by Tara Grayce
I have never done anything like this before. I’m always the good child. The one who obeys all the rules and never talks back to my parents.
My parents won’t like me going off by myself. But this is my mess, and I should be able to fix it before they’ll even have a chance to realize something is wrong.
With a deep breath, I march to my wardrobe and fling the door open. I push aside a few articles of clothing and pull out a large, canvas sack, slinging the single strap over my head and across my shoulder. The sack is my getaway bag. If the castle is ever attacked, and I can’t get to Dad’s study and the portal to Michigan, I’m supposed to grab this bag and do my best to flee the castle.
I don’t even know why I grab it. Not really. I mean, this should be as simple as tracking Brett down and bringing him back through the portal. How far can he have gone in three hours? Especially without a specific destination in mind. I should be able to catch up with him, no problem.
Yeah, right. Like anything has gone right for me today.
I mean, he could be dead already for all I know. I swallow. Hard. Am I prepared to find his body and haul it back to Michigan by myself?
He’s still alive. He has to be. I won’t let myself think about another possibility.
After I return to Dad’s study, I slip through the secret door and head down the stairs as fast as I can without falling. Once I reach the bottom, I don’t pause for a deep breath. I don’t stop to think. I just stick my hand into the right side of the portal and let it drag me to the other portal in Averell.
I pop out inside an earthen cave. It’s completely dark, except for the tiny pinpricks of light filtering around the door built across the entrance. Roots dangle from the ceiling, clawing at my hair and scalp.
I peer through the peephole. The bushes outside the door are still. Underneath their spreading branches, I catch a few glimpses of the hills beyond. A distant herd of unicorns is grazing, but that’s the only sign of life.
Safe enough. I slide back the lock and throw my weight against the door to push it open. It’s heavy since the outside is covered with a layer of dirt and brush to camouflage it, and I have to push it up and out.
I wiggle free from the secret door and let it fall back into place with whump and a faint click. When shut, the door blends in with the rest of the small hill.
Dad has thought about building a tower over this spot to keep it even more protected but decided against it. Not only would it be difficult to keep the portal hidden from the gnomes when they excavated the tower’s foundation, but a random tower in the middle of the unicorn’s favorite grazing pastures would both alert everyone that there’s something worth guarding here and make the unicorns suspicious of our motives. And, thanks to our need for a lot of unicorn horn powder on a regular basis, we can’t risk offending them.
At least this particular grazing ground is a favorite of Trygg’s herd. It’s one of the safest places in Averell to wander. Hopefully that means Brett remains unscathed.
I scramble out of the bushes, brush myself off, and climb to the top of the hill to get a better view. Shading my eyes against the late afternoon sun, I turn in a slow circle, searching for a boy-sized figure strolling across the landscape.
I don’t see any. Nothing besides the usual birds and small wildlife, a dragon souring into the clouds in the distance, and the herd of unicorns.
Climbing back down, I search the ground around the hill, looking for any sign to show where Brett might have gone.
I find nothing. What did I expect? Bits of his hair and clothes scattered along the ground marking the direction he’d gone? People don’t shed hair or rip clothing that often, and he hasn’t been in Averell long enough for his clothes to start falling apart.
Face it. Tracking isn’t something I’ve learned as either a high school student or a princess. Maybe Ryan would’ve found something. He has gone deer hunting a couple of times with friends from school, but I don’t know the first thing about reading the impressions in the ground.
The grass appears just as springy and full as ever. No obvious footprints leading off into the horizon.
Maybe tracking in Averell is different than what I’ve heard about tracking on Earth. Averell’s ground is different. The grass has more of a bounce to it than grass on Earth, as if there is a giant sponge underneath the first layer of soil. It’s also a brighter green, like the grass green in a box of crayons.
Sighing, I dust off my hands. I’m going to need help. As much as I want to quietly fix this problem before it causes too much damage, I can’t do it on my own.
I should go back to the castle and see if Mom and Dad can be pulled away from the great hall long enough to ask for help. Or I should return to Earth and wait for Ryan so he can go with me.
But both of those options will lose time. Time I don’t think I have. Brett has been here for hours, and it is going to get dark soon.
I set off down the hill toward the herd of unicorns. Hopefully Trygg is with them. His herd claims this section of the hills.
As I crest the hill overlooking the herd, several of the unicorns look up. The guard stallion at the far end stares at me for a few minutes, nostrils flaring, before he shakes his mane and returns to eating with a long snort. As this is Trygg’s herd, the stallion probably recognizes me.
Unlike horses, a pair of unicorns mates for life, so a herd is made up of several families. The stallions take turns guarding the herd. The Stallion is the overall leader of all the herds of unicorns.
One of the long-legged, scrawny young unicorns breaks away from the others, kicks up his back legs, and races up the hill at full speed. His black mane and tail whip behind him while his shaggy, brown fur ripples with the surge of his muscles and the breeze kicked up from his speed.
I hold my ground, even when it looks like Trygg has no intention of slowing down. He likes to play this game, trying to see if I’ll flinch. I haven’t flinched since the first time he did this back when we were children.
A few yards in front of me, he digs his hooves into the dirt, skidding on the grass. In a blink, he transforms into a dark-skinned boy with black, shaggy hair down to his shoulders. He’s dressed in his usual bright blue shirt and green pants, oddly flamboyant compared to the puffy, brown fur he has in his horse form. He turns his momentum into a somersault, rolls to his feet, and halts in front of me. “Ami! You got away from the castle! Dad said those stuffy-nosed dragons were causing all sorts of head burns for your parents. I’m surprised you got away!”
He gives me an exuberant hug, his buck-teeth flashing with his huge grin.
I hug him too before I step back. “My parents don’t know I’m here.”
“Ah, sneaking out. I highly approve.” Trygg bobs his head so vigorously that the lock of hair falling across his forehead and eyes swishes back and forth.
“Of course you would.” I adjust the strap of my bag so it rests more comfortably on my shoulder. “Being a rebellious teenager is almost a sacred tradition for you unicorns.”
Trygg’s head hasn’t stopped bobbing. “Right you are. Actually, I think my dad is getting rather disappointed that I haven’t done nearly enough rebellious stuff yet. Mom is secretly relieved, but Dad was so looking forward to being the stern father after all the trouble he gave his dad. I’m pretty sure I caught him practicing his I’m-so-disappointed-in-you-son lecture with his reflection in the pond the other day.”
“I can help with that, actually.” I adjust my sack again. It’s going to be a pain—literally—to carry this sack if I’m already sore from its weight. But I know better than to ask Trygg to carry it. Unicorns are not beasts of burden. “How would you like to join me on a little quest?”
“Quest? As in, take off without my parents’ permission?” Somehow, Trygg’s grin widens. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. We shouldn’t be gone too long. Maybe a couple of hours at most.”
Trygg huffs, blowing the lock of hair into the air before it falls
back over his eye again. “Bummer. My parents won’t even notice I’m gone. Oh, well.”
The less notice we attract, the better, but I don’t tell him that. “I was put in charge of a son of a foreign diplomat, but this boy ended up wandering off and getting lost. I know he went this way, but that’s as far as I can get by myself. Do you think you could help me track him down before my parents know he’s missing?”
I don’t let myself wince at the lies and half-truths. I can’t tell Trygg that we are trying to find a boy from my high school who accidentally fell into Averell from another realm. Knowing Trygg, he’d want to go straight to the portal and explore Earth for himself.
Trygg shrugs. “Sounds like fun. Sure. Where do we start?”
For the first time in the last few minutes, I breathe somewhat easier. I point back the way I’d come. “Over there.”
Chapter 5
We Pacify a Naiad
I lead Trygg back over the hill to a spot near the secret entrance. Not too close, obviously.
Trygg turns in a slow circle, his nostrils flaring. He points in the direction of the secret entrance. “That way.”
“That’s where he came from. So where did he go?” I lean forward onto my toes.
Trygg shoots me a look. “Give me a moment.”
He transforms into a unicorn and lowers his head, sniffing at the ground like a dog. He trots a few paces, snuffling loudly, and wanders in a few wide circles before he turns back into a boy. “If you tell anyone about this, then...then I’ll think of something sufficiently horrific.”
“My lips are sealed.” I hold the back of my hand to my mouth, as if pressing a royal seal into wax.
Trygg’s nose wrinkles. “Your friend smells weird.”
“He’s not a friend.” I say this too quickly, too automatically. “And, he’s a foreign diplomat. He’s bound to smell different than a native Averellian.”
I can’t explain just how foreign Brett is. As in, not even from this realm. How different does Brett smell to Trygg? It shouldn’t be that different since he will smell similar to Mom.
What do I smell like to Trygg? I’m not sure I ever want to ask. I’m probably some strange mix of Averellian and something else, probably sour, to Trygg’s sensitive unicorn nose.
Trygg nods and points in the opposite direction of where his herd is grazing. “Well, your friend went that way.”
I heft my sack of supplies higher on my shoulder. “Lead the way.”
Trygg changes back into his unicorn form and walks ahead of me, occasionally lowering his head to sniff the grass.
We hike for an hour over the rolling hills and spot a few other unicorn herds, as well as a few more dragons flying overhead. Thankfully, neither the guard stallions in the unicorn herds nor the dragons pause to bother us. Two teenagers walking alone don’t pose much of a threat.
We steer clear of a colony of skeetles. They look like a cross between a squirrel and a prairie dog with fat, round bodies and bushy tales. They also happen to be bright yellow with a stripe down the center of their back in various shades of green. Trygg glares the entire time their colony is in view. Unicorns don’t like skeetles. Their colonies pose a hazard to galloping. A unicorn can seriously injure or break a leg if they step in a skeetle hole.
The skeetles chitter as we pass. They’re just creatures, not rational, talking people such as the unicorns, dragons, naiads, gnomes, silvarans, and dryads.
Trygg spends most of our hike as a unicorn, but occasionally he changes into a boy to talk. Because this is Trygg. He can’t help but want to comment on everything, and I listen patiently to his rant on the evils of skeetles.
The farther we go from the portal, the more my stomach clenches. What was Brett thinking to wander this far?
He’s now been in Averell for four hours. I know it’s human nature to wander and explore, but I honestly didn’t think he’d wander this far.
His trail veers occasionally. Once he almost seems to turn around, before he sets off at an angle to the direction he had been traveling.
Something is niggling at me about that. Was it something Mom told us about her first time in Averell?
The hills flatten to a sparkling stream bordered by brush on our side and a dark smudge of thick forests spreading out into the horizon on the other.
I don’t bother to stifle my groan. “Don’t tell me he went into the Ellian Forest.”
“All right, I won’t tell you. But that’s where he went.” Trygg changes back into a unicorn, sniffs at the ground, and pops back into his human form a blink later. “How foreign is this foreign diplomat of yours? Who doesn’t know better than to just traipse into the Ellian Forest?”
“He’s from the Isle of Trione.” I don’t want to lie more than I have to. Not to Trygg. But at least I can make this lie match all the other lies I’ve told over the years.
Trygg’s eyes widen. “Like that island your mom came from? I always heard things were different across the sea, but I didn’t realize how different.”
“Forests are a little friendlier where he comes from.” I force myself to keep walking forward, even though my stomach has now sunk into my toes, weighing down my feet.
Finding Brett is going to take a whole lot longer than just a few hours.
I check my internal clock. Ryan still has several hours before he will come through the portal and alert Mom and Dad. How soon will Dad be able to send a search party after us? We shouldn’t be hard to follow, not with the trail Trygg and I must be leaving on top of Brett’s scent.
Trygg trails behind me as we approach the bridge over the river. I crane my neck to peer under and around it. I don’t see any trolls guarding this particular bridge, which means a naiad probably lives nearby. Naiads and trolls don’t get along, since trolls holding up travelers at bridges tend to make travelers wade through the water with their dirty, smelly feet.
The bridge itself is mostly stone, with a few wooden beams forming part of the span and handrails. The wood is a good sign. It means that at some point, the dryads in this part of the forest cooperated with the naiads, the gnomes, and the silvarans to build this bridge into the forest.
When I’m only about three feet from the end of the bridge, the water at the edge of the stream ripples, flows against itself, then shoots into the air. The water forms and solidifies into the shape of a six-foot-tall man wearing mud-brown slacks the color of the river bottom and a gray shirt the same shade as the boulders lining the stream’s edge. The naiad’s skin is a translucent white-blue while his hair is cerulean blue. “More rivulets. Have you come to steal more water like that other one did?”
Other one. Probably Brett.
Trygg snorts. “Of course not. We aren’t nags.”
I grip his arm. This was going to take some finesse. “Let me do the talking.”
Turning back to the naiad, I gesture at the river. “This other rivulet, did he have light brown hair and blue eyes? Stood a few inches taller than me?”
“So you two are in with him?” The naiad grows a few inches in height. The water at the edge of the stream darkens and lashes into the air.
“Never seen him, actually.” Trygg shakes his head and shrugs.
“He’s a foreign diplomat who wandered away from Largone Castle, and we’re trying to find him.” I give the naiad my best princess smile. “I apologize for his actions. He doesn’t know our laws nor our language, which is why we need to find him before he causes any more trouble.”
The stream quiets, but the naiad doesn’t relax. “If it is so important to track him down, why hasn’t the king sent a search party?”
Good question. And one I don’t have a good answer for. Dad would, of course, send out a search party the moment Ryan tells him what happened. Not to mention, someone will have to come up with some story to tell Brett’s mom if we don’t find him before she is supposed to pick him up from our farmhouse.
The naiad’s crossed arms tighten. The water behind him lashes at the river ban
ks again.
Nothing to tell him but the truth.
I dip into a half-curtsy. “I am Princess Amarani Coriantha. I’m afraid I’m the one who let the boy wander off, and I’m trying to find him before my parents discover he’s missing.”
The naiad shrinks down to six feet tall once again and nods. “I see. Young rivulets have to carve their own paths sometimes. I did myself, years ago. You may proceed, but I would be cautious. I heard a ruckus in the forest after that boy ran into it. If he managed to offend me, he will surely offend the dryads even more.”
He probably had. I have to fight a frown. How much trouble has Brett managed to cause?
Hopefully, the dryads have simply detained him, and I’ll be able to convince them to turn him over to me. Then we could be back on our way to the portal before dark.
I glance at the sky past the naiad’s shoulder. The sun is low, touching its lower end below the tops of the forest ahead of us. We don’t have much time before we run out of daylight.
The naiad steps out of our way. I give him another smile as I stride past him. “Thank you for the warning. If my father King Finian comes this way looking for me and the foreign diplomat, please direct him after us. I may be a young rivulet carving my own path, but sometimes a rivulet has to defer to its elder stream when necessary.”
“Of course.” The naiad gives me a half bow and fades back into the water.
Trygg joins me on the bridge, and a shudder travels down his back. “I don’t like forests. Especially angry ones.”
I pat his arm. Unicorns, like dragons, are creatures of the open sky and hills. Not the deep forest. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“And leave you to wander the dark, scary forest alone? I may be a coward, but I’m not a bad friend.” Trygg snorts and shakes his head. “Though, if you don’t mind, I think I’d rather face the forest with all four feet on the ground.”
“I don’t mind. I’d rather you have your horn at the ready, though I hope we won’t need to defend ourselves.” And, staying in his unicorn form, would keep Trygg from talking when he shouldn’t.
