Free Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) by Chrystalla Thoma Page B

was much better than any he’d tried on Ost, nutty and filling, and the eel melted in his mouth.
    Kalaes served him water. “When did you first know you had telmion?”
    Elei went on chewing, not wanting to remember, but then he had to stop and put the blue bread down. He was eating Kalaes’ food, sleeping under his roof, and the guy had asked Elei a simple question. He owed him an answer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and fingered the rim of his plate. “I was very little. Don’t know how old.”
    “What did your parents do?”
    “Parents?”
    The thought had never occurred to him, not that he remembered at least. Parents. A strange concept.
    “Your mother. Someone gave birth to you, didn’t they, fe?”
    Put that way… “I suppose so.”
    Kalaes suddenly laughed out loud, startling him. “You’re… unpredictable, fe. So, no parents. Who raised you then?”
    “Albi.”
    “A woman? She took you in, then.”
    Well, you could say that. After all, ‘in’ could mean many things. He nodded. Albi had no house. But she’d had a big heart. And she’d taken him in.
    “So what were the first symptoms?” Kalaes piled blooms on a slice of bread and stuffed himself, cheeks bulging. He went on chewing, oblivious to how funny he looked.
    Elei’s mouth tried to grin again, its corners twitching, but the memory he was supposed to unearth stopped it. Symptoms. He had to think about that. It’d been long ago. “My skin, those strange marks. Then the pain. The vomiting.” There, he still remembered. Perhaps he’d never forget. “Then Albi found me.”
    “And gave you cronion.”
    Elei licked dry lips. She’d saved him in the nick of time. He’d been so dehydrated his body had begun to fail. She’d given him a kiss of life or death. Life had prevailed. “Yes.”
    Kalaes chewed on another cake. “The streets are a mean place to be when you are small. I know how it is. I had my gang, we protected each other. Then, when we got sick, Pelia came along and took us in.”
    Elei’s heart was in his throat. Protection. Kalaes made him feel safe, like Albi had. He had an aura of strength around him that promised calm. Even cronion relaxed when Kalaes was there. Elei wanted to stay there, with him. So he said nothing. He bit into a bloom and it tasted of ashes and frustration.
    “Were you in a street gang? Did you have a protector?” Kalaes waved a bloom in the air with his tattooed hand.
    Well, obviously he did. Hadn’t he said so? “Albi.”
    “No others? How did you stand against other gangs?”
    “There’re no street gangs in the trashlands.”
    He would have thought it was obvious. After all, there were no streets in the trashlands, and for apparent reasons so few people lived there that it was easy to keep a distance. No social calls, no greetings. Trying to avoid disease was half the job. The other half was finding something edible enough or something sellable to exchange for something edible and for water. And that was that. No energy for squabble.
    Elei wondered why Kalaes put down the cake, arched an eyebrow and gave him a wary look.
    “Trashlands. Why would you live there?”
    “Albi lived there.”
    “She took you there?”
    “She found me there.”
    Kalaes looked green. “Wait. She found you there? Among the trash?”
    Elei frowned. Was it so strange? Albi had never commented on it. There were all sorts of strange things among the trash. A child was just one more. Wasn’t it?
    “She said I was left there.” Said she’d found other children before, but they had died. All of them. Telmion was a killer once it got you and it loved rotten garbage and standing water. Rotting flesh and offal and sourness and rat’s fur—
    “What is she, a trash gatherer?”
    Elei blinked. “Yeah, that’s what she was.”
    And she was kind, she was funny, she was gruff, she was affectionate, she was—
    “Sorry, fe. Hey! Eat up your cake.” Kalaes was smiling again and it looked a little strained.