The Steward

by Christopher Shields

  A quarter of the sun was now hidden. It has to be here, but where?

  Looking back at the boulder again, I put my hands on my head. “Think Maggie, think,” I whispered to myself, but there was nothing. I felt a little silly expecting to find an Air sign etched into stone. It doesn’t really make sense. As I stared at the stone, it dawned on me that I probably needed to look in the air. That didn’t help either.

  Even though I didn’t expect to pass the trial, I felt panicked—like I did when I took an exam with time running out. Think, Maggie. Calm down and think. Air… how do I narrow that down. “There’s more air here than island...” They’ll put it where you can reach it. “That’s true.”

  As I thought about it a little more, studying the boulder, I noticed it. The north side was shaped something like a big triangle. There was a dark strata line running across it about a third of the way up. A triangle bisected by a line—the symbol for Air, right there in front of me.

  I looked above the stone, half hoping to see a symbol floating in the air. Nothing. I knew better. I walked back around it to the east, on the narrow side, and stepped back. The entire boulder came to a narrow vertical point from top to bottom. The more I looked at it, the more it looked like the shape of a sword. That was a symbol for Air, too.

  This is in the right place, but how do I see the sign?

  In the cave, I had to control my body in order to control the stone, but the corresponding component in the Air symbol was Spirit. I still didn’t really know what that meant.

  “The sign has to be in the air, but where do I look?”

  Walking around it several times, I still didn’t see anything. The symbols in the gazebo flashed through my mind again, and I tried to remember what was different about the Air sign—my heart raced.

  “The waxing moon!”

  I quickly turned and searched the sky—it was crystal clear. I found the moon but it wasn’t a crescent tonight, it was nearly full. I remembered that the sword in the symbol was above the triangle—none of the other element signs had a symbol above them. The sword must be the key. I looked at the horizon and the sun was nearly below the hills on the western shore. It was still light out, but getting darker by the minute. Sweat ran down my face and I panted frantically. My skin tingled. The time! I’ve got to hurry! Once the sun disappeared behind the hills, I’d only have twenty or thirty minutes before nightfall.

  The minutes ticked by. I circled the boulder so many times I lost count. With each pass, I tried to think of something different. Huffing and puffing, I sounded like a cross between a hot-water kettle and an old steam locomotive. Annoyed, frustrated, tears of anger filled my eyes. This is so frickin’… It’s right here! Right here! Oh, for crying out loud!

  I checked the sky above the sword one more time and saw nothing, so I sat down about ten feet in front of it and tried to think. The key, I knew, was figuring out what Spirit meant. Aunt May had said that it involved looking beyond my own existence, developing an understanding of more than myself. She said much more about it, but my brain could only focus on those words.

  “Aaahhh,” I growled. “What does that mean?”

  Candace had told me about another meaning associated with Air and Spirit—the heavens. The sky was already turning indigo, getting darker by the moment. A few stars started to show up, and in the west the Evening Star twinkled brighter than the rest. I unconsciously stared at it while I tried to sort through the symbols again.

  I had another epiphany—I was here at twilight, the best time to see the Evening Star. I stood up and moved to the right so that it was directly above the sword. As I aligned them in my field of view, I caught the glimmer of a faint line in the air in front of me. When I moved a few inches forward, though, it disappeared. Slowly moving backward a few steps, I froze when the Air sign came into view. Oh, my gosh…

  It was faint, like the trace image of a sparkler swirling in the night, but it was there, right in front of me, suspended in air directly between the sword and the Evening Star. That was it—looking beyond myself literally meant looking beyond my immediate surroundings. The Evening Star was my guide.

  I lifted the pale green stone and held it in front of me approximately where the opening was in the gazebo sign. My heart raced as I saw a light appear in the stone, faint at first, but growing. I knew exactly what to do next—somehow. I willed the stone to stay in place, imagining the air cradling it, keeping it still. I let go.

  “Congratulations!”

  I turned and saw Sara smiling. She was suspended several feet above the ground in front of me, but it was Sara as I’d never seen her—young, vital and beautiful. Her hair was no longer silver but a golden color, and she was absolutely radiant. She didn’t appear any older than me. While not one of the tiny, gossamer-winged pixies of myths, she was as beautiful as any storybook fairy I’d ever imagined. Luminous skin delicately wrapped the elegant curve of her jaw, and a slight pink tint highlighted her cheekbones. Eyelashes, long, thick and golden, curved upward above her piercing black eyes. It touched me to see her this way—it was the first time she’d revealed herself to me in her preferred human form.

  “I can’t believe I figured it out!” I wiped the wetness away from my eyes.

  “I can, Maggie. You possess the same qualities as so many of your ancestors, and remember—most of them have been inclined to the Air element.”

  “But I’ve never really understood my place in the world. I’ve struggled so much with it, and I had no idea what Spirit really meant. I still don’t. I flunked career day.”

  She laughed, and said, “You misunderstood your Aunt. Don’t think of Spirit as a concept predicated on your place in the world,” emphasizing the term ever so slightly, “or as a construct that is somehow related to a skill or trade that fits seamlessly into a bigger picture. Spirit is not about the individual or individualistic pursuits. Think of it as your relationship to the world. Spirit is about being a part of the living world, being conscious of things beyond you—it is the search for a more perfect relationship with the world.”

  She smiled, and floated toward me to stand within arm’s reach in one lithe movement.

  “More than anything else, this trial was designed to open your mind, to show you the qualities you already possess, and to start you on the path,” she said.

  “That was tricky, by the way, using the Evening Star. It appears in the West—the orientation for the Air element is the East,” I jabbed playfully.

  “Maggie, the Evening Star is not really a star at all—it’s the planet Venus. It is also known as the Morning Star because it appears in the eastern sky at sunrise. You really should bone up on your astronomy.”

  I laughed at her retort, but I noticed the presence of something else—of other Fae. They were everywhere. I could feel several of them around Sara and me. She noticed that I looked around and reached out with my hands, trying to gingerly make contact.

  “Do you feel their presence?” she said with a bewildered look.

  “Yes, I didn’t realize there were so many here,” I said.

  Her face went completely slack. “It’s unheard of ... how many of us are here, can you tell?”

  I could sense all of them, but the closer they were, the easier it was for me to detect and count. “Over a hundred on this island, I think. There are … sixteen up here with us on the promontory—including you. Eight are in physical form, eight are not,” I said.

  Her eyes were huge, and a slight smile formed on her full red lips. “That’s simply amazing,” she said in little more than a whisper.

  “Why?”

  “Maggie,” she said, her face showing more excitement than I’d ever seen, “a few people have learned to sense the presence of my kind, but only after years of practice. It has been a common gift among your ancestors who were Air inclined, except they only learned to do it after we showed them how. What’s more remarkable is that you are the first with the sensitivity to differentiate one Fae from another when we
’re in our natural form. A few people can detect Fae when we’re in a physical form. Even fewer people can detect the presence of Fae when we’re in Naeshura, or natural form, but no human has ever been able to comprehend the difference between one or one-thousand.”

  “So that’s good?” I asked, trying to keep the sheepish smile off my face.

  “No … it’s astounding! If you are this attuned with the Air element during the moments following your trial, just seconds after your connection to Air has awakened, you might develop abilities that, quite frankly, none of your ancestors dreamed of.”

  I considered what she meant.

  “Oh my god, can I learn to fly? That would be totally off the chain.”

  Sara laughed and held her hands up. “First things first—you have to learn to control the element. Like working with the Earth element, you will need to learn the nuances of Air, and that will take time—even for you. Let’s work on gusts of wind before you try to do the Icarus thing.” She paused and smiled. “But for you, flight might be possible, although it’s probably more akin to riding atop a tornado than what you’re probably hoping for.”

  I felt the smile slide off my face and she grinned.

  “In what way am I different from Aunt May?”

  “If I were to take a woman who had never swum before and throw her in the water, would he drown?”

  “She might.”

  “Most people, including your aunt, are beginners when they experience the true nature of the elements … they are people who have never been in the water, so to speak. Your natural connection to the Air is like a short cut—like you were an experienced swimmer the first time you entered the water. You see, the difference between you and her is that floating and swimming are second nature to you. The beginner has to learn how to keep her head above the surface, and she does that by experimenting—she has to learn to hold her breath. To move, she learns by manipulating different parts of her body. In other words, she must learn what is intuitive to you.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Usually, one’s connection to an element has to be learned and practiced. A learned connection, though, is often a limiting force. You see, if one doesn’t feel the connection naturally, she limits her ability artificially. Your mind is conditioned to accept limitations in the physical world. There are some people, and you are apparently one of them, who have a natural connection to an element, and once that connection is awakened, some skills develop easier.”

  “So I can learn Air skills faster than most?” I asked.

  “Yes, you will not have to think about them as hard, and because you’re not thinking as hard, your conditioning isn’t as likely to get in the way. You’re already capable of sensing Fae. That’s one of the most important skills we teach a Steward. Keeping other people away from places they shouldn’t be is much easier when you can sense our presence.”

  “How will my conditioning get in the way?”

  “Before Gavin taught you to manipulate the Naeshura in the Earth element, why have you never changed stone before?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know how?” I guessed.

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Why?”

  I understood what she meant. “I’ve never considered it. Until I saw it happen, I thought it was impossible.”

  Sara nodded, and it finally began to make sense. My beliefs about how the world was supposed to work, what I’d learned and been taught, would be obstacles, and I understood they might be difficult to overcome, but now I felt something I hadn’t felt before—desire. I wanted to learn to do as much as I could, and more than that, I wanted to understand how things worked. Simply to know what should happen was no longer good enough. I felt strong. Alive. I finally understood Spirit.

  I wanted to test it and see if I could create a breeze for a few seconds, and instantly I felt it. The sensation sent a chill up my spine, and somehow I knew it was my breeze—I created it. A tear spilled onto my cheek. While it blew, I focused on a leaf that lay a few feet from me and directed the air to lift it upward. It darted back and forth spastically on the stone surface before it lifted off the ground. At first it blew just a few inches, but as I concentrated more, it lifted higher. I played with the air around the leaf, and tried to put it on top of a boulder. It was as if I could feel the leaf with numb, invisible fingers—I knew where it was, and I knew I had it, but I couldn’t quite get it to do what I wanted. I fumbled with it a little more but lost control and it fluttered off into the darkness.

  “Most impressive,” Gavin said from behind me.

  I turned, smiling, and found him returning my smile with his own.

  “What else can I learn to do?” I asked, barely containing my excitement. It was so exhilarating that I didn’t think to say hello. I felt like a child at Christmas who came downstairs to find a gift so unexpected and spectacular, so special, that she never could have imagined receiving it.

  “It will take practice, but it is possible to learn how to manipulate the Earth element through the air without physical contact,” Sara said.

  “Oh, no way.” I couldn’t contain my smile.

  “Yes, way,” she said, teasing me. “And not all Fae can do it, either. Most Fae are limited to controlling only our alignment element without touch. It’s an exceptionally rare skill among humans, and one I wouldn’t have even mentioned were you not already so far beyond what I expected. I’m beginning to believe that with you, Maggie O’Shea, anything is possible. You have already held the Air stone in place for nearly twenty minutes, and you’ve not even realized you’re doing it.”

  I spun back around and saw it, glowing green in the darkened sky, and almost immediately realized I had been holding it there. I quickly found the part of my mind that held it, and when I turned it off the stone fell into my hand.

  “Yes, it’s true,” Sara said. “You struggled with a leaf, trying to move it with a breeze, while all along you held a stone in place subconsciously. That is a key to your development, Maggie, opening your mind and unlearning the limitations.”

  “Well, considering this, I think my mind is pretty open.”

  “Oh no, my dear, you are learning to open your mind, but your journey has only begun.”

  “She’s right,” Gavin said. “Tell me how you got onto this plateau tonight?”

  “I altered the rock face and climbed.”

  “Exactly,” he said. His expression was almost apologetic.

  “No, but that was great, I found a solution.”

  “You found the most limited solution, one driven by your conditioning.”

  “What?” I was a little perturbed that he wasn’t impressed.

  He smiled, his chocolate eyes twinkling despite the dimming light. “Maggie, you thought how do I get myself up to the plateau—you never considered bringing the plateau down to you. You could have easily lowered it, stepped on, and then put it back in place.”

  When he said it, I felt as if I had just awakened from a nap. I completely understood what they tried to tell me. I was antsy and breathing quickly—I had the strongest desire to do more, to explore my new gift. Being here with Sara, Gavin, and the rest of the Fae was incredible.

  “Are there always so many of you on the island?” I asked.

  “Not always. This is a special occasion. While many of us are fond of the elemental trials, you’ve become something of an attraction—given your unorthodox solution to the Earth trial,” Sara said.

  I felt myself blush. “Are there any Unseelie here?” I asked.

  “No, we don’t share the islands at the same time,” Gavin said.

  “It would be neither prudent nor wise,” Sara agreed

  “Can you tell me why, then, the Unseelie are here at all, and why Chalen is the caretaker for the Weald?”

  Sara looked at Gavin, and I could tell they had one of their silent conversations. I’d asked the same question about Chalen and the Unseelie before, and t
hey’d never given me an answer. I tried to listen for some hint of what they communicated to one another. Unfortunately, being inclined to Air didn’t come with powers of telepathy. If only.

  “I think it’s only fair that we explain it,” Gavin said aloud, breaking the silence.

  I assumed he was defending me to Sara.

  She looked at me and smiled. “Yes, I understand your concerns, but I agree with Gavin and see no reason to wait. She will learn soon enough,” she said as though she were speaking to an audience.

  From behind I heard a third voice, a woman’s voice, say, “I agree.”

  Even though I heard only two words, the voice had a liquid quality. It was feminine and strong, giving me a sense of comfort and safety. Whomever it belonged to hadn’t chosen to materialize in human form—she was a large white owl. I wondered if it was Ozara.

  “You remember when I told you about the conflict between the Unseelie and the Seelie?” Sara asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The leaders of both clans made a pact between them to end the fighting that threatened all of us. One of the central points of conflict was over what to do with places like this one. You see, both clans shared this place, and dozens of other places like it, for thousands of years before the fighting. The Unseelie claim to those places is as legitimate as ours. We reached peace only after agreeing to mutual access. Part of that accord, as well, was an agreement to a permanent Unseelie presence in the Weald—Chalen represents the Unseelie Clan.”

  That knowledge was a stain on the evening, because knowing that he was a representative of the Unseelie made it seem all the more dangerous that he was right up the hill from me and my family. It meant that he probably reported everything about us to his clan—they weren’t some distant nightmare any longer. I’m sure everyone sensed my discomfort—I still hadn’t managed to find a way to block my emotions from them like I could the images in my mind. I felt a hand on my shoulder.