. The earth city was dark and completely devoid of all sounds except the very earth itself while in contrast there was a constant background hum in the city of wind. I had never truly had time to imagine it, but as I stared at the houses built in dizzy angles and heights I thought it might be my home someday. It felt nothing like home, but it brought a subtle safeness which cleared all worries of my mind. It was already breaking dawn when I and Fera found ourselves in the light city, in a very familiar place.

Unlike with the other elements, finding the gift of light was perfectly easy. The very single moment we broached the boundaries a picture of the fountain of truth hovered in my mind. Its water would be what we would take.

“This might be the most exhausting night of my existence,” I confessed as my knees gave way before the familiar fountain. Though the sight of it was haunting, I couldn’t get my eyes off it, until Fera covered my sight my kneeling with me. “But also the best… for now.”
A smile crept on Fera’s lips. “Do you really think that?”

“I’ve never felt so… attached,” I continued. “I’m used to feeling very detached – maybe it’s just how I am – but now… the feeling’s gone. I feel like I am here instead of somewhere else. It’s not like I’m floating further away anymore. Like there’s strings holding me down now.”
“Strings?”
I looked into Fera’s silver eyes and remembered how kissing him in my vision had felt. “My mamma was one string,” I said. “She kept my feet on the ground. When she left there was nothing left. And now there’s you…”
There was a pause and we shared a gaze, the fountain light drawing a bright aura around Fera’s hair. It had been long since I had looked at anyone like him. When I looked at Talia I saw something unattainable and beautiful, someone I could never have – almost like I had seen Ashley. When I looked at Rilla I only saw a pretty girl I didn’t feel drawn to. I had always been drawn to only the people I couldn’t have.

Fera was just like that. I had promised myself I couldn’t ever think of him how I wanted to, that things would never change between us. We both did our best to prevent the wall between us from breaking like glass. But the water wavered, the tension between us grew stronger…

“There’s something I want to do,” I whispered, still breathless. I moved closer to him, and the tips of our noses almost touched. “Say stop,” I breathed, “If I’m going too far.”
And just like our visages had brushed before our cheeks touched. Fera’s bones were sharp and angled unlike mine. His nose carved straight and hard against the soft surface of my own… and his lips tasted like light and life and…

Something made me jerk back wildly like I had been electrocuted. I staggered up and withdrew unconsciously, leaving him on his knees, staring bewilderedly at me. Under his hair I couldn’t see the true color of his eyes.

“I-“ I stuttered, my hands shaking. “I’m sorry.”
Fera said nothing but stood up, his expression still blank. There was distance between us, still sparkling with invisible electricity. I tried to catch my thoughts and rewind the moment, recognize what in Fera had made me step back, but I just couldn’t.

“We don’t have to do this,” Fera finally said, his voice hoarse. “If you do not want to-“

“But I do,” I defended, my fists clutched. “I do.”
“You don’t,” Fera insisted. “It is not what you want. We do not have to go wrong. We could just… lay here and forget the world.”

And with his words he tilted his body backwards, falling stiffly into the fountain of Light.

23: the elemental feast

hui kamala, mulla alkaa tulla kiire. tänään oon lueskellu bilsaa ja pitäis vielä alotella ranskaa kunhan oon syöny. huomennakaan ei välttämättä oo aikaa kirjottamiseen. oiskohan se sitten perjantaina? täytyy kyllä alottaa ruotsin:n lukeminen joskus mutta... no, toivotaan parasta. ei tässä nyt muuta voi kuin postata uuden luvun. tässä nyt eräs luvussa mainituista kappaleista snow patrolilta.:)

Chapter Twenty-three

The music was like listening to the sounds of the earth itself: plants rooting, trees growing, flowers opening their petals. Gravel crushing against gravel, the sound of dirt and grass. It was a symphony of survival, a symphony of life.

While Rilla sang about all those things, Nolan explained me the differences between Elemental bands. Earth bands were all known to use earthern instruments: drums, woodwind instruments and sounds of the human body, whileas wind bands sounded ethereal with their wind chimes and harps. Light bands were known to produce almost magnetic hums and ambient sounds. Nolan was just about to begin his explanation of fire bands, when the band quit playing and the guy in the emerald tuxedo threw his drumsticks in the air, yelling: “DRINK BREAK!” causing the crowd to go wild. A flutist popped open a champagne bottle, pouring foam over the front row watchers. They opened their mouths like a flock of hungry sharks.

“Is this always like this?”
Nolan pressed his lips together. “Yes, always.”

A blonde girl dressed in a waterline-length dress as shiny as a beetle’s shell offered us shots colored like poisonous acid. Nolan knocked back the glass, his face twisting into a grimace. “Green wine,” he frowned, apparently displeased by the taste. “I hate it.”
“Green wine?” I asked, staring bewildered at the drink in my hands. I could still remember the feeling the fountain water had brought me, though I couldn’t memorize the taste. I turned around, offering the drink ahead to the first random person at sight. The band members had started to harass Rilla with bottles of clear liquor, which she refused repeatedly. She pointed towards the fountain and jumped off the stage. I dragged Nolan along towards her direction.

“This party is out of control,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to imagine how the band sounds three hours later.”

Me neither. I raised my gaze, finding it had started to become darker. Despite all the alcohol being poured around us the air smelled clean. Perhaps it was how the earth palace was: somehow always clear despite what happened around it.

We reached the fountain soon. At the water Rilla pulled out an empty bottle off the ground and filled it up. “The band members just don’t get it. Not everyone in this world is a drunken jackass who wants to ride their champagne bottle naked into the moon.”
“Perhaps they only wait for solidarity,” I shrugged. “You could drink something to please them.”
Rilla’s denial was sharp. “I don’t drink anymore. After what… you know.”

She capped her bottle, strolling back towards the stage. I sat idly next to the fountain, my eyes monitoring at the teenagers around me. Kaiyans and earthlings weren’t really that different when it came to drinking. In their very essence every teenager had the same kinds of problems. And in their very essence so many teens mistook alcohol being a resolution to them all.

“There she is!”

“Mein Gott,” I voiced, hiding behind Nolan as I saw them approaching. Alex, carrying several liquor bottles to each hand accompanied by a group of teens around his age had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “It’s time to introduce you to the kaiyan ways…”
“OF PAR-TEEH!” Howled a really drunk Asian guy wearing a green shirt with the text ‘KISS ME, I’M AN EARTH-CHILD!’ on it. “What’s her name again?” he slurred in a heavy accent.

“Hilary,” an afro-haired guy in hipster glasses recited with satisfaction. “I love you, Hilary!”
“Alex, what is this?” I said, staring bewilderedly at all the random people around me. “Have you introduced me to half of Kaiya?”
“Only my best friends,” he began with a smile, flailing at the people around him. “Christo, Yin, Becca… and Kyle!”
“It’s Darren,” the hipster guy said. “I love you, Hilary!” he repeated.

“Whatever, Kyle,” Alex said, approaching me so fast I had no time to react. The next thing I knew was I had been lifted in the air by four people I had never seen before, ready to throw me into-

“Alex,” my voice trembled, and I exchanged a helpless look with Nolan, who apparently didn’t know what to do. “You’re drunk, don’t do-“

And then my head was underwater, my limbs all around me, trying to grab hold of the edges, pull me up. The water broke around me and my head emerged to the surface. It dripped cold and wet around me, gluing my hair into my forehead. My mouth tasted like dirt.

“Forsaken shithead,” I cussed, sprouting water like a miniature fountain. “Somehow I can understand he’s grown up with my-“
“Hilary, calm down,” Nolan said, holding a hand out. “He’s drunk.”
“Why do the guardians allow stuff like this? Where’s Aes? What the hell is going on?”

Nolan lifted me out of the water with a nervous look. Somehow my clothes were very much dry where he had touched me. “It’s a question of free will,” he said. “They test their suitability this way. The more competent an earthling is, the less the earthling drinks.”
“What a shitty way to test anything,” I said, shaking the droplets off my hair like a wet dog. The band had started to play again, and instead of running around wildly, the teens had gathered to dance in one spot. Here and there I could spot lonely youngsters just chilling around while some sat together with their friends away from the public. The doors to the earth palace were guarded by Aurelia and Argenta, who apparently were in the middle of checking out a group of shirtless guys near them. Aes was nowhere to be seen. I stared at the twin sisters with curiosity, the same way I looked at Severina these days – trying to spot identical features to mine. One of them apparently felt my gaze, because a second later was I was exchanging a look with them. “I’ll go talk to them,” I muttered before one of Nolan’s male acquaintances could reach us. The twin sisters giggled as they saw my wet hair but I ignored it. It wasn’t my fault anyway.

“You got soaked,” one of them, the low-voiced spoke. “Wild guess: Alex?”
“Correct guess,” I sighed. “He’s an idiot.”
“We know,” the twins spoke in monotone. “Argenta dated him once.”
The low-voiced sibling, Argenta, rolled her eyeballs. They were a very deep earthly brown. “He has got no brains under those pretty dreadlocks of his.”
“Quite a few of the boys in the feasts have brains,” Aurelia acknowledged. I was starting to pick up slight differences in the two: the tone of their voice, the twitches of their lips and eyebrows. Faraway they would have looked like clones, they both having their hands on their hips, but close-up they had differences. “But I can’t deny they are candy to the eye.”
I sighed. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-five,” the siblings repeated.

My eyes widened. “Oh,” I exclaimed, trying to picture Aes inside my head – he had always looked older to me. “That’s what I thought.”
Yet they all acted like teenagers, I thought. Nothing like Severina.

The two stared simultaneously in the distance. Nolan was no longer at the fountain. Alex had jumped on the stage and danced wildly with Darren-the-hipster. Rilla had immersed herself into her song: it was a tune which had something familiar in it, as if it had parts of something I had heard on Earth. Her eyes were closed and there was sweat on her temples as she gave all of her to the melody. Not very far from us, one of the shirtless guys had chosen to urine in a flower bed. “Father won’t like that,” Aurelia acknowledged, her eyes flashing. “He knows.”
“Father knows everything,” Argenta added. “It’s like he’s rooted to the earth and the earth speaks through him.”
“It’s terrifying how much Aes reminds me of him,” said Aurelia. “He’ll become just like him.”
I turned to her with curiosity. “How is he different?”
“He’s the councelor in training,” Aurelia continued in a vague tone. “There are things he learns we don’t. He learns to channel the earth in new ways. He’ll become the human vessel through the Elemental speaks.”
The human vessel, I repeated inside my mind, cold currents running through me. Terrible, inhumane images ran over my eyes. “Where is he now?”
“Aes?” Argenta repeated. “Probably with father. Learning to become a guardian. That kind of stuff.”
I nodded, staring into emptiness. Something scratched my senses, moved in my eyes, hummed between my ears. But I heard nothing until someone slapped my cheek. It was Nolan – he had appeared next to me, replacing Argenta and Aurelia, who were now gone.

“Hilary!” he hissed, shaking my shoulders. He was incredibly strong – I could imagine him easily being able to throw me through the house if he wanted to. “Rilla’s calling us. On stage.”
“What?” I repeated, but had no time to think. We hurried through the crowd and up the stairs, now wet of champagne. Rilla smiled enthrallingly, her hair glowing wild red against the lanterns like I always imagined it. “I own the next song to my friends,” she said, a brave light in her eyes. From the way she looked at us I could tell she wasn’t high – yet she acted in a way I never would have dared in front of a hundred people. “Hilary and Nolan, do you have any proposals? Anything.”
“Nothing, unless you want to sing Like A Virgin,” Nolan shrugged. His eyes turned to me.

“Anything?” I asked slowly, trying to keep my eyes alone on Rilla to miss the fact we were standing on a stage under countless eyes. “I don’t know do you know it… but it’s my favorite song. Do you know Chasing Cars?”
“By Snow Patrol?” Rilla asked. “Of course I know it. I know every single song there is. I’m a musician, don’t forget it.”
And then she turned towards the audience, singing the first words of my favorite song. To my surprise, the band could play with after a short while, only with a few flaws. Their red cheeks and foreheads showed they were clearly high, their bloodshot eyes that they had cried. I knew how the night would end – they would lean to each other bawling when making their ending bow and join into a hug like it were the last time they would ever see each other again.

When I watched at the band play together in (almost) perfect harmony, the audience sway to the music, couples lean into each other their eyes closed not caring which element they represented, I realized what the Elemental feast was all about: unity. In that moment all was only green and brown, only earthly figures dancing together to the music like leaves to wind. In that moment there was only pure energy.

That was also the moment when I saw him.

He stood in between two trees in the darkness, close to the gates. Unless the light of the lanterns would have reflected off his eyes I could have never seen him. They shone in the night like two silver coins.

I found my words forming his name soundlessly. The gazes of the audience burned hot on my cheeks, but I couldn’t get my eyes off him. Rilla was in the third chorus, her eyes closed as she sang.
And then I ran, pushing myself through the crowd, the swaying bodies of the drunken teenagers. The lights flared in my eyes as blinding flashes, swirling fireflies through the air. The music made the air vibrate, resonate together with the earth’s rhythm. My heartbeat was everywhere, and when I reached him I could only hear the blood pounding in my ears.

“She is a good singer,” were his first words. He leaned slackly against a tree trunk, looking refreshed.

“It’s not why you are here,” I said, staring at the way he was dressed. I could notice he had changed his clothes to a green tee and pants the same color. This time they were his size. “Where did you get those from?”
“I heard there was a party tonight,” he answered. “These were the best clothes I could come up with.”
“You didn’t steal them?”
Fera’s eyebrows furrowed. “Steal? Why? I am not a thief.”
“Yeah,” I breathed with exhaustion. “If you still sleep in a ditch, how come can you look so… fresh?”
Fera smiled idly, picking his fingernails. Normally it could have been an arrogant gesture, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. “I am very sure it is not why you decided to come to me. Have you thought of my offer?”
“An offer?” I repeated incredulously. “Is that what you call it?”
“Well?”
A sigh erupted deep from my throat as I took a leaning position. “I still haven’t decided what I think of you.”
“But could it work?”
“Could what work?” I raised my tone. “We… nothing can become of me and you, of us, if that’s what you think. Don’t you listen to the lyrics? ‘I don’t know where, confused about how as well, just know that these things will never change for us at all.’ It’s how I think of you.”
Fera tilted his shoulders nonchalantly. “Oh yes, I listened to the lyrics. I listened to them well. They also say ‘All that I am, all that I ever was, is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see.’”

I could feel my cheeks flushing. “Are you hitting on me?”
Fera’s laugh was indefinable. “It is how I think of you. When I look into your eyes I see myself. I see a part of me which I have lost.”
A huff of exasperation escaped between my lips. The band began to play ‘I Could Stay Away Forever’, and I sighed mentally of relief. At least it didn’t have any ambiguous lyrics. “You make me mad! It’s like… like trying to make a contract with someone who speaks a different language. They’ll start offering you coconuts and bananas in exchange of golden coins and- why are you laughing?”
“What are you talking about? You should hear yourself!”

I buried my head in my hands with an exclamation. “Shut up! Don’t make fun of my way of speech!”
Fera passed a hand over his face like he was wiping off the tears of joy. “Let’s make this easier,” he began, pointing at a spot little further away in the woods, a spot between two stones which looked like a great hideout. “Let’s go over there.”
“No way,” my eyes widened as I thought of the broken branches Nolan had been talking about. “I’m not going out there.”
“Are you afraid of the dark?”
“No,” I exclaimed. “I just don’t want to get eaten.”
“By who? Me?” Fera asked amusedly. “We have already gone through this. I am human, human just like you. I promise not to scratch your wrists open or suck your neck-“
“Human boys do that too,” I raised my brows. “Are you quite sure of this?”
There was begging in Fera’s eyes. “Did you follow me off the stage only to turn down every offer I make? You could need regular company. I can see your friends out there are not in their most presentable state.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Alex in the distance, now shirtless, running around the yard after a horde of giggling girls who apparently had also been soaked. Some guy looking disturbingly like Nolan watched a group of older guys pour foam into the fountain. The band members were struggling to hit their notes right, and I still couldn’t see Aes.

“Won’t they see us from there?”
“They won’t,” Fera assured, his eyes on my still wet hair. Alex and the girls were disturbingly close to us, and I rather would have not run into him again that night. Or ever.

And compared to a shithead like him, wasn’t Fera quite… nice?
“Very well,” I agreed, following him deeper to the woods. The haze hung in the distance, making the deepest of the woods only green and black, but right above us there was a starry spot, and beneath the roof the foliage gave the forest stars shone unbelievably bright and white.

When we got to the stones, Fera sat in between them, his head resting on moist lichen like a pillow. As he gestured me to sit next to him, the lyrics of Chasing Cars rang in my head. ‘If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?’

There was distance between us and the air was cold, but I didn’t feel it. I only looked at the stars, the sounds of the party ringing somewhere in the background, like I was floating millions of miles away.

“Now, talk,” Fera said.
”What?”
“Anything,” his voice reduced to a whisper. Somehow in that second I was very sure no-one was aware of us being there, like we were little children hiding in their fortress built of blankets. “Just like you spoke to me when we first met. Just… talk.”
In the distance a star blinked right before clouds passed over it. “Sometimes when I was little I and mamma went outside in the night to watch the stars,” I began, pausing. “There’s something in their light which was comforting. We would just lay there for hours, hand in hand, watching clouds drift over us. My mamma would talk to me about the earth and how she loved the feel of the grass under her skin: that if she could, she would be a part of it. And I never understood her because I could only see the stars and close my eyes, still seeing them. And I would breathe the night-air and lay on my place until I lost touch off the tips of my toes and felt immaterial, like light – like wind. In some other way, everywhere.”
There was a silence and I turned my head into Fera’s direction. I noticed he had been looking at me all the time I had spoken.

“Why do you do this?” I asked, my voice but a breath of cool air. “How-“
Fera silenced me by raising a finger. “Shh,” he cooed, his eyes on me. For some reason there was nothing awkward in the moment, as idiotic as it sounded – hiding between two stones inside the woods when there was a party around us. “The air,” Fera spoke, his words departing as a puff of vapor. “Doesn’t it feel cold?”
“No,” I said almost soundlessly. “It feels… good. To be blunt,” I laughed sharply, closing my eyes, “I feel better than I’ve felt for days. All this stressing out… it’s been killing me. Everything’s changed so fast. Suddenly I have to be something I’ve never been before… someone’s friend, someone’s sister, someone’s daughter. And in the same time I’m expected to decide whether my friends are really good for me, whether my sister acts like a sister enough to call her one, whether my father really is who he is claimed to be. I know you can’t understand a thing, but you don’t care, I guess. All this picking on you… it’s not how I wanted it to be. I don’t want things to be this way.”
“They don’t have to be that way,” said Fera. Things don’t have to be anything. I don’t want you to become anything you aren’t for me or for anyone else. Just-“
But now it was my time to silence him. I rolled over, sealing his lips with a finger. His eyes widened, but he said nothing, and I rose up gently, sitting next to him.

“I accept your offer,” I said. “We may see each other again. But there is one condition.”
Fera got up, leaning onto his knees. “And what is that?”

“That things will never change between us,” I continued. “I know it is impossible. After we take you to the council on Sunday, Hestia will probably somehow be able to awaken your memories or at least make you remember your element. You will move together with your guardian. Perhaps even become a councelor. Perhaps find your old self and find out you have never seen me before, that I only look like someone you have known. Perhaps you will forget me. But my only wish right now is that things would be like this always, that we could meet at nighttime and watch the stars and for a swift second forget there is a world around us. And until things change my wish lives.”
Fera’s expression was indefinable as he looked at me through a fountain of dark hair. The sounds around us were starting to recover, his voice become distant. “I accept your condition,” he replied after a pause, pulling his hair beneath his ears. “But before I leave, there is one thing you should know. I know you. It’s not just an illusion, just a trick of mind. It’s the very first thing I knew when I saw you. And you know me too.”
“Yes,” I answered quickly as I rose up on my feet. “I know you. You remind me of mamma.”
There was a long silence when we only stared at each other bewilderedly, like the world around us was beginning to fall and it were the last thing we could do. When I finally blinked my eyes noticing they had started to water, he had already turned around and walked into the haze.

The first thing I realized when returning back to the party was the time had passed.

Instead of the familiar band members on the stage, some amateur musicians had grabbed huge bass drums and played with them like joyous children. Despite all the drinks spilled the ground was empty of all litter and looked as perfect as it had when we had arrived. The fountain had turned into a huge bubble bath, and naked teenagers – both boys and girls, swam in it like it was a gigantic hot tub. Some youngsters were passed out on the yard in the most bizarre places, but none of them were familiar. The first two people I ran into were Aurelia and Argenta, who both had wetlooks like Alex had stuffed their heads into the fountain too.

“You’re still here,” Aurelia said amusedly as she saw me stroll out of the woods. “I thought you left together with your friends.”
“Nolan and Rilla left already?” I asked. “When?”
“Around half an hour ago,” Argenta estimated. “Rilla looked okay – she shone, but she wasn’t really pleased with Nolan’s condition. Apparently he had too much green wine to drink.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t of his free will,” I said, thinking of how official Nolan had seemed in the beginning of the evening. “How about the others? Have you seen Chyse? Or Talia?”
The siblings shook their heads simultaneously. “We were going to ask you a same type of question. Have you seen Aes?”
My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “You said he went training with your father,” I began. “Wasn’t he there?”
“Well,” Aurelia sighed, “Our father wasn’t actually in the mood to talk – he just feels ashamed right now, but we trust him as he said he hadn’t seen Aes the whole evening. When was the last time you saw him?”

“Hours ago,” I answered, remembering the nervous girl in her red, bouncy curls. “Just before a guest threw up into the fountain. Just before he followed you he told me we’d meet again tonight, that he had more riddles to tell.”
The twin’s expression was all confusion. Something in that look didn’t feel right – it made me feel rigid inside, just like Rilla must have felt when he thought Chyse had gone missing.

“He never followed us to the fountain,” they spoke in monotone.

“That’s… awkward,” I croaked, my mouth dry. “Everyone’s suddenly gone. First Talia, then Circus, Chyse – and now Aes. It’s hard to believe they’d be holding a party of their own somewhere.”
“A strange coincidence,” either of the siblings spoke. I didn’t pay attention to whom – my gaze was fixed into emptiness, where the fountain figures frolicked like ignorant children. The night air hadn’t felt cold before, but a breeze was beginning to freeze me from within. Shivers ran down my spine.

“It’s starting to get cold,” Aurelia said, noticing my goosebumps. “Unless you are willing to join the pool party-“
“It’s smarter to go home,” I finished the sentence. “I think I’m too sober to do anything else. But it was a nice party. Perhaps someday teens will learn to enjoy life without alcohol. But I think I got the point. It’s unity.”
The siblings smiled. “You’re smart. That’s what a councelor needs.”
“Yeah,” I gave a laugh, thinking of Alex in his angelic dreadlocks. “Unlike that shithead Alex. I guess we’ll be seeing each other on Sunday in the council summoning.”
The twins nodded, giving me a final glance. But before I could turn towards the gates which awaited me like a gaping mouth, Argenta spoke. “One last advice,” she said, pointing at a couple of teens who were apparently heading the same way as I. “Don’t go alone.”