Spellbound Statues, page 24
“Well… yeah.”
“Just relax and be open. We can’t exactly go home and have a nap, but I can do this. I’m not the one who has been flying around doing all the work. Mostly, I’ve just been sitting in the car acting as your chauffeur.”
“I always wanted a chauffeur.”
“Well, there you go.”
Reg closed her eyes and tried to do as Davyn had instructed and be open and accept what he had to give. It was the only way she would be able to carry on.
Her outlook improved as her energy grew and, after a few minutes, she tried reaching out to Ruan again.
She saw him sitting under a tree, his rosy round cheeks and curly brown mop making him look like a child rather than a grown man. He had on sunglasses which helped him tolerate the light above ground. He was talking to someone she couldn’t see. Calliopia, no doubt. The two rarely separated, and none of their friends or family members would have anything to do with them, other than Karol.
“Ruan.”
Ruan was startled and turned his head slightly. He smiled cheerily. “It is the great Reg Rawlins!”
“Not the great Reg Rawlins,” she told him. “The very tired Reg Rawlins, asking for your help.”
“My help?” he scoffed. “What can a piskie do for a great sorceress like thou?”
“I need you. Will you come?”
Ruan reached for Calliopia’s hand to ensure that they were connected and would not go in different directions. He gripped it tightly.
“After all she has done, when Reg Rawlins calls, Ruan Rosdew will come.”
“Come,” Reg called, and pictured him there beside her. There was a jumble of images in her head as he tumbled across space to land beside her.
And then he was there, and she saw his dirt-smudged, rosy cheeks in person. The haughty fairy Calliopia was by his side as always, looking slightly discomfited at being brought across the country to sit in the midst of a human temple ruin.
“Why come we?” she demanded immediately. “Fairies do not help humans.”
“Fairies have helped me more than once,” Reg told her. “And I need a pixie’s help, not a fairy’s. Piskie’s,” she corrected herself, remembering to use the name Ruan used himself rather than the human corruption. “I need a piskie’s help.”
Ruan looked around at the stones of the ruin with interest.
“I have not been here before.”
Reg nodded. She didn’t imagine there was much there to interest him. But she was wrong.
He stopped where the Gideon had stood before the ground had swallowed him up. Reg raised her hand and started to warn him that it might not be a safe place to stand. But Ruan looked curiously at the earth beneath his feet; brows knitted together.
“What have you been doing here, Reg Rawlins?”
“That wasn’t my doing. I just… I unpetrified someone, and it turned out that he wasn’t very respectful of the earth elemental and wanted to bind it again, and it…” Reg shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t think it was very happy with him.”
“You wish me to rescue him?” Ruan asked angrily, “He has gone the way of all the earth. He is beyond being rescued again. And Ruan would not rescue someone who had done such a thing.”
“No. I’m not asking you to.”
“I will do nothing to bind one of the fathers. Especially not the earth father!”
Reg continued to shake her head. “We want to free them, Ruan.”
He looked at her, brows arced in query. He looked around at Davyn and Sarah and gave the homunculus a long, penetrating look. Then he looked back at Reg. “Tell me what has been done.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Reg looked at Sarah and Davyn, then did her best to succinctly describe everything that had happened over the past few days and what they had discovered about what Corvin and Gideon had done centuries earlier.
Ruan’s eyes were wide, and he listened with rapt attention. He shook his head in dismay at her description of how and why the elementals had been bound.
“Reg Rawlins tells the truth? You do not seek to bind the fathers?”
“No. We are trying to right the wrong that has been done. But we don’t want a bunch of people to die because of it. We’re hoping there is some way to… appease the elementals. If there is a way to achieve some kind of harmony.”
Ruan nodded, thoughtful.
“There is much to be done. This will not be an easy task.”
“What do you need us to do? We have the other elementals, still bound to the relics we want to release them from. The earth elemental is still close… I don’t know about the fire elemental. It could be close by, maybe back toward the fort where it was bound. I don’t know. Maybe it has gone farther afield. I haven’t heard of any other forest fires.”
“We must address the earth father first.”
Reg shrugged. “I know it’s the one that has been causing the petrifaction and… took Gideon, but I think the others are more powerful and dangerous. If we had the others all onside, maybe the earth elemental would just follow.”
Ruan scowled. “Reg Rawlins knows nothing of this. The earth is the most powerful of all.”
Earth was more powerful than fire, water, or air? When Reg thought of the devastation that could be caused by the other three elementals or how quickly they could kill, earth seemed undistinguished. Earth was just there. Other than when there was an earthquake, when did the earth cause mass casualties? And she didn’t know when she had ever heard of an earthquake happening in Florida.
Most of the time, the earth just lay there under their feet. While it might provide stability and a surface to build on, it did not seem as important as the other elements.
Ruan could tell she didn’t understand and shook his head sternly as if she were a student who wouldn’t listen to the teacher, the expert who knew what he was talking about.
“Humans have no respect for the earth. What do humans do when they come to a place?” He looked around, glaring at all them. “They have to build their houses on top of the land. They cut down the trees, drain the swamps, break up the ground for their crops.”
Sarah had just talked about how they had done all those things to tame the land in Florida. But Ruan spoke about it as if they had destroyed the earth rather than working it to provide the food and other crops they needed to survive.
“The earth dries out,” Ruan pointed out. “It blows away in the wind. The animals die out. With the trees and the water gone, it gets too hot and dry, and the crops fail. Humans blame the land instead of themselves. There are no nutrients left in the soil. The fires start. The humans poison the land and water with their chemicals.”
Reg looked at Sarah and Davyn, but they didn’t dispute any of this.
“There are no trees or swamps to stop the storms that come in off the ocean, and more humans die.” Ruan scoffed. “If they lived under the earth, so many would not die. But humans do not understand the earth. They fight the earth as if it is an enemy.”
Reg felt embarrassed for the human race. She was not a farmer herself, having never even planted a garden. But she knew that they had poisoned the earth with pollutants and extinguished several animal species, probably plants, too. Instead of working in harmony with the earth, they thought they knew everything they needed to do to increase production.
Had all the chaos and devastation they had blamed on the elementals been their own fault for trying to change their environment and not understanding the consequences?
Ruan nodded his head sagely, studying her face. “Humans do not understand the power of the earth. You think the earth is weak, but it is the strongest of all.”
Reg swallowed hard. She respected Sarah’s garden gnome, Forst, for the work he did in the garden, and she knew that the food on her table had to come from somewhere. But she was disconnected from the earth. She walked and lived on top of it but didn’t give it a single thought.
“So, what do we need to do?” she asked Ruan. “We can’t fix how humans have changed the shape of the land. That would take years. We need to do something today. We don’t want to keep the other elementals bound for another day.” She appealed to Ruan’s concern for the elementals rather than the people who could be petrified or killed by the earth and fire elements that had already been freed.
“Yes,” Ruan agreed. “We must do what we can today.”
Reg breathed a sigh of relief.
Ruan looked around, examining the ground and then his surroundings.
“We will remove the Geode of Gaea from this place, and make an offering to the earth father.”
“Okay.”
Ruan pointed to each of them in turn. To Davyn first, “You are fire.” To Sarah, “Air.” And to Reg, “And Reg Rawlins, water.”
They each nodded solemnly.
“Each of you brings an offering to your element.”
Davyn could bring fire. Reg was a little disappointed that she had not been assigned that element. But she had other affinities and Davyn did not. Reg wasn’t sure what Sarah could bring for air. Maybe she could do an aerial show on her Roomba. Did elementals enjoy talent shows?
To begin with, Reg thought of offering a bottle of spring water from the cooler in the car. But she could do better than that.
Ruan approached the broken altar stone and knelt before it. He brushed the debris off the surface and ran his fingers over the runes carved in the stone, chanting in a low voice. He placed both palms on the earth in front of the stone. Reg felt a quiver go through the earth. She laid her palms flat on it as well, feeling the warmth of the soil, almost as if it were a living, breathing creature.
The earth boiled beneath Ruan, but he didn’t seem alarmed by this development. He kept chanting quietly. Calliopia chose a better viewpoint to watch what he was doing, but said nothing that might distract him.
Several oval stones, almost like eggs, came to the surface of the soil. The ward stones. Ruan touched each of them, still chanting in pixie language. He removed each from the bed of soil in front of him and lined them up next to him.
He put his hands to the earth once more and closed his eyes. He stopped chanting and was silent, maybe communing with the earth elemental or feeling for the other stone that was buried deeply there.
The earth rumbled as it had before, and Reg’s fingers curled into the grass and dirt beside her, as if by, holding on tightly, she could avoid sliding into the abyss where Gideon had disappeared.
Her heart beat hard and she felt sick to her stomach.
Was this it?
Were they all going to tumble into the earth and that would be the end of them? Would Marta Jessup investigate what had happened to them? Would someone look after Starlight and Ember?
She had never imagined her life ending this way. The thought of the weight of the earth piled on top of her was suffocating.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The rumble trailed away. The earth had not opened up again. Perhaps it was just one last rumble of the earth’s belly, satisfied with its last meal. Or having a difficult time digesting such a tough old bird.
The soil in front of Ruan did not boil this time. Only one stone came to the surface, cutting through the dirt as if it were water and rising, clean and sparkling, from the deep.
Ruan bowed down, his palms still on the surface. His face was almost in the dirt. His butt stuck up in the air, but Reg didn’t think he looked comical or ridiculous. He paid obeisance to the geode that lay in front of him. One side of it was the round, rough shell of unfinished stone. The other side was as straight and smooth as a mirror and shone to a brilliant finish. The white and green crystals gleamed, laced with glittering gold. Reg was sure it must be incredibly valuable. But its true value did not lie in the money it could be sold for.
Ruan began chanting again, his voice breathless, as if he were overcome by the beauty of the earth relic. At long last, he pressed his face into the freshly turned earth like he might actually eat it, then sat back on his knees and slid his fingers under the geode.
“Follow thou me,” he instructed, not looking at any of them, but at the stunning rock that lay in his hands.
Reg struggled to get to her feet. Davyn offered her a hand up and then a shoulder to help her over the uneven ground to the spot Ruan chose.
Ruan knelt on the ground again, gently laid the geode aside, and started to dig in the earth.
It was not the broken, loose soil of a tilled garden. The surface was overgrown with grasses and weeds. The ground was hard and filled with rocks of all sizes. Ruan’s fingers ended in thick, claw-like nails, and these seemed to help him in his endeavor but, even so, it was not long before the skin of his fingers was torn and bleeding. He paid no attention to his injuries but continued to dig a hole for the geode.
Reg moved to help Ruan, but Davyn pressed her back. “You have already done too much today, and your role is not yet finished. Do not spend your strength.”
No one else stepped forward to help Ruan. They all watched him dig his hole. Eventually, Ruan sat back.
“First the fire, to purify,” he intoned.
Davyn stepped forward. He looked into the small hole. He glanced at Ruan, then crouched down and raised both hands to pour fire into the hole. It burned white hot for a moment, and then he gradually let it cool, then put it out. Reg almost expected the inside of the hole to be solid glass, melted by the heat of the fire, but it was not. Every blade of grass and tendril of root had been burned away, as well as any garbage or impurities left there by man.
“Water,” Ruan commanded.
Davyn returned to Reg’s side and helped her forward, lowering her to her knees where she was more comfortable and stable. Reg held her hands over the hole, much as Davyn had done, and closed her eyes.
She had been to the Temple Orange Grove a couple of times before and, on the way there, she had seen a small slough of water as they turned off the main road. She concentrated on it now, calling the water into her hands and letting it trickle through the cracks between her fingers into the hole until it was filled. It took a lot of water. The ground was very thirsty. But eventually, the hole was filled with water. Reg moved back out of the way and Davyn helped her to the side again to watch the ritual and wait.
Ruan put the geode into the rapidly disappearing water and, before the water all drained from the hole, he started to fill it with the earth he had initially removed. Before replacing it all, he flicked a glance toward Calliopia.
Reg had not anticipated that the fairy would have anything to do with the ceremony but, apparently, she knew her part without being told. She strode forward, her skirts billowing around her, and bent to add something small to the hole. Reg could not see what it was but could only guess.
Ruan nodded and filled in the rest of the dirt, pressing it down gently to make it smooth and level.
“And air,” he whispered, as if afraid of waking a sleeping baby.
Sarah stepped forward. She seemed a little uncertain, but she didn’t have her vacuum and didn’t engage in any aerial acrobatics. She knelt before the filled-in hole and breathed gently on the surface of the dirt. She looked at Ruan questioningly, and he nodded. Sarah continued to blow on it gently until a leaf sprouted through the surface of the dirt.
Reg stared at it, mesmerized. She had seen many unbelievable things since moving to Black Sands, but this was a new one. The little green tendril grew and lengthened and sprouted more leaves until it had formed a small but perfect young sapling.
Ruan placed his hands on the tree trunk and repeated an incantation. Then, he returned to the temple foundations and picked up the six ward stones.
He set them in a circle around the tree, along the edge of the hole he had dug.
“This is the offering we have made,” Ruan said aloud, speaking in English this time. “The beginning of the healing of this land. Trees provide strength, oxygen, shelter, protection, and sustenance. They hold the earth and keep it strong, retain moisture, and return nutrients to the soil. Without them, the land turns hot and dry.”
He stroked the branches of the tree. “Grow strong and yet flexible, to stand up against the wind. Provide a break against fire, flood, and famine.”
There was a rumble far distant, deep within the earth. This time, it did not scare Reg. She felt calm and soothed by Ruan’s words.
He stood there for a moment in silence.
“Earth and fire be here already,” he informed them. “Let us unite the four fathers. Bring water and air.”
Davyn again motioned for Reg to stay while he and Sarah returned to the car to fetch the vial of the Tears of Poseidon and the Zephyr Pearl.
Instead of carrying the Zephyr Pearl casually under her arm, this time, Sarah held it reverently in both hands and walked with great care back to the sapling.
Davyn brought the vial with equal reverence. They both looked down at Ruan, then knelt, which brought them closer to his level. Sarah groaned and leaned on Davyn to get down to the ground again, but seemed fine once she was in place.
“Open the vial,” Ruan instructed.
Davyn carefully unstopped the Tears of Poseidon. Ruan touched it and chanted. There was a rushing sound like the waves on the shore, and Reg caught a whiff of pungent sea air that hadn’t been there a moment before. Her siren instincts were not triggered. That would have been awkward. She did not need to attack Davyn, or worse yet, Ruan, in the middle of the big reunification ceremony.
“And finally, air,” Ruan said. He put both hands over the iridescent pearl and whispered to it. A long period of time seemed to pass. Reg opened her eyes. She was exhausted and was afraid she had missed something, falling asleep while waiting for the final step of the ritual. She rubbed her eyes and refocused her attention on Ruan.
“By fire’s warmth and water’s grace,
By air’s soft breath and earth’s embrace,
We honor thee, our fathers old,
With hearts sincere and pledges told.”
