Elemental Hunger

Chapter Two

"Gabby, you're on service tonight."

Cold dread filled my stomach with the cook's words. Service meant face-to-face contact with Councilmembers. Possibly with Jarvis—and now Liz.

I'd managed to avoid service duties for the past three months. I just couldn't face my former friends. Not here, not in the dorms. Not ever would be fine by me.

I made my eyes glaze over as I gathered plates, bumped through the door, and served the Elementals in the dining chamber. Gather, bump, serve. Gather, bump, serve.

Colored silks blended together. Blue, violet, orange, white, black. No yellow. Thank the sparks.

"Table twelve," the cook said, dishing up my last service for the evening. Gather, bump—

The Councilmembers sitting at table twelve all wore yellow.

"Hi, Gabby," Liz bubbled at me as I placed her food in front of her. Warring emotions battled inside. Guilt because of my resentment of her appointment. I should've been happy for her. Her life had improved dramatically over the past few months.

As an Unmanifested Councilmember, she didn't have to work in the Laundromat anymore. Her hands—once red and chapped—were porcelain and shiny, her nails perfectly polished. She'd been busy learning to read and write. I could tell, because she held her fork with less awkwardness, like the Elementals did who'd learned to hold a quill as children.

Her hair was plaited into a crown, something she definitely hadn't done. Her face had been painted by delicate hands. All the work of a servant. Liz probably hadn't lifted a finger to do more than feed herself in three months.

Jealousy raged through me, though I wished it wouldn't. Now that she was part of a Council, she enjoyed the same treatment Elementals received from birth. This was why the Unmanifested pool of candidates was the biggest at every selection ceremony. Anyone would want the lifestyle of an Elemental, even if the role of the Unmanifested was the most unsavory: Administering the judgments of the Councilman.

Along with the guilt and jealousy came a wave of anger I couldn't contain. The plate in my hand absorbed the heat from my Element, but the Airmaster I served didn't seem to notice.

I practically dropped Jarvis's plate in front of him and turned to leave.

"Gabby," he said.

"Don't," I clipped out. It hurt, hurt to walk away without talking to him.

Again, his silence followed me as if it was all he had left to give.

#

After work, after curfew, after the school and the city of Crylon slept, I dressed in my only pair of jeans, my running T-shirt, and my brown hooded sweatshirt.

I heated the bars in the gate, wrenched them apart, and set my feet loose in the forests beyond.

Jarvis had introduced me to the freedom behind the fence surrounding the school. Last fall, when my Element was only a few weeks old, Jarvis and I wove through the trees during one of many illegal jaunts through the forest. The leaves crinkled beneath our feet, glorious reds and golds against the damp earth.

He chatted about his courses; I told him about the tilted axis of the earth and how it created the seasons. He filled me in on the politics of the selection ceremony; I complained to him about my work in the kitchens.

I desperately wanted to ask him about his Element. I danced closer and closer to the subject, asking him things like "What happened after you Manifested your Element?" or "What kinds of things can Firemakers do?"