The Elementalists Page 14

  Chloe swallowed hard. “So they know what it says?”

  “There’ve been a few translations over the years,” he said as he produced a folder from his desk and almost reverently removed the single piece of paper within. “Of course, I’ve done my own translation, which differs a bit from those that were done before,” he added with a hint of defensive pride. “But I think my interpretation hits a few insights that my predecessors missed.”

  He put the paper in front of her. A series of lines were scrawled out in ancient Chinese calligraphy with a direct, stilted translation in English beside it and then a more fluid, anglicized version below that. Without looking, he began to recite his translation by heart.

  “The age of spirits soon fades to loss,

  Old powers hidden away by water, rock, and cloud.

  Time forgets those that came before,

  Replaced by man’s dominion over the land.

  The cities will grow as the forests fall,

  Rivers will be drained and mountains moved,

  And the people will know no wisdom but their own.

  The spread of their mark will consume like a weed,

  As the earth chokes and cries out to deaf ears.

  Until the Old Ones hear from deep within their prisons,

  Hidden beneath the soil and under the oceans,

  Called back from the stars and the land of sleep.

  When the spirit of the land withers and dies,

  They will return with the breaking of the world.

  The ground will open and the wind will howl;

  Waters will rise and fire will blot the sun.

  The Five Claws will claim dominion once more,

  And the age of man’s rule will shatter into oblivion.”

  Dr. Liou finished with a nod and cleared his throat. He smiled expectantly.

  Chloe felt light-headed. “That’s kind of bleak,” she mumbled.

  “Yes, but it’s amazing, too!” he said excitedly. “No other ancient Chinese text talks of the future. They’re all concerned, especially in that time period, with ancestral worship and historical record. But this one cauldron is foretelling the end of mankind thousands of years from the time of its inscription. It’s unique!”

  “How many thousand years?” Chloe asked.

  “Who knows, that kind of speculation is irrelevant to my research,” answered Dr. Liou with a dismissive wave. “Cultures have predicted the end of days since the beginning of recorded history, but we’re still here. Some of the Ancient Mayans thought the end would come just a few years ago, and I’d say that whoever made this cauldron had something like our modern times in mind, wouldn’t you?” he added with a playful wink.

  Chloe was having trouble seeing the humor that came so easily to him, hearing instead Mrs. Greenwald’s words of warning echoing again in her mind. “What are The Five Claws?”

  Dr. Liou grinned bigger still. “Good question. That is where I differ most clearly with my predecessors in interpretation.” He pointed to a couple of the Chinese symbols in the photographs. “The Chinese word ‘Tianlong’ means heavenly or celestial dragon. They were the wisest and most powerful dragons, having ascended to some form of higher consciousness. In China, the five-clawed dragons, like those depicted here on the cauldron, were the Tianlong, equated with the emperor and divine province.”

  “Most scholars think that ‘The Five Claws’ is just another way of saying Tianlong—so that the cauldron’s text speaks of the celestial dragons returning to destroy mankind. But if you notice in the series of photographs, there are five interlocking five-clawed dragons depicted here.” He pointed to each dragon as he laid out his own variance on the doomsday theory. “One that looks as if it is made of rock, another covered in feathers like a bird, a third that looks like a hooded eel or sea serpent, a forth that trails fire and smoke, and the fifth surrounded by lightning… Earth, air, water, fire, and spirit, just like it says in the prophecy!” He paused for dramatic effect.

  “I believe that ‘The Five Claws,’ shown on the cauldron, refers to five specific dragons, each representing an elemental force of nature, the kings and queens of dragonkind, if you will.” He sat up in his chair and adjusted his glasses. “This is where my theory gets a little controversial. You see, the myth and iconography of dragons existed in almost every ancient culture—Chinese, Greek, African, Islamic, Aboriginal, Aztec, Native American, and on.” He pointed back to the photos. “I’m not sure how, but not all of the dragons shown here are from Chinese legend. I think they come from various traditions from all over the world.”

  “But that wouldn’t be possible in 850 BCE,” Chloe observed.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed, “but there it is.” He placed the photo showing the feathered dragon on top of the pile. “The Aztecs and Mayans worshipped a feathered serpent god called Quetzalcoatl across Mesoamerica for almost two thousand years. He was the god of the sky and wind, and a bringer of knowledge and craft to the people who honored him.”

  He replaced it with the photo of the cobra-hooded sea dragon. “In a number of Hindu and Buddhist cultures throughout much of Southeast Asia, the Nāgas are an elemental race of water-based spirits that most often took the shape of giant snakes. According to Hindu mythology, their mother was a massive, black, hooded sea serpent called Kadru… Some Comparative Religion scholars think that Kadru was the same as the Baylonion sea goddess, Tiamat.”

  Chloe began to feel a pit growing in her stomach.

  He replaced the top picture with that showing the roaring dragon wreathed in fire. “I believe that this one is Chien-Tang, one of the many names for a giant fire-breathing dragon that plagued ancient China. According to legend, he lived for a few hundred years in the Chien-Tang River and collected yearly payment of sacrifice in bulls and virgins from the locals.”

  Dr. Liou placed the last two cauldron photos on the desk: one showing a wingless beast, almost like a giant armadillo, covered in stony armored plates, and the other depicting a horned, winged, and four-legged dragon circled in lightning… Chloe leaned her face closer, looking at the vague diamond shape on its forehead beneath the thick layers of tarnish.

  “These two I don’t have a tested theory on yet, but this one,” he pointed to the same dragon Chloe was focused on, “this one I may be getting close.”

  Chloe looked up, trying to steady her breathing. “Close to what?”

  Dr. Liou was enjoying this. “Horned serpents were venerated across many Native American tribes. The Eastern Cherokee talked of an ancient beast they called Uktena, whose legend lived in the Smoky Mountains and later moved up the Shenandoah Valley toward central Virginia.” He took a quick sip of water. “It was supposed to be a terrible creature that caused lightning storms when anyone approached it. They also said it had a shining diamond in its forehead, which was the source of vast wisdom but capable also of burning so brightly that it could blind those who saw it.”

  He shrugged. “My theory is still a little loose, but I think that maybe this Uktena could be the spirit dragon on the cauldron?”

  Chloe fought to get what little saliva she could generate down her throat. “It’s supposed to live in central Virginia?” she croaked.

  Dr. Liou smiled. “It’s part of the reason why I took the job here.”

  Maybe it’d be better if I was crazy? Chloe’s heart was pounding so hard that she thought she might pass out. She had to tell him. Surely she wouldn’t have accidentally run into the one man who actually knew something about the insanity she was experiencing if she wasn’t also meant to bring him into her madness. “Dr. Liou, what if somehow the Tipping Point Prophecy is tru—”

  It was then that Kirin waltzed around the corner, holding a couple cans of Dr. Pepper. “I had to go to three machines, but I found the Dr. Pepper!” he announced triumphantly just before he noticed Chloe sitting in front of his dad. “Chloe?”

  Chloe lost her train of thought as her cheeks turned scarlet. “Oh! Liou…right.” I’m such a
n idiot!

  Kirin’s face brightened with his disarming grin. “I would have gotten you a drink if I’d known you were coming.”

  “You two know each other?” Dr. Liou asked.

  Kirin stepped in and handed his dad a can but didn’t take his eyes off Chloe. “Yeah, Dad, this is my friend I’ve been telling you about—the girl who was struck by lightning.”

  “Really! You’re that Chloe? I’ve heard a lot about you,” Dr. Liou said with an unreadable expression.

  Oh crap! He knows about skipping at the pond.

  “Kirin said you were one of the most innately curious people he’s ever met, and I can see now that your topics of interest are right up my alley.” He smiled that same charming smile that ran in the family. The smile faded as he turned back to regard his son. “Now you can sit back down and return to your reading. Don’t think I wasn’t paying attention to how long it took for you to buy a couple sodas.”

  Kirin lowered his head and adopted an overdone hangdog expression as he shuffled to his chair in the corner. “Grounded again,” he exhaled as he passed Chloe.

  “Yes, Kirin decided it was a good idea to come home three hours past his curfew and blacked-out drunk on Friday night! So he’ll be missing another three weeks of friends and phone calls until he can hopefully learn to focus and grow up a little bit,” snapped Dr. Liou with a hard stare at his son.

  “Gee, Dad, no Homecoming Dance for me. Major bummer,” Kirin challenged.

  Chloe felt immeasurably uncomfortable on so many levels. She couldn’t bear to look at Kirin.

  “Maybe you could take a page out of Chloe’s book on proper ways to behave in high school,” Dr. Liou suggested as Chloe furrowed her brow and winced. “At this rate, you’re not going to get a chance to meet anyone else this year.”

  Yeah, except Cynthia ‘Goddamned’ Decareaux! Chloe suddenly found herself standing. She tightened the straps on her backpack until they dug painfully into her shoulders. “Thank you very much for talking to me, Dr. Liou!” she blurted.

  “Really, call me Edward, and please stay. I could talk about this for hours if you were willing,” said Dr. Liou, pretending Kirin wasn’t in the corner.

  “Sorry, I wish I could. I just realized what time it is.” Chloe’s eyes flitted about the room with no clocks in sight. “I have to get home to help my mom…bake a cake.”

  Both of the Lious stood at once.

  “I hope we can talk again sometime soon,” said Dr. Liou. “I’ll let you know if this Uktena angle pans out for the fifth dragon.”

  “Thank you, and yes, please let me know what you find out,” she said before forcing herself to turn and face Kirin behind her. She wanted to scream at him but smiled meekly instead. “See you at school tomorrow?”

  “Sorry,” Kirin mouthed before she turned and bolted out the door.

  She stopped a few doors further down the hallway, panting hard, while trying to quell the multiple emotional tornadoes building within. She had not planned on still being in earshot of Dr. Liou’s office.

  “Thanks for making me look like an idiot in front of her, Dad!” shot Kirin in an emphatic whisper.

  “Well, I can at least see why you like her,” said Dr. Liou. “It’s nice to know you haven’t lost all sense of judgment since coming here!”

  Chloe’s heart lurched, and she took off toward the stairs. She did not bother to stop as Chet yelled for her to sign out. Despite her building fear that either she was heading toward a psychotic break or the world was heading toward its end, she couldn’t help but feel the excited flutter of hope in her gut as she started the long journey home.

  • • •

  Ripples of electricity danced across the blue eyes that watched the girl from the shadows. The Fifth Claw of Typhon’s Talon could smell the tension in her nerves and hear the flit of questions that played through her mind. She glanced back at the building she’d come from and then took off at a run. He would let her go for now.

  He had already wiped her memory of his presence twice, but again she had unearthed his image from her subconscious. Now she’d found her way to this clever scholar who knew of the prophecy and the old names of the Five Claws. Tonight as the girl slept, the Lord of Lightning would cleanse her mind of her troublesome curiosity once more.

  He shifted his piercing focus to the father and son arguing within. The boy did not belong here—this one was governed by the tides. He was at home only among the waves, yet he was drawn to the girl like a moth to flame, bound to her spark. And the father already knew too much, though he was not a believer. Perhaps if he came closer still, the Lightning Lord would need to make a meal out of him… For the meat he had been eating did not sit well in his belly. Fat, juicy cows that were too tempting to ignore, but once downed, something in the blood was making him weary and slow. These harvested beasts of men had become unnatural.

  He turned his attention to the sky, blanketed with thick clouds above the trees, and listened to the dreams of his undying brethren. It would not be long now until the Ascension, when the others would rise and his power would bloom in full… He needed hold on for only that long.

  Chapter 12

  Chloe's Boys

  Chloe woke on Monday morning unable to fully remember much of what had happened at UVA, outside of the awkward meeting with Kirin’s father, followed by the outright embarrassing run-in with Kirin himself. Oddly, she’d found it increasingly difficult to recall why she’d even gone there in the first place—something concerning mythology, the specifics of which she couldn’t quite grasp. “Chinese…BLANK…and prophecies,” she recalled asking Yvette, but for no discernible paper on her immediate academic horizon.

  She assumed these memory gaps were the lingering result of the lightning strike, as Nurse Shiflet had warned, but she didn’t want to burden her mom with that just yet. Mom has enough on her plate; she doesn’t need anything else to worry about—not when she’s doing so well after the Brent incident.

  But what Chloe was really afraid of was that she might be slipping from reality, just like her father had… Harvard scientists have now isolated and mapped a genetic link to schizophrenia. That wasn’t something Audrey would ever be able to take.

  Instead, Chloe chose to focus on the last overheard exchange between the Lious. She played their hushed words over in her mind again and again; and for a few days, she’d convinced herself that, despite the age difference, maybe there really was a romantic possibility there. But after a week of building self-doubt, she had to acknowledge that they could have just as easily been talking about friendship. I don’t know what to believe anymore…

  Before high school, all of the drama and excitement that surrounded Homecoming Dance had always seemed like an absurd cliché to Chloe. That being said, she was not surprised to find that most of her peers fell victim to the hullabaloo of expectation in the weeks that led up to the big night. What shocked her was how easily she herself fell into the trap.

  Her idle thoughts hovered on tortured visions of Kirin making out with Cynthia on the dance floor. And she knew that the crimson demon, as Chloe had come to think of Kendra, wouldn’t pass up a chance to seek her revenge at the upcoming public forum. But despite it all, and against everything Chloe had ever believed, she found herself imagining a storybook scenario in which Kirin would ask her to accompany him and then the various dresses she might wear.

  She knew how pathetic this was, as she was reminded every day in homeroom that he was strictly grounded for the two weeks that led up to the dance as well as the one that followed. And at lunch, she was made painfully aware that even if he were allowed his freedom, he would quite possibly skip the public charade to go somewhere private with Cynthia instead.

  Though Kirin seemed a bit more standoffish around Cynthia since the party, Chloe could not help but spy the heated glances she still cast his way, or the reddening of his cheeks and embarrassed aversion of his eyes when he felt those looks upon him. He’d become more reserved with Chloe as wel
l, and now that Cynthia and/or Stan often joined them in the back of The Cave, she felt wholly deprived of the authentic connection she’d previously felt between them.

  And so Chloe continued her routine: paying attention in school, running as fast as she could after her classes, and studying with laser-like focus at night. Ezra had forgiven her for disappearing at the party, but he’d also stopped training with her twice a week since the football season had kicked in. Other than their occasional greetings in the hallway or parking lot, she didn’t see him at all anymore, and she missed the confident edge he gave her and the sense of grounding he brought to her foolish internal ramblings.

  Now all she had to rely on was the devoted but flighty attention from Stan and a renewed and relentless interest in her perpetually stalled love life from Liz.

  • • •

  Chloe sat at the back corner desk of her homeroom class, doodling over a diamond shape in the margin of her notebook. Beside it was a handwritten date: Thursday, October 16th, and beneath that, the chicken-scratch words: Homecoming Dance this weekend. Headaches coming soon… Something not right?

  She looked up to catch a smile from Liz as she waltzed in wearing what had to be the tightest and skinniest jeans that would still allow movement. Liz lowered herself into the desk in front of Chloe, beaming, like there was nowhere in the world she’d rather be. Chloe didn’t understand how she did it—day after day of bubbly cheer, though it was clearly tied directly to her relationship status with Paul Markson. Things had been good now for “almost two whole weeks!”

  Chloe watched as Liz busied with her backpack and put her iPad on her desk. No books, pen, or paper, just the iPad, and Liz’s was one of about twelve that Chloe counted around the room. Chloe drummed her fingers on her textbook.

  Try unplugging once in a while to read a damn book, people! In truth, Chloe would have loved an iPad of her own; only there was no way she could afford one.