Free The Elementals by Saundra Mitchell

afraid of the corn anymore, but the animal bit of his brain still took pause. Resting a hand on the frame, Julian breathed on the glass deliberately, then watched the fog fade. This was the last place he’d ever stood on two healthy legs, on two steady feet.
    Somehow, they’d made him forget everything. That he watched the corn from Charlie’s room and used to have a bed in Sam’s. That there was a time when he walked up the stairs and back down, when he wasn’t tucked in the pantry or carried anywhere. That they used to go to the church in Connersville, the one with impressive steps. Once, Julian was sure, he’d climbed a tree and gone ice-skating.
    Polio had wiped it all away, and his family had helped disguise it.
    There were hooks in the downstairs rooms for his crutches. His chores kept him in his mother’s garden or tending the chickens; he detasseled corn and snapped beans. He put laundry on the lines and took it down again, but someone else hauled it inside.
    Bitterness rose in Julian’s throat. He was older than Dad had been when he went out West alone, and he had nothing. Not a girl, not a piece of land, nothing—wait, not true. He had a morbid, ugly gift that his parents warned him to hide. The one extraordinary thing of his own, and they’d tried to erase that, too.
    Leaning over, Julian stared at a dead fly on the window sash. A surge of reckless discontent filled him; it blotted out reason and contemplation. Drawing a deep breath, Julian blew on the fly. Its iridescent wings trembled, then it staggered across the sash.
    The flash of oblivion came on hard. It was a swift punishment, and brief. Julian clutched the side of the window, his knee buckling beneath his weight. He blinked, and everything came back at once. All but sound; the ringing in his ears drowned that out.
    Revived, Julian slid downstairs, almost crashing into the front door. Wrenching himself upright again, he threw open the door and stepped onto the porch. Blood still sang in his ears, his pulse thin and wild. With a single breath, he revived the captives in a spider’s web, then clung to a rail for the aftermath. His heart quivered tentatively before catching its beat again.
    As he stood there, he noticed a stiff, bent wing in the grass. He’d never tried to revive anything bigger than his pinkie. Somehow, that had seemed too great. Too godly. Cold crept over him.
    It would have been easy to go back inside, to live in this oversized crib and blind himself to the truth once more. It would have been easy, and he’d never have been able to face himself again.
    Hopping down the stairs, Julian nudged the bird with his crutch. Hardened in its pose, the bird—a sparrow— seemed insubstantial. It could have been made of papier-mâché. A light breeze ruffled the feathers, and Julian dropped down before he could think it through.
    He burned all the breath from his lungs, but nothing happened. Still stiff, still dead, the sparrow lay on the grass, unmoving. With a sigh, Julian sat back. Nothing, just nothing. He should have known. Pressed by the sun, he reached for his crutches.
    Abruptly, the sky changed angles. Beneath him, the earth shifted. Razored heat cut through him from the inside. He didn’t feel it when he hit the ground. Streaks of green crossed his vision. A fine veil of panic drifted over him. Everything hurt; nothing moved. When he breathed, he gagged on the stench of decay.
    The sparrow stirred. Its limbs moved contrary to nature: talons flexing against the joints, and its head wrenched nearly backwards. Its eyelids dragged over milky, sightless orbs. Lurching through the grass, it fell over, then righted itself. Claws spasmed, wings jerked.
    Skin itching like pestilence, Julian wanted to move; he tried to crawl away. But he was frozen, eyes fixed open. Light burned, but tears wouldn’t come. There was no blessed darkness for him. He had to see it, when the sparrow remembered how to flap its wings. The sight of maggots