Dark Currents: Elementals, Book 1

by Mima

  “Well done, you. Go shake it off and ride your bicycle out to the beach. Listening to the waves always soothes the spirit.”

  Xia pursed her lips against reacting to his outrageously erroneous statement. She tried to keep her face clear of her opinion. “Mr. Branough, it’s always so nice to visit with you and Rougher.”

  “Aye-uh. Now there’s a sour puss.” Clearly, he wasn’t buying it. “Haven’t ye found what ye been seeking then?”

  Like most people who respected magic, Mr. Branough sensed it enough to suspect Xia of being something more than human, which of course she was. The villagers generally nodded pleasantly, assuming Xia’s presence in the rental cottage was recreational. “Oh, aye, how loovely,” they’d say when she explained her visit was temporary.

  The first time she’d met him, Mr. Branough had looked her up and down. He should have seen nothing more than her average height, her gray eyes, and average face with long, thick, dark auburn hair. But he’d given her a small bow. Nothing obvious, just a respectful courtly gesture she’d been used to seeing more in her youth. He had responded with the same words the other villagers had, but he’d stretched each word out with a knowing weight. Then he’d winked before bending to pat Rougher.

  Taking a deep, calming breath, Xia put her sweater in the wicker basket hanging on sparkling purple handlebars, along with her mail and the sausage pasty. “Mr. Branough, there’s much in this world that doesn’t want to be found.”

  “I assume a smart lass like yourself will know not to bother that which is best left alone.”

  Her hands tightened into skeletal claws on the cheerful yellow grips. His simple, wise words brought it all back. Her heart thumped in her chest with memories made fresh from this morning’s flashback. Drowning in her own bed. Screaming through tears at her lover for failing her. A nightly dose of sleeping herbs for years. Xia had gone poking into the deepest parts of a very large something that was best left alone, and she’d paid. But orders were orders.

  “That’s good advice. Don’t worry about me. I’m good at what I do.” She smiled fondly at Mr. Branough, with his funny eyebrows and kind, sharp eyes. She swallowed, pushing her heart back into her chest.

  Saying goodbye to Mr. Branough and Rougher, Xia mounted the Schwinn. With an awkward, hopping push, she strained on the pedals. Soon the large fenders and white-walled tires were rolling with all its considerable retro-charm. It amused Xia to see humans recycle styles round and round, but she was grateful too. So much changed so quickly. It was comforting when familiar items came into fashion again.

  Away she zoomed down the street, the breeze flapping the wide brim of her hat. She caught Anne laughing at her in the grocery’s window, but pretended not to notice. No one in this sleepy village just south of Skye appreciated the Schwinn’s glitter paint job. Nor her sister’s hat. Nor her privacy, for that matter. She adored it here.

  At the crest of the hill of the main street, she put her foot down, pausing at the corner. She should return home now, read Markos’s letter, clear her mind from the crappy morning and rest for tonight’s patrol. But she didn’t feel like it. She wasn’t sure what she felt. Maybe dangerous.

  Dangerous made her think of Adam, the only other magical she’d met so far in Mallaig. Mr. Branough’s advice to go to the sea suddenly seemed enticing. Well, she was only going to visit the seashore by default. Really she wanted to see the man who belonged to it. She was too upset by Markos’s letter in her basket. Macgregor’s insensitive greed was just the excuse not to open it. She would delay returning to her quiet little cottage. She was going to the water to talk to Adam.

  Xia knew better, of course. There would be a price to pay. After all, she was trying to stay beneath Aqua’s notice. Being stationed on the coast and actually going down to the water’s edge were two very different things. Aqua could recognize Xia easier tonight, for her proximity. But it wasn’t like Aqua hadn’t been able to shred her just fine these past weeks anyway. She was sick of it. How about she turn the tables. She wanted to toy with one of Aqua’s pets a bit, like a wicked child shaking a hamster awake in its cage. Hmmm. Xia wasn’t sure how that analogy reflected on her maturity.

  She slowed at the foot of the pier, where the steps went from the raised road down to the cobblestone beach. Hello, hamster, she thought with a grin. Propping herself still with one foot stretched out, she looked him over. He was tall and blond, dressed in a ragged brown T-shirt and jeans. She never liked blonds. They were too intimidating, tending to ooze confidence. He was trim and strong. She never pursued lean men, as her soft, wide hips tended to be in a different class than muscular, fit bodies. He was tied to the sea down to his very soul. She feared it like nothing else on earth, above or below. And Xia, of all women, knew there was much to be feared.

  The hamster’s name—now stop that, she chastised herself—the fisherman’s name was Adam. Others might wonder what a single man of his work ethic and beauty was doing in this struggling village, working in the freezing, harsh, terrifying sea every day. Xia knew he could be no other place, nor wanted to. This was his territory, settled upon him with ancestral blood. He was working on a thousand greasy pieces of a battered outboard motor strewn across a piece of plywood propped on two sawhorses.

  “Hello, Adam.” Wakey-wakey, hamster.

  He looked up, and his hair glinted in the sun like gilt. He had black eyes. Some would find this color combination odd, perhaps. It suited him. Xia never cared for men with black eyes. Their thoughts were too deep, too private, to ever truly know them. To ever truly trust them.

  He straightened, a tool and a cloth in each filthy hand. “Hello, Morphi.”

  See, now that right there made this trip down to the beach worth it. To be reminded that this was not a man she’d ever go for. Jerk.

  She smiled brightly from her perch straddling the bike, looking down on him from the tidal wall. She ignored the uncalled-for way he used her title, putting a gulf between them. “Such a nice day, isn’t it?” The steady, menacing swoosh of the waves on the cobbles made her spine shrivel.

  “Aye. Nice hat.”

  Her cheeks stung in the salt air. Even though he said it without any intonation, it felt ungentlemanly of him to call attention to it. “It used to be. Macgregor found it in the short time it took me to pick up the post.”

  “Aye. I was thinking it was him, and not you, that ate it.” Now his tone was sardonic.

  Nodding blithely, she gamely changed the subject. “How’s the engine coming?”

  “As expected. It’s a piece of shite.”

  “Ah.” Teeth clenched, she kept her face pleasant. “Well, good luck then.”

  He didn’t say a word in return. She stared at him, smiling like an idiot, brain frozen. Those black eyes were as merciless as the sea. And as cold.

  Awkwardly, she bounced the bike’s massive front end around, stumbling when her green peasant skirt caught on a pedal, until she’d turned it, puffing. Finally, she was on the seat and huffing to get it started again. His gaze was a tormenting itch in the middle of her back until she was out of sight. It sucked when the hamster you wanted to play with bit you. People who said selkies made wonderful lovers were morons.

  Leaving the cluster of stone and stucco houses that passed for a village, Xia rumbled over the dusty gravel at the side of the one-lane road. She’d journeyed here to spite the bad memories and to delay opening the letter. In her pique, she’d gone down to the water. She’d spoken to the beautiful fisherman, the seal-man, the cold-eyed hamster who plagued her imagination. Now she had Markos’s unopened letter, a chewed hat, churning humiliation, and spindrift on her skin like the touch of poison. Tonight, the nightmares would be very bad.

  The letter fluttered in the basket. Markos’s symbol of a tiny, tawny flame was burned into the return address spot, put there with one of his blunt fingers. Xia narrowed her eyes and stood to pedal faster and faster, throwing all her weight into each push. The massive bike surged forward. The letter tossed
, only the sleeve of Aunt Natty’s sweater holding one corner. With Power comes Burden, she could hear Aunt Natty say sadly. Hating the letter, hating the situation, hating her fear, she stared at the envelope. She pedaled harder, leaning over the basket, eyes on the gravel spattering by under the wheels, and finally the letter swirled into the air.

  For one breathless moment, bitter triumph thrilled through Xia. I’m sorry, Markos, I don’t know what happened to it. It must have blown out of my basket on the ride home… Gasping, Xia lunged for it, grabbing it with one hand. The bike wove wildly, gravel grinding with an ominous clatter. Cursing under her breath, she got her balance back and sat down. The letter was clenched between her hand and the sunny rubber grip. She could feel the small bulge inside it. That would be the packet of herbs that would rip her soul away.

  Eyes stinging, she blinked the wind-tears away. Powerful scumbags were waking that bitch Aqua up, and so far none of the Chamber’s resources had been able to find them and stop them. When things were this bad, the Chamber brought out the harsh orders. And soldiers died. Focusing on the seagulls soaring overhead, Xia pedaled in time to their lazy wing beats, as if focusing on her body could banish her anger. The jagged peaks on the Isle of Skye snarled from the water off to her right. She straightened her spine.

  Xia turned into the tire-tracked dirt lane leading to her cottage. She gathered up her belongings, leaving the gorgeous bike in the center of the carport. It wasn’t even noon, but oh, how tired she was. What a mess. A morphi who practically dared her mark to notice her. Attracted to a man she didn’t quite like and outright feared, probably just to distract herself from her failure. With a terrifying letter from her boss sitting in her basket. And the day only leading to another brutal try at being a spy. Being a morphi wasn’t nearly as glamorous as they made it sound in Magic Weekly.

  For the first time, Xia considered asking for help. She wasn’t entirely sure about the wisdom of assigning a morphi to a land that experienced the gloaming, the odd twilight where light lingered long past sunset. It sometimes lasted past eleven o’clock in the summer. Morphi needed twilight to work, but the extended time on the dreamscape was taking its toll. She wasn’t getting anything, but Aqua was taking plenty out of her. The gloaming let her wander the dreamscape longer than she ever had before. All she found was horror. But it was simpler working alone.

  The little cottage wasn’t historic, but she appreciated it wasn’t a metal trailer, either. It had a wood frame, with modern stucco filling in the walls and a plain, brown-shingled roof. Xia hung her hat on the pegboard by the door, next to the large front window that looked past the old apple tree to the unmown field. Her flats she placed neatly on the mat. Pausing at the side of the couch, she tossed Markos’s letter into the garbage can and laid the wrapped pasty on the laminate counter that separated the kitchen from the sitting area. She set a cup of water to boil. Moving past the bathroom and into her bedroom, she hung up the sweater the morning had required. The view out the back window was pretty, the fence just a short ways beyond her bedroom window thick with massive thistle. No sheep had been in the Glyndon’s pasture since she’d arrived. Maybe they thought she’d curse the herd.

  Humming, she put the pasty on a napkin and ate a spoonful of honey while she waited for the water to boil. She decided on plain black and filled the tea ball with the delicate leaves. Clearing her throat sharply in the empty silence, she kept her guilty, itchy back defiantly to the garbage can where her advocate’s letter sat and finished making her tea. Sitting on the small sofa in the living room, because there was nothing else but uncomfortable counter stools to sit on, she pulled the end table up and ate the filling pasty, enjoying the sizzle of the sausage.

  Curled in the corner, nursing her tea, Xia finally let her gaze slide guiltily over to the wastebasket. Markos’s flame-mark flickered at her over the edge. She tapped her fingers against her mug. It was too much to hope for that he was merely reassigning her. It would be a blow to be reassigned off his team. Not only did she have a strong relationship with him, but he understood her and let her work alone, as was her preference ever since she’d Returned.

  She hadn’t seen him face to face since he’d fried that hotel desk in Beijing after she’d painted his hooves yellow while he was sleeping. Naturally, it was in retaliation for him taking all her dresses out of her hotel room and leaving only a pair of painted-on jeans for her to wear to an important dinner with a snooty fenghuang. Chinese phoenixes were renowned for their respected fashion sense, and Xia had simmered every time the elegant, delicate creature had stared at her jeans. Her vengeance had been terrible. Those light-hearted times seemed like years ago instead of months.

  Heaving a put-upon sigh, Xia set her mug on the table and fetched the letter. She stroked her fingers along the length of the envelope, feeling the single piece of paper inside and the small, thin bulge. Her nose imagined it could smell spelled herbs. She shuddered, a roll of revulsion cascading down her spine. She wasn’t sure, but in her heart she knew what this packet was. Twice before she’d breathed in this spell. Twice before she’d given up all of herself and disappeared into another creature’s soul. Practice makes perfect.

  Closing her eyes, she almost let herself sob. There was no one to see. She’d cried nightly for the last few weeks, when she finally emerged from the gloaming, alone and drenched in sweat reeking of fear. But she wouldn’t cry over this. This wasn’t just a job. It was who Xia was. I’m a damn fine morphi. I am a powerful guardian of the planet, working to defend all life. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.

  But still her fingers didn’t open it. Nothing in it would change her standing orders to patrol for clues on who was waking Aqua. Decisively, she decided to go shopping then spend the afternoon grounding herself for a harder patrol tonight. After she’d given herself one more chance to succeed, then she’d face Markos’s news. Later.

  Chapter Two

  Shopping her favorite websites proved enjoyable. A decent income was just about the only perk of being a morphi. Then came a brief, dreamless nap, and it was time for a cuppa. Picking up her tea, Xia went outside and around the back of the house. She walked past the old apple tree and along the thistle hedge, her shadow long with the setting sun. She prepared for the dreamtime.

  She did not have to center herself in the physical world, but she liked to. Connecting to the elements this way reminded her they weren’t really her enemy, when it was so easy to slip into the habit of seeing them that way. Poor things, they couldn’t help their nature. They couldn’t help that after the first time they’d slept, an entire world of fragile but determined things had sprung into being, and now wanted with all their hearts to survive.

  Xia walked until she crested the small hill, and tipped the last of her honeyed tea into the soil there, an offering of peaceful intent. She lifted her free hand and closed it on the evening breeze, taking from Aer. Squatting, she placed her hand on the soil and took from Terra. Reaching deeper, she took from Aqua and finally, deeper still, she took from Ignis. Poised in grass, she let herself drift in her own mind for a long time, calm and strong, a woman comfortable with her magic.

  The walk back was when she began to focus her thoughts and control her breathing. By the time she walked into the house, she’d nearly achieved the trance state. Shedding her skirt and tee, her slip, bra and panties, she then undid the clip in her hair. She piled the plaid bed pillows up and lay down, reclining on the smooth comforter. Pointing her toes, she stretched in one tight, focused wave that settled her, centered her.

  The power in her center began to spin. She breathed carefully and watched it build, faster and faster, until her brain spun away when the last of the sun glinted past the horizon. Morphi trained to join elemental dreams that would help the Chamber keep the four elements in balance. She could listen for the Four’s secrets only during twilight, the time between. That’s when she could glide along the edges of their dreams.

  Breathing in the cool stillness, Xia tri
ggered the unique power she’d been born with. She slid into the dreamtime, a place as much as a moment. As long as light and dark danced in twilight, her magic could glide among the elements, riding connections, dabbling over patterns, dreaming.

  An expanse of shining black stretched out before her. Xia flew over the endless acres of menace. Aqua, cold and silent. Passive, asleep, she was the most dangerous thing on the planet. Xia’s horror was she saw Aqua dreaming of her own awakening, becoming more self-aware night after night. When she was fully alert, another flood would take the world and no one she knew had an ark ready this time.

  No one could stop her but Terra. Terra was sullen and sleepy and slow compared to Aqua’s speed. Ignis chattered and raged, sleeping as long as it was kept fed. Aer was always delighted with change, a fairly useful childlike being commonly in a sleepwalking state. But now things were in flux and the other elements were paying attention. It was bad when one of the Four tipped the balance and grew dominant. But it was worse when that waking element was Aqua. Aqua, unlike any of the others, hated.

  Everything in Xia focused on stretching. She needed a clue to who dabbled too close to Aqua’s dreams. Slowing, she lost altitude, skimming breathlessly over the puckered waves. Then Xia landed, splashing into Aqua’s angry, muttering grip. She twisted and rolled as visions of a nightmare world of dark and rain, cold and wet took her. Breathing through the sudden chaos, the lashing confusion, she struggled to find her footing, to find some grip in Aqua’s awareness so that she could go beneath her notice. A morphi was a spy. She needed to be a ghost, a shadow, a faint cold spot…

  But today she’d gone down to the sea. She’d even spoken to a being of Aqua’s. Aqua wove through Xia just as she struggled to weave through Aqua. Abruptly, an image of golden hair swishing wetly around a gray face. Black eyes filmy in death, flashed by her. No! Adam in death hurt her, as sleepy Aqua knew it would.

  Xia tried to back away from Aqua’s connection to her. But she’d approached the water, and she had a price to pay. When she’d increased her proximity to Aqua, she’d increased Aqua’s awareness of her in return. Abruptly, she quit struggling and let Aqua wrap Xia in her dream. There would be precious little spying going on this eve. She swallowed, determined to hold on for one slim chance Aqua’s dreams would reveal something.