by Tricia Barr
The cavern rang with silence for a long moment, all of their eyes roaming the ceiling of the cavern for anything Skylar might be able to hone in on. The anticipation in the air, like the increased pressure, was tangible.
“There are several very small vents in here,” Skylar said, eyes still closed. “But there is one directly above us that doesn’t travel very far before meeting up with an opening, and the pressure suggests that that opening is actually the open air.”
“Are you saying that the surface is right on top of us?” Sebastian asked.
“That’s what it feels like to me,” Skylar said, opening his eyes and turning them to Sebastian.
“When you say ‘not very far’, how far is that?” Phoenyx asked.
Skylar pursed his lips, then said, “I’d say the ground between the ceiling of this cavern and the surface is about fifteen feet thick.”
Phoenyx considered that knowledge for a moment. Was that thin enough for them to somehow break through? And if they did manage to break through, how would they climb up? Scaling a rock ceiling wasn’t exactly easy, especially without rock climbing equipment.
“Do you think you can use your telekinesis to smash through the thinnest part of the rock?” Sebastian asked.
“I can try,” Skylar said. “Just to stay on the safe side, we should go into the tunnel in case the ceiling caves in.”
They nodded and followed him into the tunnel just far enough so that they could still see the ceiling of the cavern. Skylar locked his eyes onto one spot in the ceiling, then took a deep breath as if he was preparing to lift something very heavy. The pressure in the cavern changed once more and there was a loud bang as dust and pebbles fell from the middle of the ceiling in a perfect circle. Skylar took another deep breath and there was another bang, sending more debris cascading into the air.
He repeated this four times, then finally gave a frustrated sigh and turned toward them, shaking his head. “The rock is just too hard, I can’t break it.”
“That’s okay, we’ll just have to find another way,” Ayanna said. “You’ve shown us where there’s a weakness in this cavern, we just have to find something else strong enough to break through.”
“But if Skylar can’t do it with blasts of air, what can we possibly hope to find?” Phoenyx said.
“Well, air is the softest of all the four elements,” Ayanna said. “We have Water and Fire, both more forceful. There has to be a way we can use your powers to get us out of here.”
“Water,” Sebastian said, his eyes vacant as he turned his head to the side.
“Yes, if we can locate a source of water,” Ayanna replied.
“No, I mean I sense water nearby,” Sebastian said excitedly.
“Really? Where?” Phoenyx asked.
“Just on the other side of one of these cave walls,” he said, getting more excited with every word he spoke. “There’s an underground river running right beside us.”
“That explains why the bridge collapsed,” Ayanna said. “Prolonged exposure to moisture. The dew must have been eating away at it all this time.”
“Do you think you can make the water break through the cave wall? And furthermore, use it to break through the ceiling?” Phoenyx asked.
“I’m sure I can make it break through the cave wall, the angle at which it’s flowing and the speed it already has I can use to our advantage,” Sebastian explained. “But as far as the ceiling, that’s a bit trickier. Gravity is working against us, I don’t know that I can give it enough force to smash through that thick of ground.”
“I have an idea,” Skylar said. “Steam.”
The three of them looked at him in curiosity.
“Just like back at the tomb in Egypt,” Skylar said. “Phoenyx used her power to heat up the water enough to turn it into steam to move the lock. She can do the same thing here, just on a much bigger scale.”
“That just might work,” Ayanna said. “Sebastian, let the water from the river fill the bottom of the cavern and Phoenyx can heat it to a boiling point. The pressure from the heat and steam should act as a geyser, forcing its way through the rock ceiling because heat travels upward.”
“That’s brilliant!” Sebastian exclaimed.
“Let’s do it,” Phoenyx declared.
Sebastian narrowed his gaze at a spot on the cave wall almost directly across the cavern from where they stood. With his hands out and his shoulders arched, he pulled back as if heaving something backward. The ground gave a low groan and the cavern shook slightly, until the wall across from them burst open and water rushed in to turn the bottom of the cavern into a large pool.
The splashing of the water was so loud, she could hardly hear Sebastian call out, “Turn up the heat!”
She turned her attention to the basin of water, focusing heat to build at the bottom. Water wasn’t as easy to use her powers on. Unlike plants and other combustible solids, water was resilient to fire and took a lot more effort to affect. And with such a large amount of water, she really had her work cut out for her.
Phoenyx concentrated on the entire bottom of the cavern, warming every inch of rock to heat the water. She could feel the energy draining from her, and even though sweat covered her brow and the brows of her fellow spelunkers from the rising temperature in the cavern, she felt a hollow cold settling inside her. She thought about the fact that Ralph was getting away with the stone she had fought so long and hard to attain, and she let that anger fuel her fire.
The water level rose higher and higher, and as it spilled over the ground floor it stopped at the entrance to the tunnel right in front of where they stood. The water continued to rise up flat against the empty air like there was some invisible wall there, and she realized that Skylar was creating a sort of telekinetic barrier at the threshold of the cavern to keep the water from taking them.
“Ahh!” Ayanna gasped.
That drew away Phoenyx’s attention completely. She looked Ayanna’s way to see her withdrawing her elbow from the tunnel wall and rubbing it with her other hand. It dawned on Phoenyx that Ayanna had gotten burned brushing her elbow against the rock. It wasn’t just the bottom of the cavern that had collected her heat, but all the rock around them. She hadn’t realized she was doing that.
But it certainly paid off. The pressure in the cavern reached a critical point and the ground quaked and boomed. Through Skylar’s mental barrier, Phoenyx could see large rocks plummeting through the water. She pictured water spewing from the ground, rising high over the treetops, and she hoped that no hikers were unlucky enough to be in the splash zone.
Within minutes, the water rushed upward and the level reduced to just above the ground. They waited for a few minutes, but the level didn’t go back up, suggesting that the river had emptied as much as it was going to.
Skylar dropped the invisible wall and they entered the cavern, a rush of hot air blasting their faces and instantly soaking their clothes with sweat. A six foot wide hole punctured the middle of the cavern ceiling, raining in sunlight that sparkled in the water droplets and debris that fell.
“That worked fantastically,” Ayanna said, still rubbing her elbow.
“Now that we have an exit, how do we get out?” Sebastian asked, his panting mirroring Phoenyx’s—it had taken just as much out of him to guide that amount of water as it had for Phoenyx to heat it.
Skylar, who was tiptoeing around the puddles of hot water on the ground in his socks—he had given his shoes to Phoenyx and was now paying the price for it—hopped forward. “I think I might be able to lift us all out telekinetically.”
“Are you sure?” Phoenyx asked.
“We are a lot lighter than a private plane,” he said with a shrug. “And I did it before when we were locked in the Four Corners dungeon. Granted, there’s no solar storm, but we’ve all gotten a lot stronger since then. I’m confident I can carry us all out of here.”
They exchanged glances and then nodded at him.
“It will be easier for me if
we are grouped close together, so bring it in guys,” he said, welcoming them close with his arms open.
They gathered into a huddle, linking their arms over each others’ shoulders. After a brief minute, their feet left the ground and they slowly hovered over the steaming pool of water and lifted ever closer to the hole in the ground above them.
Phoenyx meant to keep her eyes closed until they were safely on land again, but she couldn’t help but look around as Skylar levitated them upward. She wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but she also didn’t want to be dropped into a boiling hot pond of water and cooked like a lobster either, and that anticipation only grew stronger the higher they got.
But Skylar’s concentration never once wavered, and they floated like a balloon up through the hole and then landed gently on the grassy, pine-needle covered ground. The crisp New Hampshire air caressed her face and chilled her soaking clothes, a stark contrast to the muggy, thick hot air that had engulfed them in the cave. The mid-afternoon sun that filtered through the trees was painfully bright after being shrouded in a dimly lit cave for so long, and it took her eyes a few moments to adjust.
Once the realization hit her that she was free, that she was no longer trapped in the cave, the eagerness to track down Ralph returned to her. She was going to find him and get back what was hers.
“Ralph can’t be much farther ahead of us,” Phoenyx thought out loud. “The trek back out through the cave takes an hour, and we were stuck for about forty-five minutes. We should be able to get to him before he leaves the area.” She looked around the forest, trying to gauge orient herself.
“But what if he’s already out of the cave?” Ayanna asked. “We have no idea where his vehicle is parked. And even if he does get held up somewhere, it will take us at least a half hour to get to the cave’s entrance on the surface. I just don’t see how we will reach him in time.”
Phoenyx clenched her jaw, unwilling to let the fire stoking inside her die down. Fire needed to be satiated.
“Skylar,” she said, the thought striking like lightning. “Can you hone in on Ralph’s mind at this distance?”
Skylar cocked his head with a thoughtful frown. “I can certainly try. I used to do it with Sebastian in Vegas all the time whenever I wanted to find him. I am not quite so familiar with Ralph, but I will try.”
Phoenyx nodded encouragingly.
Skylar closed his eyes tightly, and a subtle sizzling sensation rushed through Phoenyx’s brain, making her sneeze. Ayanna and Sebastian had similar reactions. Phoenyx imagined a telepathic bubble emanating from Skylar and rapidly expanding outward as his mental radar searched for Ralph.
After only a minute, he inhaled sharply and, with his eyes still shut, said, “I found him! He’s making his way up the hole in the ancient tree. He’s got a jeep parked about a hundred yards behind our car. We have about a half hour before he makes it there.”
“That’s not enough time,” Ayanna groaned, fingers curling into fists. “Even if we sprint, we will never beat him there.”
“We don’t have to sprint,” Sebastian said, his ocean blue eyes splashing with an idea. “We can fly.”
“What?” Phoenyx asked in confusion, but a brilliant smile breezed onto Skylar’s face, and he seemed to understand perfectly.
“You’re a genius!” Skylar slapped Sebastian on the back. “Everyone gather around.”
As she and Ayanna stepped closer to Skylar and Sebastian, understanding dawned on her, and she braced herself for the tummy-tickling lift. Just as in the cave only moments ago, their feet rose up off the ground, an invisible elevator pushing them upward. Branches spread apart as the four of them moved into their path, like the sea parting for Moses. In seconds, they were over the canopy of the forest, floating above a sea of trees. The breeze that could not cut through the trees down below was free to wisp around them up here, and Skylar closed his eyes to bask in the freedom of it as the wind caressed his face and brushed through his blond hair.
Then he opened them, and with a determined look behind his glasses, they zoomed forward. Phoenyx’s belly turned and tightened, feeling like the invisible elevator they were in was free-falling. The conifer tips rushed backward beneath them, and Phoenyx had to squeeze her eyes shut to keep the nausea at bay.
The roller-coaster feeling in her stomach abated, and she peeked through her tightly closed eyelids to see that they were gently slowing down. She opened her eyes fully as they descended, branches swaying as the trees rose above them and the ground came up to meet them. Phoenyx heard twigs snapping in the distance, and they landed just in time to see Ralph emerge through the trees a few yards away from them.
At the sight of them, Ralph froze mid-jog, his face paling instantly. And at the sight of Ralph, the fire inside of Phoenyx sparked back to life.
Quickly thawing from his pause, Ralph regained his wits and pulled a gun out from behind him. He aimed it and fired, the boom resonating through the forest and sending startled birds flying into the sky. The bullet came to fearsome stop three inches in front of Phoenyx’s chest, then fell to the ground with a small clink.
Phoenyx could contain it no longer. Every inch of her skin itched with the struggle to hold in the fire, and the itch was so unbearable that she finally stopped trying. She narrowed her eyes at Ralph, seeing red, and the trees around him burst into flame at their bases, forming a circular wall of fire from which he could not escape unscathed.
Panic drained all the color from Ralph’s face as his head turned frantically from side to side, then back at Phoenyx. She approached him with slow steps, like a lioness stalking her prey, and she could hear the brush sizzling beneath her feet. She was only mildly aware that the flames dancing from her pores were searing away her clothes. Her focus was completely on Ralph.
The fire in the trees spread quickly, hungrily burning everything, and she became consumed by it, fueled by the greenery it was destroying. The thrill of it drowned out the distant yells from her friends, and all she could hear was the crackle of fire as it indulged itself.
By the time she reached Ralph, he was stiff with terror. Fire wanted to burn him in one swift lick, but the logic she managed to hold onto told her that burning him alive could damage the stone.
She held out her hand, and the flames withdrew up to her wrists. “Give me the stone,” she demanded, her voice sounding alien to her.
Almost whimpering, Ralph fumbled around for the stone, pulling it out of his pocket only to drop it.
“Good boy,” she said, and her voice was not her own. But the fire was too addicting to ignore, and it had control.
“Phoenyx, stop!” a familiar voice yelled over the hiss of the burning forest.
Phoenyx turned around to see Ayanna standing behind her, braving the flames. Phoenyx shrugged as if to shoo away a fly, then turned back to Ralph. But Ayann grabbed her arm and pulled her back to face her.
“I said stop,” Ayanna said behind gritted teeth, and Phoenyx saw that Ayanna’s hand was burning where she held Phoenyx’s arm. For the first time since seeing Ralph, reason came back to Phoenyx, and she hesitated, trying to fight the allure of the burning.
“You can control it, Phoenyx,” Ayanna said, remaining calm as her flesh blistered. “This isn’t you. You are stronger than Fire.”
Phoenyx paused, the electrifying pleasure of loosing her element coursing through her even as she fought to resist it. “I…I don’t think I am,” she managed to say.
Ayanna locked eyes with her for a long moment. “Then I’m burning with you.” And she pulled Phoenyx against her.
“No!” Phoenyx shouted, shutting her eyes, and the flames of her body extinguished before she could burn Ayanna any further. She kept her eyes sealed shut for a moment, hearing only the relieved panting from Ayanna as she was locked in Ayanna’s embrace.
When she finally dared to open her eyes, she saw that Ayanna was fine, and her hand was already healing. The forest was dead silent all around them, and she saw that not only had
the flames of her body extinguished, but so had the forest fire. Phoenyx’s legs were shaking so bad that soon Ayanna was the only thing keeping her upright.
Sebastian ran to her, and Ayanna passed Phoenyx to him as if she were a rag doll. She clung to Sebastian, full of shame for her loss of control, desperate for any words of consolation. His water-cool touch as he rubbed her back was more comforting than she could explain in words.
Skylar picked the stone up out of the pine needles, then he and Ayanna looked down at Ralph, who was cowering in ball on the ground.
“What should we do with him?” Skylar asked. “He’s too much of a danger to us to let him go.”
“Let’s get him back to his car,” Ayanna decided. “From there, I’ll erase his memory of this whole ordeal. Then he can continue to live out his life as if he never met you. Although, I am going to fire him, of course.”
Skylar chuckled and nodded.
Then, without any effort on the part of Ralph, his body rose to its feet, and his arms went behind his back as if bound at the wrist. Skylar walked in the direction of their vehicle, Ralph being pulled in tow against his will. “We’ll see you two at the car,” Skylar said to Sebastian and Phoenyx before he continued. As always, there was no judgment in Skylar’s eyes when he looked at her. Not that it mattered, for she was her own harshest judge.
Ayanna hesitated, regarding Phoenyx with concern, then finally followed Skylar and the unwilling Ralph.
Now she and Sebastian were alone, standing in the middle of the blackened circle of trees.
“What happened?” Sebastian asked after a long silence, still holding her.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I lost control. We are closer now to freedom than we’ve ever been, and having it all nearly taken away from us pushed me over the edge.” She bit her lip, debating whether to admit something she had been trying to deny. “The fire is harder to resist in this life, and I don’t know why. Ever since escaping from the Four Corners in August, I’ve been feeling so drawn to it, yearning for it. Heck, even before that, before I knew my own powers, I could feel that longing to unleash something. I’m scared, Sebastian. I’m afraid of what I might become.”
