Born of Earth: An Elemental Origins Novel Read online

  Faith stared down at her hands and chewed her lip. A line had formed between her brows.

  "That's only half of it." She took a breath. "Going back to the lassoing of hornets. When I asked him where he learned it, at first he wouldn't say. When I kept asking him, he said that an old Chinese man had showed him. He wouldn't say who the man was or where he'd met him. I couldn't make sense of it. I wracked my brains to think of a Chinese man in Ana that Jasher could have met but couldn't think of a single one. I prodded him for almost a year before I figured it out."

  I sank into the chair across from her, my heart thudding. The nameless sensation shrouded me, the back of my neck prickled.

  "I uncovered more clues and eventually I had enough to piece things together. I'm not sure it would have happened if it wasn't for Sarasborne. This place has been renovated and added to over the years, but it still has the same foundation and most of the original building is intact. It has its tragedies, too."

  Tragedies? I wracked my brains for anything Liz might have told me and came up empty.

  Faith poured herself a glass of water and took a sip. "My Grandfather Syracuse used to tell stories to your mam and me. One of them was about a young man who had been killed during the construction of this place. Sarasborne was nearly finished and the men were doing the roof. The pitch is steep and the men had to rig up scaffolding and ropes and the like for safety. One of the men, Conor, slipped and fell. He was roped, but in those days there was no such thing as nylon and the rope had no give. He was saved from hitting the ground, but the internal injuries killed him."

  Conor. I grew very still. My mouth had gone dry. “This place has a ghost?”

  Faith nodded and went on. "Neither your mam nor I ever saw anything strange, and believe you me, we looked. As kids we were obsessed. We'd half convinced ourselves that objects had been moved from room to room or that doors had opened on their own. But if I'm really honest I know that we never witnessed anything of real proof. But, about a year after the first time I watched Jasher put a feather on a hornet - it was late one night when I heard his voice. I thought he was talking in his sleep so I stopped outside his room to listen. I realized a conversation was going on." Faith stared past me with unseeing eyes. "I peeked into his room. It was a full moon so the room was bright. He was sitting up in bed with his back against a pillow, relaxed as you please and havin' a gas with someone I couldn't see."

  My skin had turned clammy, in spite of the warmth of the room. It was just like the conversation I’d witnessed while Jasher was playing the guitar. I could imagine how Faith would have felt that night.

  "I was frightened,” she was saying. “Then I caught the drift of the conversation. Someone was explaining to Jasher how this house had been built. He asked the man's name, waited for a moment and then said, "It's nice to meet you Conor, I'm Jasher."

  I shook my head. "You'd never told him about Conor."

  "No, never. He was too young to be hearin' stories like that. So that's when I knew that the boy I'd adopted could speak to the dead."

  I was shaken, because I knew she was telling the truth.

  "After that, I took my time," she continued. "Eventually, I asked Jasher if the old Chinese man who had taught him how to lasso hornets had been a ghost, and he said 'yes'." Her eyes misted over and her voice broke. "Then he looked so guilty and I told him that he didn't ever need to be ashamed. After that he seemed relieved that he didn't have to hide it from me anymore."

  I absorbed everything she'd told me. While sitting around a campfire and telling ghost stories plays a part in every child's life, I always knew they were just stories. But this wasn't just a story, it had happened here, in this house, to my family.

  "There are those who say that Ana County is situated on a ley line, and that's why supernatural things happen here more often than other places."

  "Ley line?" I'd never heard the term before.

  "An undetectable matrix of energy lines criss-crossing the earth. Some say they link sites of supernatural significance such as the pyramids and Stonehenge, just to name two obvious ones. Others say that the lines were there before things like that were built, and because the lines are so rich with electromagnetic power, they attract supernatural activity."

  "Whoa. Auntie," I gave her a spooked side-eye and she laughed.

  "I know.” She opened the oven and the smell of broiled tomatoes filled the kitchen. “To someone who doesn't work with energy on a regular basis, it sounds kooky. But I can assure you it only seems flaky to those whose worldview is rooted in the tangible world. No one can deny that there's power in the earth - how else would plants grow or volcanoes explode? She shrugged and put the tray of tomatoes on the island to cool. "It's not so farfetched."

  The lens of my own worldview was being challenged just by learning about Jasher's birth and ability. One thing at a time or I would feel overwhelmed. "Do you think Jasher sees ghosts all the time?"

  "I don't know anymore," she said. "I think he used to, when he would go into town for school. I couldn't figure out why he was so thin and anxious all the time. But after I took him out and home-schooled him for a while, he was a completely different boy."

  "How so?" I peered out the window, keeping watch for the man himself. I felt a little guilty that we were talking about Jasher in such detail while he wasn't there. By now I knew way more about him than he knew about me. Advantage Georjayna. So I guess I didn't feel that guilty.

  Faith laughed, took off her glasses, and wiped her eyes. "Sometimes children really do know best. Homeschooling was his idea. I was against keeping him at home permanently at first; I just wanted him to do it for a year to get his health back. I wanted him to have friends his age and to receive the same privileges that other children had. But when the time came to register him in school again, he begged me not to make him go back. He was so desperate not to that I hired tutors and he surprised both of us by graduating early. He always had terrible grades at public school. But without all the... distractions... of whatever he was dealing with in town, he was a star. Not long after he graduated, he started the landscaping business and he seems to be okay doing that for now. He doesn't mention the dead anymore."

  Movement through the window caught my eye. Jasher was striding across the lawn toward the house. He looked completely different to me now that I knew more of his story. He walked with a confidence rarely seen in those who'd suffered so much at a young age. There were troubled kids in my high school, and they weren't hard to spot. It was in the fearful eyes and the posture that said don't look at me. Jasher displayed neither.

  "Do you think," I asked as we watched him approach, "that the circumstances of his birth have anything to do with his ability to talk to the dead?"

  Faith smiled and waved at Jasher through the glass. He waved back and gave us a heart-stopping grin. His white teeth flashed in his tanned face, changing his entire countenance. I found myself wishing the grin was for me, but I knew that it was for Faith. I understood their bond now.

  Faith said, "I have wondered that myself countless times. He didn't just get too close to the veil, he was inside it. That kind of beginning is bound to leave its mark."

  The door to the mudroom opened and Faith went to the cupboard for plates.

  Chapter 9

  Second breakfast was quick and quiet. I didn't feel much like making conversation after what Faith had told me. My mental processor was already working overtime. Jasher wasn't talkative at the best of times, and Faith barely said a word either. We each seemed lost in our own wells of personal thought. We ate breakfast in the gazebo while birds chirped and butterflies fluttered through the garden.

  Jasher had barely swallowed his last bite when he kissed Faith on the cheek and dismissed himself, claiming he needed to run errands. He gave me a curt nod goodbye and I considered it an improvement. Once Jasher had gone, the atmosphere eased.

  "What's Jasher doing to the greenhouse?" I asked Faith as we did the dishes together. "I saw there's
a window that needs fixing, but he's got a lot more windows there than he needs to do that job."

  "He's expanding it," she explained. "I'm not sure where he gets his ideas from but once he's got a plan in his head, there isn't any stopping him." She looked me in the eye as she wiped down the counter top. "One of the reasons I'm so glad you've come for the summer is because I think it will be good for him to spend some time with someone his own age. I don't want to force him to go out into the world if that's not what he wants, but I don't want him to be sheltered forever, either." She put a hand on my upper arm and squeezed it. "Thanks for coming, Georjayna."

  I flushed. "Thanks for having me." What else could I say? I had been under the impression that Aunt Faith took me in as a favor to Liz, but apparently that's not the way Faith saw it.

  "Have you seen the greenhouse yet?" Faith asked.

  "Just from the outside." It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Faith about Jasher's prickliness, but I didn't have the courage to bring it up. Faith was leaving for Aberdeen in a week, and so far Jasher and I were getting along like two wounded badgers stuck in a pipe, but I didn't want to tattle. I can't bear the sound of whining, especially my own. No, if Jasher had a problem with me, I was going to have to deal with it myself.

  Faith gestured for me to follow her. We left the kitchen and went down the long dark hallway that ran through the center of the house. The parlor was an L-shaped sitting room complete with a fireplace, overstuffed chairs, and cracked paintings of rolling green landscapes.

  The room was dim, so I reached for the light switch.

  "There's no power to this side of the house," said Faith.

  I dropped my hand. "Oh, it went out?"

  "Sort of." Faith smoothly slid the handmade glass doors wide. Richly scented, humid air drifted in through the open door. I followed her into the jungle. A long narrow walkway, the neck of the key, opened up into the round room under the dome. I hadn't spent much time in hothouses in my life, but even I knew this was no ordinary greenhouse. Humans were not in charge here - plants were. Little hand-made signs populated the entire greenhouse. I still couldn't tell what was what. Everything criss-crossed in a thick tangle of green.

  The floor of the greenhouse was naked earth and many of the plants grew directly from the ground. Others flourished in terra cotta pots and strawberry planters. A few plants thrived in raised beds retained by low wooden walls. Wrought iron structures supported climbing vines. The structures themselves were nearly obscured as they'd been covered in leaves.

  "Did Jasher make these, too?" I asked, gesturing to the shapes.

  "Yes. Lovely, aren't they?"

  I nodded, admiring the curving, feminine shapes. I was having trouble reconciling Jasher with these pretty works of art. Was there anything he didn't know how to make?

  Faith pointed out some of the more powerful medicinal plants, since these were the reason she'd wanted a greenhouse in the first place. She had a small worktable and shelving that was bursting with amber glass bottles, each one hand-labeled in a delicate script.

  She explained that Jasher would be building a bigger workshop for her as part of the expansion. She'd been able to foster relationships with a few boutique stores and had small orders to fill for essential oils. A small distillery sat on a low long table beside her cupboards.

  The sound of wings made me look up. "There's a bird in here!" I exclaimed, tracking a sparrow flitting from one branch to another, tilting its head at us. “How can we help it get outside?”

  Faith was unconcerned. "Do you see the seams in the dome that run through the center in the shape of a cross?" My eye followed where she pointed.

  "Yes.” I could see them, and a pulley system attached to a spool and handle that was at waist height and hidden in the foliage. Targa had been right after all. “The dome opens?”

  "Yes. Watch." Faith moved the leaves aside and began to crank the handle. The ceiling of the dome opened outward like a flower opening up to the sun. The petals came to rest, folded entirely backward on themselves. The swallow vanished through the open dome.

  I was genuinely impressed. I knew nothing about architecture or mechanical things. Jasher seemed more and more like a magician to me. Too bad he was such a grump. "I guess in the summer, there isn't much need to shelter all these plants."

  "Exactly. It can get too hot so we keep it open most of the time. Pure rainwater is mother’s milk for plants, and keeping the roof open also allows pollinators like bees to come in. Don't worry, they don't stay," she said quickly when she saw the look on my face. "They just come and do their job and then go home." She began to close the dome again, turning the crank.

  "You're not going to leave it open?" I watched the big glass flower close into a bud.

  "Not for tonight," she said. "The forecast calls for a pretty strong overnight electrical storm. I don't want to wake up to a swamp in here."

  I trailed after Faith as she sealed up the greenhouse, not wanting to leave. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but the place had a kind of magnetism that made me want to stay.

  Chapter 10

  Now that I'm looking back on everything in retrospect, the first dream comes to me as clear as water from a spring-fed stream. I know now that it was really more of a vision, and it happened sometime during the darkest part of the night.

  I remember floating on air. I don't remember where exactly I was, but I remember my legs moving as though walking but the soles of my feet made no contact with anything solid. An ethereal fog blew around me as I pedaled against nothing. The soft cotton cloth of my pajamas brushed against my legs. My legs continued to stroll, my hair blew gently, tendrils kissing my cheeks. I remember feeling quite strongly that there was something that urgently needed my attention. Me. Georjayna Sutherland. Only I would do.

  A bookcase with glass doors materialized in the gloom and I pedaled toward it. Grasping the cupboard handles, I opened both doors wide. The faint scent of old leather drifted out. I trailed a fingertip across the spines of the unusually tall leather-bound books. None of them were embossed or printed with a title.

  The same feeling that told me something needed my attention also told me which book to choose. I hooked my finger into the top of a frayed looking spine and pulled. It slid out and fell open in my hands. The spine cracked. On the oversized page was a painting rendered in colored ink, as beautiful and vivid as a stained-glass window. An elaborate border in multi-colored paisley and gold leaf framed the portrait. The subject’s tiny face was all spritely angles. Slashes of dark hair fell across her ears and shoulders. Wispy, fine wings rose elegantly from her back. The delicate fingers of her right hand reached out, seeming to rise from the page. A name sounded off in my mind, like the tinkling of a very far away bell. I heard a wind, and words on the wind.

  Say her name.

  "Eda," I whispered. The smell of moss and damp earth filled my senses. The warm night breeze blew my hair away from my face and off my shoulders. Grass touched the tips of my toes as they hung above the earth and I remember not thinking it was odd at all that this bookcase was outside. I turned the page.

  Another exquisite painting. This portrait was of a masculine faerie, with squared-off wings and strong looking legs. I knew his name, too. It appeared in my mind like a thought that had been delivered. It's weird what our minds do in the nighttime. The wind that spoke repeated itself.

  Say his name.

  "'Po," I said, louder this time. The warm breeze caressed my cheek bones, caught at my eyelashes. My toes touched the earth as I dropped another fraction. I turned the page again.

  Another sketch. Another name. Another whisper. Another breath. Each time, more of my soles made contact with the soil and grass beneath my feet.

  "Tera. Hana. J'al. Mehda."

  I turned the pages faster, feeling compelled to say every name out loud. With every name, the warm wind grew stronger, whipping my hair around. The fabric of my pajamas lay completely still despite the gale. There was a long dr
awn out 'haaaaaaaaaaaaa', sound - like an exhale, warm and humid. I went on, naming names.

  "Oka. Iri. Bolé. Wenn."

  I inhaled the warm earthy wind, and it filled my lungs, energized me. My weight settled fully onto the soles of my feet.

  It was enough. I was finished. My job was done, for now.

  I replaced the book and closed the glass doors with a click as the swirling fog closed in around me.

  Chapter 11

  It was the booming sound of distant thunder that woke me. I lifted my head to find the clock on my nightstand but it was so dark I couldn't read the face of it as it was an old-fashioned clock, not a digital one. A flash of lightening conveniently lit my room and revealed that it was 5:45. The darkness enveloped me again.

  I knew that I’d dreamt something strange, something about wind, and the bottoms of my feet, and the smell of earth after a rain, but I couldn’t bring to memory any distinct details. I closed my eyes and wracked my brain but it was hazy at best and just left me with a feeling of confused wonder.

  I threw back the covers as rain began to fall in earnest. It pounded the roof and eaves. I've always loved storms. I love when heavy raindrops fall against the windows and run down in sheets against the glass, making the outside world look like it's underwater. I love the rumble of thunder and the white flashes that light up the sky and clouds with painful clarity.

  I looked down into the yard but I couldn't make out much through the blur of water except for the dark shape of the gazebo. I wrapped my robe around me and went downstairs to the kitchen to get a better view. The house was quiet. I assumed Jasher and Faith were still sleeping.

  The kitchen was lit up by a flash of lightning just as I entered and I was treated to a stark view of the backyard - the dripping wisteria on the terrace, the patio furniture.