The Morning Flower

by Amanda Hocking

  “I’d like him to sleep down here in the medica, though, so I can keep a better eye on him,” the häxdoktor said. “He does really need some rest, but he will be fine.”

  “Perhaps we should clear out to let him sleep,” Elof suggested.

  “Is it okay if I stay a few minutes longer?” I asked.

  Elof nodded. “Of course. We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

  When they were gone, I turned back to Pan. His dark curls lay flat across his forehead, and I gently brushed them back. “Are you sure you’re okay?

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Honest.” He laughed lightly. “You’re so pretty when you’re worried.”

  “Thanks? I think?”

  He laughed again, harder this time. “No, I’m just saying you’re beautiful. I feel like everything I’m saying is coming out weird, but I mean what I say anyway.”

  “You sound drunk,” I commented.

  “No, I didn’t drink anything, not really, but since they gave me that girl’s blood I have been feeling pretty darn good.”

  “Pretty darn good?” I teased.

  “Yeah, really.” He put his hand over mine. “I also feel like I really wanna kiss you.”

  I chewed my lip. “I don’t know if you should in your condition.”

  “No, I know that I should.” He propped himself up a bit with his good arm. I leaned down and kissed him gently on the mouth, but I cut it short, pulling back.

  “What’s wrong?” Pan asked.

  “I’m still freaked out from you getting hurt.”

  “But I’m okay,” he insisted.

  “I know. I don’t think I could’ve forgiven myself if something really bad happened to you because you followed me here.”

  He relaxed back down on the bed, content with just holding my hand. “I would follow you anywhere, and it’s worth whatever risk there is.”

  “You’re so cute when you’re all high on Älvolk medicine.”

  “I’m always cute,” he joked.

  “That’s true,” I agreed with a laugh, and he yawned loudly. “You’re tired. I should let you sleep.”

  “Stay with me until I fall asleep.” He tugged at my hand. “Please.”

  I nodded, so he scooted to the side, as much as the narrow bed would allow, and I squeezed onto the edge beside him. I rested my head on his chest, and he wrapped his good arm around me. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep, but I stayed with him a little bit longer, listening to his heartbeat and savoring the way his arm felt around me.

  Eventually I untangled myself from him. I went toward the door when something caught my eye. Under the apothecary table I saw a pink gemstone glinting in the light, and I crouched down to pick it up.

  It was a friendship bracelet, woven with neon thread, dried flowers, and a few glimmering plastic gemstones. There was one large bead in the center: a Linnea twinflower covered in clear resin. I had seen it before; I had actually been the one to buy it for Hanna, back in Merellä. She’d used it on a bracelet that she had made for Eliana.

  This was Eliana’s bracelet.

  She’d been here since she’d left with Illaria, and Indu had told me that it had been years since she’d visited here. But she was here, in the medica.

  Indu was lying about her. How much of anything he said could I really believe?

  I palmed the bracelet and hid it in my fist, and I was shaking slightly when I left the medica. Elof and the häxdoktor were talking outside of the room, and Elof assured me he’d be checking on Pan throughout the night.

  As tired as I felt, I was strangely wired, and I didn’t feel like sleeping. The dungeon-like dormitory felt more than a little claustrophobic, so I decided the answer was fresh air. On my way back to the room, I noted some thrimavolk standing guard—down the hall at the bottom of the steps that led up to the main door through the stables.

  Dagny was already asleep again when I got back to our room, and I quietly pulled on my jeans and got out my Moleskine notebook and my cell phone. I’d turned it off when we got here to conserve the battery, and I turned it on now. It was after two in the morning, so the sun had risen after a brief civil twilight, and I grabbed the solar charger from my bag in hopes that there would be enough sunlight now. I fastened the bracelet around my wrist so I wouldn’t lose it.

  I didn’t take the notebook with me—I didn’t want to risk losing or damaging it—but for a minute I studied one of the maps I’d traced. I didn’t think the thrimavolk would physically stop me from going outside, but I wanted to see if there was a way to get out without them knowing.

  It was something that Finn had always taught me to do. Make sure you know all the exits.

  This is exactly why I had copied the maps of Áibmoráigi from the book back in the archives—so I would know how to get around if I ever found myself there. The map showed a well with a ladder in it next to the bathroom in the girls’ dorm. The water it tapped was miles below the surface, so a doorway opened into the tunnel.

  After the commotion because of Pan’s injury, everyone had apparently gone to sleep, and the halls were dark and quiet. I used my phone flashlight to light my way, and the door to the well was fairly easy to find.

  The door was heavy iron and didn’t open easily, and it took my superior strength to open it, but I managed to do that with only one loud grunt from me and one tiny creak from the door. It opened to a big hole—one end running down to the water, and the other going up toward the sun.

  I slid my phone in my back pocket and grabbed the mossy ladder that ran up the stone well wall. Then I leaned back and closed the door carefully behind me. I made it up the ladder only slipping and worrying about death three times.

  Outside, I breathed in deeply, relishing the fresh air in my lungs even if it was stinging cold.

  The ruins of the First City sat on a flat plateau jutting out from the mountain, and the edge of the city ended in a sharp drop-off. I walked over to the edge of the cliff, and I sat down and folded my legs under me, watching the sun rise over the mountains. I touched the bracelet on my wrist, toying with the flowered bead.

  “Where are you, Eliana?” I whispered.

  My phone dinged in my pocket.

  It was a message from Hanna.

  I tried calling but I couldn’t get through. I’m assuming you’re safe and just far out, because that’s what you told me you’d be up to. But you better be taking lots of pictures. If you get enough signal, we should video chat. I hate that I’m here and missing out on all the action.

  Sorry I’ve been silent for a few days. Mom grounded me from the internet because of some stupid fight I had with Liam, who was the one being a snot and not me. But that’s a story for another day, as you would say.

  Have you heard anything about Eliana yet? I keep asking Dad to help, and he says he’s talked to the Queen and the Chancellor, but he doesn’t think there’s really anything we can do, since we didn’t know that much about her.

  I would just feel a lot better if I could talk to her, or even if I just knew that you’d talked to her or something. She’s my friend, and it sucks that I don’t have any way to talk to her.

  The book I’m reading is called Jem-Kruk and the Adlrivellir. You probably haven’t heard of it. It was in with my dad’s stuff, not Finn but my bio dad. My grandfather Johan actually wrote the book. Mom says he was some kind of children’s author and a historian, which is why I think some of the stuff he wrote is so accurate. He based it on real stuff he knew.

  Anyway, I’m sure you’re busy, and I gotta go. Call me when you get a chance.

  -Hanna

  Along with the message, she’d included a couple photos she’d snapped of the book info, a title page that had been missing from my own copy.

  JEM-KRUK AND THE ADLRIVELLIR

  An Adventure Story for Children

  By Johan Nordin

  Hanna’s grandfather wrote the book. He knew so much about Jem-Kruk and the place he came from. How had he known all this? And why hadn’t he
told me he’d written the book when I was at his house? Why would he hide it?

  Eliana’s bracelet felt heavy on my wrist. She’d been here, and Indu and Noomi—my father and my half-sister—were hiding that from me.

  Why? And what the hell was going on around here?

  The bracelet tickled my wrist, and when I looked down, I saw it wasn’t the bracelet but a inky black spider crawling up my arm. I flicked it away and scooted back from the edge of the cliff, right into waiting arms. Long fingers wrapped around my face, cold and strong, and blotted out the sunlight.

  47

  Visionary

  I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. It was trapped in my throat, like with the Ögonen when they’d caught me in the Catacombs of Fables back at the Mimirin. But this time I was paralyzed too my limbs frozen in place as I gasped in the darkness.

  But suddenly there was light in the darkness. A green fog that I was flying above, and then I zoomed in toward it. None of it was of my own accord. Rather, I was being dragged along by some unknown force, pulled into the emerald cloud, which smelled of sulfur and ash.

  My vision cleared. I couldn’t turn my head to look around, but behind me I heard something chasing after me. It made a thunderous roar, twisted with a painful shrieking.

  Then I was plunging down, underneath the cloud and into cloud water. But that only lasted a moment, an icy few seconds where I couldn’t breathe, and then I was surging out, gasping for air as I flew up over a waterfall.

  I was spinning, spiraling really, and the waterfall was below me, disappearing back into the darkness it had sprung from.

  Suddenly I was falling again, and a grassy field came into view hundreds of meters below. I fell through the sky, where rust-red vultures circled, and I was plummeting toward the meadow. It was empty, except for three yellow flowers, and I closed my eyes shut, bracing for impact.

  But instead, I landed on my back gently on the soft grass, and I opened my eyes to the bright blue sky above me. I was lying on the cliff in the ruins of Áibmoráigi again, and I was gasping for breath.

  I sat up and scrambled back from the edge, frantically looking over my shoulders until I saw the Ögonen standing to the south of me. They looked like the ones I had seen back at Merellä, with the light shining through their semitransparent ocher skin.

  They had no mouth but wide dark eyes, and they stared down at me. Slowly, they raised their slender arm and pointed toward the south side of Áibmoráigi. I followed their fingertip, and I saw a white woolly elk walking toward the south side of the city.

  I got to my feet, and I followed the elk, walking the past the Ögonen and following the winding paths through the crumbling stones. Beyond what Indu had shown me when he’d brought me into the First City.

  And there at the far southern point, where the bluffs ended against the steep mountain face, there was an arched stone bridge spanning over a steep canyon. The woolly elk paused before the bridge, looking back over its shoulder, the cinnamon-red eyes on me. When it started walking again, I followed it over the bridge.

  I didn’t look down, because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to take another step. The stone bridge was narrow with no parapets on the side, nothing to prevent me from falling over the edge and down, down, down … I took a deep breath and slowly made my way across.

  The albino elk was walking faster, not quite trotting, but before I could reach the other side of the bridge, the elk had started to round the mountain. I ran, the bridge shaking underneath me, and I stumbled at the end and fell onto the plateau. The grass and dirt softened my fall, and I got to my feet and ran onward, but I didn’t see the woolly anymore.

  On this side of the bridge, across the canyon that separated me from the ruins of Áibmoráigi, the air smelled sweeter, and I could hear the sound of rushing water echoing off the cliffside and mountains.

  I chased after where the elk had been, but there was no sign of it. Just a wide grassy ledge curving around the mountain. It was angled, with rocks and small boulders hiding in long grass for me to trip over or slip on as I scrambled along.

  When I finally rounded the mountain, my bare feet slipping in the mud, I found myself face-to-face with a waterfall. It was tall, with the water coming from a spring far above me, but the way it spread across the rocks, it didn’t seem that heavy. There was an ethereal, almost gossamer quality to the water.

  If I had to guess, I was about a quarter of the way from the top of the waterfall. The fast-moving water had cut through the land around me, and the pool at the bottom of the falls was hundreds of meters below.

  When the coursing water broke over the ledge, it flowed down the mountainside to join the chain of lakes in the valley below. There was nowhere else to go. The elk had disappeared into thin air.

  The bridge had connected Áibmoráigi with a bumpy path winding around a mountain ending in a broad plateau jutting out from sheer mountainface so that it seemed more like an island floating in the sky. It curved around the mountain, and it ended when the waterfall cut through it.

  I stepped back, trying to see if there was anything I had missed, and that’s when I really saw how familiar and beautiful the waterfall looked. I had never seen this one before, but I had seen another like it, in the faded pages of Mr. Tulin’s old nature magazines. Catarata velo de la novia in Peru, which roughly translated to the Bridal Veil Waterfall in English, had gotten its name because when you looked at it from the right angle, the falling water made a silhouette like a woman standing in her bridal veils.

  And that’s what I saw now, but not a woman in her bridal veils.

  “‘Remember to find the woman in the long white dress,’” I whispered.

  48

  Falls

  I climbed up the rocks around the waterfall, scanning the cliffside and rushing waters for any sign of an entrance or anything that would lead me to Eliana. I hadn’t seen anything so far, so I was trying to get higher for a better vantage point. Or maybe the entrance was at the top of the waterfall. Or maybe even higher, but the peak of the mountain was a sheer journey—many kilometers straight up.

  “What are you doing out here, so far from home?”

  I whirled around to see her standing behind me. Her skin was shifting—like the Kanin tribes, she’d shown the ability to change her skin to match the environment, much like a chameleon, and even the delicate gown she wore changed, the green grass and gray stone becoming a sheer lavender fabric flowing around her.

  This all gave her the effect of materializing out of thin air as she stepped toward me. Her pale green hair was long and free, and she tilted her head as her lips pulled into an odd, pouty smile.

  And that’s when I realized it wasn’t her. The smile wasn’t quite right, and she had a scar on her cheek—a little mark like a tiny hook.

  “You’re not her,” I realized, and her smile widened, revealing her bright teeth. “You’re Illaria.”

  “So I am. I should’ve known you’d be able to tell the difference. It must be one of those sisterly things,” she said.

  “You did know about me, then?” I swallowed hard. “You knew that we were sisters.”

  She sneered at me. “Of course I did, but because I know something doesn’t mean I feel the need to tell everyone about it. For example, I know that you’re nothing but a disgusting troglodyte, and I would be bappers if I willingly claimed you as part of my family tree.

  “Don’t look so offended,” she snapped at me. “My mother was descended from Kings, and you’re this.”

  “Alai, did you lure me out here just to make fun of me?” I asked—shouted at her, really. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Lured you? I didn’t lure you anywhere.” Illaria shook her head. “I followed you to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble.”

  “What about the albino elk?”

  She instantly perked up. “What albino elk?”

  I rubbed my temple. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Where is Eliana? I want to see her.”


  “She doesn’t want to see you!” Illaria yelled at me. “The only reason she even went to find you is because she was losing her mind. Eliana’s always been little off-balance, but after Mama died, she spiraled out of control. Going after you was the final indignity in a long list of disappointing mistakes on her part.”

  “Why can’t I see her?” I demanded.

  “Because she’s not here, and you can’t go where she is.” Illaria had had enough and she threw her hands up in the air. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to be allowed to go anywhere anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?” I stepped back from her, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go.

  Illaria was standing right in front of me, blocking the way back to the bridge. Behind me, the waterfall cut through the ground, and the plunge pool was too far down for me to land safely, and the rocks around the falls were too slick for me to climb quickly.

  “I told Indu not to let you come here. I told him that you were an unruly mistake and that you did not belong here, not with our kind.” She stepped toward me, and the skin around her eyes became a dazzling array of reds, shifting out like fire from her eyes.

  “But he needs his daughters,” she said, taking another step toward me. “So few of his have made it to age, and he can’t let go of what little he does have, even if they end up like you.”

  “I don’t even want to be here. Just let me go back and get my stuff and I’ll be on my way,” I said. “I won’t ever step foot here again, and I’ll stop bothering everyone about Eliana. It’s clear that the two of you don’t want anything to do with me, and I’m happy to leave you alone.”

  “Oh, I know you will. I’ll make sure of it,” she growled with a smile.

  This was not heading anywhere good, and I might only have one chance at this, so I knew I had to make it count. I swung at her, but she dodged out of the way, and I dismally remembered how Eliana had been able to hop around our apartment like an Olympic gymnast. And as Illaria dove away from my next swing, I realized that she definitely took after her sister in that regard.