On the fifth day of the Fall, no one was ready to face the new reality that stared them in the face.
Or almost no one.
Teja, of the Fire and Cold Houses watched the bright light of fires burning against the summer sky, but she didn’t feel their heat. All around here, there was nothing but cold and darkness. A future without a future. To her mind, anyone paying attention already knew that the Fall meant the death of everything. Not just of the Fire House or the Elementals. But, everything.
Teja was a pragmatist. Some said cynic. Some said bitch. No matter the word, she’d always seen through the bullshit and directly into the heart of the world around her. And right now, with that futureless future barreling down on her, she saw that her best path led straight down into the pavement.
Suicide.
It was such a stark word.
But, Teja was paying attention and all she saw a total absence of hope.
If the Elemental Phases went extinct, they took the rest of the universe down with them. It was a mathematical fact. The various Houses supported all the interconnected processes of nature. Everything depended on them, because they controlled everything, from Water to Time to Wood. Each member of the House held a bit of the whole, and each House relied on the others. The Heat House needed the Fire House’s element to produce warmer temperatures. The Fire House needed the Air House to feed their flames. The Air House needed the Weather House to generate the conditions for wind. And so on, in an endless circle of life and death.
The Elementals kept nature in balance and the gears of the universe running smoothly. But, if too many Phases died, their House would fall. And if too many Houses fell, then they pulled the rest of the Phases down with them. Like an avalanche, the resulting disaster would speed up and grow bigger as it raced downhill. The world would topple.
Teja didn’t see a way out of it, now. She sat at the edge of the Fire Palace’s wide Gothic roof and stared at the blazes far below with emotionless hazel eyes. They’d passed the point of no return. The world was closer to the end than it was to the beginning. Much, much closer.
And one invisible microbe was the catalyst of oblivion.
The Fall: A disease poised to end the universe.
It had been released by Parald, of the Air House as revenge against the Council of All Houses. And, more specifically, against Tritone, of the Water House for refusing to be his queen. But, Parald’s vengeance had spun out of his control. The plague had a mind of its own and it wouldn’t be satisfied until it destroyed… everything.
Teja’s feet dangled off into infinity as she scrolled through her grandfather’s iPod. She stopped when she reached the “recently played” section and pushed the button to make AC/DC’s This House is on Fire blare over the headphones. “Recently played” was such a subjective term. What did it really mean? To the iPod, “recent” mean the songs that Oberon had listened to over the last week or so. But, to anyone who’d survived the Fall, anything that had happened just a few days before already seemed like someone else’s life.
Ancient history.
Some people continued to cling to hope. Teja had heard their whispers and coughs as they prayed for salvation, night and day. If they could just survive this, then maybe… Maybe… Maybe they could pull the rest of the world through. Maybe the universe wouldn’t end. Maybe Gaia or God or whoever was watching over them would have mercy.
Teja knew better.
In order to have children, Elementals needed Phase-Matches. The one person that they could combine their energy with, and love, and connect to on --well-- an elemental level. Two parts of a symbolic whole. The Fall had already wiped out so many Phases that Teja doubted one in ten survived. There was no way they could find enough Matches, now. No way they could have children or recreate a viable population.
And the Fall hadn’t stopped, yet. More and more died every hour. Every minute. With the odds stacked so high against them, it was impossible for the Phases to bounce back.
On the iPod, The Bloodhound Gang started screaming The Roof is on Fire.
Teja barely noticed.
It was all over for the Elementals. They were extinct in every way that mattered. Some Phases, like Teja, and her cousin Djinn and his family, seemed to be immune from the plague. No one knew why. Few cared to know. Caring about anything was beyond most people, now. In the end, it wouldn’t matter.
The lucky ones had gone first. The so-called survivors were postponing the inevitable by hanging on. They just got to watch the universe struggle through its death throes. Teja read the plain truth in the twisting flames of the funeral pyres. But, what did it matter, at this point? What really mattered, at all?
Her grandfather was dead.
The Fall took him and all Teja could do was watch it happen. Without Oberon, every single reason for anything was gone. It had been carried away in the ashes of his funeral pyre and left nothing behind for Teja but a cold, dark future without a future.
All she felt was empty.
Her emotions had been frozen out of her.
That was… good, though. She didn’t want to experience more pain and loss. Teja didn’t want to feel anything, ever again. The ice inside of her was a relief and she was afraid of what might happen if it melted away.
Fire and Rain came through her headphones. It was a nice song, slow and sad; completely unlike her larger than life, type-A personality grandfather. It wasn’t that Oberon loved James Taylor, but every song on his iPod had the word “fire” in it somewhere. Oberon, the murdered King of the Fire House, had weird ideas, sometimes.
The world could never be right, again. Not with him gone from it.
Oberon had been her hero. Most Elementals saw the Fire House as a bunch of loud, aggressive lunatics. Usually, they were unfavorably compared to the human mafia. The Fire Phases liked to have their own way and were completely fine with cheating if that’s what it took to win. They could be impulsive, oblivious, and somehow incredibly stubborn, all at the same time. They had zero regard for the feelings of others and senses of humor that edged towards demonic.
And Oberon had been the worst of the lot. An egotistical, irreverent, “might makes right,” video game playing, eye rolling rebel. He was the champion of every underdog and the gadfly at every Council meeting. Every day, he did something crazy that made Teja want to pull her hair out by the roots. Oberon drove her nuts with his insane ideas and disregard for the rules. He had a booming laugh and a zest for life that no one else could even come close to matching.
He made Teja proud to be his granddaughter.
And she’d let him down. She done everything she could think of and it still hadn’t been enough to save him from the Fall. What could possibly matter to her after that?
James Taylor gave way to the Ink Spots declaring I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.
Job, of the Earth House, High Seat of the Council and the oldest Elemental left alive, wanted to rebuild. He had some half-assed plan to re-form Council and rally the remaining Phases. Teja had promised to help him do it. He’d pressured her and she’d relented, because she just didn’t have the energy to argue with him. Even though she could no longer feel it, Teja knew she had a great deal of respect and love for the Earth King. Job was a good leader and an even better man.
But, he’d always been an idealist. Job couldn’t face the truth, yet.
Not like Teja could.
The icy void situated inside of her chest grew bigger all the time. She’d promised not to kill herself. She’d looked right at Job and promised him. She’d promised her grandfather, too. When he lay in his bed, dying of a disease that no one had even heard of three days before. She’d promised Oberon that she’d help Djinn rule the Fire House. That she’d clean up her cousin’s messes and ensure their family’s legacy wasn’t broken with Djinn’s nutty schemes.
But, at the end of the world, what did it really matter if she went back on her word?
The song switched again. Billy Joel proclaimed We
Didn’t Start the Fire.
The rest of her family would get over Teja leaving them behind. They could just toss her in one of the pyres and move on. Teja didn’t have a Match or children, but Djinn did. He had Pele and the kids. He’d recover. So would their adopted cousin Hope. Djinn would take care of her. He was the Fire King, now. He could run the Fire House and their family would be okay.
Maybe.
She ignored that skeptical thought because she just didn’t have the energy to follow her doubts to their logical conclusion.
Teja was so tired.
It was difficult for a Phase to commit suicide. Or complete suicide or whatever politically correct phrase the humans had for blowing their own brains out. All day, Teja had been trying to figure out how she could do it effectively. She was a perfectionist and she didn’t want to screw-up her last job.
Elementals were hardy folk, though. Susceptibility to mysterious plagues aside, they didn’t die easily. The gun-to-the-head thing wouldn’t work on Teja, because bullets were harmless to Phases. Slitting her wrists and putting her head in an oven were out, too. Hanging might do the trick, but it would take a while.
There just weren’t a lot of foolproof options.
Nothing killed a Phase faster than decapitation. That would be the ideal way to go. If only she had a guillotine, she’d be all set. Years before, the Shadow House had built one, but then Job outlawed them after an unauthorized execution. So, unless she jumped into the human realm and visited a French Revolution museum, “off with her head” didn’t seem real feasible.
Teja frowned. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. Could she find a working guillotine at a museum? It was possible. But, the idiotic humans probably removed the blades from the exhibits. They wouldn’t want some frigging tourist to climb in and Marie Antoinette himself while posing for a goofy vacation photo.
Damn stupid humans.
St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) came on the iPod, but Teja didn’t even hear it.
Basically, Teja figured her easiest choices were leaping off of a tall building, and hoping for the worse to happen, or finding a poison that worked on Elementals. Poison had a nice Classical ring to it. Cleopatra, Socrates, and Teja, of the Fire and Cold Houses… All dead by self-inflicted poison.
Unfortunately, poisons strong enough to kill a Phase weren’t exactly sitting on grocery shelves. At least, Teja didn’t think that they were. Her knowledge of toxic substances was limited. Fire Phases racked up a high body count, but they knocked-off their victims in much more direct ways. Hacking an enemy to quivering bits? Sure. But, they’d never resort to something as impersonal as poison. And she was just too exhausted to do a lot of research on the stuff, now. So, poison seemed like a longshot, which was a shame.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the funeral pyres. There were worse ways to go.
A doctor would know about poisons. But, -Oh, the irony!- the Fire House’s doctor had died from the Fall three days before. Teja’s cousin Freya, of the Cold House was still alive, though, and one of the foremost healers in the real. She’d been there trying to help Oberon at the end, although she and her brother, Eian, hated the Fire House.
They especially hated Teja.
Hell, if the Cold Phase side of her family knew that Teja needed some kind of “adios cruel world” pills, Freya would probably hand over bottles of poison with a happy smile and wave good-bye. Sadly, Teja just didn’t have it in her to go to the Cold Kingdom and witness more destruction. Not even if it meant that her own end would be more swift and painless.
Jumping would have to do. Not even a Phase could survive a four story swan dive onto the pavement. Her skull would be shattered by the impact; her body broken beyond repair. Her last memories would be the rush of air on the way down and of her grandfather’s stupid music.
That wasn’t so bad, considering.
The Fall was a hard death, wiping out whole families and erasing people like they’d never existed. Until half-an-hour before, Teja had been taking a shift at the pyres, stacking the anonymous bodies. Some she recognized. Some had pinned their names to their clothing, as if they wanted someone to know who they’d been and remembered them. Some lived and died alone. The illness was democratic in infecting all sorts of people and then leaving them all at the same place: Burning in mass bonfires that most survivors couldn’t bear to watch.
By the end, most victims of the Fall were glad to let go.
Sitting on the roof and looking down on the chaos, Teja understood the victims’ sense of liberation. Of course, they wanted to be free.
Teja did to.
The iPod’s playlist progressed to Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. Her grandfather’s favorite song brought back bittersweet memories of Oberon dancing with her. Oberon illegally downloading half the songs on the internet. Oberon booing the contestants on American Idol. Teja shoved the thoughts out of her head.
She had other things to focus on, now.
Like a suicide note. Should she leave one behind? It seemed pretty pointless. What could she really say? “I’m sorry” seemed trite and insincere. If she was really sorry, she wouldn’t have done it in the first place, right? “I love you” was just as bad. Who could read a note that said that and not think, “Yeah you loved me, but not enough to stay and help me, huh?” She could list some reasons for choosing death, but the mass cremations and rotting corpses covering their homeland seemed like a pretty fucking eloquent rationale.
Shit.
Teja had been useless when it came to emotional crap, even before she lost the ability to feel anything. Her family would be better off without her. She couldn’t even think of a way to say good-bye to them. It was better not to leave a note. They’d figure things out when they saw her splattered body on the pavement.
That image made her wince.
Teja didn’t want to subject Djinn and Hope to the sight of her corpse. Her cousins were having a hard enough time. Maybe she could aim for one of the gigantic pyres with her fall. That way it wouldn’t leave such a mess. It would be her suicide and funeral all in one.
The practical side of her knew that wouldn’t really work, that her family would suffer when she died, even if they never saw her body. But, Teja was too worn out to listen. She’d poured everything she had, every drop of her energy, into trying to keep Oberon alive.
And she’d failed.
There was nothing left inside of her, now. Whatever spark or passion she’d had for life had gone out.
Teja was one of the most powerful Phases. She controlled two Elements, something unprecedented in Elemental history. She helped support two Houses. So few Phases possessed her skills and level of power. But, she’d been helpless to save her grandfather, the one person she loved most in the world.
The Doors’ Light My Fire cued up, the familiar keyboard and drum introduction drawing her attention. Jim Morrison was right. The time to hesitate was through.
Teja leaned over slightly, so she could experience the dizzy view straight down. A sensation of vertigo had her vision swimming for a beat. She could almost feel the ground rushing up to meet her. Jumping wouldn’t be so hard. All she had to do was let go.
Teja was very, very ready to let go.
She pulled the headphones off and set the iPod aside. All around her the Fire Kingdom stretched out endlessly. The Kingdoms in the Elemental realm all looked different, depending on their Element. The Water Kingdom had magical waterfalls and crystal clear pools. The Shadowland was a grey and shifting landscape of darkness. The Cold Kingdom was predominantly ice and snow. The Fire Kingdom was world ablaze.
Electricity had gone out the second day of the Fall, but the Fire Kingdom was still illuminated. And not just by the funeral pyres. It glowed at the edges, with volcanic reds and yellows. Flowing rivers of lava poured over black igneous rocks and towering volcanoes rimmed the perimeter in forbidding peaks. It was beautiful, in a stark and alien away; a place like nowhere else in existence. Teja loved the Fire Kingdom.
It was th
e only spot she wanted to spend the last few moments of her life.
Teja got to her feet. It would be best to jump while standing. It gave her an extra few feet to topple from. The smoke-filled air blew through her long curls, whistling enticingly; calling her downward. The toes of her battered Converses poked out passed the edge of the roof.
She should’ve changed clothes before she died. Even for someone as unconcerned with her appearance as Teja, it seemed sort of wrong to commit suicide in ripped jeans and old sneakers. Overtop of her white t-shirt she wore the letterman style cardigan that had once belonged to Oberon. There was a large, red “O” at the bottom, which had struck his fancy and he’d stolen it from some human college student back in the 1920s. Since the Fall began, Teja hadn’t taken the damn thing off.
Still, killing oneself was a solemn occasion. She should probably wear mourning gray and maybe some heels. Except, she didn’t have the energy to go find new clothes.
She just didn’t care.
Teja inched forward a bit more. The Fire Palace was a study in Gothic architecture, right down to the hideous stone gargoyles on the roofline. Several of them seemed to smirk at her as she prepared to jump. Her hand caught hold of the one closest to her. Using his horn for balance, she leaned out, her body extended over the open air.
If any slight part of her doubted that she could actually commit suicide, it was quieted. Teja, in that second, could absolutely let go of the gargoyle, push off the roof, and plunge to her death. There was something so shocking about that, it actually penetrated her hopelessness. The quiet confidence in her plan vanished and a thread on her normal thought pattern tried to peak through.
She was about to kill herself. She could really do it.
Something whispered at her to turn back.
The voice was sure and strong, telling her that she needed to survive. It cried that she was leaving her family to suffer alone. It screamed that it wasn’t her time. It said she was needed.
Queen of the Magnetland (The Elemental Phases Book 5) Page 31
