The Elementals by Saundra Mitchell Page B

was never enough to risk its torments.
    But Daddy was forever whisking them away on the wind. It was a useful gift, and his best plaything, too. He’d carried Kate to the tops of the pyramids and into the boughs of the tallest trees. It was impossible to win a game of catch with him, for he could blink away at any moment.
    What’s more, in all the years they’d traveled, meeting artist friends at the fairs, flinging themselves to the far corners of every known map, Kate had met hundreds of people gifted by the elements.
    There was a French woman in Virginia who could make the wind speak with any voice she chose. She would have gotten on brilliantly with the old grandfather in Prussia—he could make fire’s embers carry messages for him across the miles.
    Two black-eyed twins in Cyprus witched water together: the girl leaned toward heat and steam, the boy toward cold and ice. They taught Kate to ice-skate on a white-sand beach and to kiss beneath an olive tree, which made for a lovely summer indeed.
    But it was a private society. Kept quiet, discussed only among those touched by it. And even to them, Kate was an oddity. She’d been explained away as aether, a fifth element made from the other four.
    Heaven, or space, or air to breathe: aether simply
was.
Like her gift—it
existed
. Stopping time for thirty seconds at a time was good for nothing but sneaking out of the house or catching a dropped cup before it shattered on the floor.
    “Who can what?” Mollie prompted.
    “ . . . Bend their arms and fingers the wrong way,” Kate finally said. “Pound spikes into their eyes and survive. And eat fire! You really haven’t lived until you’ve spent the night with fair people. The ones
in
the attractions, not the ones attending. You’ll never know nicer folk than the Wolf People of the Sierra Madre.”
    Whirling round, Mollie nearly took Kate’s head off with the tripod. “You’re making that up.”
    “I’m not, and I can prove it. I’ve got films. You’ll see. Come on.”
    Clutching her satchel with both arms, Kate broke into a run up the path. Her mood soared like mercury in glass—there was a reason she wanted to paint with light and motion. She didn’t need color! Or scent, or sensation! Sometimes it was enough to
see.
With her camera she could prove impossible things, record beautiful things, create perfect things. She could slip past disbelief and into truth.
    Suddenly giddy, Kate wanted to leap and spin. She settled for scrambling across the grass with Mollie at her heels.
    But she stopped short when she saw a man with a handcart taking away an armoire.
    “Oh no,” Kate murmured, and hurried for the back door.
    In a single afternoon, her parents had transformed the house. Sheets covered the furniture and mirrors; they belonged to the house, not the Witherspoons. The movers were taking away the extras they’d hired, like the armoire and the blue velvet chair Daddy liked to nap in, even the whimsical place settings embossed with images of the sun.
    Amelia turned when Kate stepped inside, her awareness unerring. “Did you finish your movie, sweetheart?”
    Ignoring her question, Kate peeled off her satchel. “You said we weren’t going yet.”
    “We’ll have one last night here. Mollie can celebrate with us.”
    “She’s got nowhere to go!”
    “She does,” Amelia smiled brightly. “Your father and I had breakfast with Mrs. Collins. You know her. She owns the theatre by the boardwalk. She said if Mollie needed a place to stay, there are apartments above the stage, and of course plays that need actresses all the time.”
    Trembling with rage, Kate wanted so badly to throw things. To break things. She wanted to kick holes in the floor and throw rocks through the window until her mother’s awful smile shattered along with the glass.
    But instead, she ground her teeth together and forced a smile when she looked to Mollie. “How exciting. You’ll be an independent woman of means,