The Elementalists

Chapter 1

Kass

*Part 2*

My village was high up in the Quillin Hills, our pods speckled between irregular rock formations in a valley that snaked all the way down the mountain. The Cloud Islands of Caeltanica were once beautiful, as most places on Tellus were once, and I was lucky to have been brought up there, far from the dangers of the mainland. But still. It was a husk of how it used to be.

There was nothing to do, nothing but the vast emptiness of the world. You could travel for miles and still find nothing but barren rock and dirt. Every now and again, you might come across a tree. Niven and I loved climbing trees; higher and higher until we were on top of the world in a forest of branches, and there was something about it that just felt real. Alive.

But of course, the trees were all dead. Once we reached the top, we'd slide all the way down inside the trunks until our feet hit the bottom with a haunting echo. There were no leaves, no flashes of colour, no life. Just dead, brown bark, crisping in the cold.

It wasn't always like this. War left this world behind.

Still, it's not like we had to stay in Quillin all the time. At the bottom of the valley, we could teleport through Wormhole 2056 to anywhere within that Wormhole's database. Permissible places economically similar to Quillin. The authorities allowed us to trade between ourselves; we specialised in wool. We got all our ration tokens, water, and electricity by trading with the government, but could trade any extras we had, as well as tokens, for whatever we wanted in the foreign markets: food, gadgets, clothes, toys, books. But we got fewer and fewer coats of wool from our goats each month, and we knew they wouldn't be able to sustain us for much longer. Each night, we'd sit down to pray that the government would relocate us to another, better, planet.

Let it be Ra, I'd pray before bed. No one believed in the old Caeltanican gods anymore, but my parents were traditional and insisted we still pray. Kitty longed for Lares, but for me, it was always Ra. Please. Please.

The rain was heavy as I squelched down the valley towards the farm; it was miles away, a good few hours return trip. A smile played on my lips. It would be worth it. Still—the damn rain. It sizzled right through the fabric of my cloak. I pulled a hat from my rucksack and rammed it on under my hood for extra protection. The sulphurous smell leached from puddles that sprayed under foot, and I wrinkled my nose, tugging my cloak tighter around my shoulders.

I reached the farm at sunrise, as a strange mix of amethyst and orange flooded the sky. The goats were waiting for me by the fence, rearing up on their hind legs, bleating. They cantered between my legs, long fur draping in the mud; I knelt down beside them to stroke each one, before wrestling the huge comb and scissor set out of my satchel. Then, I looked around for a suitable goat.

'There you are.' A rather large, curly-haired male lurked on the other side of the paddock, hiding. 'You'll do.' It regarded me with resigned eyes, then settled into my lap. He knew the drill.

One hour moulded into two, and the weather showed no signs of clearing up. It was as though the sky was purging itself of a year's worth of acid—and soon, my mohair was soaked through. I shivered, shaking rivulets of rainwater and hair out of my eyes; the acrid sting brought tears to my lashes and I scrubbed them away.

'Quit wriggling, Duster.' I tried to coax the soggy creature under the paddock's flimsy tarpaulin shelter, but he was having none of it. The rains shouldn't have lasted so long—I'd look a mess on my birthday. With a huff, I forced my shears through his coat; it had gummed together into a sticky mulch that didn't—want—to—be—cut. Duster bleated balefully at me.