Earth to Hell. Kylie Chan
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I said, carefully holding the stone child in my hand so that I wouldn’t wake it; it had fallen asleep almost immediately. ‘They’re annoyed that Simone won’t summon them. She doesn’t have any control over what they do. This one probably sensed she was in Hell and came here to find out what happened.’
Gold came out of Marcus and Monica’s room. ‘They’ll be fine, ma’am. Marcus nearly drowned though.’ He turned to Simone. ‘Princess, you really need to train with us. Learn how to summon and control these elementals.’
Simone turned away and headed towards her room.
‘Talk to her, Lady Emma, please,’ Gold said. ‘This can’t go on. Marcus was nearly killed. It’s only the fact that he’s half-Shen that saved him; any ordinary man would have drowned.’
He saw the stone in my hand and his face softened. ‘My baby was very scared by the whole thing.’ He reached out and I passed the stone to him.
‘Hold me, Daddy,’ the baby said sleepily.
‘I won’t let you go, bebe,’ Gold said. He looked up. ‘Everything’s under control now, ma’am, it should be fine. But please talk to Simone.’
‘She could control water elementals and she doesn’t want to,’ Michael said grimly. ‘Typical.r’Bout time she grew up.’ He fell to one knee and quickly saluted me. ‘By your leave, Lady Emma, I’ll go talk to my mom.’
‘Say hello to her for me,’ I said, and he disappeared. ‘Take the baby home, Gold. I’ll talk to Simone.’
‘Can I talk to you in your office, after you talk to her?’ Gold said.
‘Sure, wait for me there.’
I went to Simone’s room. She sat at her desk, working on her homework. I entered and sat on the bed.
‘Simone, if Marcus wasn’t half-Shen, that elemental would have killed him. Both he and Monica are lucky to be alive.’
‘Why can’t those elementals just go away and leave me alone?’ Simone said without looking up from her homework. ‘I hate them.’
‘That’s part of the problem, sweetheart, and you know it.’
She turned and glared at me. ‘I don’t want any of this, Emma. I just want to be a normal kid. These elementals are freaking everybody out.’
‘Learn to control them then.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ She turned back to her homework. ‘I’ll learn to control them and be even more powerful. I’ll walk through the Academy and people will be more scared of me.’
‘Nobody’s scared of you, Simone.’
She threw her pen onto the exercise book. ‘Don’t lie to me, Emma, I can sense it. Some of the students are terrified of me. Like I’m some sort of monster or something. And after what happened in Heaven, it’ll be twice as bad. The ones that know about your serpent are terrified of you too.’
‘The serpent is the least of it. I’m terrified of myself.’
She dropped her head and her voice became small. ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea how much damage I could do with even a small amount of yin? And my control of it isn’t that great either.’ She shook her head. ‘When I bring it out, it wants me to destroy everything.’
‘You need to learn to handle the elementals, Simone. Next time we may not be so lucky. Go down to the Academy and have the Masters teach you.’
‘I hate the Academy. I hate the way everybody bows to me, and is scared of me, and some of them freaking want to be my friend just because of who my father is. I hate it.’
‘I can have one of the Masters come here, if you like. You won’t even have to go down to the Academy. Just learn to control them so they don’t hurt anybody.’
She sighed and turned back to her book. ‘Okay, Emma, I s’pose you’re right. But please, talk to the school. I don’t want to repeat Year Nine. I’ve made some great friends there and they treat me like an ordinary kid.’
‘I’ll talk to them for you.’
‘Thanks.’ She tapped the book with her pen. ‘This biology homework is due soon. I need to finish it.’
I rose to go. ‘Okay, sweetheart. Let me know if you need anything.’
‘Do me a favour?’ she said without looking up from her book.
‘Hm?’
‘Don’t call me sweetheart, Emma, I’m not a little kid.’
I bowed slightly. ‘Princess.’
She spun and threw the pen to hit me right between the eyes. I caught it easily and returned it to her desk.
‘Leo’s gonna call you sweetheart,’ I said. ‘He called me that all the time.’
‘Leo can get away with itr’cause he’s gay.’
‘Nothing to do with it.’
‘Out, Emma.’
‘Ma’am.’
‘Humph.’
I went into John’s office, where Gold was waiting, his baby cradled in his hands. The stone drifted out of my ring across the desk, then took human form and sat in the chair opposite me. It was a slim European gentleman in his mid-sixties with a shock of white hair, wearing a smart dark green suit and tie. He leaned his elbows on the desk and rubbed his hands over his face.
Neither he nor Gold looked at each other but both appeared concerned.
‘Well?’ I said.
Gold glanced at his parent and shrugged.
‘Normally we stones stand aside from the …’ the stone from my ring searched for the word, ‘… the organic community. We keep ourselves to ourselves, serve the Celestial as we should, and have our own network. But things have been happening.’
Gold touched his child thoughtfully and it made a soft squeak of sleepy contentment. My stone’s face softened as it watched.
‘We have problems,’ Gold said. ‘And although we would like to solve them ourselves, I think this time we need help.’
‘We’re disappearing,’ the stone from my ring said. ‘Without a trace.’
‘Show her, Dad,’ Gold said.
A haphazard web of glowing white lines, about sixty centimetres across, appeared floating above the desk. The lines connected hundreds of tiny black dots. It was like looking at a virtual map of the internet.
‘The black dots are Eastern stone Shen — there are about a thousand of us altogether,’ Gold said. ‘The lines are our network.’
‘This is what the network looked like six months ago,’ the stone from my ring said.
About fifty of the dots blinked out, taking the glowing lines with them.
‘Five months ago,’ Gold said.
Another twenty dots blinked out and the lines representing the network thinned.
‘Three months ago,’ the stone said.
Another fifty dots blinked out. About a tenth of the lines had disappeared.
‘Last month,’ Gold said.
‘We lost another twenty in the last two weeks,’ the stone said.
‘About a fifth of the stone Shen have disappeared in the last six months?’ I said, incredulous.
‘Slightly less, about fourteen per cent,’ Gold said. He placed his hand over his child. ‘Most of them were our younger progeny, less than a thousand years old.’
‘And