The Morning Flower

by Amanda Hocking

  Back at the inn in Iskyla, Mrs. Tulin often muttered, “Fish and guests start to smell after three days.” That was probably true everywhere.

  Since it was a celebration for Pan, she let him choose the music. He spent quite a bit of time flipping through the milk crate of records before deciding on Harry Nilsson. Pan made us supper and Rikky poured us wine. We talked and laughed as we ate, until I decided to take a break.

  I went back to my room to pack up my things. Since we were leaving early in the morning, I wanted to have it all together to be sure I didn’t forget anything.

  Once that was done, I messaged Dagny to let her know I’d be back home soon, and then I messaged Sylvi to let her know that I’d be coming back. I’d paid up my rent until the end of July—well, Finn had, as a sort of going-away present/college fund—so I knew my living situation in Merellä was covered until then.

  My boss Sylvi hadn’t exactly been my biggest fan before I left, but she let me go without too much complaint, so I hoped she understood. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or careless, but it was more important to try to find Eliana.

  Although, in our days of researching, we had barely inched closer to Áibmoráigi or how to find Eliana. I vacillated between convincing myself that she was safe with family or that she was in terrible peril.

  Before we left Merellä, I’d explained to the authorities everything that had happened with Eliana being kidnapped by her twin sister, Illaria. I had told Dagny and Elof, and I’d filed a report with Mimirin security—not that that had really done much good. There was very little proof of Eliana’s existence before she went missing—there was even less now that she had gone on the wind with Illaria, Sumi, and Jem-Kruk.

  Not that I really knew who they were.

  Then again, I didn’t really know who Eliana was either.

  With my messages to Sylvi and Dagny taken care of, I decided to send one to Hanna. I didn’t have much to update her on, but I knew she would worry if she didn’t hear from me soon. I wrote a few lines assuring her that everything was okay, and I attached a couple pics I’d taken of Drake the snapping turtle for good measure.

  By the time I had finished, it was still early. The fireflies hadn’t even come out yet, but maybe it was the light mist holding them at bay. The music was still playing—it had recently changed tracks from the cheery “Gotta Get Up” to the very melancholy “Without You,” so I guessed that Pan and Rikky were still up.

  It was empty out in the main part of the house, but the front door was slightly ajar, and I heard the splashing of Drake. Sometimes Rikky liked to feed the turtle after dusk. She said it more closely mimicked snapping turtles’ natural hunting instincts.

  I went to join them, but I stopped at the door. They were standing on the dock with their backs to me. An outside light was on, creating a halo of yellow above them, and the mist sparkled like glitter. It was heavy enough that their clothes were damp, clinging to their bodies. Rikky had her arm hooked through his, and both of them watched the animals swimming around.

  Then she said something—it was too quiet to hear over Nilsson’s mournful singing, and anyway they were too far away for me to hear. Pan looked over at her, then she leaned over and she kissed him, fully, deeply, on the mouth. She kissed him.

  And at least for a moment—a few beats of my heart—Pan kissed her back.

  19

  Break

  I shouldn’t have watched. I knew that then. I don’t even know why I did in the first place. Pan and Rikky were outside— I knew they were—and I was going over to join them, but instead I stood there like a creeper.

  And I saw her kiss him.

  And I saw him kiss her back.

  And I saw him stop. He put his hand on her shoulder and pulled away.

  And I heard him say, loudly, “This isn’t a good idea, Rikky.”

  She didn’t say anything, but she moved forward, like she meant to try again, so this time he took a full step back.

  That’s when I decided I’d watched enough (too much, really), and I knew it shouldn’t hurt, but it did. Pan wasn’t really my anything. I had no claim to him, and even if I did, she had kissed him. He had stopped it. Almost right away.

  Pan had done nothing wrong.

  Neither had Rikky.

  But I wish I hadn’t seen him kiss her.

  Or at least I wish I had kissed him first. Before I had seen him kissing her in the mist.

  I went back to my room and I pulled the blanket over my head and I wished I didn’t feel this way. I wished I didn’t feel sick to my stomach. But mostly I wished I would fall asleep and feel better tomorrow.

  It ended up being a little of both. I fell asleep relatively quickly, after a brief obligatory bout of tossing and turning, and I woke up feeling a little better but not great.

  I didn’t really know how to act around Pan. Or Rikky, for that matter. Which made for a very awkward farewell. It didn’t help that the conversation between Pan and Rikky was very stilted, full of lots of “ums” and “uhs” and very little eye contact.

  Things finally started to feel more relaxed when Pan and I were miles down the road. Until then, we’d been traveling in silence, but then he switched radio stations, flipping over to Elton John. He turned it up and sang along to “Rocket Man,” and eventually I joined in.

  “I’m really surprised you knew that one,” he commented once the song had finished, and he turned the radio down. “I didn’t think you guys listened to a lot of pop music in those really isolated villages where you grew up.”

  “We do, sorta.” I shrugged. “The changelings bring a lot of pop culture back with them, and everyone everywhere knows about the Beatles and Star Wars. But I would say generally speaking our tastes tend to be a little dated. In Iskyla, I heard a lot of Cher, Diana Ross, and Elton John.”

  “That doesn’t sound all that dissimilar to music in my house growing up,” he said with a laugh.

  We lapsed into a silence, but it didn’t last long before Pan broke it with, “Are you done talking to me until another classic rock song?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “You haven’t been talking much this morning, and it seems like something is wrong.”

  I slouched down in the seat, staring out the window as desert landscape rolled by. “No, everything’s fine. I’m just nervous about getting back.”

  “Have you heard back from Sylvi yet?” he asked.

  “No, but I’ve decided to take that as a good sign.”

  “I’ll try to put in a good word for you, for whatever my word is worth to her.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take whatever I can get, and Sylvi definitely likes you more than she likes me,” I said, which only made him laugh.

  “She’ll warm to you. It just takes time,” he assured me.

  “If you say so.”

  “Hey, I warmed to you eventually.”

  “What?” I looked sharply at him. “You didn’t like me at first?”

  He nodded. “Oh, yeah. For the first thirty seconds or so, I was really on the fence about you. And then you said, ‘Hello.’”

  I smiled. “That’s what did it for you?”

  “Yep.” He barely suppressed his own laughter. “That’s what won me over. I’ve always been partial to folks that know their greetings.”

  “I’m glad I finally won you over.”

  “Yeah, me too,” he agreed.

  Phoenix, Arizona, was roughly the halfway point in our nearly thirty-four-hour drive back to Oregon, so we stopped at a little motel on the side of the highway. Neither of us were exactly flush with cash, so we chose the cheapest option. It was a little rundown and still had physical metal keys for the doors, but it looked clean enough, and we got two queen beds in our room.

  “You want the bed by the window?” Pan pointed to the poppy-patterned bedspread. “I’ll take the one by the door?”

  “Sure. Whatever you want.” I tossed my duf
fel bag on the bed. “Is it cool if I use the bathroom first? I ate way too much sugar on the road, and I really gotta brush my teeth.”

  “Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna call Dagny anyway.”

  I’d begun gathering up my toiletries, but I stopped. “Dagny?”

  “Yeah, since she’s been dog-sitting Brueger for me, I wanted to call and check in,” he reminded me as he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his snug jeans.

  When he’d asked Dagny to take care of his dog, I’d been there. Technically, Brueger the Belgian Malinois was the property of the city of Merellä, used to herd the giant woolly elk. But Brueger had been sleeping at Pan’s apartment since he was a puppy, and he didn’t think it was fair to ask him to sleep out in the barn.

  “Tell her hi for me,” I said before ducking into the bathroom.

  I freshened up, and when I turned the tap off, I could hear him through the door, talking on the phone first to Dagny—in his normal voice, thanking her again—then to Brueger, in a slightly higher-pitched, excitable tone, asking him if he’s a good boy.

  I put a hand over my mouth to silence my giggle, but I won’t lie that it made me feel like taffy left in the sun all day—so warm and gooey and strangely pleasant.

  When I came out a few minutes later—having changed into light shorts and a tank top—Pan had gotten off the phone and changed into his own pajamas. Well, changed might have been too strong a word. He’d really just stripped down to his boxers, so he stood shirtless beside the bed.

  “Is this okay?” He motioned toward himself. (And, for the record, he had that wonderful naturally lean, muscular physique that happened with taking care of yourself and a bit of good genetics, and not that insanely jacked superhero look, so he would still be soft when he held you, but I already knew that from when he’d hugged me, and from when we’d danced.)

  “Sorry.” He apologized and reached for his shirt, and I realized I’d been staring at him, frozen, like a maniac. “You’re obviously not—”

  I held my hand up to stop him. “No, it’s fine.”

  “You sure?” He held his shirt like he meant to pull it over his head. “I did it because it’s hot in here.”

  The air conditioner sputtered in the window, doing its best to slowly cool the room, but he wasn’t wrong. It was stuffy and warm in here.

  I laughed, trying to break the tension of the moment. “It’s not that big a deal.” Then with a smirk I added, “I can sleep topless, if that’ll make you feel more comfortable.”

  “I never realized that was an option, but yeah, yes. That would make me feel much more comfortable,” he said, so I threw a pillow at him, and he laughed.

  “I should’ve known you’d answer that way,” I said as I climbed into the bed.

  “I think you did know,” he countered before hopping into his bed.

  “Good night, Panuk,” I said, before clicking off the lights.

  “Good night, Ullaakuut.”

  I heard the springs creaking and groaning as Pan got settled in. I double-checked my phone to make sure my alarms were set for the morning, and then I listened to the pathetic hum of the AC. He sighed, then rolled over. And then rolled over again.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I just…” He muttered something to himself that I couldn’t understand. “Was it because Rikky kissed me?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been aloof with me today,” he said. “And … and last night, Rikky kissed me. I was wondering if there was a correlation.”

  “Yeah, but not the one you think,” I admitted.

  The thin motel curtains let in enough of the streetlight that I could see his silhouette as Pan propped himself up on an elbow. “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s still so hung up on you.”

  “She’s not—” he argued, but I cut him off.

  “She really is, Pan. And you broke up with her because she wanted to go home and you wanted to stay in Merellä.”

  “That’s not the only reason,” he interjected quietly.

  “By the time we get back, I’ll have missed a week of my internship, and it ends three weeks from now,” I said. “Maybe even less, the way things are going.”

  He waited a little bit before saying, “You could stay.”

  “I might,” I admitted. “But I might not. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

  “Nobody knows what they’re going to do, not really,” he argued gently. “There’s no way I could’ve known that I’d ever be here, with you.”

  “I know.” I stared up at the ceiling and the blinking red light of the smoke detector, and I thought carefully how to word what I felt. “It’s not that…” I sighed. “I want to figure out what I want to do first. My internship ends soon. And then I will make a decision about where I’ll be living, and then … then I’ll be open to dating.”

  I grimaced in the darkness, hating how awkward and presumptuous it all sounded, but I didn’t see any way around the conversation. And I wasn’t sure I was saying the right things.

  If Finn were here for me to ask, I know that he’d praise me for being responsible and making smart choices, which was definitely a recurring theme in the Holmes household. All the kids—including myself—were encouraged by both Finn and Mia to make smart choices, to use critical thinking and logic.

  Of course, Hanna—who spent nearly the entirety of twelve years under the guidance of Finn and her mother—would be livid if she knew I was sort of turning Pan down.

  That fact really did reaffirm that I was probably making the right decision by waiting to get involved with someone until I knew for sure what kind of commitment I could make.

  But I was still thinking about how he looked shirtless, and that crooked smile that he had when we were dancing together, and the way his arms felt around me … and then I was wondering why I even made the decision to say no—

  “So,” Pan said, interrupting my train of thought, “if I understand correctly, what you’re basically saying is the real-life equivalent of the Magic 8 Ball saying, ‘Reply hazy, try back later.’”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know Magic 8 Balls?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It was a clunky joke anyway,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I was really saying that you meant, ‘Not never, just not right now.’”

  “Yeah, that is exactly it.”

  Pan lay back down, his silhouette disappearing into the dark shadow of his bed. “That all sounds reasonable and mature.”

  “Why do you sound so disappointed?” I asked.

  “Because I can’t really argue it. You’re right.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling rather disappointed with myself.

  20

  Correspondence

  After eighteen straight hours in the Jeep, the ancient city by the sea came into view. From working in the archives, I’d learned of the claims that it was one of the oldest establishments in North America, dating back to the 1500s, and the stone walls and looming towers showed their age enough that it was believable.

  It was dark when we got back to Merellä, so I didn’t get to see the citadel in its full glory—although the smell of the metropolis was definitely out in full force. The heady aroma of salty sea air, elk dung, fresh hay, rotting fruit, and flowers in bloom.

  Security guards at the gates stopped us, doing a quick scan of our IDs and our papers, and then it was the winding dirt roads through the quaint village, all stone and tiny Tudor houses, practically built on top of each other. And finally we rounded the corner and I could see the carriage house and the staircase to the apartment above it.

  The light at the top of the stairs had been left on for me, and I felt rather touched that Dagny had thought to do that.

  Even before we got there, I could hear Brueger barking. As soon as we parked, Dagny opened the door, and the dog bolted down the stairs and pra
ctically leapt into Pan’s arms.

  Pan laughed as Brueger slobbered and jumped all over him. “I wasn’t gone that long, buddy. But I missed you too.”

  “If you’re expecting me to run down the stairs and greet you like that, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” Dagny said dryly, and she leaned on the railing of the landing at the top of the stairs.

  “Aw, shucks,” I joked, and I unloaded my bags.

  “How was your drive?” she asked.

  “Long,” I said, and Pan immediately added, “Very long.”

  “Are you coming up, Pan?” Dagny asked. “Or are you heading home?”

  “I’m just so excited to get home and sleep in my own bed,” he said.

  “Suit yourself. I made some lemon tea for Ulla and me to relax,” she said.

  “Dang, Dags, you really are the best roommate.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Hurry up. The neighbors are probably trying to sleep.”

  Pan said his goodbyes—my arms were full with my bags, so I didn’t have to worry about navigating any possible hugs goodbye—and then he headed home, and I jogged up the stairs to my apartment.

  Dagny poured me the aforementioned tea, and I sank into the lumpy couch. To help set a relaxing mood, she lit a few candles and a stick of incense. Her silver archery arrow hanging on the wall glinted in the candlelight.

  She asked me about my trip, and I filled her in on the highlights—what we found out, Indu Mattison, the Kiruna Airport, meeting Queen Bodil, a little about Rikky, more about Bekk, and I even mentioned Drake.

  The only thing I avoided telling her was anything within the realm of my flirtation with Pan. I didn’t even tell her that Rikky was his ex-girlfriend. I figured that if Dagny cared to know about it, she would ask.

  “I never understood how their king died in a bar fight,” Dagny said after I finished telling her about my visit to the Ugly Vulture.

  “He really did!” I insisted. “They’re even proud of it.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

  I nodded emphatically. “They even had the ‘weapon’ that killed him on display. It was a big broken wine bottle.”