Elementals: The Prophecy of Shadows

by Michelle Madow

  My fingertips were turning numb from the cold, and I pulled the sleeves of my coat over my hands. “Do you have any idea what ‘it’ is?” I asked her.

  “Something important.” She held her gaze with mine, not backing down.

  “Okay,” I said. “And how do you plan on getting it?”

  “I’ll jump.”

  I did a double take of her outfit—designer jeans, a blue silk shirt, a black winter coat with fur lining the hood, and, of course, the knee-high stiletto boots. It wasn’t exactly the correct attire for jumping into the ocean in the winter.

  “You’ll freeze to death,” Blake said what was surely on all of our minds. “And you’re not dressed for swimming.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She didn’t even flinch at the fact that she would ruin what was probably more than a thousand dollars worth of clothing. “Water is sort of my thing.”

  I said nothing, because if any of us were going to jump into the ocean in the middle of January, it would be Danielle.

  Chris let out an uneasy laugh. “What are you going to do—change the temperature of the ocean to turn it into a giant hot tub? Because the ocean is kind of … big.”

  “Thanks, Genius.” Danielle rolled her eyes. “I realized that.”

  “Just trying to help.” He grinned and flipped his hair out of his eyes.

  “You should try,” I threw my opinion out there. If Danielle’s instincts were correct, she could be helping us on the journey referred to in the prophecy.

  She could also become hypothermic and drown, but I suspected that wouldn’t be the case.

  “I wasn’t asking for your permission, even if you are in the center of all this,” she said to me. Her tone was as cold as the weather, and everyone went quiet. The only sounds were the whooshing of the wind and the crashing waves. “I’m doing this, and don’t any of you try to stop me.”

  She spun on her heel and dove off the dock, icy water splashing up at us as she disappeared beneath the surface.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I stared at the place where Danielle had disappeared, waiting for her to resurface. But the water remained calm. There was no trace of her—she’d dove so deep that she was impossible to see.

  “I’m going in after her.” Blake widened his stance and studied the water, like he was building the courage to jump.

  “No. You can’t do that,” I said, taking a step towards him. He stared at me, shocked—and a little annoyed—that I’d told him what to do. But I hated the thought of Blake getting hurt, so I continued, “Danielle has power over the water. You don’t. She’ll be fine, but you’ll freeze to death if you go in there.”

  Chris stepped closer to the edge of the dock. “So we’re supposed to do nothing?” he asked. “She could be drowning, and you want us to stand here and watch?”

  “Yes.” Kate nodded. “She’s the one who has power over water, and she seemed confident that she could handle this. She’s most likely fine, but if any of us go in there, the water will be so cold that we won’t be able to tell which way is up. Let’s give Danielle a chance. She’s supposed to do this. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be the only one who could ‘hear’ whatever she was talking about.”

  “Or maybe she’s losing her mind,” Chris said, looking worriedly at the spot where she’d jumped. “No one can stay under water for this long.”

  “Chris is right,” Blake said through gritted teeth, the tension in his jaw visible as he spoke. “We have to help her. I’m going in after her.” He took off his shoes and threw his coat to the ground, diving into the ocean before any of us could say no.

  I stared at the spot where he’d disappeared. A sinking feeling passed through my stomach, growing worse when he didn’t resurface. Now was the time to create a brilliant plan to save them both, but I froze, unable to think of anything. Too much time was passing. Danielle might be able to stay under for this long, but Blake couldn’t.

  He could be dying, and I was powerless to help him.

  “Should we still do nothing?” Chris asked, his voice shaking. “Since it’s working so well.”

  The water stirred, and Danielle’s head popped out of the surface, her hair matted in place, mascara dripping down her cheeks. There was an arm wrapped around her shoulders—Blake’s. He floated next to her, unconscious. She treaded water, the muscles in her face strained from holding onto him, but she managed to keep his head above the surface.

  “Which one of you idiots let him jump in after me?” she yelled.

  I met her death glare with one of my own. “None of us let him,” I said, my throat tightening at the sight of Blake floating next to her. “He jumped before we could stop him.”

  She reached the dock and eased his arm from her shoulders, and Chris hurried to the edge to lift him up. Blake’s body thumped as it hit the wood. His eyes were closed, his lips a sickly shade of blue, and his face was so chalky that he looked like a mix between an ancient statue and a corpse.

  If he was dead … I wasn’t sure if my healing powers extended that far. Just the thought made chest hollow, and I clenched my fists so tightly that my nails dug into my palms. He had to be okay.

  I ran over to him and held my hand to his cheek, unaware of the tears streaming down my face until they landed on his pale skin. Then I felt a faint glow of life coming from his body. He was alive. So there had to be something I could do.

  This was nothing like fixing a cut, but I grabbed his hand anyway, determined to heal him.

  Instead of closing my eyes, I kept them open, focusing on his pale face as I pulled white energy out of the air. Warmth rushed through my veins, energy pulsing through my body as the center of our palms opened to each other, and I pushed the energy I’d gathered towards him. Just when it felt like I wouldn’t be able to pull out any more energy from the Universe, his eyes snapped open, and he leaned to the side to cough the water out of his lungs.

  My head felt fuzzy, like I was about to pass out myself, but that didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was that Blake was okay.

  Danielle rushed over to him and wrapped her arms around him, shoving me to the side. My elbow collided with the dock, a sharp pain shooting up my arm. I rubbed it, glaring at her. I’d just saved Blake’s life. She could at least pretend to be grateful.

  “What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “You jumped into the ocean to try saving me and nearly drowned,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “As if I needed saving. Water’s my element.”

  I sat up and healed my elbow, stopping the throbbing that would surely turn into a bruise in the next few hours. Then I looked over at Danielle. She had been dripping wet a second ago, but now she—and her clothes—were completely dry.

  She was more powerful than I’d realized.

  She took Blake’s hand—the same hand I’d held while saving his life—and all of the water soaking his clothes glided off him, forming a puddle on the dock and slithering back to the ocean.

  “Thanks,” he said, running his hands through his now-dry hair.

  “Of course.” She reached for his hand, and while he didn’t grab it back, he didn’t drop it, either. He just let it sit in his.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked her.

  “I almost got it before you jumped in after me,” she said, laughing now that it was clear he was going to be fine. “Now I have to go back in and get it.”

  It was tempting to say something about how at least he’d cared enough to try helping her, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Kate frowned and looked at Danielle. “What exactly was it that you were looking for?” she asked.

  “Some sort of jar,” Danielle replied. “It looked tied down, or attached to a stone, but I’m going to try getting it anyway.”

  “It can’t hurt to try,” Chris agreed. Then he looked at Blake and said, “And don’t go playing Superman again. Or I guess Aquaman would make more sense.”

  “Don’t worry.” B
lake smirked. “I’ll leave that to Danielle. I’ve had enough of swimming in the freezing cold ocean for the day.”

  “All right,” Danielle said. “Here goes nothing.” She spun on her heel and dove back in, not creating a splash this time. It was like she’d become part of the water.

  Figuring it would be at least a minute until she returned, I checked to see how Blake was doing. His face and lips had returned to a healthy color. Another rush of relief passed through my body, and I realized that if he hadn’t helped me practice using my powers last night, he could be dead right now. My throat tightened at the thought, and I swallowed to make the lump go away.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, stepping towards him.

  “Thanks to you,” he said. “I don’t know what you did, but…” He paused, his eyes full of concern. “It didn’t drain too much of your energy, right?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, although I suspected that if I had to do whatever I’d done for a bit longer, it might have become a problem. “I’ll just take it easy for the next hour or so.”

  The probability of that happening was slim-to-none, but no one said anything otherwise.

  “Just don’t go fighting any monsters,” he said with a wink.

  I stood still, not knowing how to respond. Kate and Chris still didn’t know about the two-headed hound from last night. That must have sounded completely strange to them.

  Kate shuffled her feet and looked back and forth between the two of us. “Right,” she said, her forehead scrunched. “No monster fighting. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Danielle resurfaced before I could respond, and she lifted a large object into the air. “I got it!” she exclaimed.

  I squinted, trying to make out what she was holding. It looked like a jar with two handles. The deep orange background reminded me of red clay before it’s put into the kiln, and brown images decorated the sides. I was too far away to make out what they were.

  She swam to the dock and placed the jar down. Then she hoisted herself up, the wooden planks creaking under her weight. She was already completely dry. The jar was dry as well.

  Kate knelt in front of the jar and reached forward to touch it, but she pulled her hand back at the last second, as if afraid of damaging it. “This is beautiful,” she said. “Look at the details in the paintings.”

  I knelt down next her to get a better look. While the paintings on the jar were tiny, they held more detail than I ever could have imagined. The largest section featured a bearded man in an elegant chariot pulled by a horse, his hair blowing in the wind, a surge of water coming up behind him. His eyes looked fiercely outward, and he held a trident in his hand. Packs of horses galloped around the chariot, and a winged horse in the sky looked down on him. He had to be Poseidon—the god of the sea.

  “It’s like Pandora’s Jar,” Kate whispered, still fixated on the paintings.

  “Jar?” I sat back on my heels and looked at her. “I thought Pandora had a box.”

  “There was a mistranslation from Greek to Latin,” she explained. “It was actually a jar.”

  “And this is the jar from the myth?” I tilted my head in disbelief. That sounded pretty far-fetched.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not the same jar. Although Pandora’s Jar was created by Hephaestus—the god of fire, blacksmiths, and artisans. Maybe he created this one, too.”

  “Maybe,” I said, although I doubted it. Greek gods didn’t just come down to Earth and drop handmade jars into the ocean. Actually, from what Darius said in class the other day, the gods rarely came down to Earth at all.

  Danielle scooted closer and held her hands above the jar. “I’m going to open it,” she announced, looking at each of us for confirmation. No one said anything—we all knew she was going to open it whether we agreed or not—and she wrapped her fingers around the handle, easing it upward like she was afraid it might break.

  I braced myself for something crazy to happen—an explosion, a flash of light, a sonic boom. But the jar remained the same.

  Danielle leaned forward to see what was inside, her hair draping in front of her face. “There’s a piece of paper in there,” she said, lowering her hand into the jar. Something shuffled inside, and she brought out a piece of rolled up parchment. It reminded me of the one Darius had showed me of the original prophecy. However, unlike the prophecy, which was yellowed with curled edges, this parchment was as good as new. It was also completely dry.

  “It’s immune to the elements.” Kate’s mouth formed into a small circle. She leaned forward, tucking her hair behind her ears as she examined the paper. “The jar had to have been crafted by Hephaestus. Almost every magical, finely-made object is.”

  Danielle unrolled the paper and examined it.

  “What does it say?” Kate asked.

  “Travel north to the King of the Sky,” she began, her voice rising as she continued, “He stands amongst the stones of the dead, accessible to the one who can fly high.” She lowered the parchment and looked at each of us, like she was waiting for one us to tell her what it meant.

  “Fly north to the sky?” Chris looked up at the sun and used his hand as a visor, squinting in the direct light. “Anyone got a private plane? Or a rocket?”

  Kate laughed, but she sounded more on edge than anything else. “I don’t think that’s what it means, especially considering that when this was written three hundred years ago, people had no way to get up there.”

  “But it’s a prophecy.” Chris elongated the last word. “Sure, they didn’t have planes yet, but they could prophesize their existence.”

  Danielle played with the paper, looking back and forth between Chris and Kate. “The prophecy got us what we needed by driving east, so now we should head north,” she said, glancing back at the car in the parking lot.

  Thinking back over the ride to the ocean, an idea popped into my mind. “The stones of the dead,” I repeated, surprised I hadn’t realized it immediately. “The cemetery. We passed it on the way here.”

  “Of course.” Kate snapped her fingers. “The statue of Zeus—the King of the Sky.”

  “There’s a statue of Zeus in the cemetery?” I asked. That was the most random thing I’d heard all day.

  “Right in the back of it,” Blake said. “It’s taller than a house. We always figured our ancestors put it there to remind us where we came from. Urban legend says it’s haunted, so middle schoolers like to sneak out to the cemetery at night to see if anything happens.”

  “And does it?” I asked.

  “No.” He laughed. “That’s why it’s called an urban legend.”

  “Right,” I said. Urban legends: fiction. Greek mythology: fact. I would have to remember that. “Then what’s so important about the statue?”

  “You’ve heard of the Seven Wonders of the World, right?” Kate asked, standing up and stretching her arms behind her back.

  “Like the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal?”

  “Those are the Seven Wonders of the Medieval World,” she explained. “Same idea, but it’s based off the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

  “So …” I paused to recall the old monuments I’d learned about in school. “The Pyramid of Giza?”

  Kate nodded, a small smile forming on her lips. “That’s the only one still in existence today,” she said. “One of the other Ancient Wonders is the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. There’s a replica right here in the Kinsley cemetery. Art History professors come here all the time to check it out, but the Parthenon in Nashville attracts more tourists because it’s way more famous.”

  “There’s a Parthenon in Nashville?” I asked.

  She nodded again. “Because of all the higher education institutions there, Nashville’s called ‘the Athens of the South,’” she said, making quote signs with her hands. “The city built it in the late 1800’s. But the Statue of Zeus here is where the idea of recreating ruined monuments in the States came from. It was built ten years before Nashville’s Parth
enon.”

  Danielle clanked the lid back on the jar and picked it up. “Enough with the history lesson,” she said, hugging the jar to her chest. “The statue is super close, and it’s the best thing we have to go on. So let’s check it out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Zeus towered over the mausoleums, rivaling the height of the nearby birch trees. He sat on top of a podium that was about seven feet tall. Carved mythological scenes decorated the sides of his throne, and his left hand held a scepter with an eagle on top. His right hand balanced what looked like an angel in his palm. His shoulder length hair and long beard resembled the image of Poseidon on the jar, but while the Sea God’s hair blew loosely in the wind, Zeus’s was symmetrical, not a strand out of place. His eyes stared forward—powerful and determined.

  “That’s incredible,” I said, my lips parted in awe.

  Even though Kate must have seen the statue before, her eyes were wide as she took it in. “It really is,” she said. “It’s an exact reproduction of the original. It’s made of ivory, the throne is wood with gold painted carvings, and Zeus’s hair, beard, and clothing are all made of gold. I never get bored of looking at it.”

  I didn’t bother to ask how she knew all of that. Knowing Kate, she’d researched it eons ago and still remembered every detail.

  “You see the goddess that Zeus is holding?” she asked, pointing to the figure in his right hand.

  The goddess was what I’d originally thought was an angel. Tiny compared to Zeus, she stood proudly in his palm, her wings wide open behind her. She held one hand up in the air, pointing forward like she was preparing for battle.

  I nodded for Kate to continue.

  “That’s the goddess Nike,” she explained. “The goddess of victory that Darius told you about during your first day of class. Now do you see how her wings look like the swoosh?”

  I walked around to look at the goddess from the side. “Sort of,” I said. “But I wouldn’t have noticed unless someone had pointed it out.”

  “You guys can study the statue all you want another day,” Danielle said. “But we’re looking for something here, and we should try to figure out what it is. Maybe it’s another jar.”