The Fifth Element

“I’ve been feeling kind of funny today,” I said, leaning up against the stone wall. I could feel a cold sweat breaking across my skin.

Henry looked at me, a mixture of concern and interest evident in his eyes. “How so?”

We had wrapped up my fire elemental lessons moments ago and were walking back to my new dorm. I need a new one because mine had been destroyed by an octopus thing. Apparently, the heads of the school wanted to have a word with me later that afternoon, and so they had decided I had enough classes for today.

I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. “My head has been feeling cloudy all day. It’s not an all the time feeling, it’s more like an off and on thing, but now I feel kind of dizzy like I’ve been on one wicked merry-go-round.”

He scratched his head and looked at me for a moment, and then seemed to find something more interesting on the wall above my head.

I scowled at him. “Why won’t you look me directly in the eye?”

“Hmm?” He said, his eyes focusing on my face for a moment, and then sliding away to look at the wall again.

“See, you just did it again!?”

I waited for him to say something like, ”Sorry your face is so ugly that I can’t stand looking at it for more than three seconds.” But instead, he said.

“I’ve been feeling kind of funny today too. If you don’t feel like you can walk I can carry you.”

“No its okay, I just need a moment,” I lied, and pushed myself away from the wall, big mistake. The hallway we were walking down shimmered, and I clamped my hand over my mouth, to keep from vomiting. Henry crossed the five feet separating us and grabbed my arm, steadying me on my feet.

“I swear I’ve been sick more times this week, then I’ve been in my entire life. I just wanted to go home... “I frowned and knitted my brow together, for some odd reason, I couldn’t picture home. Then a hazy cloud swept over my mind. When it cleared, I could imagine a stone mansion on a hill. Greta was standing in front of it waiting for me.

Oh, Greta, why did you make me come to this terrible school?

“That’s it! I’m carrying you.” Before I could protest, I found myself in Henry’s arms.

“Put me down!” I demanded and began to squirm, but soon stopped, when the world began shimmering more violently. I leaned my head against Henry’s chest and closed my eyes. I didn’t open them, until Henry stopped in front of my new dorm, and did his little trick thing with the wall.

The dorm looked exactly like my old one, but with one exception, no window. Henry laid me down on the bed gently. He helped me take off my shoes and tucked me under the covers like Greta use to do when I was little.

“Henry.” He had his hand on the wall. “Can you please tell me why the school is flying.”

Henry looked over his shoulder at me, then the wall, and then back to me again. He took one last longing look at the wall, and then grabbed the chair in front of the desk and dragged it over to my bedside. He sat down in it.

“Well, you know how you and the other students are rather dangerous? Well for that reason we had to move you and the rest of the students to a different location ever so often. If we kept the location of the school in the same place, someone would eventually find it. And there are a lot of people looking for you guys, especially your parents. So, instead of moving everyone to a new building, we are saving time by just moving the school to a new location.”

He made it sound like it was normal to pick up a school and move it somewhere else. True, moving buildings was a common practice back home, but to move something as big as this school was unheard of.

Henry went to stand, but before he could, I reached out and grabbed his hand. He looked down at my hand in his wordlessly and settled back down into his seat.

“I have another question for you.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Testing your luck, I see.”

I gave him a mischievous smile. “Maybe, but I really do have another question. I have to have an answer for this one. “How will this tattoo on my stomach kill me?”

I looked up at Henry, hoping that by some miracle he would tell me. Well, I guess some miracles do happen.

“It’s not a tattoo. It’s an earth spell. I’m not going to go into detail, but if they feel like you’re a threat at any given time, the board can cook you from the inside basically. All they need to do is have the one who cast it activate it and....” He made a slashing motion across his neck. “So don’t do anything stupid that will make them want to kill you.”

“Great, just another thing to add to my things-to-worry-about list, getting cooked by an ugly tattoo from the inside-out. This is going right up there with seeing dead people.”

“You can see dead people?” I heard Henry exclaim, but I was already sinking into the depths of unconsciousness. In my dream, a girl with blonde hair and gold eyes kept asking me what her name was, but I couldn’t remember. Next came a busty blonde with green eyes, and curly blonde hair. She asked me who she was, but like the golden hair and eyed girl, I didn’t have an answer for her either.

Henry’s P.O.V

I tiptoed out of the room, leaving Violet sleeping peacefully on her bed. I found Amber, my sister, waiting for me in the hallway.

“How is she doing?” she asked me when I had finished sealing the door behind me.

“Not so good, she’s erasing her memories and planting false ones. How kind of her to tell me,” I spat.

“Henry, she has to. She’s dangerous; you saw what that boy she brought back did. They still can’t put out that fire that he used to kill that Kraken. Thankfully they managed to contain it.”

“And now they’re torturing that boy, cutting him, starving him, poking at him, until he begs for them to kill him. Do they realize that he is the reason she’s not in enemy hands right now?” I pointed to the wall behind me.

“Why do you care about him so much? I thought you hated him with every cell in your body?” She joked, but the joke fell flat, and we both grimaced.

“I got bad vibes from him, and I wasn’t wrong too. Being what he is and all it is no wonder I did, but I still don’t like what they are doing to him.”

She looked at me sorrowfully with her big brown eyes. “I don’t like it either, but the school heads control everything around here.”

“I know, and I’m sick of it.” I slammed my fist against the wall. I felt my skin break, and warm blood began to run over my knuckle.

“Me too Henry.” She smiled at me bitterly, her eyes dancing across my bleeding hand for a millisecond. “I wished they waited longer to take her. I enjoyed being a normal student, going to a regular school, even if it was only to keep an eye on her. If I wasn’t ordered not to draw attention to myself, I might have even made some friends.”

I could see the sadness fill her eyes, but no tears formed. She knew better than to cry in front of me. I could understand her desire to be normal perfectly well. As children of two special elemental parents, we were doomed from the start to be different. We had been under the magnifying glass of the magic council since day one. We had grown up around this place, following it from house to house every time it had moved and later we had lived here when our parents had died in that...accident When our abilities awoke, we began working for them. All we really are, are lap dogs of the school.

Amber must have sensed what I was thinking, because she wrapped her arms around me, and then pulled away, but she kept one arm around my waist. I put an arm around her shoulder, and together we walked down the hall.

Violet’s POV

The familiar voice of the ghost girl, I mean Lacy, woke me up. I cracked my eyes open a bit and saw she was floating above me.

“What?” I groaned. I opened my eyes fully.

“Do you remember our agreement?” She looked tense.

“Yeah, you teach me the wall trick, and I bring your killers to justice,” I answered.

Lacy’s face relaxed. “Good, that would be a pain if you forgot.”

“Why would you think I would forget something like that?”

“No reason,” she chirped. She leaped into the air and began doing somersaults. Just watching her made me dizzy.

I still wasn’t feeling so hot. Speaking of hot, how was I not freaking out about my tattoo that could cook my insides? Well, maybe I wanted to die. That thought made me shiver.

“So you’re going to meet my killers today.”

“Oh, am I?” I said, my attention going back from my inner thoughts to Lacy.

“You’re meeting with the school heads today right?”

“Yeah...” I trailed off.

“Well I’m going with you, and I’ll point them out to you.”

“Joy,” I said, pulling the covers over my head. Right now I just wanted to be unconscious, and unconscious I was a second later.