Nightfall

by Shannon Messenger

  “Let me play with it a little more on my own, first,” Dex told her.

  “If you want to help,” Fitz jumped in, “I was planning to ask you for the names of any goblins who worked at Lumenaria and might’ve tended to the prisoner before she escaped. To see if they know anything about her.”

  “How do you know it’s a female?” Oralie asked.

  “My mom told us,” Keefe told her. “And I don’t know why she’d lie about that.”

  “I suppose,” Oralie said. “Though it’s strange that I’m not feeling even the slightest sense that I’ve ever heard of an Ancient female criminal. Whoever she is, they did a very good job of erasing her. I’ll put together a list of guards. You might also want to ask Fallon Vacker.”

  The name sent a strange ripple through the room.

  Sophie didn’t know much about him, only that he was Fitz’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and one of the first members of the Council.

  “He . . . rarely accepts company,” Alden said quietly.

  “Is that why we’ve never met him?” Biana asked.

  “You have lots of relatives you’ve never met,” Alden reminded her.

  “Really?” Sophie asked. Her brain still struggled with the indefinite elvin life span. But she’d always assumed they kept in touch with their numerous relatives—especially a legendary family like the Vackers.

  “Most of the Ancients live very solitary lives,” Alden explained. “All that time and experience makes it hard for them to relate.”

  The explanation made sense—but something about the way his jaw had tightened had Sophie wondering if there was more to the story. Especially when she considered what Alvar claimed when he’d revealed himself as one of the Neverseen.

  You’ll understand, someday, when you see the Vacker legacy for what it is.

  “Can’t you at least ask Fallon for a visit?” Biana pressed.

  Alden sighed. “I suppose I can try. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  Oralie promised to send the list of goblin guards to Fitz that night, and Sandor offered to coordinate with his queen if any of the goblins had returned to Gildingham.

  “And while we’re adjusting plans,” Della said, blinking in and out of sight as she crossed the room, “I want to go with you to Ravagog.” She might’ve looked like a Disney princess with her wavy dark hair, perfect features, and green mermaid-cut gown. But Sophie had seen her drop Mr. Forkle without breaking a sweat—while wearing heels.

  “I think that’ll be up to Lady Cadence,” Sophie warned. “If she agrees to help, I’m sure she’ll have a lot to say about who does and doesn’t get to go.”

  Della nodded. “Then I want to go with you when you talk to her today.”

  “So do I,” Mr. Forkle jumped in. “I also expect a thorough update when you next contact Lady Gisela.”

  “And I want to know everything she has to say about what happened to Cyrah before you tell Wylie,” Tiergan added. “I know my son has asked you to keep him updated. But he’s still recovering from his abduction. I need to make sure nothing sets him back.”

  “Of course,” Sophie promised.

  “Well then,” Mr. Forkle said, “it sounds like we have quite a lot to do. So I suppose we should move on to my brother’s planting.”

  “Only if you’re feeling ready,” Tiergan told him.

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Then I’ll let Blur and Wraith know to meet us at the planting site,” Dex’s mom offered. “And I brought this.” She fished a delicate green bottle out of the pocket of her cape.

  Kesler side-eyed his wife. “Did you steal that from Slurps and Burps?”

  Juline’s cheeks flushed, but her posture stayed tall and proud. “The store is half mine, so it’s hardly stealing.”

  Kesler grumbled something about never-ending secrets, but he wrapped his arm around his wife and pulled her close, tucking her amber-colored hair behind her ear.

  Sophie wasn’t sure exactly what was in the bottle, but she’d seen others like it used during the plantings she’d attended. And it made her heart feel prickly.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” Mr. Forkle told Councillor Oralie.

  “I wish I could. But my absence would be noticed. Councillor Terik is meeting with Elwin this afternoon—as well as a team of Technopaths—to make some adjustments to his new leg, and the rest of the Council is expected to be there for moral support.”

  Sophie glanced at Dex. “I thought you were helping with the prosthesis.”

  “I was. But he wanted me to design something that could be permanently attached, and that’s too . . . complicated.”

  “It’s absurd is what it is,” Kesler corrected, then quickly apologized to Oralie.

  “Actually, I agree,” Oralie told him. “I think Terik’s hoping they’ll be able to build something that will function exactly the way he was able to before Lumenaria—and I can’t blame him for the inclination. But technology is not flesh. He’ll be much happier if he allows his body to adapt.”

  “It can’t be easy, though,” Grady said quietly. “Especially since so few understand what he’s enduring.”

  “I wonder if it would help him to speak to the Redek family,” Alden suggested. “I know Caprise’s injuries were vastly different, and her struggle is mostly emotional. Still, they can at least relate to the challenge of having a drastic change in physical circumstance.”

  Oralie seemed intrigued by the idea, but Sophie couldn’t follow the rest of the conversation. Her failing friendship with Marella Redek was one of her bigger regrets—especially since the last time she saw her, Marella had begged Mr. Forkle to try triggering her special ability, hoping she’d become an Empath and be able to help her mom.

  “Did any of you guys ever find out if Marella manifested?” Sophie whispered to her friends, feeling both better and worse when they all shook their heads.

  Oralie moved to leave then, holding a shimmering pendant up to the light. “It’s incredibly good to see you,” she told Mr. Forkle, choking slightly on the words.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s good to be seen.”

  As soon as Oralie glittered away, he removed a blue pathfinder from his pocket and reached for Sophie’s hand. “Let’s go say goodbye to my brother.”

  Twenty-one

  ARE WE IN Norway?” Sophie asked, wishing she’d added a cape to her outfit when the blisteringly cold wind hit her.

  They’d leaped to a sharply angled slope in the middle of a green-gray valley, with snow-crowned mountains surrounding an ice blue lake—or was it a fjord?

  “That’s what the humans call it, yes,” Mr. Forkle agreed, his deep breaths clouding the air. “And that”—he pointed to the massive rock jutting horizontally out of the mountain far above them—“they call Trolltunga.”

  “Troll Tongue?” Sophie asked when her Polyglot sense translated the Norwegian term.

  Mr. Forkle smiled. “My brother and I gave the humans the nickname, and it’s stuck all these years—along with so many of the stories we invented. I suppose we had a touch too much fun ensuring that the legends about us stayed as convoluted as possible.”

  He turned away to wipe his eyes and Sophie hugged herself, trying to think warm thoughts. Even with the body temperature regulation tricks she’d learned at Exillium, she couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.

  “Here,” Keefe said, wrapping his cape around her and fastening it under her chin. “Can’t have you turning blue on us.”

  He shook his head when she tried to protest. “You didn’t refuse the Fitzster’s gift, did you?”

  She wanted to point out that Fitz’s gift didn’t require him to be stuck freezing for who knew how long. But she had a better solution.

  She unfastened the pin and scooted closer, wrapping one arm—and part of the cape—around him so they could share.

  Tam snorted. “Guess
we have to score one for Keephie.”

  Grady’s sigh had a whole lot of groan mixed in.

  “Wait.” Kesler glanced at Dex, who was shaking his head at his dad—hard. “Does that mean—”

  Juline elbowed him before he could finish the question.

  “My brother just likes to make trouble,” Linh said through the silence that followed.

  “And for once I don’t mind.” Keefe scooted even closer, resting his head on Sophie’s shoulder.

  She shoved him away, taking the cape with her. “And now you can freeze.”

  “Worth it!” Keefe decided.

  “Are we waiting for something?” Fitz asked, squinting at the blue-white sky.

  “Blur and Wraith should be here momentarily,” Mr. Forkle promised, counting his paces across the ice-crusted ground until he reached a small patch of muddy grass. “This is it.”

  “Really?” Kesler asked. “I mean, the view is nice, but . . . there are lots of amazing views on this planet.”

  “There are,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “Though the sky here is spectacular. And this region holds many of our fondest memories. But honestly, we chose this place for the challenge. Everything on this slope has to fight for its spot on the earth, through wind and snow and rain.”

  “You wouldn’t rather give yourselves a tiny bit of peace at the end?” Biana asked.

  “I’m not sure our Wanderlings would know how to survive without struggle,” he said. “Plant them somewhere easy and they’d wilt from sheer boredom. This is the life we know—beauty and treachery in equal measure. And think of the stories we’ll inspire! Humans hike up this way a few months out of the year, when the conditions allow. I look forward to hearing how they explain the sudden appearance of a tree unlike any others, standing tall in Trolltunga’s shadow. I wouldn’t be surprised if they blame it on magic. Or elves. And I may have to—”

  The rest of his sentence was cut short by a flash of light as three figures leaped onto the slope.

  “I thought today wasn’t a day for disguises,” Tam said, pointing to Wraith’s headless floating silver cloak, and the smudges and swirls of color and shadow that made up Blur.

  “But it’s also not a day for distractions,” Livvy corrected—though she was noticeably mask-free.

  Wraith’s cloak rippled when he moved closer, his voice eerily disembodied as he said, “Revealing who we are would sidetrack everyone.”

  “And in my case, it requires a looooooooooong story,” Blur added.

  “A boring one at that,” Livvy said. “Mine was way better.”

  “How’s my sister?” Sophie asked her.

  “Doing well. She’s helping Quinlin organize the paperwork he’ll be sending over about the fires. And she’s officially addicted to Prattles. She already devoured six boxes, and asked me to bring you this.”

  She handed Sophie a grayish-brown pin of a creature that looked like a messed-up combination of a saber-toothed tiger, a hippo, and a giant rat.

  “A gorgonops?” Biana jumped in. “I’ve been trying to find one of those for years!”

  “They are rather rare,” Livvy agreed. “That’s why your sister said she wanted you to have it—though I suspect she may have also thought the pin was . . . less than pretty.”

  Sophie smiled. “That sounds like the Amy I remember.”

  Her sister used to love trying to trade the things she didn’t like, pretending she was doing Sophie a favor. And the gorgonops definitely wasn’t a creature that was going to win any beauty contests.

  “Do they keep these things at the Sanctuary?” Sophie asked.

  “In a restricted area,” Grady said. “We had one at Havenfield for a while and his fangs were bigger than my head.”

  “He dug his way into the mastodon pasture once,” Edaline said quietly. Her shudder said the rest.

  “Some creatures do not mix well with others,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “But they still need our protection.”

  The elves believed that every species existed on the planet for a reason, and to allow any to go extinct could have tremendous consequences for the delicate balance of the earth’s environment.

  Sophie tucked the pin into her pocket and asked Livvy to tell her sister that she’d hail her before she went to bed.

  “Well,” Mr. Forkle said, “I suppose I’ve stalled long enough. My brother deserves to rest.”

  He dropped to his knees, taking a slow, deep breath before clawing at the cold mud with his swollen fingers. It seemed strange he hadn’t brought a shovel—especially when Sophie noticed his nails cracking—but maybe that had been deliberate. Maybe he wanted the planting to hurt a little.

  When he’d scraped out a fist-size hole, he wiped the mud on the sides of his cape and turned to Sophie. Her hand shook as she dug the locket from her cape.

  Soft sniffles rippled through their group when he let the tiny seed drop into his palm. Sophie had never actually seen a Wanderling seed before, so she hadn’t known what to expect, but somehow she’d imagined something more . . . exciting.

  The seed had no real color—just a faint milky tone—and was shaped like dried-out, already-been-chewed gum. But coiled carefully across it was a strand of thick black hair, and Sophie’s already prickly heart plummeted into her stomach.

  “Goodbye, my brother,” Mr. Forkle murmured, bringing the seed to his lips. He whispered something only the seed could hear before he placed it carefully in the hole and covered it with soil.

  Juline moved to his side and poured the clear serum from the green bottle over the mound, then shattered the glass against her knuckles and scattered the shimmering remains like confetti. The glinting shards sank into the ground and everyone stepped back, holding their breath.

  It took much longer than the other plantings Sophie had been to, but eventually a tiny green shoot peeked out of the ground. And as soon as the light hit it, the sprout surged with a rush of energy, stretching higher, growing thicker, and spreading out branches until the sapling was taller than all of them.

  The trunk was narrow, but the bark was thicker than other trees, and coarser too, with a swirled pattern of brown and gold and red and black and even a few threads of green. The leaves were equally varied—some wide and flat, some thin and curled, some shiny, and others covered in a cottony fuzz. Berries sprouted among them, the exact blue as Mr. Forkle’s eyes—the only part of his appearance that Sophie could recognize. The rest was such a hodgepodge of colors and textures, it almost felt like the Wanderling was trying to reflect all of Mr. Forkle’s identities at once. And it seemed to lean, as if it was angling itself, waiting for someone else.

  Mr. Forkle wiped his eyes and ran a shaky hand down the trunk, whispering more words that only he and the tree could hear.

  Sophie decided to transmit a few of her own—the one thing she’d forgotten to say in Lumenaria.

  Thank you for everything you did for me.

  “Rest well, my brother,” Mr. Forkle said, stepping back to join his small band of supporters. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Twenty-two

  I THOUGHT WE were going to Lady Cadence’s house,” Sophie said as the scenery glittered into focus.

  Mr. Forkle had leaped the eight of them—Sophie, Biana, Tam, Keefe, Della, Sandor, Woltzer, and himself—to a river so wide, it looked more like a lake. White swells crashed against the dark rocks, and the roar of water tickled Sophie’s ears.

  “The best anyone can do when visiting Riverdrift is find the general area,” Mr. Forkle explained, pointing south, to where the water cut through a tangle of unruly woods. “The rest we’ll have to do on foot.”

  “Aw, not another epic journey, Forkle,” Keefe whined, slumping against Sophie’s shoulder. “My feet are still recovering from the eight thousand stairs you already made us climb.”

  So were Sophie’s.

  They’d also lost time going home to change. Mr. Forkle hadn’t wanted Lady Cadence to see them all in green—which was probably smart. But now the sun was sett
ing and all she could think was that her parents had been missing for another whole day.

  “There’s a curve in the river about half a mile up ahead,” Mr. Forkle called over his shoulder. “She usually lays anchor somewhere near there.”

  “Wait—we’re getting on a boat?” Tam asked.

  “A houseboat,” Mr. Forkle clarified. “King Dimitar refused to let Lady Cadence establish any sort of permanent home in Ravagog. But he did agree that she could set up something temporary. So, Riverdrift was her solution. She designed the vessel herself and kept it docked along the Eventide—until the Council made her sail back to the Lost Cities to mentor Sophie.”

  “Well, it’s probably smart we didn’t bring Linh, then,” Tam said. “She might sink the place.”

  “Aw, she has awesome control,” Biana argued.

  “Not lately. She’s started calling water in her sleep. I’ve been waking up to giant water-beasts prowling around the room. She’s even made a few life-size water elves—two of which looked so much like my parents I actually screamed.”

  Mr. Forkle frowned. “Sounds like she could do with formal training. I can arrange for her to have a Hydrokinetic Mentor—and a Shade Mentor for you as well—if you transfer to Foxfire.”

  Tam pulled on his bangs. “Ugh. That would make my parents way too happy.”

  “I’m sure it would,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “But had life not thrown you such a complicated detour, you’d be attending the academy already—which isn’t to imply that your education through Exillium has been a waste. I wish every prodigy could achieve such mastery of their skills as the two of you have.”

  “But if you guys come to Foxfire we could have lunch together every day,” Biana jumped in. “And hang out in study hall. And team up in PE. It would be epic!”