Elementals: The Prophecy of Shadows

by Michelle Madow

  “What are you doing?” I gasped and reached forward to stop him. “You’ll burn yourself.”

  “No.” He pulled away from me, and as the flames touched his skin, he didn’t even flinch. “Watch.”

  The fire grew taller and brighter, and then he turned the lighter off. The flames should have gone out. Instead, they turned blue, growing hotter and burning stronger than ever, fully surrounding the pendant. He was holding fire, and his hand wasn’t burning. He was controlling the flames. Which, according to what I’d learned this week about how our abilities worked, wasn’t supposed to be possible.

  But I couldn’t deny what I was seeing in front of my eyes.

  Finally the fire died out, and he held the pendant up for me to see. The clay sun had hardened completely. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that it had been in the kiln for hours.

  “How did you do that?” I brushed my finger over the pendant, but it was scorching hot, and I yanked my hand away.

  “I don’t know.” He stared at the tiny sun, looking as transfixed as I felt. “Yesterday I was lighting the fireplace in my house and it felt like I could make the flames move like I wanted. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, so I went to my room to experiment.” His jaw hardened, and he raised his gaze to meet mine. “I wasn’t imagining it. I could control the fire.”

  “But that’s impossible,” I said. “We can’t affect the physical world like that. Right?”

  “The only explanation I could come up with is that something happened when we felt that jolt under the comet, and whatever it was changed us,” he said. “It gave me this ability.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe this was something you would have been able to do even without the comet.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he said. “Then I remembered a bit about Hephaestus—the Greek god of fire—and I looked him up. Not even he could control fire with his mind.” He glanced at the pendant again, and then re-focused on me, his eyes burning with intensity. “I thought that since this all started when you moved here, you might know what’s going on.”

  “Last week, I didn’t know that witches existed,” I reminded him. “All of this is new to me. I’m the least qualified person for you to ask.”

  “But you were with us under the comet, and I know you’re picking up on how to use your abilities abnormally fast,” he said. “That’s why I had to talk to you today. Have you been able to do anything like I just did with the fire? Anything that affects the physical world?”

  Disappointment surged through my chest as I realized why he’d brought me here. Until now, despite the complications, I’d hoped he was interested in me and wanted to spend time with me. That he thought I was someone he could trust. That he was as drawn to me as much as I was to him.

  But he didn’t feel that way at all. He was just trying to get information from me.

  I shouldn’t have expected anything more. And as I was standing here, crushed, he was waiting for me to explain his newfound ability. I had to set him straight. I was no one special. And I certainly didn’t have the answers he thought I did.

  “I haven’t been able to do anything like that.” I focused on the pendant, purposefully avoiding looking at him. “Even if something were different with my abilities, I wouldn’t know, since I didn’t even know I had abilities until a week ago.”

  “What about Kate or Chris?” he asked. “Have they mentioned anything unusual?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “But something strange did happen at tennis yesterday…” I paused, hoping I wasn’t about to say something totally off base. But he nodded for me to continue, so I did. “I was getting a drink of water, and the fountain went all crazy on me, like it was possessed. Danielle was standing right behind me. She was upset that I might get her spot on the team.”

  His eyebrows knit together. “Do you think she got jealous and doused you with water? That she controlled it? Like I controlled the fire?”

  “I don’t know.” I ran my hands through my hair, since it sounded silly when he put it that way. “Maybe. Or maybe the water fountain was faulty, and the timing was a coincidence.”

  We both looked at each other, saying nothing. I could tell that neither of us believed it.

  “Thanks for telling me,” he finally said. “I’ll ask Danielle about it later.”

  I nodded and glanced around the empty stairwell. “We should head to class,” I said, shifting my feet. “We’re late.”

  I didn’t actually want to leave—I would have skipped class entirely to spend time with Blake—but being alone with him was just going to get my hopes up. I had to be stronger than that. I had to fight whatever I was feeling for him. Because he didn’t return those feelings, and it would be easier for me once I accepted that.

  I reached for the door, determined with my resolve, but he held his hand out to stop me.

  “Hold on,” he said, and I was helpless to do anything but still at his touch. “I didn’t make this for myself. I made it for you.” He lifted the sun pendant, motioning for me to take it.

  I grazed my fingers along its surface, studying the details he’d engraved. A small face sat in the center, and two layers of rays extended in all directions. It was beautiful.

  “Wow,” I said softly, taking it from him. It was still warm from the fire, and it pulsed at my touch. “Thank you.”

  “I made it for you because you remind me of the sun.”

  I took a sharp breath inward. If he were anyone else, I would have thought this meant something. That I meant something to him. But he had a girlfriend, and I didn’t want to be a side-girl, or a fleeting fascination.

  I wanted the real thing.

  So I stepped back and slipped the pendant into my bag. “We should go,” I said.

  Disappointment flashed over his eyes, but he opened the door, motioning for me to go first.

  Everyone stared at us when we entered class late. Luckily, Darius believed us when we said we had extra clean up duty at the end of ceramics. We took our normal seats and settled in, but it was impossible for me to focus. My thoughts kept wandering to Blake and the small clay pendant in my bag.

  I reminded him of the sun.

  For some reason, the comparison just felt … right.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In homeroom on Friday morning, every desk had a glass of water on top of it. I sat next to Kate, eyeing my glass curiously. I suspected that I wasn’t supposed to drink it.

  “Something strange happened with my lab experiment for bio,” she said the moment I sat down. “You know how out of the three plants we’re growing, the one with no direct sunlight is supposed to grow the slowest? And the one with the most sunlight should grow the fastest?”

  “Yeah…” I said, wondering where she was going with this. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how the results for the lab would turn out.

  “I got to school early to check on my plants.” Her eyes went distant, like she was seeing what had happened again in her mind. “They were larger than anyone else’s, but get this—the one with no light grew just as much as the one with light.” She wrung her hands together, chewing on her lower lip. “That’s not how the lab was supposed to turn out. It doesn’t make sense.”

  I searched my mind for an explanation, but couldn’t think of anything. “Maybe someone moved your plants around?” I finally said.

  “No.” She shook her head. “We labeled them ahead of time. They weren’t mixed up.”

  The bell rang before I could come up with another possible answer, and Darius walked to the front of the room. He clasped his hands behind him and looked around.

  “Today we’ll be working on directing energy into a drink, such as water, to affect someone’s mood when they ingest it,” he told us. “I want you to focus on an approved color of your choosing. If you’re an upperclassman you should have this down by now, so this should be practice. I’d like to see the sophomores getting the hang of it, and freshme
n, don’t feel badly if you find it difficult.” He scanned his eyes over the freshman in the front row. “If you still haven’t succeeded in gathering energy, please work on that instead. Skills build on each other, and you’ll need that one to be successful with this.”

  He sat down at his desk, which I took as a cue to begin.

  I decided to use the color orange. A main quality orange represented was strength, and with everything going on in my life, it couldn’t hurt to have more of that.

  Ready to start, I looked around to see what everyone else was doing. Some students had closed their eyes, and others stared at their glasses with such intensity that it looked like they were trying to make them combust with a single thought.

  I closed my eyes and immediately sensed the orange energy around me. The tingling started in my palms—rushing inwards like waves of light traveling through my body. The orbs of energy grew larger, swirling together until they felt like they were going to burst through my skin. Unable to contain the energy for any longer, I opened my eyes and touched the glass, shooting orange beams of imaginary light out of my palms.

  A loud crack echoed through the room as the glass exploded, shards and water flying in every direction.

  I stared at the place where the glass had been, my eyes wide, my palms flat on the table. Shards of glass were everywhere, and there was a puddle of water in the center of my desk, inching closer to the edge.

  Had I really been responsible for that? Everyone stared at me, and heat rushed to my face, but this time it wasn’t because of the energy. I just wanted my classmates to stop gaping at me like I was some sort of freak-witch.

  “I knocked over the glass,” I lied. “It was an accident. I’m fine.”

  Kate appeared in front of me with a roll of paper towels, and she did her best to gather the glass and mop up the water. I tore off some towels to help.

  “Nicole.” Kate’s voice wavered, and she pointed at my wrist. “You’re bleeding.”

  I looked at where she was pointing and froze. A piece of glass had embedded itself inside of my forearm, blood seeping out from the sides. The shard was about the size of my baby toe—big enough to cause damage, but small enough that you had to be close to notice it. It stung, but it didn’t hurt. Not as badly as I would have expected. It was like I was looking at someone else’s injury—not my own.

  Maybe I was in shock.

  Not wanting to bring more attention to myself than I already had, I lowered my arm under the desk so no one could see. Homeroom was almost over. After the bell rang I could walk quietly to the nurse’s office and get cleaned up. There was no need to cause more of a commotion.

  Then the pain hit, like a swarm of bees gathering around the cut and stinging at the same time. Not knowing what else to do, I closed my eyes and yanked the glass out of my arm, biting my lower lip to stop myself from screaming. Once it was out, I dropped it on the floor and held my hand over the wound to slow the bleeding. It burned so badly, like someone had set my arm on fire.

  My head spun, and I pressed harder on the cut, trying to hold the skin together. What good was being a witch if I couldn’t fix this?

  Maybe I could fix it. I didn’t know the limits of what I could do. And so, remembering what Blake had told me about white energy and how it could fix things, I gathered as many colors as I could, pictured them combining to form white, and directed them towards the cut. I let the light flow out of my palm and into my arm, imagining my skin stitching and melding back together.

  Soon the throbbing calmed, and I lifted my hand, forcing myself to look.

  My skin was now perfectly smooth.

  I had no time to think about what I’d done. Instead, I grabbed a wet paper towel and rubbed it over my arm, cleaning off the blood. There wasn’t too much, but it was enough that people would ask questions when they couldn’t find an obvious wound. After cleaning up, I put the bloodied towel in my bag, which was gross, but I needed to hide the evidence. I was about to slide on my hoodie when Kate grabbed my arm.

  “Let me see that.” She rotated it to search for the cut. When she saw that it wasn’t there, she stared at me, her eyes wide in question.

  “See what?” I tilted my head, trying to play it off like everything was fine. Others had gathered around to help clean up, and I didn’t want them to know what had happened. They didn’t need another reason to think I was a freak. Hopefully Kate understood that I would tell her later, and wouldn’t say anything now.

  She dropped my arm and frowned. “Nothing,” she mumbled, gathering the wet towels and taking them to the trash.

  Once she was gone, Chris scooted his chair closer to mine. “How did you do that?” he asked, nearly bouncing out of his seat.

  “Do what?” My brain felt like it was in a haze. I looked at the clock to see how long it had been. Only a minute had passed.

  How could all of that have happened in such a short amount of time?

  “Your glass looked like it spontaneously combusted.” He laughed and pushed some hair off his forehead.

  I relaxed, realizing he was talking about the glass exploding and not the cut on my arm. “It didn’t spontaneously combust,” I said, trying to laugh it off. “I knocked it over, and it broke.”

  “You must have knocked it over pretty hard.” He looked at the place where the shards had been and shook his head.

  I shrugged, since that wasn’t what had happened, and Chris seemed to know it, too.

  Darius stepped to the front of the room and cleared his throat. “I’m going to let you all leave early today,” he said, and everyone cheered. Then he turned to me, his eyes sharp. “Nicole, please meet with me here after school. I’d like to go over some of the material you need to catch up on.”

  I nodded, since I didn’t have much of a choice. I also didn’t know how much Darius had seen.

  All I knew was that what had just happened to me definitely wasn’t normal.

  And that he was the only one who might have answers.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The rest of the day passed in a haze. It was like there was cotton in my brain and I was watching everything happen around me instead of being there myself. I was more than ready for the weekend, so when the final bell rang, all I wanted was to go home. But I couldn’t skip the meeting with Darius.

  The door to the library classroom was open when I arrived. Darius sat at his desk, reading something from a piece of paper. He looked up when he heard me enter.

  “Nicole,” he said, removing his glasses and placing them down. “Thank you for meeting with me. I had hoped to talk with you one-on-one before now, but things have been rather hectic since you arrived.”

  I felt bad that I hadn’t come to him sooner. It just seemed weird to talk to a teacher when I had friends like Kate, Chris, and Blake to help me along. Of course Darius wasn’t a normal teacher, but maybe I’d avoided talking with him because it would mean admitting that all of this was real.

  But at this point, did I really have a choice?

  “Sorry,” I apologized, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. “Things have been really crazy with moving and all.”

  “It must be difficult to adjust to so many changes,” he said, gesturing to the chair next to his desk. “Please sit. I’d like to show you something.”

  I made my way across the room and sat in the chair, crossing my legs and waiting for him to continue. But instead of saying anything, he pushed the paper he was reading towards me. I leaned forward to get a better look.

  It wasn’t actually paper. It was more like parchment—ancient and yellowed—and it only had a paragraph of writing on it in thick black ink. I ran my finger along the bottom of it, surprised by how rough it felt under my skin, and skimmed the perfect calligraphy:

  In the beginning of the new year, the Olympian comet will cross the sky and the wall will grow thin. Five representing each part of the world will work together to restore the balance, the power of the Aether igniting them. The Journey
will lead them East on the path to the Shadows, which will serve as their guide.

  It made no sense, and re-reading it didn’t help. Only the comet had any relevance. The rest might as well have been written in Ancient Greek.

  I looked back up at Darius and shrugged. “I don’t understand what this means.”

  He picked it up, locked it into a drawer, and pulled out a piece of paper that looked like it was from this century. It had the same thing written on it. “A girl named Abigail Goode wrote this a little more than three hundred years ago,” he said. “She was a witch who lived in Kinsley, and this is believed to be a prophecy. The Elder in charge of the Kinsley area—which would be myself—keeps watch over the original. This is a copy.” He placed the newer looking version in front of me. “I want you to hold onto it for now.”

  “What?” I did a double take and sat back. “Why me?”

  He studied me and folded his hands over his desk. “You’ve exemplified extreme natural ability with your power,” he said simply. “In just over a week you’ve mastered what takes most students months to learn. And what you did in class today…” His eyes lingered on the spot on my arm where the cut had been, and I covered it with my other hand. “Like I told you on your first day, our powers are mental, not physical. But you made that glass explode. Which shouldn’t be possible, but you did it.”

  I opened my mouth to protest—to give him the same excuse I’d given to Chris—but he held a hand up to stop me.

  “I saw what happened, and it won’t do either of us any good for you to deny it,” he said kindly. “I hope you know that I want to help you. I’ve talked with a few of the Head Elders, and while they have their theories, I believe you’re the key to deciphering this prophecy.”

  “Hold on.” My eyes widened at the possibility. “You think I can figure that out?”

  He nodded, his expression serious. “Yes, I think you can figure it out,” he said. “Because I believe you’re the one spoken of in the prophecy.”