The Storming

Chapter 3

Chapter 1

“Ana, you're not paying attention.”

I blinked, slowly focusing on my teacher. “Sorry.”

“Honestly, Ana, you say you want to learn but your mind is somewhere else.”

I clenched my fists under the table, forcing my voice to sound calm and breezy. “Yeah, I don't know what’s wrong with me, sorry. I am trying.”

Airmed started running on again about the importance of controlling one’s emotions before beginning any sort of water magic.

That was a rich, I thought, coming from her. Really, didn’t she know where my mind was?

I could have told her easily. I’d been thinking about David. Where he was, how he was, and how to find him.

The thing is, David’s people had been fighting warpers for years, for millennia, even. Both groups carried the same ancient alien hybrid DNA, but while most starseeds used their psychic abilities for good, the warpers hated humans. They’d always wanted more power, but since the fae had come out of hiding and revealed themselves to the world thirty years earlier, the new world utopia had put a damper on their plans. Now humans were evolving to become more like us, the fae, and the world was filled with magic. David said there were fewer warpers these days, due in part to a human-starseed watchdog organization called the Gregors, but they still existed.

David believed a new faction we’d accidentally stumbled upon might be more dangerous than all the ones that had come before. They were building an army, mind-warping innocent starseeds, turning them into mindless evil drones dedicated to using their powers for ill. I didn't have a lot of confidence in the ability of the starseeds to find my boyfriend on their own, and the latest news I’d heard was that the Light Guards of the fae didn't want to get involved in what they saw as a starseed problem.

Fine, I thought. I had no problem with that. I understood why they didn't think it was their fight.

I, however, wanted to get involved, needed to get involved. My boyfriend’s mental health, maybe even his life, was on the line. How could anyone expect me to just sit here?

I’d been trying to make the most of it, learning as much as I could. Airmed was a fantastic teacher, one of the best. Few fae my age could say they had met her, let alone studied with the great and powerful healer, a true Ancient at over a thousand years old and one of the most gifted water fae on the planet.

My grandmother said that I was being ungrateful. My parents understood how I felt, but refused to buckle under my emotional pleas. At least my father had promised to keep in touch with the Starseed headquarters and send me updates regularly. Too bad there was nothing to report: the trail had gone cold. It was as if the starseeds that had been taken hostage from the Gregors’ headquarters in Montreal had simply disappeared. How you could hide the kidnapping of thirty-eight people in broad daylight, I had no idea, but somehow, it had been done. Surveillance footage had been scrambled. Forensic evidence was untraceable, as if the perpetrators didn’t even have DNA to shed. Witnesses, neighbors who should have seen everything, acted as if they’d never even noticed the building existed.

No doubt, the warpers had used their powers to cover their tracks. The Gregors suspected the starseeds had been taken south to an off-grid facility like the one I’d found in Northern Vermont when I’d been hiking the Long Trail, but in reality it was anybody’s guess.

I wondered if-

“Ana, pay attention!”

“Honestly, I am listening,” I protested, squeezing out the doubts cycling in my head. “I'm paying attention, I swear.”

She eyed me doubtfully, but plowed on.

“Okay, well, as I was saying, as fae much of our power comes from our emotions, our connection to the deepest part of ourselves and the elements that we have the most affinity with. For you and me, that's water, which makes our emotional state doubly important. If we don't have a handle on our emotions, our actions can become too powerful, dangerous. Having the ability to knock back an opponent without even thinking obviously would have big benefits for our survival when fae first evolved, but we aren’t living in the wilds of an Ancient planet anymore. You have to watch yourself, be sure that your emotions don’t get away from you in the heat of the moment. If you get too angry, if someone surprises you and you don’t have a handle on your powers, you could seriously hurt someone without meaning it.”

Airmed frowned, lost in thought for a moment.

“When I was still a maiden,” she said softly, pulling my attention back just when my own mind was threatening to change tack, “my brother used to love playing tricks on me. One day, he jumped out at me from behind the stable, wanting to surprise me, as siblings so often will. I didn't mean to do it. I wasn't thinking. I threw up my hands and blasted him back with a wave of energy. He must have flown twenty feet across the yard hitting his head, against our home. I laughed so hard, until I realized that he had hit his head on the stones bricks behind him. It took me two days of healing to bring him back from his concussion.”

“I never heard that story before.”

“Yes, well, no one sang about it in the old sagas. We didn't spread the story around, it wasn't exactly inspiring. My father didn't want the other fae to know that his daughter couldn't control her power. I was ashamed for many years after that. Incidents like that were part of the reason that I hid from people for so long. I had so many years where I worried that my power might slip out, hurt somebody, do damage that I would not be able to repair. I grew tired of making mistakes, tired of having to choose sides in the war between the light and the dark.”

“But you're out now. You see people now. You've returned to Aeden. You're not hiding anymore in the hills of Ireland.”

“No, I'm not. With the dark gone, there are no sides to choose,” she said, referring to the utopia my mother had birthed thirty years before when she awakened the powers of the Tree of Life, boosting the great red sun, Anansanna, deep within the Earth’s crust, and banishing evil from the world forever. At least, that’s what we’d thought had happened. How were we to know that another race of aliens existed on the planet, one that was immune to the positive effects of the flare? Somehow, that knowledge had been lost to the ages, if it had ever even existed, and they’d had thirty years to plot against our brave new world.

“No one came to seek me anymore in that land, my legends have faded with time. Few even imagine that I still live. And with so many fae gaining stronger powers now through the grace of Anansanna, you and your mother having the ability to heal, I'm not the only one anymore. Every day, new people are awakening with greater powers. I don't worry so much about being bothered. My life is quiet here, usually.”

She looked at me staunchly, implying that I disturbed her sanctified existence.

“Okay, sorry,” I said, sullenly. “I got it. I have to keep a tight leash on my emotions. How exactly am I supposed to do that again? I mean, you can’t expect me to never lose my temper, right? And how is someone even supposed to become immune to being surprised?”

“I'm not sure I ever entirely mastered it myself,” Airmed said wryly, “but it is important. I think that the martial arts training your parents have already given you is a start, but I've been talking with them and we've decided you should begin daily lessons with Khai. He's been learning some techniques for centering, Light Guard practices that are supposed to have that very effect. Their training is designed not only to strengthen resolve, but create an invulnerability to surprise, so that a Light Guard is almost impossible to catch off guard.”

“Why didn’t my father teach me this technique when I was young? It would have come in really handy with Hollis,” I said, remembering the countless times my older brother had ambushed me when we were kids.

“Why, I imagine it's because your parents assumed that you would be an earth fae, like them. Earth fae have a natural inborne ability to remain grounded, to stay calm like a rock. It is hard to upset an earth fae but with water as your element, well… Water and fire are the two most changeable fae on the spectrum. Water takes things to heart and can get overwhelmed with feelings. Fire flares up easily but also releases and forgets what they were mad about minutes after it happened.”

“So you want me to study with Khai,” I asked reluctantly, backtracking to what was really bothering me. I knew we’d have to make up eventually, but I’d been content to nurse my grudge. My best friend, the boy I had grown up admiring since my birth was the same one who had brought me here against my will. He’d kept what was happening to David from me, knowing that if I knew I wouldn't have agreed to come. And then, when I’d found out, when I’d resisted, he’d tased me using his ability to harness the power of fire as lightning. To say I’d found it hard to forgive him would have been an understatement.

“Yes, Ana. It's time, don't you think? When he visits you ignore him. I know you feel like he wronged you, but he was following your family’s own orders. Give your friend a chance. Can’t you feel his pain?”

“His pain?” I scoffed. “What would any of you know about pain? What about how I feel-”

“That's enough,” she cut me off. “I'm not going to go through this again with you. I know exactly how you feel, but I can also see how pointless it is to prolong this little feud the two of you have going right now.”

“Whatever,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

Airmed laughed, unfazed by my willful display.

“This is what I'm talking about. Emotions are tough.” Airmed chuckled to herself as if I was some recalcitrant toddler, instead of a fully grown woman scheduled to start at university. So what if I had gotten my powers a little later than other fae? So what if Airmed was more than a thousand years my senior? Technically, legally, physically, I was an adult and I didn't appreciate my family and friends treating me like I was too weak or too young to follow my heart. I stared at her woodenly, refusing to debase myself further.

“Why don't you go get cleaned up while I prepare lunch? I will call you when it’s ready,” she said, dismissing me.