The WeatherWorkers

Ben sat at the top of the stairs, slowly tapping out a beat on the banister.  Forceful voices drifted up the stairwell and pounded into his ears at ten times their actual volume.  His fingers paused as the voices rose, then resumed their aged routine.  Ben sighed and rested his head against his knees; his dark locks flopped forward and his fingers switched to a different tune more cheerful than the first.  The sticky air full of tension smothered the happy tune, and Ben looked up as footsteps approached the bottom of the stairs. 

“Ben, you really should be in bed.”  He stared at his father, unmoving.  “I mean it Ben, it’s late, and it’s rude to eavesdrop.”

Ben muttered under his breath.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that?”  His father’s voice iced over.

“I wasn’t listening.  Not to you anyway.”  Ben retorted, staring at his feet.

Father sighed the same soft exhale as his son had moments before, as if expelling rotten air.  Ben took the signal and slowly got to his feet, eyes fixed on the floor. 

“Goodnight, Ben.”  The wish was a command.

He stared silently after his father retreating down the stairs.  Thunder rumbled in the distance as Ben locked the door to his room with a soft click.  Drawn by the weather, he walked to the window and looked out over the field behind the house.  The horizon glimmered occasionally with lightening flickers growing constantly brighter.  The tension in the house was dwarfed by the building tension of the coming storm, which pushed itself through the glass of the window and permeated the room.

After wrestling with the window for several moments, Ben managed to lift it a crack and a refreshing breeze forced its way inside.  Summer nights like this were always the same.  The thunderclouds rolled in slowly, making everyone edgy and angry.  Tension inside always broke first and as if following the cue, thunder began to bellow on the outskirts of town, lightening flashing as quickly as Annalise’s insults. 

It was all because of Annalise, the horrible fights, the shouting voices.  Ever since she came Ben’s family had changed.  They awoke puffy-eyed and tousle-haired, barely speaking over breakfast.  They went about their own daily routines, passing each other in the hallways silent as ghosts.  Dinner was always a strained affair, forced to sit together and knowing that the evening would bring bad weather and tempers.  Conversation invariably turned to the radical new policies of the Garrisol government.  Annalise would start to talk in her horrid, high-pitch chirp about the Garrisols; they would do the country good, and powers given were meant to be used fully, not brushed under the rug like an unwanted gift.  Father would grow angry with her, touting the strength and discipline of refusing to abuse powers, no matter how well-intended they were gifted.  Trying to smooth things over, Mother would suggest that times were changing and that the family should consider joining up with Contevos and his group of Moderates, to which Father always shot back that Contevos’s Moderates were even worse than the Garrisols, and Annalise criticized that Contevos was a weak idiot.  But this family, she would say, this family was worthy, hang the old ways and join the Garrisols!  It was at this point that Ben was sent from the room to wait and listen at the top of the stairs, invisible and neglected, until the adults thought to check on him in his usual post.

Sometimes it was worth being invisible, he learned much more that way.  He didn’t dare tell his father, but he knew Annalise was right.  The Garrisols used power, and why shouldn’t they?  And Ben had that power, too, as did his father, who maintained that neither of them should use it just as their many greats grandfathers never had.  This treason was why they were confined to their home, which they now shared with a constantly nagging government watch dog. 

They should join the Garrisols, they could be, would be, great!  Ben could see himself now, standing among the young men in grey uniforms, the best of them all, worthy of his family name, but for his father, the traitor.  He was resentful and bitter that Father had denied his claim to a place among the Marcara, most admired, most dreadful of the Garrisols.  He had called it selling out.  Ben had called him idiotic.  In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have said it to his father’s face.

Ben could feel heat rushing to his cheeks as he thought about the biggest fight of all just two weeks before.  He pressed his nose to the crack of the open window and let the breeze cool his flushed face.  If it weren’t for his old fashioned father, he could call the breeze whenever he wanted it, he could command it.  Who wouldn’t want to control the weather?  The Garrisols believed in bending nature to human will.  Only the Marcara were allowed to do it and they guarded their weather-working knowledge more carefully than any worldly possession.  How Ben wished to be among the elite!  It was his right, his destiny, and his father was standing in his way!  Mother at least wasn’t stuck in the old ways, content to study and predict but never control.  Contevos and his Moderates believed that control of the weather should be limited to minor adjustments and were busy refining it to an art.  Only the Marcara were great, knew human mastery over the elements was the true destiny of man-kind. 

A gentle knock on the door pulled Ben out of his musings.  He opened the door and let his mother enter, then shut and locked it once more.  Although she disapproved of locked doors, she didn’t protest and sat herself at the desk.  He watched her carefully, noting that several strands of ebony hair had managed to pull free from her usual immaculate bun and framed her thin face.

“Ben,” she began, “I’m sorry you have to hear this every night.  We’re all under a lot of stress, and that makes people say things they don’t mean.  Even you.”  She looked at him pointedly.

Ben rubbed his hands along his thighs.  “I did mean it.  I do mean it.  This is ridiculous!”  Frustration poured forth.  “Father won’t let me learn how to WeatherWork, but I can, it’s my birthright!  He’s smothering me with his old-fashioned beliefs!  How can you let him, why do you let him do that?”

“Ben, don’t yell at me.”  Her soft voice held an edge.  “I get enough of that from your father and Annalise.  I won’t tolerate your disrespect.”  She leaned forward and held his gaze until Ben looked at the floor in submission. 

“I hate her.”  He mumbled.  Thanks to Father’s well-publicized dissent, the Garrisols sent Annalise to watch them always and make sure they didn’t try to convince others to oppose the government that favored total control.  Economic benefit, total safety from natural disaster, they said.  How can anyone wish anything else?  Even though Ben shared their beliefs, he despised Annalise.  She was like a puppy, following the strong, doing their bidding and never thinking for herself. 

“I know you do.  But do you hate your father as well?”

Ben squirmed at the accusation.  At least Father wasn’t a coward, he held firmly to what he believed and wouldn’t back down.  Though Ben was furious with their situation because of it, he couldn’t help but feel a grudging respect for him.  “No,” he answered finally, gazing out the window.

Watching the storm roll in, Ben was filled with the desire to learn how to turn it aside.  Of course, the storms came here because they were sent from other places they didn’t need to be.  Isolation in this house now directly in the path of storm cast-offs was the punishment for speaking out against the Garrisols, and the powerful Marcara in particular. 

“Ben, I want you to learn to WeatherWork.”  He looked at his mother, startled and pleased.  She held up a hand as he opened his mouth to reply.  “Not to wreck havoc on our country like the Marcara are doing, but because I know you.  You have too much of a temper, and if it gets the better of you, you might tap into your gift—let me finish.”  Ben had stood up, angry that his mother would accuse him of using his gift carelessly.  “It would be accidental, but without any training, the results could be disastrous.  You need to learn how to control it.  Controlling your gift for WeatherWorking, Ben, is more important than controlling the weather.”  He sat down again, watching her closely, but didn’t respond.  “Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”  Ben lied.  He would do anything to learn WeatherWorking. 

“Good.  But don’t tell your father, or Annalise.”  They both looked toward the door.  The voices hadn’t faded.  Even though Mother had left the argument, Father and Annalise were still at it.  “I’ll bring you the books.  You’ll have to learn on your own, I don’t know how to help you and we can’t go to anyone who does.  But you have to promise me you will be responsible with your gift, Ben.  With great power comes—”

“Great responsibility.  I know, Mother.”  Ben rolled his dark eyes at the ceiling. 

“Promise me, Ben.”

He took a deep breath, then looked his mother in the eye.  “I promise.”  She looked at him carefully for several moments, then seemed to decide he was being honest, and let herself out of the room. 

Ben locked the door once more and knelt at the window.  The worst of the thunderstorm was overhead now, lightening leaving streaks in his vision and thunder blotting out the fight downstairs.  He would learn how to move storms.  He would learn control, and he would show everyone.  He would show his father the true meaning of power, show Annalise what it meant to really believe, show the Marcara he was worthy of them, and more!  He was gifted with weather magic from his father’s side, but unlike the rest of them he would not deny it.  He would bring glory to his family.  He would make them great.

                                       -------------

For the next several weeks, Ben spent almost all of his time locked in his room, pouring over the books his mother had smuggled him.  Even dinner was more bearable, now that he knew he was doing something to change the status quo.  He quickly memorized the basic weather properties, including all the types of clouds and precipitation, how they interacted with each other and other forces such as wind and changed in different temperatures, and how all of this was simply the different ways water behaved in the air.  He soon progressed to studying how weather systems worked and finally learned about hurricanes and tornadoes, the great weather monsters. 

When he finished learning about the weather itself, Ben approached his father one evening in the study.  That night’s dinner had gone relatively smoothly and everyone was in their own territory of the house.  Ben stood uncertainly at the door for a minute before taking a deep breath and knocking. 

“Enter,” his father called.  Ben pushed the door open and saw his father relax slightly when he realized who it was.  “What can I do for you, Ben?”

“Are you Predicting?” Ben asked.

Father looked at him carefully before answering.  “Yes.”  A moment of silence stretched.

“Can I watch?”  Ben stepped a few feet into the study.  His father nodded and motioned for him to sit beside him at the desk.  The desk was against a large bay window with no screen or curtains that faced the same open meadow visible from Ben’s room.  There were trees off in the distance, but the view of the sky was unobstructed.  Heavy rain beat at the roof and water drops slid down the window in rivets, racing to the ground.  Ben pulled up a chair and watched his father, who was watching the sky.  They sat quietly for a while before Ben’s father shook his head and spoke.

“Look there, to the north.  See that cumulonimbus cloud system?  It’s drifting south, toward us, but the wind is blowing north-west.  By the look if it there will be hail tonight.”  Ben nodded, following the pattern of the cirrocumulus clouds higher up.  “With that wind and those clouds,” his father indicated the clouds Ben had been examining, “do you know what weather we should be getting tonight?”

“Overcast, but no rain.” Ben replied.

“Good.  So you have picked something up over the years.” 

Ben fidgeted slightly.  He couldn’t give away that he had been studying the books. 
“I’ve learned  quite a bit actually.  I’m not as dense as everyone seems to think.”

Father grinned.  “I know you’re smart, Ben.  That’s what I’m afraid of.  Weather is not always predictable, it’s like a wild beast.  Even a gifted WeatherPredictor,  especially one, in fact, knows that.”  In the dark, Father missed Ben’s eye roll. 
“Look at that lightning.  Ribbon lightning.  It’s not windy enough for that.”  He shook his head again.  “Probably the additive affect of the wind and the artificial movement of the cloud.”

Ben watched his father closely as the lightning threw into sharp contrast every feature of his face from the wide brow and jaw to the long straight nose Ben had inherited.  “Is that why you don’t like the Marcara controlling the weather, because it does unnatural things?”  Ben fought to keep the contempt out of his voice.  By his father’s expression, he wasn’t completely successful.

“Yes.”  He answered shortly.  “That should be good enough for you.”  Tension filled the space between them, two people not unlike two clouds with electric charges different enough to spark lightning between them.  They watched the weather together until the rain was too heavy to see clearly out of the window.

When they emerged from the study, Annalise was standing in the hallway, pudgy arms crossed and thin lips pressed.

“Why watch helpless?”  she goaded.  “Why let them run us over with storms?  You can do better than predict, when you can’t even predict what they are going to do!”

Ben saw his father’s dark eyes narrow dangerously.  He advanced on Annalise, but she stood her ground, spouting her usual poison.  “How do you live here, day after day, in this house in the cast-off path?  You ignore your responsibility to your country!” 

“How dare you teach me about responsibility!”  Father shouted.  Footsteps pounded down the stairs; Mother was drawn by the shouting.  “You cower behind the Garrisols, you do the country no good!  Neither do they!”

“They do more than you ever have!  Without the Macara, the drought would have been devastating, storms would have ruined docks on the coast!”  Annalise was pink with fury, her hands balled into plump fists swinging at her sides. 

“The Marcara are destroying this country.”  Father’s voice was dangerously low. 

Ben edged toward the stairs and noticed that his mother was standing there, the knuckles of her long fingers white where her hand gripped the banister.  They stood together and watched Father and Annalise standing almost nose to nose, Father towering over his opponent. 

“You’re a treasonous bastard who wishes his family home destroyed and his family dead over idiotic pride.”  Annalise spat. 

Father struck her across the face and retreated into his study, slamming the door behind him.  Annalise stormed out of the house in a fury, and the family knew that the Garrisols would soon be hearing of the encounter.  Ben pushed past his mother and raced into his room.  When he was securely locked inside, he sank to the floor and listened to the hail beating the sides of the house, as if to punish the family for their treason.  Ben didn’t know who he was angrier at, Annalise or his father.  Both were fools.  He dove under his bed and retrieved the one book he had yet to study, the one that would teach him how to control the weather.

                                       --------------

Breakfast the next morning was silent.  Annalise had returned during the night and now sported a bruise on her cheekbone.  Ben’s mother watched her constantly as she ate, and Ben was too tired to look at either woman, having stayed up all night studying.  His father wasn’t at the table at all. 

As soon as he was finished with the meal, Ben returned eagerly to his room, taking the stairs two at a time.  Back on his bed with the book, he flipped through it looking for more information, but he’d already read it all.  There was surprisingly little to WeatherWorking.  He knew all the patterns and how weather should behave, but the ability to control it was already there, he just needed to know the weather enough to call to it.  He slid off his bed and walked to the window, looking for a likely cloud to call.  He picked a cirrus cloud drifting gently on a north-blowing wind that looked far enough away to test his reach and to also go unnoticed by his father if he was Predicting from his study.  Ben knew that that sort of cloud on a northern wind meant good weather followed its system, so it should be safe to call here. 

He stared at the cloud for several moments before trying to reach out to it.  Ben closed his eyes and shut out his other senses, singling out his gift, his sense of the weather.  It was as if the clouds and winds he had observed outside were etched in his mind, ever changing with nature’s flow.  He focused on the cloud in question, and it tingled in his mind.  Taking a deep breath, Ben extended his WeatherSense and pulled gently on the cloud, but it stubbornly followed the northern wind and drifted farther away from him and slightly to the west in a gust.  Ben pulled again, but nothing happened.  Furious, he opened his eyes and glared at the cloud. 

After several more poor attempts, Ben snatching the book from his pillow and riffled through it again.  Its instructions were obscure and hard to follow.  The authors wrote of a pathway.  What pathway?  There was no pathway!  Frustrated, he left the book on the floor and the cloud in its corner of the sky and stalked back downstairs to find his mother and Annalise still sitting in the kitchen and that his father had joined them. 

Ben seated himself at the table across from his father and looked at the three slightly pale-faced adults.  None of them spoke.  Finally Ben broke the silence. 
“What’s happened?” he asked slowly.

The adults looked at each other, animosity seemed forgotten.  “Ben,” his mother said, “We have to leave.”

Ben stared at her.  “But we’re not allowed.  We have to stay here, right?”  He asked Annalise, who met his dark eyes steadily with her light ones.  She swallowed several times.

“Last night, when I went to the Garrisols, they were busy and wouldn’t see me.  That’s unusual that they are all busy at one time, so I asked around. There’s a…a…” Annalise swallowed again, “…a hurricane coming to the coast.  The Marcara can’t have that.  They’re going to transpose it here.”  Ben could hardly hear the last words. 

“Transpose it?” He asked.

“It will appear here, leaving a hole where they pluck it from.  They think it will be a hole of good weather…”  Father broke off and shook his head.  “It’s a folly.  Leaving a hole that size will wreck havoc on the coast.  I can’t Predict how.  We’re leaving in an hour.”

“You’re not going to do anything?  You’re not going to stop them?”  Ben was incredulous that his father would run away.  Though he didn’t say it, he spotted the danger in the Marcara’s plan.  If only he could do a proper WeatherWorking!  He could tame the hurricane and they wouldn’t have to flee like cowards!

“There is nothing I can do.  A hurricane cannot be controlled no matter how gifted a WeatherWorker is.”

Ben knew this was a lie.  The book had said that any weather could be controlled with enough will power and force.  If only he was experienced enough.  “What about two WeatherWorkers?”  His mother’s eyes went wide as his father’s eyes narrowed.

“Ben, I would never let you try to control a hurricane.  I shudder to think what it would do to you.” Or you to it, were the unspoken addition to Father’s pronouncement. 
Instead of pushing the matter Ben shifted to a less dangerous topic.  He glared at Annalise; her words from the previous night’s fight still stung deep.  “Why is she coming with us?”

“They sent me back.”  Annalise whispered and pulled at her blonde hair nervously. 

“They sent me back when they knew the hurricane would be sent here.”  Ben thought he saw tears in the corners of her eyes and suppressed a small twinge of pity. 

“You treat us like scum, why should we protect you?  Go crawl to your precious Garrisols for protection.”

“We will not sentence her death.  That is what the Garrisols have done, and we are not so cruel.  Go pack.”  There was a finality in Father’s words, and Ben recognized the dismissal.  He left the table and dragged his feet back up to his room.  Behind the locked door, Ben kicked the book on his floor under his desk and glared at the clouds outside.  He would control them.  He would control the hurricane, too, if his father didn’t have the spine to do it.

                                       -------------

An hour later Ben was still standing at the window determined to WeatherWork, but to no avail.  He tried every form of coercion and force he could think of that he could use in his WeatherSense, yet the clouds still stubbornly drifted north.  Finally, he gave up and let his mind wander around, following the web of senses that floated by.  The pattern was so complex it baffled him, with more connections and dimensions than seemed possible.  Everything was connected, everything followed its prescribed pathway. 

Pathway!  Ben’s eyes snapped open as the revelation tore him from his meditation.  The book said to open a pathway!  Weather never broke free from the pattern, but the pathways could be manipulated.  Heart beating fast in anticipation, Ben pressed his forehead and palms to the cold glass and closed his eyes once more. 

The WeatherSense came more quickly this time while his other senses faded away without any extra urging.  The patterns were there as before, dauntingly complicated but just waiting for his mastery!  Ben picked a cloud out of the system and traced the webbed lines it was following.  Gently, he pressed at the lines of energy that existed only in his Sense, and they yielded to his pressure.  The little cirrus cloud followed the pathway which was turning west now, across the wind.  Ben was elated, he was doing it!  He was WeatherWorking!  Flushed with success Ben kept tugging and pushing softly at the lines until there was a small swirl near the middle of the system.  It threatened to escape his hold, so he examined several gusts to see how he could anchor his swirl until the whole system was reeled in. 

“What the hell are you doing!”  His father’s roar burst through his concentration and the swirl twanged back into place.  Brought back to himself, Ben became aware that his father held both his upper arms in vice-like grips and was shaking him furiously. 
“Are you out of your damned mind!”  Rage crossed his face.

“I’m not you, I’m not weak!”  Ben shouted back, wrenching himself free.

“Weak!  Weak?  Who is weak here, the one who has self-control, or the one who uses none!” Father’s bellow made Ben take a step back. 

He stepped forward, refusing to back down.  “I have the power, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“You should be!  It can destroy you!”

“No. No! I’m strong, I can bend it.  I will not cower, I will not run!”  Ben yelled, breathless and heat rising in his face.

“Ben, you don’t understand, you need to have self-control before you can control the weather.  I’ve denied the power to command nature for a long time.  When I do decide to use my gift, I will have more control over my self, my gift, and the weather.  I will be a powerful WeatherWorker, and one who won’t be lost to the gift!  I won’t have you lost to your gift, too many others have gone that way!”

Ben shook his head, incredulous.

“Listen to me, this is important!  You can only control the weather as much as you can control yourself!  If you can’t fight the desire to use your gift for fun now, how will you be able to handle the compulsion of storms?  It’s not all about doing what you want, the weather doesn’t want to be controlled, and it will fight to keep its path.  Only, one you’ve started to change its path, it will try to follow a new one, and the bigger the storm, the less likely it will be to chose the path you want.  Then what will you do, once you’ve unleashed a power bigger than you can control?  Especially because the compulsion to forge a new path for the storm will be overwhelming, and that new path can often lead to destruction, usually of the person who foolishly attempted to gain control in the first place.  You must master yourself!”  Father had gripped his arms again, but he was no longer shouting, pleading instead to his son.

Ben stared at his father, looking for words but failing miserably.  Only then did he wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t been interrupted and had let the entire weather system wind into one point in space too small to contain it.  He refused to admit to himself that he didn’t know.

Finally, he croaked out, “I understand.”

His father seemed to hear the sincerity and fear in Ben’s voice.  He nodded, “Good.”  Father and son watched each other warily for a moment to be sure tempers had subsided.  “Now pack.”

“Why?”

“Why?  Didn’t I just say why?  Do you really think the Marcara have enough self control to take on a hurricane?  They’re too greedy to know when to stop, when enough is enough.”  Father said.

“Then we have to do something!  They’ll destroy everything, we have to stop them!” Ben cried.

“It’s too late for brave rescue missions now.”

“We at least have to protect the people in the town.”  They were other political opponents of the Garrisols.  “What will happen when the hurricane arrives here?” he asked.

Father let go of Ben and turned to the window, looking out across the familiar field. 
“I don’t know for sure, but I think it will displace the weather here, but so fast that the wind gusts will be nearly as strong as the hurricane winds themselves.  And there’s no saying what damage a full strength hurricane fresh from its warm waters will do.”

“Can’t we do something, can’t we help?” Ben pleaded.  Father didn’t look at him, but walked out of the room.

“Pack your things, Ben.”

                                       -------------

The family and Annalise were soon gathered around the kitchen table once more, the three adult glaring at Ben, who still hadn’t packed.

“I won’t run away, not when we can do something.”  He grumbled.

“Are you actually interested in helping the town or just the chance to use your gift?”  his mother asked, eyes dangerously narrow in her thin face. 

“I want to help.”

She shook her head.  “No Ben, you’re just looking for an excuse.”

“I’m not looking for an excuse, stop telling me what I’m thinking!”  Ben raised his voice.

“I know you, and you have a strong sense of self-interest.  How do we know that’s not what’s speaking now?”  She questioned.

“Please, believe me!  I’ve realized how easy it is to move the weather without thinking of the consequences, and I know the Marcara aren’t thinking of the consequences now.  A whole hurricane!  They can’t get away with this, and if we don’t do something, they will, and people will die for their mistake.”  The little swirl was at the edge of his mind.  Ben was haunted by what could have happened had he lost control once the new pattern had been set in motion.  And that was with the weather following what he wanted it to do, never mind forging a path of its own.  The time he was supposed to be packing he had sat on his bed and sunk into his WeatherSense, but without taking his eyes off the sky, Predicting like his father.  A proper respect for nature had revealed even more layers and convolutions than before to its complicated workings.  “I can’t, we can’t let them.  You can’t let them.”  Ben turned to his father, meeting his eyes and refusing to look down. 

Finally Father sighed, “You’ve learned the books, I hope?”

Ben blinked, “Learned the…how did you know?”  He was taken off guard, he’d been so good about keeping the secret.

Father gave him a crooked grin.  “I suggested your mother give them to you.  You needed to learn the weather properly before you lost all control.”

It took Ben a few minutes to recover from speechlessness.  “But…but…but why didn’t you give them to me then?”

“You wouldn’t have let me tell you about self-control, not after…well.”

Ben blushed and looked at his hands, his father didn’t seem so idiotic now. 

“Neither of us can control a hurricane alone.”  His father continued.  “If you really, truly, are only doing this out of the desire to protect others, then we can try.  But if you are acting on a selfish impulse, the hurricane will consume you.”  It was a warning.

Ben met his father’s eyes again.  “With great power comes great responsibility.”  He sensed rather than saw his mother smile.  “I have power, and so I have a responsibility to use it, and protect the town.”

“Then we’ve got a town to save!”  Father cried, wiggling his thick eyebrows.

“Oh please, cut the melodrama,”  Annalise whined, but Ben and his father had already dashed from the room.

                                       ---------------

They stood in utter silence in the calm before the storm.  Ben nervously wiped his sweaty palms against his thighs.  His father had told him what to do and it seemed simple enough, but so much could go wrong.  When Ben had voiced his concerns, his father only smiled and replied that even the most carefully laid plans could crumble to dust but for one hiccup, and that simplicity was the key.  Somehow, Ben wasn’t comforted.  It didn’t help that, WeatherGifted though they were, they were planning to stand in the eye of a hurricane, which was all well enough, until the hurricane moved as they were wont to do. 

“Ready?”

“No.”  Ben coughed.  It was funny how quickly his confidence and notorious self-assuredness had evaporated now that he was facing a real challenge like he’d always dreamed of.  Or really not so funny, rather. 

“Relax, Ben.”  His father said.

“It’s not like you’ve done this before either!”  Ben quipped in an unnaturally high voice. 

“No, I haven’t.  But I’m confident that I can.”  Father looked at his nervous son. 

“Confidence is crucial.  That’s one thing I’d never thought you would lack.”

Ben swallowed.  It was true. 

“It’s ok to be afraid, that’s normal.  Controlling the fear is part of controlling yourself.  It’ll help you with the work on the storm.”

They stood in silence for a few moments more.  Anticipation was running high as they surveyed the wispy altocumulus clouds that would soon be blasted away by the hurricane.  Ben shifted from foot to foot, then grounded both feet firmly as his WeatherSense began to spark and crackle with disruption.  He knew his father, who had tensed next to him, could feel it too.

A howl of wind met their ears as the hurricane appeared out of nowhere and displaced wind rushed to the middle of the eye.  Ben’s clothes flattened to his body and his heart hammered in his chest.  The hurricane was like a beast, its gray eye walls circling them furiously.  He was overwhelmed by the sheer force of the winds raging around in his WeatherSense.  The combination of internal and external turmoil nearly drowned out his father’s cry of “NOW!”

Standing back to back in the center of the eye, they opened a new pathway for the storms that formed the vicious eye wall.  The storms continued to circle, flattening anything in their path with deadly gales.  Ben reached up through the open path and pulled on the eye wall storms with all his might.  If they could collapse the eye wall the storm would lose its spiral momentum that maintained the winds.  Lightning struck trees nearby that hadn’t already been crushed by the hurricane’s mighty power.  In his terror, Ben ripped the pathways he had created open wide, and the eye wall storms began to follow, filling the serene eye with turbulence. 

“Ata boy!” came his father’s cry before it was whipped away.  “Bring ‘em down, bring ‘em down!  Don’t forget there’s eye wall replacement, keep those pathways wide open!”  Ben didn’t reply, but focused every drop of strength into reeling the storms into the eye.  The patch of blue sky above was rapidly shrinking as the most violent storms fell into the calm, blotting out the sun.  The encroaching darkness, wind, and rain made Ben falter, and the winds began to rev up again.

“Ben, focus!  You can do this!”  His father’s side of the hurricane was crumbling inward, too.  Ben swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.  It was a folly to try and control such a beast!  Surely they would die once the eye wall was dissolved, if they succeeded at all.  Ben felt the urge to run, but he knew there was no where to go, no where to hide from the monstrosity of weather madness set upon them by the Marcara.

The Marcara…thinking of them filled Ben with fury to match the hurricane.  He funneled that fury into his draw on the eye wall storms that raged ferociously in front of him, growing ever closer as the hurricane moved toward them.  Again, they began to crumble, the huge system loosing its structure and thus its strength.  They could do this!  They were doing this!  Ben thought, suddenly filled with a high of power and control.  He could turn these storms right around and set them back on the fools who thought to challenge him and his father!  He would do it, he would—

“Ben!”  His father’s voice sounded so far away… “Ben, stop it!”  The eye wall storms were streaming straight up into the sky and forming a funnel.  It was against all rules of nature, but their interference and Ben’s desire for revenge and power were forming a tornado inside the dissolved eye of the hurricane.  The first beast was defeated, but a new enemy was rising.

Lightning stuck the ground near by, sending a shock though both of them and jolting Ben back to himself, now terrified to be facing a tornado if he couldn’t control himself.  He tried to exert every ounce of his gift and will over the swirling cloud mass, but that only made the funnel condense further.  He needed to focus, but how?  Ben tried to calm himself, pressing his fear down.  Suddenly, he noticed his WeatherSense became sharper as if someone had turned the tuning knob on a radio.  Ben pushed his anger at the Marcara down too.  He let these feelings churn somewhere deep in his abdomen, but kept them far away from his heightened WeatherSense and returned his attention to the tornado, only to find it was dissipating, no longer fueled by his emotions. 

Exhausted by the exertion, Ben pressed his back against his father’s.  His father returned the pressure, whether to comfort him or because he too was worn out, Ben couldn’t tell.  They stood there as the storms that remained from the defeated hurricane dispersed over the town, now carrying nothing more damaging than what the Garrisols had the Marcara send their way everyday. 

Assured of their success, they sank to the muddy ground.  “Thank you, Father,” Ben croaked, brushing his sopping hair off his face.

“For what?” his father asked in a weak voice.

“For trusting me.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“And thank you, Ben.  For reminding me of my responsibility.  To the town, to my self, and most of all, to you.”

Battered by the weather they had sought to control and had successfully tamed, the two WeatherWorkers rose slowly from the mud and walked back to the house, arms around each other’s shoulders.