by Ceri Clark
Now in the downstairs hall, Jake didn’t dither but headed straight for the sitting room. Light from the street streamed through the net curtains into the small room.
Jake walked towards the bay window. As he reached the sandy-colored sofa he knelt down and pushed it a few inches to the left. Yes! The carpet was loose there. He pulled up the corner and saw a small floor safe with a combination lock. Talk about security overkill.
Jake thought back to the afternoon. What was that security code? Oh yeah. He entered the numbers he remembered lifting from Emma’s mind into the keypad. The lock whirred and clicked and he froze for a second. The sound too loud in the silent room.
Success! He moved a little to the left of the window to gain more light and opened the safe fully. It was filled with colored folders, which he stacked on the sofa arm one by one. Beneath them lay his parent’s and, below it, another folder with his name.
He removed the two folders and carefully put everything back the way he’d found it and closed the safe. Silently, he moved the sofa back and tiptoed eagerly back up to his room.
Once in his bedroom, he kicked his dirty clothes across the floor and stuffed them against the crack under his door. Sure that no light would creep out into the landing, he turned his bedroom lamp on and tilted it to get maximum light on his bed. He sat down and looked at the two colored files.
The blue one bulged with something hard and solid. Jake emptied the contents over the duvet. An envelope, a crystal pendant and some loose paperwork spilled out. Ignoring the paperwork for now, Jake picked up the envelope. It was addressed to him in his dad’s untidy scrawl. Underneath his name, he read that it was meant to be opened on his own eighteenth birthday. Taking the letter out of the yellowing envelope, he absent-mindedly smoothed the creases out of the paper.
His eyes roamed the page, scanning the type quickly, eager to know more.
Dear Jake,
First of all we want to say how proud we are of you, we love you and you will always be our son.
We couldn’t find the words to tell you before but you were adopted when you were a baby. We will support you in every way we can if you want to look for your birth parents.
We included a pendant with this letter that was found with you. We should have given it to you years ago. Social Services insisted that we had to because your birth parents wanted you to have it. We can only say we are sorry for not giving it to you before now but if we had we would have had to admit that you were adopted. We love you too much and thought we would lose you if we did that.
We hope you can forgive us.
Mum and Dad
The paperwork looked like adoption documents. They had both his mother and father’s signatures on them but no information about his real parents. The will in the last file only told him what he already knew - that in the event of his parents’ death, his uncle, Ben, would look after him.
And there was the crystal.
It hung off a black leather thong, suspended in a circle of white metal. The crystal itself was small but clear. Holding it up to the light, he couldn’t see any flaws. It looked like a perfect globe. Engraved on the edge of the metal, Jake could just make out some symbols, but these were far too small to see clearly.
Fascinated, Jake stared into the depths of the stone. In the lamplight, it glowed a soft yellow, green to blue and finally red and back to yellow from deep in the center. Feeling an irresistible urge to put it on, he slid it over his head and tucked it under his black t-shirt. A warmth began to emanate from the crystal, making him feel drowsy. As it crept though his body, Jake felt more relaxed than he’d ever felt before.
He lay back on to his pillows and closed his eyes. This was amazing, he felt like he was floating. His awareness expanded, taking in the whole room. He could see but he knew he had his eyes closed. Turning, he saw his body below him. Underneath the t-shirt there was a glow in the crack between the t-shirt and his skin. Wow.
This is weird, he thought. His legs hung off the bed at an odd angle while his upper body lay on his pillows. His arms were folded on his chest and obscured the logo underneath. However, his face seemed relaxed. He couldn’t help comparing himself to his friend. Where Karl was relatively short and ginger, Jake was tall and blond. Jake grinned; he was taller than some of the teachers!
Thinking of school, he suddenly remembered about his promise to meet Karl at the beach. Without warning he was floating towards the wall. Jake raised his arms over his eyes as the wall loomed closer. Of course, he didn’t have arms! Silently yelling he passed through the bedroom wall. With horror, he felt rather than saw spiders scuttling in the wall and he was through to the outside. Taking a few seconds to gain his bearings he realized he was far from the ground. He was floating in mid-air! The realization hit him. Oh my God, I’m floating in mid-air! He told himself not to panic but vertigo began to set in. He began to fall. His thoughts froze as fear gripped his mind. The grass was getting closer but his friend filled his thoughts. He was supposed to be meeting Karl. What a time to be thinking of Karl! But he stopped falling and began to move along again. He was off, heading towards the sea.
As he floated, Jake became more confident. He tried to take in all the details. Everything was so clear. He’d always had good vision but he’d never seen anything like this! He could see the details of every brick of every house he passed.
He began to notice sounds and realized they were muted. A brown moth fluttered against a window across the road. His progress slowed as he concentrated on the insect and his hearing sharpened. Jake could hear the wings hitting the glass with a large regular thump, thump, thump. Suddenly, he began to hear other sounds. People were shouting in the house across the road and a baby was crying in another. A bat passed, the clicks a counterpoint to the other sounds. They were getting louder, Jake’s instinct was to cover his ears, but he didn’t have any hands. Karl. Karl he had to get to Karl. He was off again, the sounds muted once more.
Within moments he passed his school. It was dark now, its gates closed. It reminded him of a haunted house he’d seen from an old horror movie. He concentrated on the boy's wing and felt himself slow down. He circled over to Karl’s window to see if he had already gone. The curtains were open and he saw two rows of beds. Jake looked to the left through the glazed windowpanes and sighed. He could tell from the shape on the bed that Karl had rolled up clothes to look like a person. Matron should be wise to that trick by now. Maybe she didn’t care?
Thinking of people who didn’t care, he was glad his uncle hadn’t made him board here. He thought he might when he first arrived but Ben kept him at this school for appearance’s sake. Fortunately for him, Ben hated spending more money than he had to on him. It was cramping his style. Paying for Jake to board there would mean he had less money to spend on his girlfriends. But again he wouldn’t want his friends at the golf club to think he was mean so he was still allowed to be a day-boy - and Ben never let him forget it, Jake thought bitterly.
Jake recalled the will. When his parents died last year, Ben and Emma were left a third of their money. That was three hundred and fifty thousand pounds! It wasn’t as if his parents had dumped him on them expecting them to struggle with him. The school fees didn’t cost that much, he thought.
He could see the beach peeking through some trees; it wasn’t too far now. This was the main reason everyone chose it as a meeting place. Following a break in the fence, a well-trodden mud path marked the way through the park. He was so close; he could see Karl’s ginger hair shining like a beacon in the distant firelight. As usual he was sitting on the sand alone, slightly apart from everyone else. Jake felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t his fault. Karl would understand. After all, it wasn’t every day you found out you were adopted or come to think of it left your body and flew!
Jake gently floated down to beach level and sat down next to his friend. A few of the others were standing next to the fire, chatting and drinking. Someone had brought some speakers and attached it to their
phone and a few of the girls were dancing; a bottle in one hand and their phones in the other. Probably texting one another, Jake thought.
He turned to look at his friend; Karl had brought out one of his many books again. Craning to look at the cover, he could just make out Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre in the firelight. His friend really needed to get a life. What was the point of going to these parties if he just read books? Jake sometimes despaired of his friend. All that scheming to be popular. Okay, they weren’t popular - but they were invited. Surely, that was a step in the right direction.
Jake watched Karl put his book down to look at his watch. Jake jerked. Karl was staring straight at him! Jake twisted behind and realized that was the direction where he lived. As Jake looked back at his friend again he caught him shaking his head. Karl took out his mobile from his pocket. He swiped the screen to unlock it and pressed the green key. Searching for Jake’s number, he began to call.
Simultaneously, Jake could hear a ring in the distance. A sharp tug pulled him and he found himself hurtling back towards his body at an impossible speed. While before he had travelled around buildings now he went through them. Within seconds, he was back on his bed. Jake groaned, if he’d known that was going to happen he would have lain down properly! He leaned over to his bedside table exhausted. There was one missed call on his phone.
Jake rolled over to stare up at the ceiling. His mind was whirling; he needed to find out more about his real parents. Energized he sat up. Where could he find out more? Social Services! Jake sat down in front of his computer and tapped the spacebar on his keyboard. Moments later the familiar login screen lit his monitor. Thank God for Emma, he thought. She could be a pain but her need for a quiet life meant she’d do anything to get it. Not that I would ever take advantage, he smiled at the thought. Ben would never have let him have a computer without her insistence.
Using a search engine, Jake quickly found the public Social Services website. A quick search within the code found a link to the private site. Don’t you just love it when governments insist that everything is put online? Jake grinned. If it’s on the web, I can get it. Searching for the password-cracking program in his downloads folder, Jake’s pendant started to glow imperceptibly. He opened one folder and closed it. Another, and another. Suddenly, hundreds of folders were opening and closing at an impossible rate as Jake looked for the file he needed. Another moment and Jake was inside the computer. It was so easy. It felt like he was in an incredibly large room with hundreds, even thousands of doors. All he had to do was just think of the door and it opened, think again and it closed. Easily finding the passcrack file on his computer in seconds he just applied the program to the website and he could sense millions of number combinations crashing against the security wall.
In just a few more minutes, he was in. Pausing to check there was no more security, he moved through to the adoption records. Another few moments and he found his name. Entering the folder, he visualized it as just another large room filled with paper suspended around him.
Grabbing the nearest, he found it was a newspaper clipping from the year he was found fourteen years ago. They had digitized the whole page. On the top was an advert and below it was a small picture of his adoptive parents holding a baby and a short description.
He was found at St Mary’s, he read. He was a month to two months premature but miraculously healthy when a nurse found him abandoned on the steps. After a few months in an incubator, his new parents took him home.
He was found wrapped in a blanket with a crystal and a letter. Jake frowned, letter? What letter? Dropping the article, he grabbed the next few files; these were just progress reports for Social Services. He frowned and moved around the ‘room’ picking more up and discarding them again. It was all rubbish, where was the letter? In the ‘corner’ was another folder, only a few kilobytes large. Inside was a file labeled to be deleted.
Picking up the paper, eagerly he began to read. It was from his real mother. Just hours ago he would have thought it was all nonsense, but now... It said his name was Malo Omnax. Impatiently he skipped the next paragraph, something about being sorry.
He began to read more slowly with disbelief. There had been a coup in a place called Eleria? The Magi had killed the heads of four of the five great Elementi families, including the High-King his father, the letter explained. She had managed to escape and with the help of Ariel, the Air Queen, had sent him and the other children to Earth. She didn’t know where the others went. The power was fading and all their systems were shut down to preserve energy. They had to use all the spare energy they had left to accelerate his growth so they could safely send him.
He had all four powers within him she said, fire, earth, air and water. With the crystal he had to find the other children and bring them back. Only together would they be able to defeat the Magi.
Wow, no wonder they marked this file for deletion. They must have thought she was a right nutcase. Thinking back though, it did make some sort of sense. He thought back to the beginning when he found he could make something catch fire just by thinking about it.
The first time had been an accident. He had lost his temper. Ben had promised that he would let him stay at Karl’s but had said no at the last minute.
He’d been furious! How dare he. He wasn’t even his father! Jake had stormed to his room, slamming the door behind him. The fury had built up, making him so mad, he felt like he would explode - and to his surprise the book in front of him burst into tall angry red flames. Luckily there had been half a glass of lemonade on his desk to put it out with. It was so cool.
After months of practice he found if he concentrated hard, so hard that every muscle in his body was tense, he could make something light up in front of him. It got easier the more he practiced. In fact it was how he got himself and Karl invited to the beach parties. His party trick was to light the bonfire... so that was fire. He could read minds - that had to be air. That only left earth and water.
Glancing around he decided he wouldn’t be able to find out any more here, he was tired and it was getting late, he set the page in his hand to be printed on his computer.
About to leave, he halted. He had to do something about security. Jake found the door that led to the access logs on the server. Scanning them, he wiped all traces of his visit before jumping to a nearby proxy server. Making sure that it didn’t keep any records of his visit, he jumped to a couple more servers before heading home.
Jake withdrew from the computer and sat back to stare at the blank screen. This was far too much to take in. He was a... No, not a magician; that was obviously what the Magi were. He picked up the printed letter. He was one of the Elementi - one of the rulers of Eleria with Talents. Not only that but he was a king - well he must be if he was the son of the High-King and he was dead. The spirit of the nation she had written. He looked down at the crystal. It had stopped glowing. It just looked like any other crystal he’d seen in jewelry shop windows down the high street.
Jake felt a wave of tiredness hit him. Exhausted, he looked at his clock. It was two in the morning. Turning the computer off, he lay back down on his bed. Clicking the light off, he turned to face the wall, closed his eyes and fell instantly asleep.
CHAPTER TWO: MIRIM
Mirim opened her eyes, and sighed with contentment. Of all the islands on Eleria, this had to be the best. She smiled as she watched the boats bobbing on the horizon. Her visits to Pumar for fresh fruit and fish were always a welcome relief; she just wished there were more of them. It broke up yet another humdrum week. The vibrant port was so different compared to the white empty soulless Citadel.
Taking her cup, she found a seat along the edge of the covered stall area. The market wasn’t fully open yet and she could see people at the red colored stalls nearest her were still setting up their fruit displays. The only stands serving customers were the grey fish booths nearer the cliff edge.
She had just enough time to sit down and unwind with a
cup of dushu. Sipping with pleasure, she let the warm amber liquid soothe her parched throat. Closing her eyes again, she leant back against the woven chair and relaxed.
She let the islanders’ thoughts sweep over her like a gentle breeze as she listened to their chatter. She loved the friendly banter among the stall owners and their customers. It reminded her of Byia, her friend from the next island along. They had been friends for years and had been inseparable once together. Each time her mother came to the market, they would sneak off to play for a couple of hours on the beach. A frown crossed Mirim's features as she remembered the last time she saw her friend. One day her mother had ‘heard’ her making plans to show her friend the entrance to the Citadel.
Mirim cringed at the memory. As soon as she’d decided to tell Byia, her mother had immediately sensed what she had been about to do. Within minutes, she had appeared like an avenging demon. Mirim relived the fear she felt when she spotted her mother approaching across the beach. Her mother had stalked up to them, the old queen’s mouth set in a grim line, her mind clamped shut like a steel vice. She’d grabbed the seven-year-old Mirim’s hand and dragged her across the sand. Mirim had never seen her mother so furious.
It was the first and only time the old Air Queen had used the air power on her daughter. Mirim had cried bitterly, tears running down her face. She wasn’t really going to tell Byia she remembered arguing, but her mother knew different, she'd read the truth from her thoughts. Ignoring her cries, her mother mercilessly invaded her mind, slicing through her immature barriers with ease. She'd tried to resist but all she could do was let the tears fall down her cheeks as the compulsion grew in strength. She would never be able to talk about the Citadel’s location.
Their trip ended there, and the old queen forbade her to see Byia again. They never went back to Yarn. Mirim could smile at the memory now but at the time she had screamed and sulked for days. Of course now she understood why her mother had done it. Her family had guarded the secret of the Citadel for almost a hundred years, ever since the Change. A child's temper tantrum could never be allowed to jeopardize that.
