Tempering earth, p.10
Tempering Earth, page 10
“Wh-what–” I stammered, unable to form a sentence. What was happening? Was the guy at my back Ezra? What was the old lady talking about? How did she know me?
“Penny, please tell me you at least tried to make a little polite conversation before you started in on the poor girl.”
“Well, I never claimed to be polite, boy. Now help our new friend back to her table so she can get some food in that empty belly.” She ran back into the kitchen.
The “boy,” Ezra, had moved up to stand beside me, and it was his aura that calmed my fears. It was an Elfennol aura, besides the flaming quality to it, and no Elfennol would risk setting me up with Alexander so close. Every Clade I’d met had that tarnished quality to the platinum light of their auras, and his was completely without that.
“I’m sorry about that. Penny is a little eccentric.”
“I can see that,” I said past my nerves, following Ezra back to my table and sitting down. “Would you mind telling me what she’s talking about?”
“Oh, she gets excited anytime the loa start gossiping about someone.”
I just looked at him. Would there ever be a day when I would be the person talking about things no one else knew?
He smiled at my slack-jaw, showing off a deep set dimple to one side of his mouth. “You don’t see them, do you?”
I took a quick look around, amping up my Fire Temper a little, and shook my head.
“But feel free to fill me in at any time.” I pushed the chair opposite me out with my foot, and nodded my head in an invitation to sit down since my neck was starting to cramp up looking up at him.
He sat down, grabbed a fried-something from one of the plates, popped it in his mouth, and then started choking on it.
Mostly because the old lady was back with another load of plates and had smacked him upside the head right when he took the bite.
“Now who’s being rude? These fritters aren’t for you, and it serves you right to choke on them.” She was loudly patting his back until he stopped coughing. “You go ahead and eat, child. He won’t steal any more of your food.” She headed back into the kitchen, again.
I looked at the table, which had at least six plates full of deliciously steaming goodness, looked across at the Ezra fellow in front of me, and couldn’t hold in a little laugh.
“You know, it’s physically impossible for me to eat all this. I mean, besides the fact that I didn’t order and have no idea what is in front of me, I’d have to have a second stomach to get all this down.” I leaned forward a little. “I won’t tattle if you eat some,” I said in a loud whisper.
He took an exaggerated look to either side, then quickly scarfed down a fritter.
“Thanks. Penny tends to think that ‘enough food’ for one person is about the quantity that a family of four eats in a week. Besides, her clam fritters are the best. Go ahead, eat.”
“I’d rather talk about whatever it is that I’m not seeing.”
He flashed that dimple again. “Sure. Fair warning, though: if Penny comes out here and sees you not eating, she’s liable to pull up a chair and spoon-feed you. That is, if she’s not offended by you snuffing her food. You don’t wanna see what she’d do then.”
Since I didn’t want some crazy woman feeding me, or hitting me upside the head, I quickly took a fritter from the same plate that he’d eaten from, took a bite, and raised my eyebrows at him to start talking. Of course, the clam fritter really was delicious, and I eyed the other bowls and plates. The overcautious part of my brain wondered, briefly, if the plates were poisoned, but I quickly dismissed it since Ezra had leaned his chair back and grabbed a fork from a rack on a nearby table, and was sampling pretty much everything. Besides, I wasn’t sure I could even be poisoned, since I’d been informed that Elfennol can’t get sick.
“S’good, isn’t it? Okay, loa. They’re just spirits. They really seem to like you, and when Penny caught word of it, she got really excited.”
Thankfully I’d already swallowed, because I’d have started choking.
“Like ghosts?”
He looked at me like I was the crazy one. “No. Who believes in ghosts? Spirits. Penny can’t see them, but she can hear them. Well, as much as you can hear something that doesn’t actually talk. They’ve been fluttering about you since you stepped on the island, which is funny since they don’t usually like people that can’t see them.”
“What is a spirit if it isn’t a ghost?” In my next life, I want to be omnipotent. Was that possible?
“I don’t really know. Penny is Vodun. They believe that the loa will do you favors if you pay tribute to them.” His tone of voice showed that he didn’t believe the same, though.
“Because it’s true, and you know it. Now, old Penny needs your strong young back to help Don put together our new shelf like you promised.” Penny was back, and apparently liked to talk about herself in the third person.
“I know, Penny. But you better have my payment ready when I’m finished.” He stood up from the table and walked past Penny into the kitchen.
“You have’ta earn my sweets, young man. And make us some tea to bring out when you’re finished!” she called back to him, sitting in the chair he’d just vacated.
“He’s a good boy,” she said with a proud smile on her face. “Ezra isn’t Vodun, you know. His father is Ethnos, and we aren’t sure what his mother was, but it was something that lets him see the loa better than any priest ever could from my people.”
Ethnos was what the Elfennol and Clades really are, or used to be before they became two peoples. I’d never actually heard any of the Elfennol refer to themselves that way, but maybe it was just because they wanted everyone to be sure they were the good guys.
Penny continued, “He talks to them too, and doesn’t need a tribute to make them pay attention to what he says.”
“Does he come here a lot?”
“Oh, not so much as I’d like. He’s been coming up since he was a child, sneaking away from his father any chance he got so that he could have a little fun. I caught him stealing one of my cakes pretty early on, and when I learned he could see the loa and had no idea what they were, I tried to teach him everything I could.”
I pondered that a little. I thought I was the only half Elfennol, but maybe I wasn’t. Maybe there were more, but they were able to keep their secrets. After all, I knew that the Elfennol didn’t see each others auras the way that I did when I Tempered Fire, so it was possible they couldn’t see the differences in his. It was a stupid taboo, and it had been dawning on me that the Elfennol were a little slow to change sometimes.
“Is he not supposed to come here?”
“I don’t think so. He’s never really said too much about his home, but the Ethnos aren’t too fond of mingling with us humans, from what I can gather. Not too much information about them either, they’re such a secretive bunch and Ezra shuts up tight anytime I start asking questions about them, but that’s alright.”
Well, that definitely sounded about right. In some of my lessons, I learned that there had been a huge controversy when they decided to bring my family in as allies, since they were human. I guess the Elfennol-Clade fiasco was still on a need-to-know basis, and not every person and family with abilities was enlightened. That would explain her “Ethnos” usage. Not correcting her assumption that I was only a human with maybe my own abilities, I grabbed a spoon and dug into the onion stew I’d seen Ezra dunk a chunk of bread into, and moaned in delight at how good it was. There were a few moments of mostly silence as I gobbled it up.
“Did you make this yourself?” I asked.
“It’s my recipe, but my brother Don fixed most of it,” she said, proudly.
“Well, everything is amazing. I’m glad I decided to explore over here.” While I would have enjoyed a little solitude, I was beginning to realize good company was way better.
“Of course it’s beautiful. St. David’s has the best views, and the best food, in all of Bermuda. You wait, Ezra will show you around once you’ve eaten your fill. Assuming, that is, that he can hurry up and finish putting that shelf together.”
“It’s done, Penny. Don had put half of it together upside down, so I had to take it all apart before getting started.”
“And I hope you brought out that tea like I asked.” Penny asked without turning around, smiling when his long arm reached around her and set a tray with a chipped blue teapot and three cups on the table.
“Of course I did. I brought my cake, too,” he said, while sitting down next to me with his chair back far enough to hold an entire cake in his lap. He grabbed a fork from the table and looked like he was about to dig in, when Penny screeched.
“Oh, no you don’t! I may not have raised you, but I know I taught you better than that!” She hurriedly started clearing the table to make room for the cake, and ran back into the kitchen with arms loaded with dirty dishes. I looked over at Ezra and he winked at me while calmly pouring tea into a dainty cup and pushing it my way, making it clear that he had just been messing with Penny. I shook my head and tried not to laugh when she came back seconds later with clean plates and cake knife in-hand, and a scowling face directed at Ezra.
Like everything else I’d eaten, the cake was delicious. Ezra made a few comments complaining about having to share the payment for his hard work, and Penny scolded him for being ungracious to their new friend. It was fun, and sitting around the table eating banana cake with two strangers felt more like home than any single moment in Eurybis had.
I didn’t realize it so much while it was happening, but I had started retreating a little back into the old me. The Me from before I went to North Carolina and met Cash and Luke; before I had friends and family and a home. No one had seemed to notice, though. In fact, the more closed off I acted around the Elfennol, the more they seemed to trust me, probably because stiff and impersonal was the most appropriate Elfennol behavior. Derek was different, as was Laurel, but outside of the Leoht family, everyone else walked around like they had a stick up their butt. Or, at least that’s how Cash would describe it, and everyone always said that Cash had a way with words. All it took was some easy company to bring me back to my new self.
After a final bite that consisted of me smooshing my fork to pick up every last crumb on my plate, Penny jumped up again and took our plates away even though Ezra was still eating his second slice. I somehow managed to refrain from patting my over-stuffed belly in satisfaction like a gross person.
When she came back to the table, she crossed both arms on the table and leaned forward. “Now, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself… Oh my goodness, we didn’t even ask your name!” Penny looked horrified, then slapped Ezra on the shoulder like it was his fault that none of us actually introduced ourselves before eating a meal together.
“Ouch, Penny. If you don’t stop hitting me, I might have to stop coming around.”
She waved an arm at him, knowing it was an empty threat.
“Honey, my name is Penny, and this is Ezra.” She held out a hand for me to shake, then gave the ‘mom look’ until Ezra did the same.
“I’m Della,” I said while shaking Ezra’s hand. His aura stuck a little to mine when I pulled my hand away, almost like a magnet meeting it’s opposite, but went back to normal once my hand was far enough away. He raised one eyebrow, but didn’t comment, and Penny didn’t seem to notice at all.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Della. So, why don’t you tell us what flavor of dunamis you are. You know about us, and I’m too curious about why the loa love you so much.”
Dunamis? What did that mean?
“What type of abilities do you have? I’d guess Natural abilities, right?” Ezra asked, which answered my question and made me glad that Dove had explained that Natural abilities were the ones you could use without external help, like herbs and stuff. Dunamis must mean humans with abilities.
I wasn’t sure if what my family did counted as Natural, since we had to Gather energy before we used it. I hadn’t been part of this world long enough to know all the nifty terms for everything, but I nodded my head before saying anything.
Ezra stared out me pretty hard, but didn’t seem to be focusing on my face since his eyes seemed to float around like he was watching a movie play out right in front of my head.
“You’re an elemental, aren’t you?” he asked, suddenly.
“I’m not sure of the official term, but yeah.”
“Oh, how fun. There are so many types. Let me guess which one! Where did you grow up?” Penny had her hands clapped together at the prospect of a guessing game.
Belatedly, I remembered that I wasn’t really supposed to tell anyone who I was, but it was clear that Penny couldn’t tell I was anything but human. Ezra might not be able to tell either since my Shielding was good enough hide my presence from other Elfennol and Clades, so as long as I just stuck to vague answers about my human half and didn’t tell anyone my last name, I didn’t think it would hurt.
“In California.”
“I’m not surprised! You’re probably one of the Water users, able to manipulate waves and make rain. How do you like our Atlantic?” Penny asked.
“It’s nice?” It wasn’t a lie since I could manipulate waves, and could probably figure out how to make rain. Plus, she didn’t ask if I were one, only assumed it was true.
“What are you doing way over here?”
“Um, just visiting family.” I grabbed my now cold tea, hoping for a change of subject.
“There aren’t any Water users on Bermuda; why, the closest elementals at all are in Carolina, and they’re all so high and mighty, they’d never deign to settle anywhere else.”
I snorted into my cup. High and mighty? If only she knew.
“The other side of my family. They live close by,” I said once I had good control over my facial expression.
“Well, that’s nice, honey. Now, Ezra, I told Della that you were going to be a gentleman and show her around the island. If you don’t intend to make me a liar, you’d better go on before you lose the good light.”
He’d been quiet through the rest of our conversation, but smiled at Penny. “Of course I won’t make you a liar. You up for a little walk, Della?”
“Sure, I don’t have anything else to do.” It was nice to be able to go with the flow; I hadn’t had a true day off from responsibilities, or life-changing revelations, since I turned eighteen.
Penny shooed us out, holding the front door open and waving us down the road.
“I don’t know how old she is, but I’m pretty sure no one over the age of two is supposed to have that much energy!” I looked over my shoulder at Penny, who was still standing there watching us.
Ezra laughed. “She’s always been like that. She says it’s the Loa that give her good health, but really she’s too wild to ever settle down.”
“So, if you can see the Loa, why don’t you believe they do what she says they do?”
“Well, because I can see them and understand them. I think that Penny’s people have deified them a little, but it’s because they don’t understand them the way I can.”
“What are they, really?” I was still a little caught up on a spirit being something non-ghostly.
“They’re elemental spirits. They’re the personalities behind the elements.”
Well, that’s new. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I haven’t either, that’s just what they are. Have you ever heard those old fairy tales that talk about the north wind like it was a person?” he asked.
I shook my head “no” because I didn’t really grow up hearing any fairy tales.
“Oh. Well, I think that’s where those stories came from. Anyway, I never met my mom, so I don’t know as much as I probably should about it, but that’s what it seems like,” he told me, and it was surely something I could sympathize with that.
“But why do you think they have anything to do with the elements?”
He leaned over and picked up a small white flower, tore the petals off in his hand, and whispered into his palm. Immediately the petals rose up from his hand in a perfectly aligned funnel and rained down on me. But he didn’t do it, not by Bending Air at least. Since I was always Tempering Fire, I could see the wind energy around the petals, but it was just plain ole wind energy.
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. “How did you do that?”
He started walking backwards, only slowing his pace a little while talking to me. “I asked one of the wind spirits to do it. That’s how I know they’re elemental.”
I had to jog a few paces to catch up. “That is so cool. I mean, you can see them, right? What do they look like?”
I was looking around, and besides the rows of pastel colored houses on either side of us, all I really saw were the typical sources for energy, nothing unusual at all. When the flower thing happened, it was like the energy appeared out of nowhere, then disappeared, which was not how the wind, or Air energy worked.
He was still walking backwards in front of me, and maintaining eye contact, and managed to sidestep a huge rock without breaking stride. We’d left the paved road and were walking toward the water.
“Um, like swirling knots of an element.” I could see him bite the inside of one cheek before continuing. “I mean, they can look like whatever they want. Sometimes they pop up in tiny humanoid shapes. The Fire guys I swear look like little lizards most often. But as far as I can tell, when they’re just hanging around doing whatever, they look like little tumbleweeds of their element. They can be hard to see, since they are pretty well camouflaged. And when they do something, they kind of dissipate into their element. Just a moment ago with the flower, one was in my hand, then disappeared when the petals were falling, then appeared again. Air is hardest to see, because you can’t see air. It’s like looking through the heat off a fire, kind of warbled.” His brows were in a frown, like he was confusing himself with his explanation.
“So, what you’re saying is that it’s hard to describe.”
