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Her grandmother smiled slightly, silently acknowledging the truth of Alma’s point. According to family lore, as a young woman her grandmother had such intense dreams she once flooded her entire house. Alma thought she could certainly understand her inability to have complete control over the way her dreams disrupted the local wind patterns.
“You’ll have to learn. I certainly wouldn’t want you to become a nomad once you come into your powers, constantly homeless because of random windstorms and tornadoes.”
Alma grinned at the image as she scooped breakfast onto her plate. She had noticed her metabolism getting faster and faster as she approached her transformation. She needed constant high-calorie meals and more than one of her friends had remarked she must have a hollow leg to put away so much food while keeping her voluptuous curves.
“Not like anyone would notice the difference, my apartment always looks like a disaster area anyway.” Alma’s grandmother let out a rusty chuckle, serving herself in quick movements when Alma had filled her plate. For a moment they ate in silence, Alma savoring the familiar flavors as she stoked her metabolic fires, glancing occasionally at her grandmother. She could sense there was a big “talk” in the works, but she wasn’t about to open up the conversation or ask what it was her grandmother wanted to discuss. She would have to wait.
Alma hardly needed prompting to take seconds of the biscuits, slathering two more with butter and preserves and sighing contentedly. Her grandmother asked if she would like to take a walk in the garden with her, and Alma knew she was getting closer to whatever it was the older woman wanted to actually discuss. Alma nodded and finished her biscuit.
After she changed into jeans and a T-shirt, she joined her grandmother at the front door. The older woman led Alma around the grounds, pointing out the newer rarities she had planted in the beds around the house. Her grandmother had a particular fondness for daylilies, although she cultivated a little bit of everything. At least it had always seemed so to Alma, who had spent many summer days going from bed to bed, pulling weeds. While her grandmother would perform the chore herself in the absence of any eligible grandchildren, she was never one to let a free workforce go to waste. Alma’s grandmother led her from the front-most gardens slowly around to the back of the house, where she still contended with the looming forest to maintain her claim to the ground she had cultivated.
When they came to the longstanding pond, with its weathered sculptures and picturesque water lilies, Alma’s grandmother used the excuse of fatigue to get Alma to sit down with her on the marble bench nearby. Alma knew they were about to get to the meat of what her grandmother wanted to tell her. She waited patiently, watching the water flowing from the waterfall and listening to the birds nearby.
After a few minutes, Alma’s grandmother cleared her throat, taking her gaze away from the pond and directing it at Alma. “I want to talk to you about something, and I know you’re not going to like it, but you should hear me out.” Alma nodded. Her grandmother took a deep breath. “When you come into your abilities, there will be a lot of things you’re going to have to cope with. Not just politics; your lack of self-control can make your new strength dangerous to you.”
Alma fought down the urge to make a retort about herself control, knowing it would only result in an argument—and knowing her grandmother would carry her point eventually anyway.
“I know you don’t like the idea of an arranged marriage, but you need a mate, Alma.”
Alma shook her head involuntarily, mentally rebelling at even the suggestion of an arranged marriage. They had discussed the possibility before, though not with the level of seriousness her grandmother brought to the topic now. Alma knew that among elementals—particularly the higher echelons, the stronger elementals whose family line went back multiple generations—arranged marriages were not unheard of. It wasn’t just a way for the ruling elite to keep the political climate stable, but a way to deal with unstable elementals themselves. Complementary partners were selected in the hopes they would give birth to elemental children and keep the powers contained in specific families instead of spreading them out. Powerful families often negotiated for years with other powerful families, brokering deals for daughters to marry sons at great benefit. Alma also knew her own grandmother had been in an arranged marriage with her first husband; when he had died, she had married Alma’s grandfather, another elemental.
Alma’s grandmother held up a hand to forestall a protest from her granddaughter. “You are going to need a mate, and you need to find one soon after you come into your full abilities. The elders nor the first families, will accept it if you go without a mate for too long. Not someone as powerful, and as unstable, as you.” Alma saw the sadness in her grandmother’s eyes. “Even if you were the most stable elemental on the planet, as powerful as you will become, you will be in danger from all sides. You need someone to give you balance, someone to protect you.”
Alma gritted her teeth. She had learned to accept the basic fact of her natural instability—her flightiness and the extremes it led to—and had humbly learned how to rein in her temper and how to focus, at least a little bit, on subjects that didn’t interest her.
“Grams,” Alma said, forcing herself to speak slowly despite the denials and retorts that sprung so readily, poised to jump from her tongue. “I understand what you’re saying. And I’m sure finding a good mate will help me achieve balance. But I can’t stand the idea of an arranged marriage. I know you were happy with your first husband, but—” She took a deep breath. “—I guess I’m too thoroughly modern,” she said with a little smile. “The idea of committing myself to someone I don’t even know, even if they’re perfectly complementary, is terrifying. I think it would make me much more unstable than I already am.”
Her grandmother stared into her eyes intently and Alma tried not to flinch. She knew her grandmother wasn’t looking at her. She was reading her lifeline, looking at the possible futures, peering into the abyss with her intuitive abilities. Finally, after a torturous moment, the older woman sighed and looked away with disappointment written all over her features.
“You’ll find a mate, but I can see if I try to force it on you, it will never work.” Alma felt a pang in her chest at having disappointed her grandmother, just as she always did. She wanted to retract her statement—no matter how true—and volunteer to allow her grandmother and attempt to find a suitable match for her. Now that her grandmother had taken the trouble to look into her future, however, Alma knew she had seen the potential for disaster. While she wouldn’t acknowledge Alma was right about the potential for an arranged match to make her more unstable, Alma had to believe her grandmother had seen a similar fate—anything less dire than that and she would not have given in.
They continued their path around the lush gardens. Alma couldn’t shake the sadness she felt having disappointed her grandmother, but she knew deep down there was more to the situation after the swift defeat her grandmother had allowed. Alma feigned ignorance as the older woman meandered through the plantation of trees at the back of the property before leading her around the house once more, talking about the troubles she’d had with some particularly difficult plants now blooming vigorously outsides of their usual climate. “You know, since you’re here visiting, I could use some help weeding,” her grandmother suggested as they approached the house. The clouds overhead boded ill for accomplishing any garden work that afternoon, but Alma knew by the next day she’d be outside taking care of the chore and she would probably volunteer without her grandmother needing to prompt her.
* * *
Alma thought more about what her grandmother said. Despite her refusal to agree to an arranged marriage, she knew that finding a mate was an important part of survival among elementals; particularly among those with any instability in their nature. It was considered vital to find a partner who could provide balance and steadiness. Her mother had been an unstable elemental, and she had gone into a semi-arranged marriage with her father, which had ended within ten years as the two became increasingly bitter and adversarial. As a result, Alma hadn’t had any contact with her biological father since—one of the terms of the agreement reached to dissolve their marriage. Alma had never felt the lack of a paternal figure in her life, though; her stepfather had ensured that. Part of Alma’s hesitation for finding a mate was due to the shattering end of her parents’ marriage. She struggled to see marriage with any amount of certainty in the wake of that.
But Alma had been lonely most of her life. Sure, she’d made friends consistently throughout her childhood, but she had never found the rapport she sought with a lover. In all of her relationships, she’d found physical satisfaction but found herself constantly restless in every other way, ready to move on the moment the mystery was gone. Alma couldn’t stand the sensation of feeling tied down, and she became annoyed with lovers she could predict too easily. She wasn’t against having a partner; she simply wanted someone who would truly be a partner—someone she didn’t feel weighed down by, someone she felt equal to. She often felt it would be nice to not feel so lonely, but she’d given up hope on the possibility of finding her equal.
That afternoon, as she did the grocery shopping and picked up the cleaning, Alma wondered what her grandmother would pull out next. She knew the discussion about her developing, soon-to-culminate abilities was far from over. There was no hint of a plot afoot when she returned, however. Alma decided whatever trials her grandmother had in store, she would have to deal with them.
three
The next morning when Alma emerged from her bedroom, she was surprised to hear voices coming from the kitchen—unfamiliar ones. She paused in the hallway, listening sharply as her grandmother spoke to the unknown guest.
“Thank you both for agreeing,” she said. “My granddaughter is not as…concerned as she should be about the way things are in the community.”
Alma frowned, wondering what her grandmother had gotten them to agree to and who these people were. The chill of suspicion ran through her. What had her grandmother done so quickly out ofconcernfor her?
“You said she’s been kept mostly out of the community since she was a teenager, besides meeting some people her own age,” a softspoken, young-sounding, male voice noted. “It wouldn’t be surprising for her not to know how tense things have gotten.”
Alma was transfixed. She stood in the hallway, wanting to know, but hesitant to show herself.
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” another voice said.
Alma felt the stirrings of anger begin. The idea that her grandmother didn’t trust her with her own fate and had enlisted the help of two men for some unknown purpose without even talking to her about it cut deep. Even though she felt a little underdressed in her pajamas, she marched through the entryway into the kitchen and stared at the three conspirators as they sat at the table. Her grandmother smiled slightly, not even a little surprised at her appearance.
“Alma,” her grandmother said, her voice pleasant and reasonable, “I’d like you to meet Finn and Dylan.”
