by Kobe Bryant
“I’m never, ever doing it,” Pretia said. “Never. It’s dangerous. And your father was foolish to even try.”
“What?” Rovi said.
“Look what happened to him. It cost him his sanity. I’m not going to let that happen to me. Sorry.” There were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t care. She’d hurt Rovi unintentionally in her visualization. In her visualization. Even in her mind she was dangerous.
“Please,” Rovi said. “Please, just once.”
“No, Rovi, never. I’m never doing it. And you have to promise never to tell anyone.” She tugged on his arm. “Rovi, you have to promise.”
“Come on, Pretia. If you have grana, you should use it.”
“There are things about my grana you can’t understand,” Pretia insisted. “Terrible things. So promise you won’t tell anyone.”
“Fine,” Rovi said. “Fine, I promise. But I still think—”
His last appeal was drowned out by the hunting horn to end class, and Pretia hurried off without a backward glance.
20
ROVI
THE NOTEBOOK
The moment he saw Pretia step outside herself—actually, sprint outside herself—Rovi had an idea. It built on something Satis had suggested when Rovi had visited him in the Trainers Towers. Maybe it wasn’t stepping outside himself that had made his father lose his mind. Maybe it was something that Pallas Myrios had seen when he’d been outside himself that had changed him for good.
Pretia had stepped outside herself, more than once. She’d admitted it to Rovi. And it hadn’t harmed her. She was a little weird, for sure, but nothing like Rovi’s dad.
The second hunting horn sounded to start track training. Rovi watched the rest of the first-year recruits leave the Halls of Process and head toward the obstacle woods, where they were supposed to meet Cleopatra Volis for their practice session. What would it matter if he skipped practice?
Rovi waited until the classroom building was empty, then he dashed back inside. He made sure no one was looking, then he slipped into the door to his father’s old lab. Dust was swirling in the rays of sunlight that were pouring in through the window. Everything was just as he’d left it. But suddenly Rovi was struck by something. Everything was not as his father had left it. The last time he’d been with his father in the lab, the day they left Ecrof, the place had been delightfully disorganized as always.
When he’d first visited the lab earlier in the year, he’d figured the additional disarray was something that had just happened over the three years that he’d been away from Cora. But now, in the light of day, he could tell that someone had been in the lab—someone who seemed to be looking for something. All the cabinet doors and drawers were open. He’d been too distracted by finding the Self-Splitter to notice.
Rovi peered into one of the large flat drawers where he remembered his father storing his drawings and sketches of his many inventions. It was empty. So were the three drawers above it and three below. Then he checked the bookcase where books on visualization once sat. They were all gone.
Also gone were his father’s ledgers and class plans—his study guides and attendance books and exam papers. Weird. In fact, all evidence of his father’s writing, drawing, planning, doodling, noting, recording—every single scrap of his father’s handwriting—was gone. Someone had taken it all. Hundreds—no, thousands—of pieces of paper.
As far as Rovi knew, his father hadn’t kept any secrets. Everything he drew, he either built or tried to build or discarded as too ridiculous. He shared all his drawings with anyone who wanted to take a look. Rovi was certain of that. He remembered his father and Janos debating them late at night in the Trainers Towers over rich cups of Megaran wine. Any student who wanted to come into his father’s lab was welcome, invited even. Rovi would hide in his special spot, wedged in the small cupboard underneath the long worktable, and listen to his father explain his weird inventions to Ecrof students.
Rovi’s last memory of Cora before he’d left with his father was of hiding in that cupboard. For their last three days at Ecrof, Rovi had glued himself to his father’s side as he tried to ignore his dad’s increasingly strange behavior—the way his dad kept ranting and raving about trees, especially about killing them. When he wasn’t ranting about trees, he was drawing. As for what he was drawing, Rovi had no idea. He didn’t even look. He’d just jammed himself into the little cupboard, happy to be near his father, even if it meant that he was in that tight space for hours, long after dinner, long after bedtime.
Rovi moved away from the drawers and cabinets along the wall and went to his father’s long worktable in the middle of the room. He squatted down and looked for the door he’d hidden behind while his father worked above him. He almost missed it—just a tiny handle in the smooth metal. He opened it and looked inside. The space was small. Really small. He marveled that he’d fit in there at all.
His father never stored anything in the cupboard beneath the worktable, knowing it was Rovi’s special spot. Still, Rovi put his hand inside, expecting to feel nothing but the cool metal interior. But something was there—a book.
Rovi’s heart skipped. He looked over his shoulder as if someone might be watching him. Then, slowly, he pulled out the book.
He recognized it instantly as one of the large leather-bound notebooks his father had filled with sketches. It was thick, at least two hundred pages or more. Carefully, as if it might fall apart in his hands, Rovi opened the cover.
His father’s style of drawing was unmistakable. So were the images. Trees. Trees. Trees. And not any trees—the same tree over and over and over. Rovi turned the pages. More trees. More of the same tree.
It wasn’t a tree he’d ever seen before. It was massive, with a trunk that looked more like tentacles than a solid mass—like it was a tree growing over another tree. The base of the tree was made up of hundreds of strange tentacles that wound up and around, twisting and turning into a knotted whole before eventually spreading out into gnarled branches that were as tangled as the trunk.
Rovi turned the pages. He’d never seen anything like it. Over and over, the same tree—the same twisted wood—from different angles. Sometimes the tentacle-like branches looked like arms strangling something hidden inside. Sometimes they looked like a body clinging to the tree itself.
Hundreds of times his father had drawn this same tree. Each image was terrifying—the tree was sinister.
And there was something else weird about the tree. It didn’t have leaves. The branches reached up and out like a dead thing—a tangle of skeleton arms. The top of the tree was strange, too. At the highest point, the twisted branches almost flattened out, like they had reached some kind of ceiling and they were growing against it, spreading horizontally, not vertically.
Rovi kept turning the pages. How many times had his father drawn this tree? It seemed impossible that he’d had the time or the energy to draw it so many times. But each drawing was perfectly detailed—each dark crevice in the twisted branches, each burl in the wood, each knot and twist.
A tree like this clearly didn’t exist in the real world, only in Pallas Myrios’s imagination—his fractured and fragmented mind. Perhaps it wasn’t a tree at all. Maybe it was an invention, a killer tree or something used to kill a tree.
Rovi flipped through the hundreds of drawings again. They were drawn with the same precision his father had used when he sketched his inventions. So that’s what this tree must be. A tree-killing device. Was this what he was planning to use to kill the Tree of Ecrof?
Rovi slammed the book shut with a cry. He’d been trying to deny this fact for years. His father had been out of his mind when they’d left Cora. He hadn’t known what he was doing. That’s all Rovi would ever allow himself to admit. But now the evidence was in front of him. Pallas had wanted to build a machine to kill the tree.
He tucked the book in his gym bag and rus
hed to track training. The penalty laps wouldn’t be so bad. They would distract him from what he’d found—the evidence that his father had not just lost his mind but had wanted to destroy one of the Four Marvels of Epoca.
21
PRETIA
THE SELECTION
The last months had been lonelier than usual for Pretia. She was so afraid of the rest of the school guessing her secret after her accidental jump at Epic Elite trials that she started to find excuses to skip training. She was worried she’d revealed too much. She was worried she’d let the school glance her shadow self. So she pretended to be sick or injured. She got herself assigned penalty laps immediately so she could go off on her own.
At mealtimes she ate quickly and alone, often huddled around her Grana Book. She always returned to the image of the reflected forest that she’d opened to the first day in Granology, the image that was supposed to represent her time at Ecrof and her biggest challenge while she was there. Since the start of school, she had been staring at this page, but she’d come no closer to an interpretation. The picture still gave her an unsettled feeling, like there was something bad or evil in it somewhere. And Pretia couldn’t shake the feeling that this had to do with her cursed grana.
Two months after the trials, Pretia came down to breakfast to find the Dreamers’ cafeteria buzzing with excitement. For once, her fellow Dreamers weren’t devouring the delicious breakfast that came pouring out of the kitchen like it was their last meal of all time. In fact, many of them hadn’t even filled their trays. Most of the students were gathered around Cassandra, who was holding court in the middle of the room.
“What’s going on?” Pretia asked Virgil, who was trying to find a seat in the center of the crowd of students.
“They announced Dreamer Field Day,” Virgil said. “It’s next week. Cassandra is choosing the events.”
“Then she’s picking the athletes,” Adira added, tugging Virgil toward a free spot on one of the benches.
Pretia had no interest in Dreamer Field Day beyond sitting on the sidelines and cheering her fellow Dreamers on. So she filled her tray with honeycakes and found a seat on the outskirts of the group. The only upside to the Field Day was that it meant the year was nearly over. A few weeks after the competition, she’d be sailing home to Castle Airim.
“Okay,” Cassandra was saying. “As usual, the focus of Field Days is track events. That way the entire school, not just the older kids who have moved on to different sports, can participate.”
This drew cheers from the youngest students and groans from the upperclassmen.
“I was really encouraged by how well so many of you guys did at Epic Elite trials.”
Pretia watched the entire crew of Dreamers turn and look at Vera, who was staring moodily at Cassandra.
“So I decided the focus of our Field Day will be jumping. Long jump, high jump, triple jump, pole vault, and one race—steeplechase. I think we have a pretty good chance to win this one,” Cassandra added, “especially since I heard the Epic Elites won’t be back from secret training in time to compete.”
Pretia saw Rovi open his mouth to say something. But before he could, he was cut off by Virgil. “But if they don’t have their best athletes, we don’t have ours,” he said.
Cassandra gave Vera a meaningful look. “We have both Epic reserves,” she said. “And I was keeping track of the scores during trials. Four of the remaining top-ten finishers were Dreamers. So, as I said, I think we’re in good shape.”
Pretia looked at Vera again. The deep scowl was still on her face. “I want to compete against Julius,” she said.
“I can’t control that,” Cassandra said. “But I want you to compete because you’re you, not because you’re Julius’s sister and have an advantage others don’t have when racing him.”
“If Julius doesn’t compete, the Realists will always say they would have won if he’d been there,” Vera continued. “We should postpone until the Epic Elites are back so we can beat House Relia fair and square.”
“No way,” Adira said.
“I understand your point, Vera,” Cassandra said, “but, unfortunately, those aren’t the rules.”
Vera rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it a little weird to schedule a Field Day when the Epic Elites are gone?”
Cassandra tilted her head to one side and thought for a moment. “It’s a little unusual. But I guess Janos wants them prepared for the summer interschool meets.”
Vera opened her mouth again. Pretia knew what she was going to say without her saying it—some complaint about how she should be competing in the summer interschool meets. But before she could get this out, Cassandra told all the athletes who’d competed in the last Field Day to meet in the common room for a strategy session and to help her round out their teams.
Pretia finished her breakfast listening to Adira and Virgil speculate endlessly about which first years, besides Vera and Rovi, might be chosen for the Field Day. Pretia got up and helped herself to a plate of eggs. When she returned to the table, she saw Cassandra approaching. Adira and Virgil exchanged excited looks. But their faces instantly fell when Cassandra tapped Pretia on the shoulder.
Pretia froze.
“Pretia?”
Slowly Pretia turned her head and looked at her House Captain.
“I’m picking you for the high jump,” Cassandra said.
Pretia’s eyes widened. “Me? No,” she said. “No way.”
“If you can do what you did at Epic Elite trials, you’ll be awesome,” Cassandra said.
“But she was supposed to be doing the long jump,” Adira said.
Cassandra ignored her.
“Adira’s right,” Pretia said. “I did the wrong jump. I’ll be terrible.”
“Pretia,” Cassandra said, “this is a huge honor. Everyone wants to represent her house.”
Pretia shook her head. There was no way she was going to let this happen. “Not me.”
“Why not?” Casssandra asked.
“You know why. Everyone knows why. I don’t have grana.”
“That’s not what I think,” Cassandra said. “And I’m sure I’m right. I’ve been watching you.”
Pretia’s stomach flipped. This was her worst nightmare. She inclined her body so that she blocked Adira and Virgil from listening in.
“I don’t know what you think, but you’re wrong.”
“You do have grana,” Cassandra said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Pretia said. She glanced across the table and saw that Adira and Virgil had stopped whispering and were straining to hear what she and Cassandra were saying.
“You’re just hiding it for some reason,” Cassandra insisted.
“No,” Pretia said. “I’m not. I don’t have it. And if anyone said that, he’s lying.”
“Who would know about your grana?”
Pretia frowned. Had she given herself away?
“So there is someone else out there who knows about your grana?” Cassandra continued.
“No,” Pretia said, “there isn’t. No one knows anything.”
“I don’t believe that,” Cassandra replied.
“Believe whatever you want. It’s not changing anything. And I’m not competing for the Dreamers. That’s final.”
She stood up. She wanted to get as far away from the Temple of Dreams as she could.
She rushed out of the cafeteria without busing her tray. She raced through the common room and into the Hall of Victory, where she was instantly surrounded by the glory of all the best Dreamer athletes.
“Pretia!”
She didn’t stop when she heard Rovi’s voice echoing through the marble halls.
“Pretia!”
Pretia raced on, out of the Temple of Dreams, down the steps, down the hill. Before she hit the main field, Rovi had caught up
to her.
“Go away,” she said.
“If you’d used your grana, you could have escaped,” he said.
Pretia turned and faced him, her eyes full of fury and her heart racing. “You of all people should know that I’m never using my grana.”
“So you’re not going to compete for the Dreamers?”
Pretia narrowed her eyes. Her cheeks were burning. “No.”
“Pretia, we’re here to win. We could use you to win. If you hadn’t noticed, the Realists won the last Field Day.”
Pretia placed her hands on her hips and glowered at him. “I can’t use my grana. It’s cursed.”
Rovi tried to grab her wrist. “That’s ridiculous.” Pretia stepped back. “The Dreamers need you. I need you,” he said.
“And I’m the last person the Dreamers need.”
“Look,” Rovi said, pointing across the Panathletic Stadium at the top of the leafless Tree of Ecrof. “Look at the tree.”
Pretia looked. The formerly beautiful tree was a collection of withering black sticks.
“Everyone thinks that’s my fault. Everyone,” Rovi said. “Maybe if I’m on a team that helps the Dreamers win, that will change. And we need you to win. Do this for me.”
Pretia pursed her lips, trying to bite back her anger.
“My dad was fired for supposedly trying to cut down the Tree of Ecrof, and the minute I got to Cora Island, the tree began to die. So it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s my fault. What matters is that everyone—or at least every Realist and even some Dreamers—think it is. Excelling at Ecrof is my only chance to clear my name and my father’s name.”
“Then you should have tried harder in track training instead of butting heads with Cleopatra.”
“I know,” Rovi said. “But help me out. Help me be more than the kid who killed the Tree of Ecrof.”
