The Elementals (24 page)

           
"Issa?! ISSA!" She peered at her flimsy little sister, like a ragged stuffed doll, she was making no vital signs to show that she was alive. She felt her chest, placed her finger under her nose. She didn't feel the slight movement of her chest or the small puffs of breath from her nose and urgency came over her. She had to find someone, anyone to help her. Marissa was dying, if she wasn't dead then. She yelled again at the door. "Someone help!"

           
No one came. Gently she laid her onto the freezing tile and hopped to her feet and out into the living room where she stopped very abruptly in her tracks at what she saw. Bryne and Era, lying on their sides, looking like death itself. It sent chills through her. Their eyes sunken and their skin yellow.

           
"Bryne? Era?" She shook them but they were ice to her fingertips. Try as she might she wasn't able to find a pulse on Era, not on her wrist or her neck. She tried Bryne but he too seemed gone. She thought "seemed" as if it couldn't be. How? Why? They couldn't be dead, she was just talking to them.

           
She felt the gemstones against her chest, and she had a sudden idea. She took them off and put them in their hands. When that didn't stir them, she tried to put their power back into them with their gemstones.
Their
power. It would never be hers. But, that didn't work either.

           
It hit her, like a ton of bricks crushing her heart, it hit her. They were dead. Just like that. Terra began hyperventilating; her arms over her stomach in protection, to keep herself together, and she curled on the floor and screamed, a blood curdling scream at the nothingness that took her only family away.

           
Her sisters. Her love. Her family. They were gone.

 
It would've been easier to go into the final battle she would face knowing that she was going to die, and see her family soon. Her fear was winning, and living.

           
The beautiful morning sunshine blazed through the window, lighting the spot where Terra laid, still curled into her ball. She stretched, her bones complaining with creaks and pops. Her muscles ached, but not as much as her heart. It beat, once, twice, filled with hope that the memories she was conjuring out of nightmares, was simply a horrible nightmare. However, if that was true, why was she lying on the floor? She hoped that it was simply because Marissa had a tougher night than usual, and she kicked her (literally) out of bed and onto the floor, but when she looked up, there was the mattress, empty.

           
Her heart plummeted - that - and everything else inside of her. It fell into the floor, past the floor, into whatever was beneath, but the point was, it was no longer with her. Her eyes burned, and stung all over again when tears fell. She shook forgetting the body pains that she had put herself through, her hands linked with her eldest sister and her love.

           
She heard soft footsteps, a different kind of creaking, that of floorboards under the stress of weight. She turned and saw Bryne's grandmother standing at the corner of the room, her hand gingerly on the wall for support, her nightgown sweeping the floor. She stared right past her to her grandson.

           
"Judy..."

           
There was a terrible sadness in her that was almost as bad as her own sadness. "I knew," she told her quietly and hoarsely. "I knew this would happen. It wasn't in the prophet, dear, but when you rely on such heavy powers, having them taken from you - even given - is a huge risk."

           
"
Why
?" Terra hissed angrily, it overcoming her. She saw red, for the first time in her life. "Why didn't you tell me?"

           
"Because this was what had to happen. You are meant to destroy him on your own. When Bryne told me what you did with Hadrian, trying to save that human boy... Well," she said haughtily, "you four were
lucky
to be alive."

           
"I killed them. You let me!" Terra complained.

           
"Calm down, control those waters. I will explain it to you."

           
She tried, it was the greatest effort she had ever given, but she turned the ocean into a rushing river. It was strong enough to take over its rocks and into death, and as tempting as it was, she controlled it, keeping her eyes from the bodies that lay on either side of her.

           
Slowly and carefully, Judy walked to the couch, sitting herself down on its mattress, bouncing a little. She groaned, but settled. "I love my grandson, don't ever doubt me on that," she told at once. “But he had a duty. It's like sending your child off to a war. You don't want them to die, but you must support them in what they had to do. He had to defeat his father. It's not good and I regret it every day, wondering what I did wrong with him. Hadrian is my son and there is that instinct to protect him, but not at the price of millions of other people. Not at the price of my grandson….his son. It does not matter what Bryne felt he was responsible for. It was Hadrian who killed his family.”

           
Terra came back to herself, the feeling of depression drowning her. “Do you want to step outside to talk? I know this is killing you.”

           
“I'm better off than you, dear. You lost your parents and now you lost your sisters and your best friend. I had many years to get used to the idea of losing Bryne, and there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't wish that I would die before him. I have practically let this cancer take me, but Bryne has been so stubborn about it all, not letting me go a day without my specially made herbs. I meant so much to him, it was selfish of me. He needed a reason to go on. I believe you became his reason.”

           
Terra looked to her hands, holding theirs. They were cold and stiff, but she didn't let go. Not then, not even as she sat up. If she let go, she might never hold them again.

           
“He loved you.”

           
The tears were burning hot, and they trailed over her cheeks into their designated paths set by the tears the night before. "What do I do?"

           
"You go after my son. It's all up to you now, dear."

           
"How can I do this without them? They were everything I had!"

           
"They knew what they were doing. You were asleep one night when they woke to speak. Marissa lied about her vision. She did not just see you dead, but them. She told them later what the vision was. They knew... They knew that if you did too, you would not let them do it."

           
That was right, but Terra didn't admit it.

           
"Don't let their death be in vain."

           
Terra didn't want that. She didn't want them to have died without a cause. They did it for her, to make the way they only knew how. She wished there had been another path for them, and at the end of that road they could have been a true family. Terra could see it in her minds eye. The holidays, the ordinary days, being together, laughing and arguing, crying and smiling. They would never have that, and she was not sure she could have that without them, but if she succeeded, there would be time to dwell on it. That was what scared her most. It would've been easier to go into the final battle she would face knowing that she was going to die, and see her family soon. Her fear was winning, and living. She had to. For them, she would, only for them.

           
Trembling, she stood to her feet. She dried her tears on the sleeve of her shirt and looked at poor Judy. She was frail, nearly as skinny as Marissa was. She looked to be as close to death as they were moments before they had...

           
"Can I do anything for you?"

           
"Kill my son. He'll be at Bryne's house. He'll be waiting for you there. In his head, that's where it all started, the birth of the first element." She smiled painfully. There was the squirming feeling inside of Terra that knew that Judy blamed herself for how her son turned out, and the future it gave to her grandson, the deaths of his mother and brother. She felt it all started with her. "Don't feel like you have to make him suffer, just do the job," Judy finished gravely.

           
"Era, Marissa….”

           
"I'll call that boy, the geeky one." She winked. "I'll get some of the Kin over here to help. I will not bury them without you. We'll wait."

           
"Thank you." Terra replied sadly.

           
"Any place special?"

           
"Here would do..." It was common for their kind to be buried at the place they died, unless there was a more important and sacred ground. In their case, there wasn't one, and so they would be buried there. In a way, it was appropriate. It was the single place they had felt safe, that Hadrian hadn't known about.

           
Terra bent and embraced Judy. There was the scent of anonymous medications. "Thank you again."

           
"Just do this for all of us. If you need a family, you have your Aunt Gwen. She means well. If I'm here in the morning, you can come home to me. There are plenty of places you are welcome to. We are never without family."

           
Terra made one stop in the bathroom to see her sweet little sister. She was frailer than she had been when Terra was feeling her ribs. There was no life from her, nothing flowing through her veins. She was really gone, and the weight got heavier. She knelt next to her, and kissed her cheek. "For you. I love you."

           
It went the same with Era and Bryne. She whispered the same sentiments into their ears, though she was aware that they could not hear, but perhaps on another planet they were receiving the message.

           
Memorizing the creases and cracks, she kissed Bryne's lips one last time. There wasn't the heat, the ice replacing the warmth of him, but she couldn't have expected otherwise. It wasn't Bryne, just a glove without the hand and their last kiss remained to be back at his home, the one she was destined to go to.

           
Without another backwards glance, she took the keys from the hook beside the door, and went to the car. The engine roared, it vibrated, and there was a switch in her that was flipped up to "autopilot." It was the same as any other drive, except that the drive she was in then was void of her family. It was rare when she had driven by herself. Marissa had been insistent on going everywhere with her and Terra wasn't much on complaining like other elder sisters. Then again, they grew up with different ideals than most other children, even those of their own kind.

           
On her way to Bryne's old house, she stopped by the drug store and bought a small bag's worth of makeup. She would attempt to bring them with her, their stones and all. She would not be fighting the battle alone, she refused. They gave their lives to fight with her, and she would not forget that.

"So eager for death, are we?" He chuckled, so much like Bryne it turned her stomach. "I guess you are. I apologize ahead of time for the pun, but after all, you're dying to be with your family. Tskk, tsk, tsk, they're all dead now, aren't they?"

           
Opposite of the house overgrown with weeds and plants, the dirt clouded windows, and the broken shingles on the roof, she parked. In the review mirror she positioned to put on the makeup she bought, getting ready to begin. She had all of the colors she needed, and with a steady hand, she drew, sliding the smooth tip of the dark green pencil from the corner of her right eye and upwards. It was not nearly as good as Era had done, not nearly as realistic, but it was better than anything Terra had done before.