by Gabi Moore
“We might as well. If they try to stop me reaching her, and they will, they won’t try anything until we get near the store.” Dion rolled up the map and put it in his jacket.
“I think they already have something planned,” Lilly said as she nodded toward the swimwear place across from them.
Dion looked at it and saw the swim team putting on their tracksuits. They formed a line and went to the back of the store where each one picked up their own suit and slipped into it. Next, they formed another line and marched out of the store, much to the disappointment of the men waiting on the outside. The swim team line swam out of the store and headed down the main concourse of the mall.
“You think they’ll go toward the pool store?” Emily asked Dion.
“They’re going in the right direction. Guess we’ll head there too and find out.”
The four friends stood up from the table and walked down the concourse in the same direction.
They didn’t notice any of Karanzen’s security guards watching them. However, it wasn’t important since the mall had plenty of new security cameras. The cameras covered only the areas with the heaviest traffic, but they still could track their movements through the mall. Right now, the officer was probably in his office doing the slow burn over the four of them gaining entrance to the mall. Dion kept in mind the offensive maneuver by Karanzen might’ve been a ruse to make them think he didn’t want them inside. The swim team elementals had appeared conveniently when he blocked the entrance.
The foot traffic picked up once they entered the main part of this section of the mall. There were quite a few people who made their way, as the day was good for an excursion to the mall. No one gave four young people walking together a second glance as they were assumed to be out shopping, just like everyone else.
The pool store had a small profile on the inside of the mall. Since it was open only six months out of the year, the mall had rented them a corner section that didn’t allow for much window space. It meant the windows could be cleaned with little trouble, but the potential customers couldn’t see the vast interior of the store. It compensated by having a large exterior display, which was where the actual pools were kept. The patrons of the store would enter from the outside through a gate or from another door inside the store.
When they reached the pool store, the water elementals were already there. Crowds of them stood at the entrance and blocked it as they chattered on with the store manager. Dion looked, but couldn’t see the owner who he needed to reach. He hoped she was inside the store somewhere.
The swim team made their way inside and soon had the same effect on the pool store’s patrons as they did on the ones in the swimsuit store. From the outside, they watched them walk through the store and talk with the staff. They would swarm around and check out the products on display. Once again, mass chaos had broken out.
Dion took them inside the store with him. No sales clerk greeted them, as they were all busy with the sudden appearance of the swim team. Still he could not see the form of Salacia Delphi. They wandered around the isles watching the nymphs in human form pull things off the shelf and put them back.
“Can I help you with something?” Dion heard one clerk ask one of the elementals as she picked up a box containing a raft from the stack and look it over. The nymph ignored him and placed it back, then grabbed one of the exact same types and looked at it.
This continued while Dion attempted to ask any of the staff about the lady who owned the place. None of them could help him because he was too busy ensuring the nymph he watched didn’t walk off with a product from the store. In effect, the staff was overwhelmed.
“Let me try,” Emily told Dion.
She walked into visual range of a sales clerk who was restacking a display the nymphs had torn down a minute ago. Emily gave him her best ‘little girl lost’ look as he made eye contact with her.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said to him. “Is Ms. Delphi in today? I needed to see her about a pool.”
“No,” he said, “I’m afraid she won’t be in until this afternoon. I can help you with anything you might need once they’re finished.” He glanced in the direction of the swim team, still picking over the store merchandise.
The moment he spoke, one of the nymphs discovered the outside display. She yelled to the rest of them who proceeded to file out the rear door in the direction of the pools. The sales clerks on the inside where relieved to see them go, but their problems were far from over.
Minutes later, the elementals were in the fenced-in area of the exterior store. Two senior sales people worked in this part of the store, as it was the most profitable part of the business. One was in the process of expounding on the attributes of a new pool model to a potential customer. He turned as the swim team column walked past him in the direction of the other pools. Both of the salesmen stood speechless as the girls proceeded to remove their tracksuits and stack them in a corner again. They stood there in a daze as the nymphs, still dressed in an assortment of bikinis climbed up the ladders on the pools and splashed into the water.
Sean saw two guys from his math class enter the store and watch the nymphs splash around in the pool. They came up behind Dion and the girls and stood next to them for a while, trying to figure out the source of the commotion outside. Finally, one of them turned to Sean.
“Where did that swim team come from?” he asked him. “We saw them in the swimsuit store and followed them over here.”
“I have no idea,” he lied. “We’re trying to decide who they are too.”
He remembered the names of the guys because they were twins. Not identical twins, but fraternal ones. They both wore glasses and were in his classes. It took him a few more minutes to remember their names: Doug and Dennis. One was slight of build and did not stand out other than having a brother who was in most of the same classes. The other played basketball and was bigger.
“Has anyone tried to speak to them?” Doug, the larger one said. “Not a bad looking one in the bunch.”
Sean, who still felt the laser beams of Emily on his back, turned to Doug. “They don’t seem to speak to anyone. None of the clerks in here or out there have been able to get them to say a word.” He was tempted to tell them the girls in the pool were all nymphs, but decided that explaining to them about water elemental wouldn’t help anyone.
Doug was the out-going popular of the two and played on the basketball team. He was in the company of the cook kids and seemed to have a different girl on his arm every month. Sean remembered him from elementary school as the fat kid who grew out of his weight and became popular when he filled out. They lived several blocks away from him in a new house his parents constructed a few years ago. Previously, they’d lived on a farm further out, but his dad sold it to some real estate developers and now the farmstead was a mass conglomeration of houses. His parents had done very well in the deal and lived in a one of the largest houses in the neighborhood.
Dennis, on the other hand, was a bit smaller and had no interest in sports. He spent most of the time in the library studying and working on another college application. He couldn’t count on a college scholarship, because his parents told both of them they would have to finance their own higher education. Dennis was obsessed with finding a college where he could get a full scholarship and not have to pay for anything. He figured it would be possible to get a job off campus to provide for his needs, but he needed a place where he didn’t have to worry about going into debt for his tuition. And he wanted a prestigious school where he could graduate and find a job in a month after he left college.
Although they were brothers, the two seldom socialized together. Doug had his basketball team friends and spent the summer at basketball camp. Dennis had his books and lab experiments as he tried to find another angle to get into college. If he didn’t know they were brothers, Sean would have wondered why they were at the mall together.
“We’re here to get some clothes for the spring,” Dennis told him. �
��We were coming out of the Better Men store when we saw those girls in the swimwear place. “Naturally, Doug had to stand there and try to figure out a way to meet one.” He glared at his brother.”
“You’re just jealous, little brother,” Doug sniped at him. “You spend all the time with the books; you’re never going to meet any girls. He’s mad because I dragged him over here to see if we could meet some of these babes. I’ve got the car keys and he’s stuck with me.”
“I really wouldn’t try too hard when it comes to these girls,” Sean tried to tell him.
“Why?” Doug countered. “You not had any luck?”
“It’s not that.” Sean groped for a word. “They’re not what you assume they are.”
“You’re going to have to explain yourself.”
Sean caught a collective look from Lilly and Emily. “I think they’re from some foreign country. They don’t seem to understand English.”
“Where?” Dennis said to him. “If any of them are from Europe I’d expect them to speak our language as it’s widely understood over there. I speak Spanish and German, maybe I could interpret.”
“See?” Doug said. “You just put him in the right situation and he comes around. I knew all he’d have to do is get out of the library for a few hours.”
Doug turned and looked at the girls. “So are you all double dating or something?”
“Something like that,” Emily said to him and moved closer to Sean.
“Never could see it,” he told her. “Prefer one-on-one myself. This has to be the first time I’ve ever seen you with a girl, Sean. Dion, it doesn’t surprise me. You have more attention from them than you know what to do about.”
Dion ignored him and turned from the sight of the splashing nymphs. “We’re here to meet the store owner,” he told him. “But she had to leave and it looks like we’re stuck in the mall for the next few hours.
“Come on, little brother,” Doug said to his twin. “Let’s see if we can go out there and make some connections.” The two went off in search of the nymphs who were frolicking in the pools. The two clerks still stood and watched them, unsure of what to do.
“I really should have warned them,” Dion said to his friends, “but I don’t know how to do it without making it impossible to find the Grandmaster.”
“What do they have to be afraid about?” Lilly said to Dion. “They seem harmless enough. At least they’re not trying to kidnap us like the last groups of elementals tried to do.”
“They have to be here because someone hired them,” Dion explained. “You saw them arrive on that bus. Someone, probably my uncle, paid for their arrival. These are not your normal lake and river water elementals. They have abilities I can only speculate. My uncle wants to keep me away from the Grandmaster so I don’t obtain any further powers that might threaten him. He’s brought this group in to carry out his plans. Keep in mind they may appear to be normal girls, but they are elementals.”
“What harm can they do?” Emily said. “I would think we’d be alright so long as we don’t get pulled into one of the pools.”
“They’ll find a way to work their power. All they need is a source of water to cause a flood or worse. And those two have no idea what they’re walking into.”
They watched Doug, with Dennis in tow; stroll over to the nearest pool that was set-up in the back lot. They walked over to the side of the pool and called to the two women who were swimming in it. The women ignored Doug as he continued to call out to them. Finally, one of them swam over to his side to see what he wanted.
“The problem with water elementals,” Dion told them. “Is that they are attracted to humans every now and then. You see, some of them were human at one time. I don’t know how it works, but sometimes an elemental starts out as a human. Sometimes a human ends up an elemental. It all depends on how they find their place in the universe. It’s really bad for a nymph to become infatuated with a human. They don’t do very well outside water and few people live close enough to large bodies of water. So what happens if a sailor should have a nymph fall for him? He has to stay constantly around a source of water or she will sicken and breakdown. It creates all kinds of problems for both of them.”
“You mean she could die?” asked Emily.
“There is no death in elementals,” Dion said. “At least not any death we would recognize. They can dissolve after a long time, but the process takes centuries. If they are out of their environment, they go into a form of hibernation and no one knows how long it can last. There are stories of water elementals that became normal again after they’d spent generations in a desert. The other problem of a water elemental falling for a human is what it can do to him. If she tries to keep him under the water, he’ll drown. Most elementals understand why humans can’t live under the sea, but some of the lower ones don’t understand why. Those elementals are very strong, so I assume they know better than to mess with humans.”
They looked again across the lot and saw Doug in a deep conversation with one of the nymphs. She had long blond hair, which was plastered across her head from swimming in the water. Her friend was Asian and had black hair, also trailing down her back. She was swimming across the pool as Dennis made eye contact with her.
“So what you’re saying,” Emily said, “is that a relationship with a water element always turns out bad.”
“Not necessarily. But neither the human nor the nymphs seem to realize what they are up against until it’s too late. She ends up a pile of salt until he can resurrect her or he ends up sick from spending too much time in the sea. The environment for one isn’t always the best one for the other. And eventually, if they are always close to each other, it will happen. Nymphs always appear to be the most beautiful women in the world to the human.”
Now both of the water elementals were on the side of the pool talking with the brothers. It wasn’t hard to see, even from this distance, the two guys were more than casually interested in the nymphs. Doug had removed his glasses and Dennis his hat while they had deep conversations with the two water elementals that appeared to be human.
“Sometimes the elemental doesn’t even know it is one,” Dion continued.
“How is that possible?” Sean asked. “Are you telling me some people who are walking around are elemental and are unaware? I would think the first time they caused a log to catch on fire, they’d figure it out.”
“But they might consider it lighting or spontaneous combustion. No one knows where elementals originate. They have always been here before, as I heard someone say. Every now and then, someone just remembers they’re supposed to be in the water all the time and they’re gone. Some people say these strange reports of people who combust happen because someone was supposed to be a salamander and then remembered one day.”
“So do you think we should at least warn them about the water elementals?” Sean asked.
Right now, the two men were busy talking to the nymphs. They didn’t seem to be lucky that day as the women were busy swimming back and forth while talking to them. They seemed to be playing games with the two young men.
“Right now they don’t appear to be making much progress,” Emily said as she starred out the back window of the store.
Dennis was still busy at the side of the pool. He’d learned the name of the girl swimming in the pool with the straight black hair: Dirce.
“Dirce?” he called back to her. “Is that anything like Circe?”
“No!” she cried, splashing water at him. “You’re thinking of someone else. She’s a distant cousin of mine.”
Dennis had never seen a girl so beautiful before. Her skin was flawless and colored a deep tan that could only come from steady exposure to the sun on a beach. Her eyes were a deep green and he could see the entire world inside them. She wore a yellow bikini and swam across the pool as if she was born in it.
“Where did you learn to swim so well?” Dennis asked her.
“Where did you learn to walk?” she returned.
“I don’t worry about things like that. I’ve always been able to swim. Have you always been able to walk?”
“Well, no, I had to learn, but we all do.”
“You can swim a few weeks after you’re born, did you know that? If you’d been taught, you might have been swimming earlier than walking.”
The girl swam across to the other side of the pool and pulled herself up on the edge. As she sat there, the rays of the sun fell down upon her illuminating her body a bright gold. She leaned back and her hair became instantly dry. Dennis couldn’t figure out how she managed to do that one, he decided it had to have something to do with the angle of the sun. She looked across the pool at her with her big green eyes and smiled at him.
“I like you,” she said and jumped back into the water.
His brother wasn’t having much luck with the blond near him. She kept swimming back across the pool, trying to avoid conversation. However, he continued to push himself on her.
“What school are you from?” he asked. “If you’re on a team it has to be one of the local ones? Montfair? St. Barbara? You can tell me, come on.”
“Why don’t you guess some more?” she sighed, as the girl paddled back.
Dion watched the girl with the black hair swim back across the pool toward Dennis. She stopped when she was right at the edge where he was standing and put her hands on the edge of the pool. As he watched, the girl reached one hand out to Dennis and touched his.
Dennis felt as close to heaven as he would ever be in this life. Ever since he was a small kid, he’d believed the only way to succeed in life was by pure reason. It had lifted humanity out of the pit and created civilization. To that end, he applied himself with his studies and tried to get ahead as much as he could. It wasn’t easy; the school where they went was full of professor and military officer kids, all of whom wanted the open slots at the major colleges. He would spend endless hours at night studying for exams. Dennis spent more time on science fair projects than most scientists did on grant proposals.
