The Evensong

by Lindsay Payton

  “No—no one,” I replied. “Why?”

  “Don’t look right now, but there’s a guy up there who’s just been staring at you for a long time.”

  It took all of my effort to keep my eyes on his and not look up. I hissed, “What does he look like?”

  His eyes flicked up briefly. “I can’t really tell, the light’s behind him.”

  I nodded slightly and bit my tongue. Trying to be casual, I looked around and finally up at the guardrail where there was a figure standing there. Calder was right, I could barely see who it was with the streetlight behind them, but the person was still staring in our direction.

  “Come on,” I said quietly, feigning a smile as I took Calder’s arm. “Let’s just start walking back towards the house.”

  He jumped off the railing and we backtracked. I tried to keep my walk calm, and Calder took my wrist, slowing me down. I wished we had gone walking on the street where there was light and people; neither existed down here.

  After a few seconds, I glanced back, hoping there would be nothing. I was disappointed to see the person was following, half of their body exposed to the light. Fear flared up in me so quickly, my muscles immediately tensed.

  “What?” Calder asked as I whipped around.

  “It’s Omar, he’s with the vulcani,” I whispered fiercely. My heart was thudding so loudly in my ears, I could hardly hear myself.

  “Is he one of them?”

  “No, but this could be just as bad,” I replied. Looking down the beach, I could see the house was still fairly far away. But we had to make it. “We should run.”

  “Is it that serious?”

  “Yes—ready?”

  “Hold on, give me your hand; I’m probably a lot faster than you.”

  I gripped his hand hard, preparing myself. I hoped Omar wouldn’t follow; was he seriously stupid enough to come into the area of so many Elementals?

  We took off suddenly, our feet pounding against the planks. Calder had been right; he was much faster than me. He pulled at my hand as I struggled to keep up, my lungs straining against my ribs for more air to keep me going. Taking a quick look over my shoulder, I could see that Omar was running along the street, and he was able to stay close since he wasn’t running on a winding wooden path.

  That second of looking away from the planks wasn’t the best idea. My foot slipped against all the sand, and I fell, holding out my free hand to catch myself. Calder hesitated for a second with enough time to wrench me back up and plow on. My hand was smarting, but I ignored it as our feet hit the pavement of the driveway. I was about to head for the stairs, but Calder pulled me around the cars towards the garage.

  “Where are you going?” I gasped.

  “Around—it’s the best way, believe me,” he replied. He ran towards the dark rocks beside the house where there was a small space between the two. The garage door was unlocked, and he pushed me in first before closing the door behind him.

  “I don’t think he came down the driveway,” he said quietly, his ear pressed against the door. I tried to keep quiet as I caught my breath. “I can’t believe he followed.”

  “I—knew he would,” I said, still gasping. “Now why didn’t we just—just go to the front door?”

  He locked the door before turning to me. “You’ll see.”

  We went up the stairs to the house, creeping into the dark hall. Calder motioned for me to be quiet as I stepped inside. Down the hall by the kitchen, I could see a light was on and there were voices carrying very clearly. Rhys was talking to someone, and I was about to question Calder, but he held up a finger to his lips.

  “I was being cautious.” It was Linden’s voice, and it sent my heart into a different kind of frenzy. Calder gestured for me to listen as he climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  “I said you might be safe, Linden. That wasn’t a go ahead to put yourself and Riley in danger,” Rhys said.

  At the mention of my name, I crept closer.

  “Just because my dad went—”

  “Listen to yourself!” Rhys hissed quietly. I’d never heard his tone so harsh before. “You are your father’s son, his blood is your blood, the lineage is direct. I’m going to be very frank with you: you will be lucky to get out of this intact as Linden, not the other.”

  Linden didn’t speak. They were both quiet, and I held my breath in waiting.

  “How are you feeling?” Rhys finally asked.

  “Like shit,” Linden mumbled.

  “I can’t do anything for you right now. Our only choice is to wait and see what else happens and what else changes. I think you should sleep in the spare room tonight.”

  I jumped when Linden yelled, “I can handle myself, all right? I’m not going to lose it and attack her!”

  Rhys was quiet, and I could imagine him shaking his head slowly. “You need to exercise caution, Linden. What I’m seeing now is that you’re completely unstable.” Linden tried to interrupt, but he went on. “I understand you’re doing your best to keep in control, but no one knows how serious this gets. We’re going off stories, how helpful do you think that will really be? Can you chance hurting anyone?”

  Linden answered gruffly. “No.”

  “Then you’ll take my advice and sleep in the spare room.”

  Footsteps on the stairs beside me announced that someone was coming down. I pressed myself against the wall and waited, noticing Rhys was talking again. Instead of it being Calder on the stairs—as I hoped—Tally stood there and looked at me strangely. I motioned for her to be quiet, pleading silently that she wouldn’t tell anyone I was standing here. She looked confused, but when she heard the two in the kitchen, she looked like she understood. She walked right by me, and I hoped she wouldn’t say anything.

  “God, Linden. You look like shit,” I heard her say as she entered the kitchen. He swore at her, and Rhys warned her to hold back the insults for a while.

  “What are we dealing with here?” she asked.

  “Possible auctorita,” Rhys said, his tone flat.

  Tally didn’t respond for a long time, but when she did, I thought I could hear real fear in her voice. “Auctorita? Are you—are you sure?”

  “No. But we have to be careful,” Rhys said. I heard a chair scrape against the floor, and I backed up towards the stairs.

  “Go straight to the room, Linden,” Rhys called. I started going up the stairs quickly.

  “What, I’m not allowed to talk to her?” I heard Linden reply.

  “Just go to sleep.”

  I rushed to the bedroom and closed the door behind my silently. My mind was reeling. Everything I heard was almost like a foreign language, but I understood something bad was happening. I barely had time to think about it some more when Linden burst into the room. He froze when he saw me, and even in the dark I could see his face.

  “When did you get here?” he asked, his voice more hoarse than usual.

  “Linden …” I didn’t know what to say. He looked so much worse than this morning. The dark circles under his eyes seemed to be even darker and his skin was very pale. He looked like he was about to collapse in exhaustion. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m fine, don’t worry about it,” he said, trying to smile. It was more like a grimace. My heart seemed to constrict painfully.

  Forgetting anything I heard about danger or attacks, I closed the space between us and hugged him tightly. Under my arms, his muscles were quivering.

  “Please don’t lie to me about this,” I said, my voice muffled in his chest. “I heard some of the things you and Rhys said downstairs.”

  He didn’t say anything, but his arms slowly came up to hold me.

  “What’s auctorita?” I demanded.

  He sighed shallowly and held me away from him. “It’s um—it’s a mouthful.”

  “Don’t joke about this!” I said, grasping his arms. “You have to tell me!”

  Something about my words made him shudder, and he closed his eyes for a mi
nute, fingers tight around my shoulders. When he had composed himself he looked at me.

  “It’s a lot to explain, and I really can’t right now. Seriously, I can’t. But you can go downstairs and ask Rhys anything you want. He’ll tell you.”

  I could see him trying to contain himself. He was fighting to stay in control of this.

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “Do you really have to sleep in another room?”

  He laughed weakly. “Yeah, I should. But come talk to me when you’re done. I’ll be on the first floor.”

  I nodded, saying I would walk with him there. He was hesitant to agree, but it was just down the stairs. When we reached his new bedroom I stopped him for a second to look at him, hoping he wouldn’t get worse overnight. He read my thoughts and said he’d be okay.

  I left him alone feeling like it was the worst I could do to him. I knew he wasn’t supposed to be around me, but until I understood why, I wasn’t satisfied. I left his door and immediately went into the kitchen.

  Rhys was still sitting at the table as Tally walked by me. This time she actually looked at me sympathetically, but who knew if it was for the fact that Linden was ill, or that I could somehow become one of his targets. Rhys looked at me similarly, though he tried to hide it. He cleared his throat as I sat across from him.

  “I take it you’re looking for some answers,” he said, smiling sadly when I didn’t immediately say anything.

  “I was in the hall when you and Linden were talking. I heard some things,” I replied.

  He sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair. “I guess we’ll start with your questions. That seems to be the easier way.”

  I didn’t quite expect this, but I was relieved anyway. “Why is he sick?”

  “That’s the big question,” he replied. “I don’t know exactly. I have an idea, but I could be wrong. It’s the only thing that could make sense.”

  I nodded. “Okay. And it’s that auctorita thing?”

  “Essentially. How much has Linden explained to you about the consequences of physical love?”

  I choked up, not sure how to reply. No one had gone over the pregnancy talk, and at the thought I felt slightly ill.

  “Um—we never really talked about it,” I said, blushing deep red.

  “I didn’t think so,” Rhys said, disappointed. “Anyway, there are a lot of myths surrounding the whole ordeal. It was once believed that Elementals didn’t have what is widely known as a soul. People thought we only got them from engaging in the acts of physical love. This isn’t true; we have souls just like every other person. Did your mother ever teach you about the three parts of the soul?”

  Rene’s face popped up in my mind and I tried to remember all of her lessons. “I’m not sure—I’m sure she did at one point, I just can’t remember now.” I could hardly think, how could he expect me to remember?

  But he was patient with me. “All right, I’m sure it will ring a bell. Everyone—including Elementals—naturally have the logos, thymes, and eros. This makes up our being. The auctorita is the fourth piece that no one has. Not naturally, at least.”

  He was right, this all did ring some kind of bell, but I didn’t dare interrupt.

  “Auctorita used to be thought of as myth much like everything else. It means power or authority, and that’s all it entails. Sounds easy, right? But once you have it, it can be too much for the physical body as well as the rest of the soul. It can enhance the other three parts, tipping the scales into excess.” He paused to see if I understood. “Logos is your logic—that doesn’t seem so bad if it were better. Thymos is your emotional drive. If this becomes unbalanced, hubris sets in.”

  I frowned. “Hubris?” I remembered that word from all of the Greek plays Rene had us read.

  “Yes, you’ve heard of it?” Rhys asked, seeming surprised.

  “It’s the most fatal flaw, isn’t it? Too much pride and arrogance that can lead to violence.”

  “Yes,” he replied, pleased. “And eros is desire. Normally it would be what drives us to our bodily needs. Give it auctorita and passion comes into control. I don’t mean a good sort of passion, but the feral kind that can push someone over the edge.”

  He paused to let me absorb that, and I repeated what I thought was the gist of it. “So auctorita will enhance all of these … too much? The body can’t handle it and the person could become—”

  “Lost, really. They can become a total slave to auctorita; the amount of power it brings leads most to act irrationally and dangerously.”

  I swallowed back my fear. “And this—this could be what’s happening to Linden?”

  Rhys nodded slowly. “It happened to his father. It’s very coincidental that both of them should have obtained it. But as I was telling him, he has to be careful. Everyone reacts differently to this, but his father was one who lost himself in the thing. Linden is very much like his father used to be, so he could be prone to becoming the same: too powerful, self-absorbed, a rogue, merciless, evil—well, that could be a stretch of the word,” he admitted, “but I really have no respect for the man.”

  I nodded, going numb with the information. “But how … how did this all start?”

  Rhys took a deep breath and leaned towards me. “Well, now that’s where you come in.”

  My mouth opened slightly in shock. “I did this?”

  “It’s nothing like that, Riley,” he said quickly. “This is not your fault. No one is really clear on how these things happen but—”

  “But somehow I triggered it,” I said, my voice shaking.

  Rhys smiled sadly. “I don’t believe that you caused the auctorita directly, but somehow being with him seemed to have started it.”

  Because we slept together, my brain translated for me. I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands together, concentrating on the lingering pain in my scraped palm. So that’s why Linden had stopped that one night; he was afraid of this. Then he must have talked to Rhys about it, who assured him that everything was myth and it was okay. Now it looked like myth couldn’t be put off anymore.

  “If he had told me I wouldn’t have—”

  “There is no way to predict this,” Rhys said, standing to sit in the chair beside me. “Myth is myth, right? Just stories … it hasn’t been taken with much seriousness until now. That’s everyone’s mistake.”

  What an awful word: mistake. This whole thing had been a mistake. I should have avoided him from the beginning and left him as Stranger in my head. Maybe I shouldn’t think that far … I should have let him keep his distance or pried the truth from somebody.

  Rhys seemed to know everything I was thinking and put a hand to my shoulder. “It’s only fair that you know all of this. He shouldn’t have kept it a secret. But people do irrational things when other emotions get in the way.”

  I turned away to hide my face. My emotions were definitely in the way of everything right now, and I couldn’t help crying.

  “He’s not going to … to die, is he?” I asked. I could hardly say it.

  “No, why would you think that?” he replied immediately, gently turning my chin towards him.

  “You said he’d be lucky to make it out of this.”

  His face darkened a little. “Oh yes, that. I didn’t mean he was going to die, but if this auctorita gets the better of him, he could lose what he remembers of himself.”

  I frowned and looked up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “He really hasn’t told you enough, has he?” He shook his head and rolled his eyes a little. “All right, well this—” he gestured to his body, “is one way of seeing me. This is the way a human recognizes a human. On the astral plane, Elementals don’t look the same. It’s like a true form, per se. It is the same person, though different. I can’t explain to you exactly the differences, but you get what I’m saying, don’t you?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, not really. Is a true form like a true name?”

  “Almost!” he said, excited I could relate it to
something. “Explain to me the true name.”

  “I guess it would be similar,” I started. “Only you are supposed to know it because if anyone else does, they can use it against you. It’s a powerful thing, and on other planes we’re supposed to embody it. I don’t even know what that means exactly, so I couldn’t really explain it in detail.”

  “That sounds very similar to the true form,” Rhys mused. “So you see it then? Our true form is on the other side, and we become them when we are there; when we ascend.” Ah, so that’s what it meant. “If auctorita damages Linden too much, he might lose this form. It’s not death, but it can be devastating.”

  I cringed at the ideas my mind came up with for this explanation. If it wasn’t death but he lost this form, what was left?

  “I wish I could explain more clearly, but it’s difficult for someone who doesn’t know absolutely everything. And I doubt you could take anymore explanations at this point,” Rhys said, eyes swooping over my face. I just nodded and hastily wiped the trail of tears off my cheeks.

  “Right. But thank you for telling me this,” I replied. “I don’t know what else I would think.”

  He smiled slightly. “No use having you jump to conclusions. I admire your understanding after all of this. But loving someone graces you with that, doesn’t it?”

  I was a little stunned by what he said, but he just grinned as he stood. He said I should try to get some sleep and not worry about Linden if I could. Nothing would happen to him yet; he would be fine in the morning. I took his word for it and thanked him again. I was surprised when he hugged me a moment before I went upstairs, but it was a little bit of comfort that I needed. I walked right past Linden’s room and up to mine, dreading the empty bed that felt ten times too big.

  It was impossible for me to sleep. Everything Rhys had told me kept going through my mind as I tried to process it all again. I wrestled with my own hopeless alternatives as to what was happening, but none of it made any sense. What Rhys had said had to be true.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand the huge white bed anymore. I got up and went to the window, looking out at the ocean. It was the normal peaceful scene only punctured by one black mark in the sand. Someone was sitting in the waves, letting the water wash over them. I had completely forgotten about the panicked run Calder and I had earlier, and I rushed out of the house.