Serial Saturday: "Priscilla Sum" Part 31

Part 31

The wind around us pressed in closer as Auraea's agitation grew. I could feel it lifting my hair, blowing up over my clothes. Any stronger, and she could probably generate enough force to blow me off of the cliff. It would be exactly what I deserved, the miserable voice in my head declared.
"I didn't mean to! I didn't know anything about a demon, I swear!" I yelped. The agitation only worsened in light of the fact that I was already crying. "I just... Tony was dying, remember? And when I saw that the amulet was supposed to be some kind of healing crystal--"

"So you took it from the display? When was this?"

"The night before you disappeared. I was going to tell you when I got home... but by then you'd already been taken." The sobs came in earnest, my whole body trembled at the enormity of my thoughtless actions. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean for any of this to happen! It's all my fault! I'm the reason Egamad got control of you, and now we can't stop him before he destroys everything!"

Right on cue, the demon's roar echoed over the chaos, and I heard explosions coming from over at the village dig site. All those people--

"Priscilla, listen to me!" Auraea tugged on my hand, and I turned to face her. She tilted my chin up. "You are right. You acted out of grief and devotion to your friend, and you could not have known what was really going on. Therefore, I forgive you."

The relief washed over me as the high, biting wind faded, and I sank against her shoulder, now crying out of relief. I looked up at her. "Here's what I don't understand: why did you even adopt me in the first place? Two immortal beings like you and Dad could live undiscovered for centuries if you'd just kept things between the two of you. Then I wouldn't have been there to mess everything up and expose you to danger--"

"No, Priscilla, no!" Auraea stroked my hair and shushed me. "I don't think that at all! For a long time after we came to live among mortals, we did think that it would just be the two of us for as long as it took to defeat Egamad. We had each other, we didn't give a second thought to any mortal." She smiled. "Until the day we toured an adoption agency after a big donation by the Daeva-Staite Foundation. As the most prominent donors, we were invited on a tour of the main facility in Chicago--more of a formality than anything else. To them, it was just a way of showing the donors where their money was going. They wrapped up the tour by showing us how they conduct their client meet-and-greet with the prospective adoptee--and you happened to be waiting for a couple who didn't show up that day." Her caresses were warm and soothing, drawing my mind away from the shame of my past actions. "They let us go in and pretend to be clients--and the moment we laid eyes on you, both Trikymios and I knew that our days of avoiding a mortal connection were over. From the day we met you, we needed to be a family, and we wanted you to be in it." She looked down and lifted the one that wore the bracelet. "And this just proves it."

I furrowed my brow in confusion. "How? The inscription said The eyes do not know you--and the statue made the floor collapse all around us! I thought--"

Auraea's face held a self-assured smile, as if she was reminiscing about her own cleverness in designing such a cunning trap. "Yes? What did you think, Priscilla?"

I wagged my head. "Didn't that mean that none of us were... you know..." I couldn't think of the word. "Accepted?"

Auraea pursed her lips. "Did anyone else find the place where this bracelet was hidden?"
I shook my head. "No, just me."
She nodded. "And you figured out that the locket we gave you happens to be the other part of this device."
I looked at it, glowing brightly with the wind-mark. "Yeah, I guess so."

The goddess smiled and stepped back so we could face one another. "There is one more part to the power of this amulet--and if it works, you will know that you are, indeed, our family."
I glanced at the beautiful designs carved in relief on the surface, and the second depression for the other side of my locket. "What is it?"

Auraea held my wrist and smiled. "Watch." She reached out and pressed her thumb securely over the protruding spikes. I averted my eyes as they punctured her skin, and blood bubbled out from the wound. Auraea smeared her thumb over the surface of the amulet, filling in the lines and cracks with it.
The dark red sheen faded before my eyes, and by the time I noticed that the cuff didn't even look bloody anymore, the punctures on her thumb had healed as well.

My hands tingled. I could feel the steady rise of the breeze over and between my fingertips.
I looked at her. "Now what?"

Auraea smiled as she opened her hand, letting the clouds swirl into a mini-tornado hovering over her palm. She batted her hand to set it aloft. "Catch!"

Reflexively, I cupped my hands under the tornado, as if she'd tossed me a tennis ball. It stayed anchored to my palm, the same way it had done hers. I stared in total shock as the tornado spun. I could feel it tugging and pulling at the air around me--but I was in control. I carefully pulled my hands apart, concentrating on the whirlwind between them. It responded to my motions, widening like a bowl of clay turning on a potter's wheel. I closed my fists, as she had done, and the vortex disappeared. I stared at my palms. Nothing glowed or sparkled, my hands looked pretty normal, except the fact that I was acutely aware of my pulse hammering under the brass cuff.
"How did you do that?" I gasped at Auraea.

She nodded to me. "Now you know why Egamad would want that so bad. It holds our essence, the thing that gives us authority over our respective elements, activated by our blood. Now you have dominion over the wind, the same as I do."

A wayward gust bumped against my shoulder, and I flinched, reaching out my hand on instinct.
My fingers closed around a solid shape, yet my eyes didn't register a physical form till I blinked--and there he was, the wind-sprite that had been following me around since Thessaloniki!
He grinned and ducked his head. "Me vlépis, Eroméni?" He asked softly. "Do you see me, Mistress?"
I nodded, my eyes bulging so wide I couldn't so much as blink.
He tilted his head back and let out a loud, musical laugh. Immediately, a score of other sprites came flocking around us, cheering happily and babbling to one another in Greek.
I let the first sprite go, and my eyes traveled to the dark, flapping figure of Trykimios. "Now, how do we help Dad?"

Auraea lifted into the air as Trikymios leveled another wave toward the northern tip of Fourtouna. A clap of his hands sent a shockwave down at the water's surface, and the waves bowed and spread out of the way, forming a maelstrom that slowly ate away at the sea around it.
"Never mind him for the moment," Auraea responded. "We need to stop that maelstrom before it reaches either shore!" She beckoned to a crowd of wind-sprites, who eagerly surged forward and surrounded the rim of the vortex at her direction. With their combined efforts, they scuffed the edges of the maelstrom, turning it back on itself. Still, it turned and twisted.
"I don't think it's going to be enough, Mom!" I yelled, throwing up my hands as a massive wave crashed over the cliff again. This time, it didn't drench me--instead, a massive wall of air rushed between myself and the water, obliterating the wave and blowing the spray away from me.

"Priscilla!" Auraea called, tearing my attention away from the awesome sight. She spread out her arms, as if holding back a huge wall of something invisible and powerful. "When I let go, I want you to use your hands and focus all of the pressure from this wind on your father, just like you focused the amulet on me. Ready?"

I widened my stance and held out my arms. The tails of my shirt flapped wildly in the bracing wind. "Ready!" I called back.
"NOW!" Auraea's voice thundered over the cliff, knocking down a few trees as she thrust her arms forward.

I brought my hands together in a hollow shape, and the wind responded. It narrowed and thrust straight toward Trikymios with the force of a ballistic missile. I saw him flinch as the wind struck him square in the chest, but then he called up a wall of water like a shield beside him, and the wind merely rebounded with a cloud of sea-spray.
Just across from the cliffside, the maelstrom halted and filled in from the center. The water-wall dropped, and I saw Trikymios swing his fist toward Auraea. A water-spout unfolded directly beneath her, rising as if to bat her from the sky. She slammed down with a sharp gust of her own, splitting the spout in two.
"We've got his attention!" She called to me. "Now use the amulet! Call to him!"

I could barely feel my fingertips as I fumbled with the locket. Prying it loose from the depression marked with the wind symbol, I flipped it over and pressed it into place over the wave symbol. Once again, the amulet glowed, and I focused the beam over the god's face.
"DAD!" I yelled as the sea churned and splashed around me. "Stop! Egamad is tricking you!"

His arms dropped, and the waves softened. The rain dissipated, and Auraea rolled the clouds aside. Trikymios skated across the surface of the water on the curls of two rolling waves, all the way to the cliff. As he approached, the wave stood upright, level with the top of the cliff. His eyes sparkled and he grinned when he saw me.

"Hey, Nosy!" I barely had time to move before he threw his arms around me. "What are you doing here? I thought you were off on some island having adventures."
"And what do you think you were doing just now?" Auraea's voice cut in behind me.
Trikymios allowed me to step aside as she approached in all her Ancient Greek glory.
He whistled. "Looking lovely as ever, Auraea."
She tilted an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Just answer the question."

Trikymios scoffed, smoothing his damp hair back from his face. “Well... Honey, you know what I was doing, you’ve been here with me the whole time!” He gestured out to the water, which had steadied to an easy tide with currents on their correct course. “There was the cruise liner with all the demons—“ He stopped and surveyed the open water. “Wait! Where did it go?” Shielding his eyes with his hand, he scanned left to right. “What?”

“Dad,” I said in a small voice, coming to stand beside him. Up close, the iron breastplate over the linen tunic made his physique look especially imposing. “That was a trick by Egamad. You were never saving people from demons—he was using you, first to brew storms all across the Great Lakes, and then to terrorize Fourtouna.”

At the name of his old nemesis, the god’s face hardened into a furious frown. “Egamad; I should have known he was behind all this! But...” He turned to look at me. “How do you know about it?”
Before I could answer, Auraea took over. “That explanation can wait. Right now, he is tearing apart the island, looking for the thing we hid here.”
His majestic face blanked in confusion—an expression I’d seen plenty of times at the dinner table. “Thing? What—“
Auraea gently lifted my hand to show him the cuff on my wrist.

“Oh!” Trikymios’ face lit up. “That thing!” He came over to us and took my hand. “Does she know how it works? Oh! But she’s not using the spikes—you know it doesn’t work as well without the spikes.”

I swapped the locket around and waved my hand to flick a gust of wind at him. “It works well enough as it is,” I teased. No way was I going to scar myself if I didn’t have to!
Trikymios let out a loud laugh. “Ha! You’re right. I see your mother activated it. I suppose it should be my turn.” He placed his thumb against the spikes, as Auraea had done, and when the bright blood beaded up, he rubbed it on the device. “There! Try that on for size,” he said.

I placed the wave symbol against the bloodied indentation. Once again, the strange feeling welled up inside me, although instead of coursing through my arms and hands, this one felt more like a gut instinct, weighing in my chest. I walked to the edge of the cliff and held up my hands, palms facing out. With a rumble and a splash, one round spout rose from the surface of the water, forming a hand itself. It responded to my gestures like the wind had done, matching whatever shapes I made with my fingers, moving with speed wherever I pointed.
“Man, this is awesome!” I gushed over my shoulder.

Immediately as I spoke, a blast of wind hit me square in the back, nearly knocking me over the edge if the watery hands hadn’t caught me.
“Auraea!”
I heard Trikymios shout, and I saw her, that gentle face a mask of blind fury, flourishing her hands for another blow. I fumbled for the locket, to get it flipped around in time to defend myself... And I saw it: the thick black shadow gathering behind her, pulling her back into the air again. “Mom, look out!” I shouted, placing the locket again and lashing out to try and blow the shadows back again. “It’s Egamad! He’s trying to get you!”

Trikymios laughed—but it wasn’t a happy, exuberant sound. His voice was more hoarse and raspy, like Egamad’s.
“Haha—Trying?” he chortled. “You stupid girl! You only thought you had them! No one takes my power from me!”
And with that, a thick black cloud enveloped both my parents, dragging them away to some other corner. I reached out with every wind I could, but nothing seemed to touch that dark mass.

“Nooo!” I screamed as my parents vanished before my eyes. I stared down at my hands. All this access to their power at my fingertips, and I still couldn’t get one over on Egamad!
I clenched my fists and started pacing as the wind and rain resumed. “Okay, Priscilla, think! There has to be something to give you an advantage—something you have that he doesn’t!” Swapping the locket back and forth would only get me so far. There had to be something else!

The ground shook below me, and I retreated closer to the trees to get away from that precarious edge. How long had I spent out here, away from my friends? Had they found each other? Had they all abandoned me for dead?

I snapped my fingers, ignoring the wave that mimicked my action. “Jordyn!” I said aloud. If anybody could come up with an idea on the fly, she could! I just needed to find her—if anybody else was still on the island. I pulled down the sleeve of my jacket to hide the cuff around my wrist, and I set out toward the camp. The mural I’d seen in the cave thrummed through my head.

This was my fate: I was going to have to face the demon eventually. I just hoped I would be ready when my moment came.

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