Elemental

Genres: YA Dystopian

Synopsis

An action-packed fantasy adventure for fans of Ship Breaker! It is the future, and most of the population of the United States has been destroyed by the plague. Survivors have formed colonies on the barrier islands off the east coast of the country. In one small colony, almost all the members have powers to control wind, water, earth, and fire—all but sixteen-year-old Thomas. When the Guardians of the village are kidnapped by enemies seeking to take over their colony, it is up to Thomas and a small group of teens to save them and preserve the mysteries of the island.

Release date: November 21, 2012

Publisher: Speak

Print pages: 352

Sample

AFTER THE STORM CAME THE PIRATES. . . .

 

I’d been lying awake for half a strike when the door flew open and Dennis’s footsteps pounded against the stairs. “Thomas, we need you,” he shouted. “Something’s wrong.”

Alice was up in a flash, long legs flying across the shelter and onto the steps. I sprinted after her. Outside, I took a deep breath and followed their gazes across the sound to our colony on Hatteras Island.

“I can’t see anything through the cloud,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

Alice shook her head. “That’s not a cloud. It’s smoke.” She took a hesitant step forward. “Our island is on fire.”

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CHAPTER 1

Thunder rattled the aging wooden cabins, but no one stopped to listen. There wasn’t time for that. The coming storm was written in every distant flash of lightning, and in the sick, heavy clouds hanging over the ocean. The pelicans flying by in tight formation groaned in warning. Even the air tasted strange and unnatural.

So how had Kyte, Guardian of the Wind, missed it completely?

Usually Kyte predicted storms a day in advance. He’d tell us how strong the wind would be. With a Guardian of the Water, he’d warn how high the ocean would rise. And though I found it hard to imagine the clear blue sky roiling with clouds, and the usually calm ocean turned inside out, I knew better than to doubt him. It was his element, after all.

“Swell rising,” yelled Kyte. He crouched beside a stick planted firmly in the sand. It marked the highest point he expected the ocean to reach. As everyone turned to look, the water washed right over it and dragged it out to sea.

He closed his eyes. Tension carved lines in his face. He was engaging his element, but it had never looked so difficult before.

“Wind speed increasing,” shouted another Guardian.

“I know. It’s my element,” exclaimed Kyte, as though he owned the wind itself, not just the ability to read it.

Meanwhile, my father stood side by side with my older brother, Ananias, at the colony’s rainwater harvester. They looked alike: same thick, dark hair and serious expression. They conjured sparks from their fingertips, tiny flames that grew and combined into a white-hot glow. Ananias directed the heat onto a bent nail while our father straightened it and drove it back into the oak paneling. However bad the storm might be, we couldn’t afford to lose our only water source.

All the Guardians were busy now, their elements in full effect. As the first and only child born without an element, I watched them enviously. I couldn’t summon fire, unearth food, predict storms, or catch fish barehanded. But I could toss sandbags against the stilts supporting our cabin, and so I did—one after another, as my arms burned and sweat poured down my forehead.

“Shouldn’t you be loading the evacuation canoes, Thomas?” Kyte’s voice was low and threatening.

“Alice is taking the last bags now,” I said, pointing to the girl sprinting across the beach—sure-footed and powerful—two bulky canvas bags slung across her shoulders.

He followed my eyes, and shouted: “Do you like having to do everything yourself, Alice?”

As she turned her head, the wind tousled her dark hair. She peered at Kyte from the corner of her eye, but she didn’t answer.

“I’m talking to you, Alice!”

She dropped the bags. “Does it matter what I like?” Her eyes drifted to me, and she cocked an eyebrow. “Anyway, you’ve spent years trying to keep Thom and me apart. Why do you want him to help me now?”

Kyte’s face reddened. “How dare you speak to a Guardian like that? You’re not an Apprentice yet, remember.”

“And I hope I never will be.” She smiled. “Are we done now?”

The other Guardians stopped what they were doing, and watched with interest. Kyte obviously knew it too. He’d have to take action—punish Alice yet again—just to save face. It was all so predictable.

Couldn’t we have just one afternoon without Alice battling the Guardians head-on, when she could be spared their pointless attempts to tame her? The storm would be upon us soon. There wasn’t time for this.

“Why do you think you missed this storm, Guardian Kyte?” I asked. The words came out quickly, a thinly veiled attempt to distract him. “Since your element is wind.”

Kyte’s mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “Why? Did you foresee it before me, Thomas? Did you just forget to mention it to us?”

I sensed the Guardians’ stares shifting to me. “I wasn’t meaning to criticize. It’s just strange. Almost like your element
didn’t . . .”

“What? Like my element didn’t what?” Kyte lifted a sandbag as though it weighed nothing and launched it several yards. “I’d think that you of all people would have more respect for the elements.”

Without a sound, my younger brother, Griffin, joined me. Being deaf, he’d learned to read the Guardians’ body language better than anyone. Having him beside me should have been a warning to say nothing. But I’d only spoken up to save Alice.

“I’m just trying to understand.”

“And you think now is the time for that?” Kyte raised his hands toward the darkening sky. “Some of us have work to do, and not enough time to do it. Can you at least respect that?”

My pulse raced. Anger coursed through me. “You wouldn’t be in such a hurry if you’d predicted the storm like you’re supposed to.”

“Until you have something to offer this colony,” he spat, “I suggest you keep your thoughts to yourself.”

“Exactly,” echoed my father. I hadn’t heard him approach. He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, but his voice was loud and fierce. He fixed his eyes on Kyte. “After all, those with elements should always be allowed to speak.”

“True. And if Thomas discovers an element, I’ll be sure to listen.”

“And how do you suggest he finds one?”

Kyte shrugged, but the mocking smile was back. “It’s difficult, for sure. Especially so late in childhood.”

My father’s grip tightened. Pain swept through me. “As things stand, he’s nothing.”

“As you say,” returned Kyte smoothly. “Nothing.”

I felt anger flash through my father’s claw-like fingers—sharp enough to make me wince—and then he pulled away. I waited for him to come to my defense again, to match Kyte word for word. He’d supported me for sixteen years. I expected nothing less now. But when I looked at him, it was as if he was done fighting. Or worse, as if he agreed with Kyte.

Nothing. The word hung in the air like a fork of lightning seen long after it has vanished. Of course it was difficult for Father to have a son with no element—it was even harder for me—but he’d always told me to be patient. Had he been lying all those years? Was this how he really felt?

There were only fifteen people in our colony, but every single one of them stood still and silent, eyes fixed uneasily on the ground.

My hands balled into fists by my sides. My heart beat wildly. I can throw insults too, I thought. I could’ve asked Kyte why his weather predictions were increasingly unreliable. I could’ve asked my father why his element was so much weaker than his oldest son’s.

But I didn’t say anything. Because in the end, they still had an element, and I didn’t. Something was better than nothing.

I kept my head up and began to walk—quick, uneven strides that couldn’t carry me away fast enough. My father called to me, but I didn’t turn back. As soon as I crossed the dunes, I broke into a run. Sand slipped beneath me. I couldn’t seem to get a grip on anything—the earth, my pulse, my life.

I didn’t stop running until I reached the narrow woods that ran like a spine down the center of Hatteras Island. I placed my left hand against a pine tree and punched the trunk with my right. Mosquitoes landed on me, and I didn’t flick them away. I closed my eyes and welcomed a different kind of pain.

“Are you all right?”

I spun around. Alice stood before me, bags still hanging from her shoulders. She must have run too, but she didn’t even seem out of breath.

“I’m fine.”

“Liar.” Her blue eyes blazed. She was a year younger than me, but that was easy to forget when she was angry. “Ignore them, Thom. Ignore them all.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Why? Because I have an element, and you don’t?” She snorted. “I can barely conjure a spark, let alone make a fire. It’s a pathetic excuse for an element, and you know it.”

“At least it’s something.”

She dropped the bags and folded her long tan arms. Sinewy muscles showed through the dull coat of white sand. “When are you going to start fighting back?”

“I just did, remember?”

“I don’t mean for me, or Griffin. I mean for you.”

“Who should I be fighting? Kyte?”

“Anyone. Everyone. Go ahead and hurt them. Do it so they’ll never look at you the same way again.”

“Is that how you got so popular?”

Alice just smiled. “See? So much anger inside you. You need to let it out.”

There was a rustle behind us. A girl stood beneath the canopy of a young tree. She fingered the ends of her long blond hair anxiously.

Alice huffed. “What a surprise. I didn’t expect Kyte to send you so soon, Rose. I figured he had more important things to do than worry about Thom and me.”

“My father didn’t send me.”

“Course not.” Alice retrieved her bags and walked away. She didn’t look back.

Once Alice was out of sight, Rose knelt down on a bed of pine needles. She tugged the ends of her white tunic toward her knees, but the material rode up again. Her skin was smooth and pale, unblemished by scars. “My father shouldn’t say those things to you,” she murmured, voice almost lost on the wind.

I sat down with my back against the trunk. “Have you told him that?”

She looked away. Suddenly I felt guilty instead of angry.

“Alice doesn’t think an element is important,” I said. “But she’s wrong. If I had yours—if I could read water the way you do—everything would be different.”

Unlike Alice, Rose didn’t disagree. I was grateful for that. “You’ll find your element,” she said, summoning a smile. “I’m sure of it.”

“Why do you keep saying that? You swam like a fish before you could walk. Elements reveal themselves early. Not when you’re sixteen.”

Her smile never faltered. “Look at your brother. Griffin’s right leg doesn’t work properly. He has ears, but he can’t hear. Maybe you have an element, and it just doesn’t work.”

I wanted to believe her, but I’d already passed the age of Apprenticeship. There would be no silver lining to the cloud that had followed me my entire life.

A gust of wind bent the trees and scattered the needles. The first drops of rain came with it.

“I believe in you, Thomas,” she said. “Always have. I want you to know that.”

For a moment, she held my gaze, and I knew that she was telling the truth. I might be nothing to the colony, but I mattered to Rose. Her fingers drifted to the wooden bangle on her left wrist. She twisted it around and around. It was what she always did when she was nervous.

She had carved the bangle herself. Just as she’d sewn the band of white cloth that held her hair back from her face, and the pretty linen tunic that fit her so differently than the ones stitched together by the Guardians.

My pulse quickened again, but this time there was no hint of anger. Instead I felt something even more powerful. Something I’d been feeling more and more over the past two years. Something that left me as empty as having no element.

“We should go,” I said quickly, before my face gave me away.

I pulled myself up and offered my hand to Rose. She didn’t take it, though. Then again, no one but my father touched me, or held me. It was as if having no element was contagious. And who could risk losing their greatest power?

Rose stood now. She was much shorter than me, but looking at her was like watching myself: same unsure expression, same way of shuffling her feet like she wasn’t sure what to do with them. Was she thinking the same thing as me too? Deep down, did she want to touch me as much as I wanted to touch her?

“You’re right,” she said, breaking the connection. “We should go.”

No. An element wasn’t the only thing I’d never have.

CHAPTER 2

Three canoes sat on the creek, filled with bags of supplies and fresh water in canisters—enough for an overnight stay in the hurricane shelter. Usually I’d have been dreading a trip to the smelly, sweaty shelter on Roanoke Island, two miles to the west. Not this time, though. For once I could only think of getting away—from the Guardians’ stares, and my father’s lies, and the colony that felt smaller every day.

With a lingering gaze at me, Rose climbed into the front of the canoe on the left. Her brother, Dennis, the youngest member of the colony at nine years old, joined her. He pressed his hands against his head as if it hurt. Rose rubbed his back gently.

Alice already sat at the helm of the middle canoe. She rolled up the sleeves of her dirty, misshapen blue tunic, and grasped the paddle tightly, eager to get moving. As her older sister, Eleanor, shared yet another embrace with their father, Alice rolled her eyes. Or perhaps that gesture was intended for her grandmother, Guardian Lora, who sat in the middle of the sisters’ canoe and complained to nobody in particular that the rain was increasing. The other Guardians claimed that Lora was coming along to look after us, but we all knew it was because she was too old and frail to ride out the storm in the colony.

I followed Lora’s eyes to the clouds. We’d never set off so late before. I wondered if we’d make it across before lightning hit. If I’d had the element of wind, I’d have known the answer. If I’d had the element of water, I’d have been attuned to the swell, the tempo of the incoming tide.

I had nothing.

I took my usual place at the rear of our oak canoe. It tilted from side to side, but I barely noticed. We spent so much of our lives on water that the constant movements felt as familiar as the gentle give of sand on the beach. Griffin sat in the middle and faced me so that he could communicate with his hands during the crossing.

Meanwhile, in the bow seat up front, Ananias conferred with our father. He spoke with the confidence of a boy who’d been treated as an adult for years—though he was only eighteen. When they were done, Father waded toward Griffin and me. He paused beside Griffin, but when he leaned forward, it was me he hugged. He gripped my hair between his fingers and held me tight.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered fiercely. “You have no idea how sorry I am. None of this is your fault. I need you to remember that. Always.”

I felt tense in his arms. I wanted to scream that it didn’t matter whose fault it was. Was it any consolation for Griffin to know that his limp wasn’t his fault? Or his deafness? Or those sinister visions that kept everyone at arm’s length? No. Griffin and I were more than brothers. We were the colony’s outcasts, the constant reminders that not everything is created perfect. Knowing it wasn’t my fault didn’t change that at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, breaths ragged in my ear. He was squeezing me so hard I could barely breathe. Something rushed through me then, like a message direct from his heart, begging for forgiveness. Against my will, it calmed me. I hugged him back.

“It’s all right,” I said, even though we both knew it wasn’t. “I’m all right.”

As soon as he let go, I knew I’d done the right thing. He looked so grateful.

Finally, he turned to Griffin. Father never held him the way he held Ananias and me, but this time was different. Still smiling, he took a deep breath and rested his hands on Griffin’s bony shoulders.

Griffin’s eyes grew wide in astonishment, and his face opened like a sun breaking through clouds. For a precious moment, everything seemed right.

But then the smile disappeared. His expression shifted. He looked frightened—horrified, even.

That’s when the noise began.

At first it was a low sound, like waves breaking in the distance, but it had a knife-like edge that made Ananias spin around instantly. We dropped our paddles and crawled toward Griffin. He’d already grasped Father’s hands and locked on. Father tried to pull away, muscles bulging beneath his dirty cloth shirt, but it was futile.

Almost everyone in the colony had seen Griffin like this before, overcome by a blind panic that gave him superhuman strength. For years I’d tried to block out the memory of those moments—or what followed—but as Griffin’s voice twisted into a keening wail, I couldn’t think of anything else.

I lunged at Griffin and sent him tumbling onto the hard bottom of the canoe. Father stumbled back and collapsed into the waist-deep water. With the wind knocked out of him, Griffin struggled to breathe, let alone make a sound, but I could tell he’d snapped out of the trance now. There wouldn’t be any more moaning, just a faint whimpering as he curled up in a ball.

I didn’t need to look around to know that we were being watched. I could literally feel the silence. Everyone in the colony remembered hearing that sound, and what had followed.

“We don’t need to go,” Dennis cried, his voice high-pitched and desperate. “It’s a storm, nothing more.”

Kyte shook his head. “We’ll not take that chance, son.”

“Then come with us. It’s not a really bad storm, I promise. That’s why you didn’t foresee it—”

“Enough!” Kyte was clearly embarrassed at having his weather prediction challenged by his own son. “It’s time you left. Paddle evenly. Conserve your water.”

Paddle evenly. Conserve your water. This is what the Guardians said every time we set off for another stay in the hurricane shelter. Following these words, we’d dig our paddles into the murky green water and watch them create eddies as the canoes slid forward. We’d laugh at our own strength and Alice’s determined attempts to get to Roanoke Island first, like this was a race, not an evacuation. And we’d secretly revel in the knowledge that the only person of authority would be Guardian Lora, who was too weak to walk unaided, let alone control seven of us.

Now there was no laughing. No reveling. No one moved.

“He said go!” My father’s voice lashed at us, fueled by fear and anger.

As I scanned everyone’s faces, they looked away. They pitied my brothers and me, I was certain. The first time Griffin behaved this way had been nine years before, while he’d been sitting on the beach with Rose’s grandparents. One moment, they’d held him fast; the next, his little hands had gotten such a grip on them they couldn’t pull away. When they’d launched a sailboat that afternoon, it had taken three Guardians to hold Griffin back, even though he was only four years old. We hadn’t even recovered from the shock when the meaning became clear: Rose’s grandparents’ boat capsized in a sudden squall. Their bodies were never recovered.

Three years later, Griffin had latched on to a boy named John as we played on a rope swing. We’d pulled Griffin away then too, and John had climbed the tree, laughing. But he hadn’t gripped the rope properly, and fell. He’d been so still that we were sure he was just pretending to be injured. Then we saw the stream of blood.

After the grieving period, the Guardians had made me explain to Griffin that he wasn’t to blame. I’d done as they asked, though I wasn’t sure whether they were trying to convince him or themselves. It was the last day anyone had willingly touched my brother. No one wanted to be his next victim.

I knew that Griffin hadn’t caused the deaths, of course; it was more like he somehow knew a bad thing was going to happen to someone before it actually did. He wasn’t the first person in my family to have the ability either. I’d grown up hearing rumors about my mother’s “talent” for foreseeing future catastrophes—even heard people wonder aloud if she was somehow the cause of them.

I’d always told myself that it was wrong for the Guardians to say such things when she wasn’t around to defend herself. Then one night, as Griffin slept peacefully in a cot beside us, my father told Ananias and me that our mother had indeed been a seer, just like her mother before her. But all she had been able to foresee was death, and since no one had wanted to spend their final moments in fear of a fate they couldn’t avoid, they were wary of her.

Like mother, like son.

Now I stared at my father, saturated and shaking. I wanted to ask him if he was as frightened as I was, but I couldn’t. We had an audience, and he was determined to appear strong. Instead I knelt beside Griffin, still curled up in the bottom of the canoe. Making sure I had his attention, I placed a finger against my chest and pulled my mouth into a frown. Finally, I pointed to him: I. Sorry. You.

He watched each gesture with a glazed expression, and when I finished he didn’t sign back. I needed to see him touch his heart, to show that he forgave me. After all, we weren’t just brothers—we were confidants, fellow outcasts. Strangers in our own colony. But I knew he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do it. The last time he’d had a seizure, he hadn’t communicated for a full day afterward. No words or laughter, just emptiness.

I glanced at Ananias, and wished I hadn’t. Gone was the Apprentice, the boy with the confidence of a Guardian. Now he looked as panicked as I felt. Neither of us was ready to go, but the Guardians wouldn’t allow us to stay. Silence weighed heavily, and somehow I knew that only we could break it.

I picked up the paddle and nodded to Ananias that it was time to go. He followed me in a daze. Neither of us said good-bye to our father—it was as though the word had changed meaning, become too final. Instead, we drove our paddles into the water and propelled ourselves away. For a dozen strokes I closed my eyes and focused on the splashing sound, and the monotony helped me to forget.

But then I glanced down at Griffin, and realized he was staring at the receding figure of our father. He didn’t even blink. It was like he wanted to take in as much of the man as possible before he disappeared forever.

CHAPTER 3

Halfway across the sound—the waterway separating our colony on Hatteras Island from Roanoke Island—the rain became torrential. Heavy drops collected in pools around Griffin’s legs, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was as silent now as he had been loud before.

We fought our way through choppy water around tiny Pond Island and followed the hulking bridge to the eastern shore of Roanoke Island. The bridge was old and decrepit—remnant of a long-ago civilization—and a small section was missing from the middle, making it difficult to cross. The Guardians had left strong wooden planks on either side of the gap, which could be lowered in case of emergency; but walking on a long, narrow board eighty feet above the water was something only Alice wanted to try. Besides, the canoes were faster, and could carry more provisions.

We paddled hard along one of the channels that cut into Roanoke Island. At the end, we tethered the canoes to a pontoon. Alice and Eleanor unloaded their supplies as Lora muttered curses.

“Let me rest,” the old woman groaned. She was standing knee-deep in the water, fragile arms clinging to the pontoon. “I believe you would have me die out here, Alice.”

Alice caught my eye. As gusts of wind whipped at her tunic, I’d swear she smiled a little. “I hadn’t thought of that, Lora,” she said. “Not until now, anyway.”

Eleanor cast her sister a warning glance, but it was pointless. Despite their physical similarities—they were both tall and
willowy—their temperaments were as strikingly different as their hair: long, curling brown locks for Eleanor, and unkempt raven-black hair for Alice. Where Eleanor glided with gentle grace, Alice carried the energy of an all-consuming storm. Where Eleanor seemed to look through people to the weather beyond, Alice stared at them with a blazing intensity that dared them to look away. Everyone adored Eleanor. Alice counted me as her only friend. Then again, she frustrated the Guardians even more than I did. How could I not have liked her?

Lora picked up on Alice’s defiant tone, and cocked her head. “What was that? What did you say, child?” She emphasized the word child, as if she weren’t completely at Alice’s mercy.

Alice just smiled. She would be turning sixteen in a few months. Her element was unusually weak, but she’d still be honored with the title Apprentice of the Fire. There would be a celebration. A feast. She certainly wouldn’t suffer through a halfhearted meal passed in cold silence, as I had done. She wouldn’t have to press her hands against her ears to block out her father’s tirade. She wouldn’t be granted an additional year to discover her element—simply putting off the moment when the Guardians would acknowledge she had no element at all.

“Thomas. . . . Thomas!” Ananias stood over me. Rain ran down his face. “Can you help Griffin?”

It wasn’t really a question, but I nodded anyway. “Are you all right?” I asked.

Ananias secured our canoe to the pontoon with deliberate slowness. He knew what I really meant. “Griffin could be wrong.”

“He’s never been wrong before.”

“But Father knows there’s danger now. He’ll be on his guard. So will everyone else.” He spoke earnestly, like he really wanted to believe what he was saying. But behind the stubble and the serious brows, he looked concerned.

I turned to Griffin. He hadn’t moved at all. One side of his body was submerged in rainwater. We go, I signed.

Griffin blinked, but he didn’t reply.

We go, I repeated. I waved my arm in a wide arc above my head to signify the weather. Storm.

He sat up, shivering.

I pulled off his saturated cloth shirt and gave him the spare from my canvas bag. I knew he’d be drenched again before we reached the shelter, but I just wanted him to stop shaking for a moment. He pulled on the shirt without looking at me.

Ananias took my bag so I could stay with Griffin. But Griffin either didn’t need my help, or didn’t want it. Without even a glance in my direction he crawled out of the canoe and onto the pontoon. Then he followed the others along the cracked road, fighting wind and rain, his weak right leg sliding through dirty puddles.

Finally only Alice and Lora remained. “Come on,” grumbled Lora as I approa