Prince of Attania, 2
Chapter 54

Attan entered the water as shadow, changing swiftly to water so he would blend in better. There were free elementals here, just not a lot. They flocked to Attan, becoming a part of him as he became them, all water together.

If free elementals in general lived only in the moment, with no coherent thought processes besides being, these elementals at the edge of Attania pulsed with life. Everything was NOW and BRIGHT and all-encompassing. It’s a wonder the sea didn’t seethe with their raw energy. Attan felt himself getting caught up in their fervor until it became his own—PUSH PUSH PUSH! He nearly forgot what he had come into the sea to do.

He sent his query out across the ambient: FIND BIG SOLID For a while there was mass confusion, and the seas did roll a bit, though Attan calmed them with a thought. He sent soothing thoughts to these wild elementals as well, and it seemed to work at least partly. They were a little less unpredictable, though just as exuberant. Attan felt it when they broke off from his essence and spread outward beneath the sea. He felt bereft for just an instant at their loss.

But a moment later a large shadow passed above him, and he realized with a start that it was partly shadow—and partly solid. It was the sea creature they had seen at a distance the day before. It intrigued Attan because it was both physical and not. At the same time. Attan released his water essence to become shadow so he could merge with the strange hybrid creature.

At once his senses were overwhelmed with chaotic impressions—dark, blood, hungry. HUNGRY! It was as if the creature was experiencing physical sensations on an elemental level. Attan tried to withdraw, but found himself sucked into the maelstrom of its thoughts until he only knew hunger and rage and destruction! The few elementals which ventured too close, as Attan had done, found themselves sucked into the creature as well, immediately losing their essences in the churning mess of feeling that the creature had become.

Trapped within the partially physical boundaries of the sea creature, Attan was carried away as it careered violently through the sea, alarmingly close to one of their three ships. He tried to remember who he was, to calm his emotions down, but all he could think about—all he was at the moment—was hunger! He wanted to devour anything that crossed his/their path.

He couldn’t—was this what being permanently trapped inside a physical body felt like? Attan had to get out! The shadow of a ship was just above him/them. Hit it, ram it, destroy it! The urge engulfed him. No! Elea was on that ship! The part of Attan that was still capable of independent thought recoiled, dragging his/their body sideways at the last minute. Instead, he/they hurtled across the open sea away from the ship. Attan didn’t know what would happen when they hit the barrier. Would the part of him that was pure elemental be rebuffed, and thus freed from this myriad creature he had become? Or would he be dragged through to the other side encased in its physical body, only to disintegrate in the nothingness on the other side? Attan didn’t know, and he was fast losing any sense of self he had left that would have made him care one way or the other.

So gradually that at first he didn’t notice, subtle vibrations pulsed through the sea. They came steadily and washed over him/them, soothing where nothing else would. Vibrations—waves—of sound? If so, Attan couldn’t quite catch it, but something about it was familiar, very familiar.

As they approached the barrier, Attan was able to break free, unraveling his own essence from that of the sea creature. The waves of vibration shuddered through him and he almost gave himself over to them, they were that peaceful, but he realized they also affected the nearby barrier. In fact, the waves traveled through the barrier, and they were dragging him with them!

Suddenly he realized what they were! With a mighty effort, he wrested his essence away from the direction of the waves, noting as he did so that some of the free elementals who had been released from the sea creature at the same time as he was were now inexorably being drawn to—and through—the barrier! As elementals, they should have been rebuffed. He knew of only one way to send spirits across the sea—Elea!

Moving against the increasingly rapid vibrations, Attan veered back towards the ship the sea creature had targeted. It was hard, harder than anything he had ever done before, but Attan managed to keep himself tightly together, taking physical form for the last several yards when being elemental became too much. He floundered in the cold water, swallowing some before he figured out which way was up, and swam for the ship.

On deck, a tear-streaked Elea sang determinedly into the wind. Meetoo held onto her from behind, his own face paler than usual as he gritted his teeth against the melody. She faltered when she spotted Attan, the melody fading away as she rushed to the rail. Attan felt the pressure of her song lessen as he hauled himself up the hastily thrown rope ladder to the deck. He didn’t trust himself to take elemental form yet.

“Attan, you’re still here!” Elea flung her arms around him and burst into tears. “I didn’t know what else to do—it had you, and I had to make it let go, but I was afraid the song would send you across the sea and you’d be lost forever!”

She shivered in the night air, dressed only in her nightgown with her feet bare on the cold deck. Despite the gravity of the entire situation, Attan smiled. She couldn’t see him because her head was buried against his chest. “How did you know I was in trouble?” he asked.

Elea sniffed. “Meetoo told me,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Meetoo?” Attan turned to where Meetoo hung back almost shyly near the ship’s railing, rolling up the rope ladder. He looked up at Attan’s regard, and nodded. “How?” Attan asked, though he was glad, very glad. He’d been on the verge of losing himself.

“I felt you,” Meetoo replied, coming over. He placed his arms around Elea and Attan both, warming them with his body heat. It showed Attan just how rattled he had been that he’d never even thought of warming the air for Elea.

Below the ship, the creature circled. From the outside, it didn’t appear so intimidating, and Attan knew what to do now. “Wait here,” he told them, turning once more to water as he slid beneath the sea.

“Attan!” Elea screamed.

Attan tried to project calmness, not knowing if she’d get it, but Meetoo would, and he would make sure Elea was okay. Attan surrounded the creature with his water essence, but this time he was careful not to merge with it. Instead, he corralled it from its physical boundaries and moved it away from the ships and the barrier both. The creature must be something like Meetoo, an amalgam of different elementals which came together to create a physical being. But where Meetoo had had Attan as an example, this creature had nothing to go by except the occasional fish, and as a result, he was not nearly as formed as Meetoo—though he was just as volatile. Attan realized how lucky they had been with Meetoo’s development. He wondered if there were more such amalgams out there. He’d have to ask Stenson about it when they got back.

When he returned to the ship, the two of them were waiting anxiously for him in the same spot. Attan grinned sheepishly. “Is it too much to hope nobody else noticed except you two?”

“Oh, they noticed,” Meetoo said, glancing sideways. Daniel stood with his arms crossed on the upper deck, and he had Reggie with him. He must have ferried him over from the other ship on one of his cloud flitters.

Attan let out a slow breath as he thought about what to say. “Can we talk about this over breakfast?” he asked. The sky was just beginning to lighten. “For some reason, I’m starving.”

Attan craved meat. He knew he was going to pay for it later with a physical reaction, but at the moment, nothing tasted better than fried bacon and eggs. For once, he matched Meetoo bite for bite. Elea had excused herself to get dressed, and by the time she joined them, breakfast was almost over and the sun was cresting the horizon.

They decided to go on, farther east then north, venturing ever closer to the barrier, and chronicling their voyage as they went. Elea agreed with Attan that the creature they’d seen was similar in nature to Meetoo, at which Meetoo took great offense. “I’m not a thing!” he protested.

Attan told Daniel how Elea’s song had saved him (and almost sent him across the barrier.) It was how Daniel had known there was something wrong. He’d felt the pull, too, as had every other Family Elemental on all three ships. “You could have died!” Daniel said. “Then what would your father say?”

Attan didn’t think so. Otherwise, why would so many free elementals flock to Elea’s singing except to go back? He didn’t think it was pure nothingness, either, as Stenson claimed. He honestly didn’t know what was on the other side of the barrier, or why there was a barrier in the first place.

“I want to test it,” Attan said. “Elea, your singing made the sea vibrate. It vibrated through the barrier, too. That’s how you send elementals across.”

“Spirits,” Elea corrected automatically, but she frowned. “Are you sure you want me to do this? What if you get pulled across?”

Attan smiled. “You’ll stop before that happns,” he said, sure of it. Elea wouldn’t let him go against his will. “And we’ll make sure Meetoo and the others are out of range.”

They arranged to have one of the ships carry Attan, Elea and an all non-family crew, which included Reggie as both the leader of the expedition and also Attan’s other ‘uncle,’ to a spot within a few miles of where they determined the barrier to be. It was far to the east, near where Attan had first seen the color elementals smash into the barrier a few years ago, though at the time he hadn’t realized it was a barrier at all. None of them had.

Daniel was against it, of course. He fumed, and even called Attan’s father, but Jet surprisingly sided with Attan. “We have to know,” he said through the communicator. “I trust Attan.”

“It’s not a matter of trust!” Daniel argued. “What if something goes wrong?”

“It won’t,” Attan said from behind Daniel, while Jet echoed, “It won’t,” through the communicator. Daniel threw his hands up in the air.

It was decided, then.

“I want to test out the vibrations,” Attan said, when they were finally in position. The other two ships had sailed back towards land and were no longer even visible to the naked eye. This time Greg stood behind Elea, his hands on her shoulders to steady her for the task ahead. He nodded to Attan.

Attan dove from the lower deck, shifting to water seconds before he entered so that it seemed a great spout of water poured itself into the sea. Elea’s song began, and Attan felt it as vibrations which shivered through him and the sea around him. He was very aware of where the barrier began, how could he not be? At night, when he expanded his consciousness all across Attania, it was the boundary where everything just—stopped.

He let the vibrations wash over him and carry him forward towards the barrier. Though he’d assured Elea that she would stop before she sent him too far, she really had no way of knowing how far was too far. Already the few free elementals in these waters streaked past him, pulled by the tightening waves of vibration towards the barrier. Attan would just have to stop himself from going through.

As the vibrations strengthened, Attan noticed colored streaks pass by him, so he merged with the nearest ones, despite the danger that in merging he would also be swept away. However, the opposite happened; he was able to slow down the forward progression due to sheer determination. Yes, these were the elementals from the caves, or some of them. Attan was sure the sky above was streaked with color as well, and he vaguely wondered if Elea could see it. These were the memory elementals, which contained Attania’s past and possibly held the key to its future.

Perhaps it was unkind of him, it certainly was out of character for him, but he pulled away from the merge at the last moment, and watched as the color elementals continued on towards the barrier. The vibrations were so intense that Attan could barely think, and it took all he was to resist the pull. But he saw the moment when the color elementals hit the barrier: they didn’t go through it like the other free elementals did. Instead, as they touched the barrier, the barrier reacted, bowing out in a long line wherever the color elementals touched. Unbelievably, the barrier retreated, and the sea flooded in to where it had been seconds earlier.

As the color elementals receded, Attan realized that Elea’s song had ceased as well. So she did sense it. Attan soared upwards, taking on wind form as he hit the sky, and followed the color elementals back towards the land. Below, on the ship, in the circle of Greg’s arms, Elea stared upwards, her eyes tracking the streaks of color as they passed by overhead, Attan among them. She smiled in relief, easily picking Attan’s essence from among them. How did she do that?

Attan veered off, taking his physical body back as he landed lightly on deck. He grinned widely. “You won’t believe it,” he said to their upturned faces. “But the barrier is farther away now. Attania can push it back!”

For the color elementals were Attania, in its rawest form. These were the building blocks of Attania. Water, earth, air, light and shadow. Memory.

Maybe they were going about this all wrong. Maybe instead of tracking the boundary of the barrier, they should be seeking out the elementals who dwelled deep within Attania’s caves and stored its memories. Maybe Attania was simply unfinished, and it needed a slight push to finish what it had started long ago.

Excited by the discovery, Attan swept Elea up in a hug, swinging her around in a wide circle. As he set her back down, he noticed Greg’s surly expression, reminiscent of their early days. What had he done now to annoy his friend?

Elea’s cheeks were flushed, and she returned Attan’s smile with a bright one of her own as she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. Oh.