Born of Aether: An Elemental Origins Novel (Elemental Origins Series Book 4) Read online

  Born of Æther

  An Elemental Origins Novel

  A.L. Knorr

  Intellectually Promiscuous Press

  Copyright © 2017 by Intellectually Promiscuous Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is registered with the Writer’s Guild of Canada and is protected under international copyright laws.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Also by A.L. Knorr

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader,

  Going Home

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also by A.L. Knorr

  Born of Water

  Born of Fire

  Born of Earth

  Returning, Episode I

  Returning, Episode II

  Heat

  The Wreck of Sybellen

  The Elemental Origins Series, Books 1-3

  Join A.L. Knorr’s VIP Reader List and she’ll personally send you a reminder as soon as her next book is out. Click here to sign up and receiving Returning, Episode I as a free gift.

  Prologue

  The moans of the wounded and the dying filled the narrow valley. The full moon, big and bright and already high in the sky, cast its cold blue light over the battle scene. Long thin shadows from arrows and spears embedded in the earth and in flesh slanted across grass, mud, and dark pools of blood. Crows gathered in the branches of nearby trees, their throaty screams alerting other scavengers from miles around. A few brave birds descended to the mud between the bodies, preparing to pick apart their dinner and usher the dead toward the slow transition into dust.

  The dark shape of a small black fox darted from the trees to skirt the perimeter of the battlefield. Sniffing the air and stopping to listen, she salivated heavily at the smell of hot blood still pumping from the veins of the dying. At the sound of a moan she bolted into the shadows, her movements quick and sure-footed. She cocked her ears toward the sound, and moved swiftly to investigate.

  A dying warrior lay face up to the ghostly moon. Shallow breaths lifted his armored chest with the quiet creak of leather and clink of chainmail. A dark pool gathered between his left arm and his torso as his life poured from his body and soaked into the earth.

  The small fox approached on silent paws, stopping to listen before taking a few more steps. Her head low and her ears forward, she inched up to the still-warm and fragrant pool of blood. As a long and final sigh escaped the samurai, her pink tongue darted out to taste the vitamin-rich liquid, the death of one passing on life to another in a cycle as old as the earth itself.

  When the fox had raised eight litters, killed and eaten a thousand rodents, escaped a hundred predators, and seen the snows go and the rains come a dozen times, her weak and aged body crawled into a familiar hollow under a juniper for the last time.

  The flesh and bone of the samurai whose blood sustained her all those years ago had long since returned to the earth. The memory of that battlefield faded from her fox mind, a nearly insignificant event in her short life. There was room only for the present moment, for the death stealing into her bones and making her shiver.

  She settled into her hollow, curling her thick tail over her paws and in front of her nose. She watched the light of another full moon through the thick needles of the bush as her breathing grew shallow and short. She knew what was coming, and she faced it alone, unafraid, and without self-pity. She was tired. She let out a long sigh and her ribs sank as she surrendered.

  On any normal day with any normal fox, those ribs would not rise again. But life gives way to life, and as the earthly fox dies, the spirit of the samurai warrior awakens, and the ribs do rise again.

  1

  Is there a limit to how many lies one person can tell? My life was so saturated with them that I was afraid to open my mouth for fear of ensnaring myself in one of Grandfather's falsehoods. They say that if you tell a lie for long enough, you'll eventually come to believe it. But that would never happen to me. It couldn't. I would never forget who I was, where I came from, and what had happened to me. It didn't matter how many lies Grandfather commanded me to tell, or what ridiculous story he had dripping from my lips to protect himself. I would always know the truth, and he couldn't change that.

  The truth.

  The truth was not that I was his granddaughter. I was his captive.

  The truth was not that my family died in a plague that swept our village. I had been taken from my home against my will.

  The truth was not that my mother was Japanese and my father was Canadian. Both of my parents were Japanese. Grandfather made up the lie to fabricate some connection to this land, to explain our presence in this country.

  The truth was not that I was a sixteen-year-old girl. I was nearly a century old.

  The truth was not that I was human. I just looked like it.

  I disliked walking home alone after school because these were the thoughts that most often clutched my mind. Normally, I walked home with Saxony every day, since we lived in the same neighborhood. But today she had a phone interview with the au pair agency she had applied with, so after saying goodbye to Targa and Georjayna, I had left Saltford High on my own.

  Though it was April, the weather was bitterly cold and gray. Snow and ice crusted the streets and bare branches reached up to condemn the cloudy sky.

  The suburb we lived in was quiet today. Very few cars passed me, and no one walked the sidewalks. It was too miserable outside for playing, and the playground I passed was abandoned.

  Our bungalow was the second to last house on our street. Even from a distance it looked unwelcome. The windows were dark and the curtains drawn. I walked up our front yard, stepped up onto our small deck, and entered our coatroom.

  "I'm home," I called out in Japanese as I kicked off my boots. I pulled on my slippers and hung my parka on its hook.

  "Akiko," came Grandfather's voice from the small front room.

  I poked my head around the corner. "I'm here," I repeated. "Need anything?"

  "Sit," Grandfather said, gesturing to the couch across from his chair. His laptop was open and it sent a blue glow onto his lined face.

  I frowned. When Grandfather asked me to sit, it usually meant he had something more complicated for me to do. He hadn't asked me to sit in years. Most of my commands these days were mere errands—groceries, translating something for him, mailing s
omething at the post office, making dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the house, shoveling the front walk. I was the world’s most exotic house keeper.

  I sat and waited.

  He steepled his withered hands and gazed at me from across the coffee table. "My name is Daichi Hotaka," he said.

  My mouth dropped open. I could do nothing but stare. My heart began to pound. Something was going to change, something had happened. My mind raced. What had happened? Why, after all this time, was he finally telling me his name? My hands instantly felt ice-cold. I didn't know what to say, so all I did was wait, skin prickling with anticipation. With effort, I closed my mouth.

  “I have been searching for something that was stolen from me many years ago.” Nothing about his countenance changed, but I could sense a vibration of excitement about him that I had never felt before. “I have finally found it.”

  He reached a hand out and spun the laptop to face me.

  My eyes dropped to the screen. It showed a video on YouTube entitled 'Ryozen Museum to Display Artifacts from the Bakamatsu Period. Early summer.' My eyes scanned the text below the video: The Ryozen Museum of History in Kyoto, Japan, specializes in the history of the Bakumatsu period and the Meiji Restoration. The museum is dedicated to the often violent events that brought an end to the Tokugawa regime at the climax of the Edo Period.

  Daichi had frozen the screen on a closeup of a wooden rack carrying four samurai short swords. Three of them were in black sheaths, and one of them was in a blue sheath with some kind of pattern on it. He pointed a twisted finger at the short sword with the blue sheath. It looked like the design on the sheath might be of trees, but the screen was blurry so it was difficult to make out.

  "Bring me this wakizashi," he said.

  My eyes widened and flew to his face. Had I heard him correctly? I swallowed hard, my mind a torrent of questions. This was more than just an errand. This was a mission, and probably an illegal one. "It is in Kyoto, Grandfather," I said. "You want me to go back to Japan?" A torrent of emotions crashed through me like a tsunami. After all this time, he was going to let me visit our homeland? Alone? We hadn’t been back in Japan since we left over a lifetime ago – me caged and in the form of a bird. Grandfather had never expressed a desire to go back, but then again, he rarely expressed desires more complex than hunger. I had long ago given up hope of setting foot in Japan again.

  He nodded. "It will be on display soon, and not for very long." He placed his hands flat on his thighs and leaned forward. "The time for this is now. I have spent years looking for this sword. We may never have another chance.”

  "I am to—" I paused, processing his command and what it meant. "Steal it?"

  His eyes gleamed and he stared at me unblinking. He took a long slow breath and each moment that passed raised gooseflesh on my skin. "You bring me this wakizashi, and I will give you your freedom."

  * * *

  My head was still spinning a few days later. I sat through my classes in a daze, and avoided spending too much time with Saxony since even she was bound to notice my distraction. Every night I lay awake praying that Daichi wasn’t playing some kind of sick joke on me, that he wouldn’t retract his offer. I had chosen to walk home alone every day so I could think. If I kept this up, Saxony was going to chase me down.

  I scuffed my feet along the sidewalk, kicking chips of ice skittering down the pavement. This had to be my last solitary stroll home, and thankfully the shock had worn off enough that I thought I could hang out with my friends without alerting them that something big was happening.

  Daichi barked at me from the kitchen as soon as I stepped into the house. “Akiko?”

  "Here," I called, taking off my jacket and boots. My heart leapt into my throat and I fought to wrestle my irrational dread back into its place. Just because he had something to say didn’t mean he was going to withdraw the offer. I took a breath, put my hat and mitts into the wooden bin under the coatrack, and pulled on my slippers. I padded down the hall to the kitchen and immediately began to warm up. Daichi kept the heat cranked up no matter the season.

  He sat at the kitchen table staring out into our snow-covered back yard. A small cardboard box sat on the table in front of him. He looked at me as I entered.

  "Sit."

  I sat, heart pounding in my ears, and pleading inside that he wasn’t about to rescind his offer.

  He pushed the cardboard box across the table toward me. "You will need this."

  I stifled an audible sigh of relief. He was furnishing me with some kind of necessity, not calling the whole thing off. I slid the box closer and opened it. Unfolding the tissue paper revealed black fabric. Bemused, I pulled out the fabric and held it out. It was so soft and thin that it slipped through my fingers like air. Dangling it by the top, I could finally see what it was. It had short sleeves and the body of it was so short I doubted that it would even come to my knees.

  "A bathrobe, Grandfather?" On Georjayna, it wouldn't even cover her butt. "Uh... thank you."

  I spotted a small bulge in the pocket on the front of the robe. I fished out a pair of thin slippers in the same material. As footwear, they would fall apart within days. I couldn't help my look of confusion.

  "They are one hundred percent silk," Daichi said matter-of-factly.

  "Oh?"

  He took the robe from me and got to his feet stiffly. He brushed the cardboard box to the side and lay the robe out flat on the table. He spread the arms out in a perfect 'T', tucked the slippers into the front pocket and began to roll the robe from the bottom up. Folding it over and over into a stripe of fabric no thicker than an inch, he picked the length of it up and looped it around my neck twice, snug enough that if he'd pulled it any tighter I might have coughed. He tied the ends in a knot and stepped back.

  I looked up at him, fingering the odd scarf. Was the old man finally losing his mind? I swallowed and felt the silk tighten.

  "Grandfather," I began. "I'm confused."

  "Become a bird," he said.

  When he gave me an order, I could no more hold back the tide than I could prevent myself from executing it. I phased into a small gray chicken, my clothing falling past my small feathered body to the floor. I landed on the edge of my chair and almost slipped off the smooth wooden seat. I squawked and flapped, my claws scrabbling for purchase. The silk loosened from around my neck but it stayed draped around my chicken shoulders.

  "Become a bird that can fly," Daichi barked with exasperation.

  I phased into a crow and hopped up on the table, tilting my head at Daichi. The silk robe hung from my neck like an absurd scarf, but I could barely feel its weight.

  Daichi opened our back door and a burst of cold air swept the kitchen. "Fly to the ocean and return," he commanded. "Do not lose the silk!"

  I hopped to the edge of the table, hooked my claws over the rim, and took off through the open door. I dropped low toward the ground, picked up a gust of wind and swooped upward. Up and up I spiraled, the silk hanging from my neck in front of my wings. I didn't feel the cold nearly as much when I was a bird, and the wind increased as I approached the ocean. I swept out over the beach, cawing my pleasure hoarsely at this brief freedom. I circled over the waves and headed back to the house. Well-kept yards covered in snow swept by beneath me as I passed over our suburb.

  The back door to our kitchen opened and I slowed down and flew inside.

  "Go to your room and become human," came the next order.

  I whooshed past Daichi, landed in the hall, and hopped into my bedroom. I beaked the door closed and phased back into my human form. I stood there naked in front of the full-length mirror, my chest rising and falling as I caught my breath. The silk robe was once again tight around my throat.

  Daichi had put my clothes on my bed. I pulled them on and went back to the kitchen where he was once again seated at the table, waiting.

  His eyes, deep in their wrinkled folds, dropped to the black silk around my neck. "It stayed," he said.

&nb
sp; "Yes."

  "Still confused?" he asked, folding his gnarled fingers on the table and leaning forward.

  "A little." I sat down across from him. "I understand you want me to have clothing for when I arrive in Japan, but—"

  "It will not disappear," he said, cutting me off. "It will not disappear in the Æther."

  I frowned. I wanted to ask him how he could know that for sure, but I knew what the answer would be. The same it always was, the non-answer.

  Daichi leaned forward and patted the back of my hand in a rare moment of contact. He gave me the non-answer anyway. "I was old before I met you," he said. He got up and walked in his slow plodding way toward the living room where he would wait until our evening meal was ready.

  "What do you want for dinner, Grandfather?" I asked. "Besides rice."

  He paused and looked back. Amusement was just a ghost at his lips, but the upward twitch of his mouth was unmistakable. "Chicken." He disappeared around the corner.

  I smiled and untied the knot of silk at my throat. Funny how after so many years together, even under unhappy circumstances, there could still be some kind of humor between us.

  2

  Saxony closed her locker and pulled her hood up over her wild curls. She hooked her arm through mine. "Come on, I'll walk you home. It’s been too long." She eyed the gloomy sky outside. "Why did I put away my winter stuff? It was so nice last week."