Chapter 6
Ryan:
The scythe grew heavier and harder to carry as I went up flight after flight of tall steps. The staircase pushed the four of us in a tight, vertical spiral through the flickering shadows of the candle-lit tower. Several times I looked over the wooden railing toward the ground. Fortunately, I had little energy to worry about a fall into the dizzying depths in the center of the stairwell; all my attention was focused on my scythe, and making sure I didn’t cut myself or anyone else on the steps.
I lost count of the unlabeled doors as we went up and up and up. I began wondering how close we were to the top, and suddenly the air tasted fresh again. The fading rays of daylight streamed in from the rooftop, now close by.
“Did Sensei mean the top floor, or the roof?” I asked.
“Let’s try the one that means a shorter trip,” Erin said, gesturing toward the nearby door.
The hinges creaked as Kris worked the bronze handle. A panoramic view of an orange sunset greeted us as we stepped through the doorway into the massive room. A few mural-covered exterior walls blocked less than a quarter of the landscape, vibrant green trees below and high brown cliffs beyond. Tall bronze lampstands stood near the columns, as yet unlit. The setting sun was slowly changing the color palette in favor of black cliffs, purple trees, and an orange and pink sky.
“It’s beautiful,” Kris said.
One of the lengthening shadows moved. Sensei was at the edge of the balcony. “You carry those tools like you have some idea of what you’re doing,” he said with a small smile. “I wonder how you chose which you would carry?”
The soles of my sneakers squeaked across the floor as I moved toward the old man, who stood out toward the edge, where the floor became the balcony. The others came just as quickly, but the Sensei’s brown eyes seemed to be focused on me.
“Wasn’t the double-scythe shorter when they left it downstairs in its holster?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “it was out of the holster. I collapsed it, but… then I decided to carry it like this.”
“Hmmm, it would have been better to make use of its holster, but good enough,” Sensei said. “Come to the edge here and look down.” His eyes turned to meet each of ours. “When you have a first-hand understanding of talent, you will be better prepared to understand the Elementals.”
After a pause, he added, “I think we would all be more comfortable, though,” he gestured toward a nearby table, “if you laid aside the weapons you carry.”
He waited as we unbuckled our leather straps. I carefully twisted the double-scythe, retracted the shaft, and returned it to the carrying straps. Stepping away, I felt like my hands were a little too light and free. I would like to meet the owner of that weapon, I thought, and see what he can do with it.
When the four of us had gathered around him, Sensei put his arm around me and pulled me so that I was looking over the edge.
“It is time for a demonstration,” he said.
The wind whistled, cold and mournful. The tower seemed taller than it did from the outside. I gave Sensei a look and saw that he had another arm over Jason’s shoulder, while the girls were standing on Jason’s left. Then the old man let go of Jason to point a bony finger straight down.
“Whatever happens, I want you to stay calm,” Sensei ordered, “and watch closely.”
I peered through the thickening shadows for signs of anything interesting, but there was nothing there, except the green-black ring of grass that surrounded the tower.
“Are you going to show us your talent, Sensei?” Erin’s voice came from next to Jason.
“Hopefully not,” Sensei answered in a little more than a whisper. He pulled back his arm and said, “There, look!”
I put more weight on the railing and bent lower, encouraged by Sensei’s excitement. As hard as I tried, though, I saw nothing but dark green. And the next thing I knew, my knees were scraping over the railing.
I fell. I twisted on my back and watched Erin, Kris and Jason draw away in horror from Sensei, whose arms had tossed me over! The world was spinning, around and around and upside down. It was a long, dark way down, getting shorter every moment.
A dream! I hoped, but no, this wasn’t like any dreams about falling. I didn’t wake up. I felt the wind tear through the space between my tensed fingertips. Breathing was like inhaling a roar, a scream against the inside of my mouth. My eyes wouldn’t close. I was spinning. I saw the blur of gray stone and orange sky and black forest. I was moving further from the building. This was the end. After all the crazy things that had just happened, this would make sense.
I suddenly remembered that in a high-speed collision, tightened muscles tear more easily, so I relaxed. Now, I could close my eyes. I inhaled a prayer… and suddenly felt something I could hold onto. Instinctively, I grabbed at it.
It wasn’t in my fingertips and it wasn’t in my skin, though I felt it across my whole body: power, energy, potential of some kind. It felt like a billowing sail wrapped around me. I was suddenly no longer spinning. Though my eyes were closed, I knew that I was now falling face-first, spread-eagle, toward the ground.
It was like a sail… No longer just grabbing, I pulled.
A blast from the below hit me full in the face. Plummeting backward, I opened my eyes. My hands were balled into fists, but there was nothing in them but my own skin. Pulling again at the mysterious force, in the opposite direction, I flailed about in a lame attempt to stabilize, as the dark world of the setting sun shook about me.
I slowed, and my direction seemed to shift. The cliffs were ahead of me. I was in a standing position. I noticed a massive circle of gray sticking out from in the dark green as I hurtled over it. Something had thrown me backward, over the tower. What was this? Twisting my body to see where the arc was taking me, there came the whoosh of wind, and I found myself falling again. I spread my fingers to pull once more at whatever had saved me.
I shut my eyes against another loud, forceful burst of air. This time it was a bit more moderate; I wasn’t pulling as hard. This feeling, whatever I was pulling on, helped me realize that I was rising again, spread-eagle. I pushed with my arms this time, as if swimming, and I stopped rising. After a few moments, the hum of the blowing air didn’t seem so frightening. I found the courage to open my eyes.
“If you’re worried about Ryan, let me go.” It was Sensei’s voice, very close. “...so you can grab his arm and pull him in,” he said.
I turned and saw Erin, Kris, and Jason rush into view on the balcony immediately below. The tower seemed to be bobbing slightly, like a boat on the waters of a lake, in tune with the whine of the air that blasted beneath me. I felt something brush my foot—someone’s hand?—and I went off-balance, spinning, slowly this time, in midair. The side of the tower was coming closer. I reached out, afraid I would bust my head against the stone, pushed off from it, and threw my arms down. It was as if I was holding onto the currents and only needed to assert my balance.
The next moment, I was standing straight up in the air. There was Jason’s arm outstretched. Kris and Erin were there, too, staring at me wide-eyed. Sensei, though, seemed unsurprised. He stood with a satisfied half-smile, his arms tucked into his wide, white sleeves.
Jason’s hands closed around mine, and I immediately fell. The faint roar had finally stopped; I swung heavily against the side of the tower. There was a thick smack, and wetness began running down my chin. My left arm twisted painfully in its socket as Jason dragged me over the stone balcony. Scraping over the rail—in the right direction this time—I fell in a heap. Static buzzed in my brain, and my stomach sloshed. I rose to my feet beside my friends. Jason looked at me and flexed his dusty hand. I grabbed my chin to stem the bleeding.
“How… did you do that?” Kris asked.
Erin helped me to my feet. I looked between the girls and said, “I just… just….” With a shake of my head, I turned to Sensei.
“Talent,” Sensei asserted, his voice ringi
ng with authority through the cavernous room. His brown eyes were calm under his bushy white eyebrows.
“An affinity for the air. That is the instinctual, supernatural talent you have, Ryan,” he continued. “In fact, the four of you should find yourselves very talented indeed. Wind, fire, water, and stone. Four ancient elements. Individually, you are powerful. Together, you must be something more.”
“Elementals? Is that what you’re getting at?” Kris said. She looked from Sensei to the rest of us.
The old man nodded. “It is a title of grave importance, and not one you have yet truly earned, but from everything that you have told me, and everything you have shown me, I believe that you are to become the Elementals.”
Erin seemed anxious to ask something, but instead bit her lip. After a long pause, she finally said, “If Japan, the US, the old countries... if they are gone, and people can have these... supernatural talents... what’s the world become, then?”
Sensei shook his head. “I know very little from the old world, beyond the fact that it has faded into memory. Vanished, we believe, in the same cataclysm that brought about talents like the ones you possess, a dark time brought about by a dark-eyed man named Devidis. To put it simply, you will have to make the best of the new world, for now, at least.”
The four of us looked at each other, speechless. Jason’s face, dusty from hauling me over the stone rail, was creased by a frown. Kris’s eyes pointed low, but I could see a bit of hopeful wonder in them. Erin’s mouth was a thin horizontal line, a mask over the sadness and confusion we must all have been feeling. I eventually rested my gaze on the bearded face of our mysterious teacher. He seemed to be waiting for us to say something.
“Wind, fire, water and stone. So we got this… talent when Devidis made us touch the crystal?” Jason summarized, with a look at Kris.
“I believe so,” Sensei said, “unless there is something you haven’t been telling me.”
“You believe so?” Jason threw Sensei’s words back at him with an aggressive step forward. “If there’s something we’re not telling you? You’re the one who’s in charge here, who knows things, not us. What do you mean when you say you ‘believe’ so? Aren’t you the expert? And what’s this about earning the title of Elementals? Devidis implied something similar, and I never want anything to do with that evil-eyed old murderer or his plans.”
Sensei turned away and answered calmly, taking the anger in stride. “I know what I know, and when I don’t know, I do my best. Sometimes that means saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and putting my energy elsewhere. Your involvement with Devidis is certainly suspicious, but I am giving you a chance. I expect you to offer me the same courtesy.” He delivered his measured words along with an accusing glare, a stronger reflection of Jason’s aggressive approach.
Sensei’s look softened, though, as his eyes moved on toward the rest of us. “As I acknowledge the uncertainty of all this, I strongly urge you not to go about my Sun Tower casually announcing yourselves as powerful Elementals. With that said, I do believe some confidence is in order. For example, Jason, I watched you as you pulled Ryan over the ledge. Was that not a strain for you? If one of my men were to haul another person’s weight like that, his face would typically show some stress. On your face, I saw surprise and concern, but not strain or stress.”
Jason rolled his shoulders, and flexed the arm that had pulled me up. “Okay, so Ryan here is a little on the light side, and I had my adrenaline pumping…” He paused, his own expression softening. “But, that big war hammer didn’t feel too heavy either. What’s your point?”
“I would expect the Stone Elemental to have tremendous physical strength, to be as steady as stone,” Sensei said.
Jason opened his mouth, then closed it, apparently lost for words. Only for the moment, though. “What else would you expect from a Stone Elemental?” He crossed his arms.
“Let’s try to address all four of you before getting too caught up in specifics,” Sensei said. “The one who spoke the line about fire… It was you, wasn’t it?” He looked at Erin.
She nodded. “Yes, that’s me.” After another pause, she said, “You’re Japanese, aren’t you?”
Sensei smiled. “Yes… I am fairly sure that I am Japanese, though it’s been a long time since that’s been relevant. Come with me. Would you mind trying to light one of these lamps?” He walked toward one of the bronze lampstands.
Erin watched him go, for a moment not following. “You aren’t going to push me off the balcony, are you?” she asked.
“No,” Sensei replied. “Please believe me when I say that I would have used my own talent to catch Ryan if he hadn’t caught himself. I wanted to begin in dramatic fashion, to be sure I had your attention. This fire experiment will be much less dangerous.”
She walked toward him, muttering something angrily in Japanese. Sensei seemed surprised, then spoke to Erin. I didn’t understand it, but I had been in Tokyo long enough to recognize the sound of their language. Jason and Kris both looked at me. I shrugged and followed the Japanese pair.
Erin seemed to be thinking of a response for a moment. “Well, then we’ll speak in English,” she looked back to us, explaining, “since that is ‘the common tongue’ here.”
Returning her focus to Sensei, she continued, “But you don’t know where we are in relation to Tokyo, where the four of us just came from? And you don’t want to tell me how dangerous this might be for me?”
Sensei folded his arms back into his wide sleeves. “I know you are frustrated. I am as well. I’m sorry I don’t have more information for you. We are all learning here, getting to know each other. As for where we are in relation to Japan… There are no countries, really, not anymore. There is only the empire of Devidis. Let me say, for now, that the nearest city is called Shix. Have you heard of Shix?”
Erin shook her head. “What about places beyond the empire? Surely there’s more to the world than that,” she said.
“Well, there are small, out-of-the-way holdouts, such as our Sun Tower, as well as the so-called Free Kingdoms to the south, but, really, everything in our known world falls under Devidis’ rule, and has been under his control for as long as we have any reliable record. I found myself here when I was about your age, transported much like you were, perhaps, and I haven’t been able to leave. The Sun Tower is surrounded by a forest, so-called the Forbidden Forest, in a canyon from which there is no escape. I’d be happy if you four considered us all in much the same situation. Can we agree that we’re all trying to find a way out?”
He searched our faces. We were all looking at each other, for a moment, but no one so much as nodded. I took a few steps back toward the balcony. Sure enough, in the deepening darkness, I could still make out the rim of a canyon. It seemed to encircle the Sun Tower.
“I’m sure we are all in a hurry to get out and go home,” I said, finally.
“Yes, I think we can start with that point of agreement,” Sensei nodded.
“And if that’s not possible?” Erin said, folding her arms near the lampstand.
“Oh, nothing’s impossible,” Sensei said. “But if your home of the past is beyond our reach, then we can try to make the best of it together. Now,” he continued, raising an instructive finger, “Erin, would you like to see whether or not there was any meaning in what you found yourself saying about a fire talent? I promise your safety.”
When she didn’t object, the old man picked up two long, square-headed nails from a nearby table and presented them to Erin, before removing the nearby lamp’s glass bulb. The candle inside was exposed, unlit. Sensei sat the cover on the side table, next to the weapons we had brought, and crossed his arms again, waiting for Erin. The Japanese girl looked at the nails, then at the exposed black wick of the lamp.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked.
Sensei made a scraping motion with his hands. “Make a spark. Light the lamp.”
Erin nodded. The stand was a bit taller than she was, so she
got on her tiptoes and rubbed the two nails together. After two or three strikes, there was a massive orange spark.
Erin, surprised, took a step back to catch her balance, but Sensei encouraged her, “Yes, just like that. Another strike or two and it should be lit.”
His prediction proved correct; Erin leaned forward, and the next strike caught the wick ablaze, illuminating the dark space left in the wake of the setting sun.
Erin the fire-starter held out the nails to Sensei, to return them to him, but he hesitated to take them in his hands. “We might want to let those cool down for a while…”
I stepped in closer and saw that the iron pieces were giving off a faint glow. Jason held out his hand to take one, and Erin let him have it.
“So these fire-starting sticks have talent, t—Ouch!”
One of the mysterious metal pieces clanged onto the floor. Erin looked at the nail in her hand. In the darkness, bright orange marked where her fingers had gripped to strike the spark. The metal looked as if it had been in a blacksmith’s forge. Jason squeezed his fingertips. When he opened his fists, big red blisters were already forming. He quickly squeezed them together again.
“Sorry, Jason,” Erin said, looking at Sensei.
“You could’ve warned me.” Jason’s frown was likewise focused on the old man once again.
“You both need to pay better attention,” Sensei said. “I didn’t think I needed to explain that glowing metal is hot.”
Jason looked ready to say something else, but the old man held up his hand. He sighed. “We will all be more careful next time. We are continually learning about each other, are we not?”
Jason closed his eyes for a moment. “OK, so Erin can hold those… fire sticks because she’s… the Fire Elemental?”
“Those were nails,” Sensei said, “large nails, and nothing more. I have never heard of talented fire sticks; a flint and tinder is just as effective, and simpler to come by, I would say. Though I suppose one could fashion such a talented tool. Implements of that nature, items infused with talent, are always hard to acquire, just as talented people are quite rare. Even so, you have been fortunate enough to carry four—no, five—such tools already.” He gestured toward the weapons on the side table.
“So I heated the nails... just by holding them?” Erin asked, rubbing her fingertips and looking at the still-glowing nail in her hand.
“It took an act of will on the part of yourself, a person of talent, but yes, you could say so.” Sensei nodded.
“That’s great,” Jason said, squeezing his hand, “but right now, I could really use some first aid. I mean… water would be fine.” His eyes came to rest on Kris.
“Would it be possible for Kris to… talent up some water for Jason’s hands?” I asked the old man. Speaking of first aid, I put my hand to my face and checked. The blood on my chin was still a bit wet, but not dripping. I would be just fine.
The old man stroked his short beard. “That’s… for Kris to determine, really,” he said. “Otherwise we would have to go back down the stairs to get some water the regular way.”
Kris quickly stepped toward Jason, “I would be glad to try. Those burns don’t look good,” she said.
Sensei urged the two closer together, positioning Jason’s palms, outstretched, under Kris’. I caught a look from Erin, worried, and tried to give her an encouraging smile. I must have looked goofy with my bloody chin, because she smiled back readily. I turned to Jason, trying to think of something more useful to do, but his face already seemed to be showing some relief. His eyes were fixed on Kris. Well, she is pretty, I thought to myself.
“I want both of you to relax,” Sensei said.
“Kris,” he turned to her, “you may be interested to hear that I’ve known a water talent or two that also had a talent for direct healing. But, what I want you to concentrate on right now is the idea that water is all around us. In school, long ago, I learned that there is a lot of water in the air, and even in the human body. And Kris, wouldn’t it be nice if we had some of that convenient water to cool Jason’s hand?”
Both of them gave surprised gasps. Water was trickling from Kris’s hands to Jason’s.
“I feel better already,” Jason said, a silly grin spreading across his face.
Our friend’s good mood was infectious. Sensei was smiling, too. I think we were all feeling better. In a strange way, things were starting to make sense. I checked myself. Or maybe I’m just a bit more comfortable going a little crazy.
“Good,” the old man said. “I think that’s enough for today. It’s getting quite dark, and Jason should have some bandages. If you’ll indulge me by grabbing those weapons you brought with you, we’ll go down to where you’ll be sleeping.”
“Sleeping?” Erin said. “Shouldn’t we be going…” Her sentence trailed off.
My smile, which had crept up on me, immediately faded. I remembered that we were someplace completely new, that the man called Devidis had stolen our reality away from us. If Sensei was right, then there were no homes for us to go back to. No family. No countries, even. Here was this second old man, telling us we had nothing, and tending to us straight away. It was awfully kind and convenient. There was nothing to do but listen to Sensei. But to trust him? No.
As panic threatened to take over once again, I looked to my friends. There was Erin who I felt I knew, and two faces only slightly newer than those of Sensei and Devidis. But Kris and Jason, along with Erin, I knew I could trust them. The four of us had all been forced to touch that crystal together. Devidis… Sensei… Flying… Today had been all too real, but it was still so much like a dream. Crazy.
Kris led the way to the table to retrieve the weapons. With some help from Jason, I sheathed the dangerous double-scythe. Sensei headed for the stairs, and we followed, weapons strapped out our backs. Was that why the old man had asked us to carry these things? He was telling us that it was a dangerous world, but also telling us that there were ways to be ready for it, to protect ourselves...? I shook my head. It seemed too generous an assumption in the context of our unkind circumstances. It wasn’t fair. We were too young for this.
I swallowed a lump in my throat as I fingered the double-scythe and its harness. If I don’t find the positive, I told myself, then I really will go crazy, and I won’t survive. Erin and Kris and Jason will be that much more alone. I took a deep breath.
It seems so much like a dream right now, I said to myself. Tokyo had seemed like a dream, too: the strange, fallen metropolis across the globe, halfway around the world, about as far from home as a person can get.
Japan was a strange new culture, just as this was. For months, ‘going home’ had meant little more than returning to a tent on a lot in a foreign land. Tonight, I suppose, I will at least have a solid roof over my head. And Sensei’s words about the old world being gone... well, they hadn’t been anything absolute. He emphasized what he didn’t know over what he did.
Tonight, I thought, maybe I’m not in Japan. Maybe I’m not ‘halfway around the world.’ Maybe, just maybe, I could already be a little closer to home.
I could admit that I was stretching the truth to myself, but the thought was keeping me from the verge of tears, at least. That would have to be good enough for now. I put one foot in front of the other and continued on.