“Oh, I’m sorry, Hanna,” Eliana said. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. I’ll never, ever, ever leave without saying goodbye. So, if I don’t say goodbye, you have to know that I’m not gone for long, and I didn’t go very far.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. I’ll always be close by,” she assured her.
Once we got back to the apartment, Hanna busied herself making some kind of sweet-and-tangy popcorn she dubbed “celebratory sparkle corn.” I used the landline to call Elof’s office and let him and Dagny know that Eliana was safe with us. The conversation was brief, Elof apologizing for the way things turned out today, and he hoped that given some time and space she would be able to return to see him again.
Eliana had settled in on the couch, where she perused through the shows that Hanna had saved on her laptop.
“I’m glad you came back with us.” I leaned on the arm of the couch beside her.
“I was always going to come back with you guys. I don’t know why everyone thinks I wouldn’t.”
“Because we don’t know much about you,” I reminded her.
“I don’t know much about me either, but I know that I’m not the type to bolt in the night,” Eliana contended.
“I understand that, but you have to be careful about making promises that you can’t keep.” I lowered my voice now, to above a whisper, so Hanna wouldn’t hear over the clatter of the pots and pans.
“What do you mean?” Eliana asked.
“You promised Hanna that you’ll always be close by.”
“But before that I said, ‘unless I say goodbye.’ I won’t ever leave without telling her. That’s a promise I can keep.”
“How can you say that?” I asked.
“Because it’s true.”
“You don’t know where you’re from, or when you’ll go back,” I said, doing my best not to sound accusatory. “Today you saw two trolls after you—a shadow and a dragon, whatever that means.”
“I’ve thought about it more, and it wasn’t a dragon. Dragons breathe fire and have wings.” Eliana said this without looking up from the laptop, her eyes fixed on the images that rolled by as she scrolled through Hanna’s shows.
“What made you think it was a dragon?”
“The skin. It was dark and leather, and they were thin but really tall. I think dragons are quite tall.”
The first thing that popped into my head was the Ögonen. As soon as she mentioned their skin, I pictured them as I saw them last—standing in their atrium towers along the roof of the Mimirin, the setting sun shining through their thin ochre skin.
“Was it an Ögonen?”
“I’ve never heard that word before, so I can’t say,” Eliana replied without giving it much thought.
“Did it look like a dragon mixed with Slenderman, minus the wings and fire?” I asked, floundering for the most accurate description I could come up with.
“I don’t know what a Slenderman is, but it was definitely slender.”
“What would the Ögonen want with you?” I asked, but I was thinking aloud more than really asking Eliana.
Still, she replied with a curt, “I don’t know that it was an Ögonen, and I have no idea what they wanted with me.”
“What about the shadow?” I turned my attention back to her. “Why did you call it that?”
“Because she looked like me, only darker.”
“Darker? Do you mean like how your skin is darker than mine, or Dagny’s is darker than yours?”
“No.” She paused her search to give me a look, like I was an idiot. “She didn’t have a different complexion. She was darker. Like a shadow. And she followed behind me, no matter how fast I ran. Like a shadow.”
Eliana’s description did little to help me understand what she had seen, but it also seemed like she wouldn’t respond well if I asked too many follow-up questions, so I decided my best course was to move on.
“How did you lose her, then? I mean, I’m assuming you lost her, since when we found you, you were alone.”
“When I ran past the city walls, she didn’t follow me,” she said indifferently, like it wasn’t much concern of hers why some shadow would pursue her or why it would stop.
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No.” She paused, then added, “But the dragon did.”
“What did the dragon say?”
“‘Remember the woman in the long white dress.’”
I mouthed this to myself, repeating it, hoping it could dislodge some tidbit of memory that would give it meaning. “Do you have any idea what that means?”
“No, but I’ve never thought of dragons as making a lot of sense,” Eliana said.
“Have you met a dragon before?” I asked skeptically.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve just never thought of them as smart.” She looked up from the laptop. “Hey, Hanna, what is Brave? Can we watch it?”
“Sure!” Hanna said. “It used to be my favorite movie when I was younger.”
“Were either of them wearing a dress?” I asked.
“No.” Eliana turned to look at me. “Ulla, can we be done talking about this? I didn’t really enjoy my morning, and right now I would like to watch this movie and eat Hanna’s sparkle corn.”
“Leave her alone, Ulla,” Hanna called from the kitchen.
“I didn’t say anything more!”
She glared at me as she stirred a bowl of sparkling pink sprinkles. “Good. Don’t.”
34
Symbolic
The remainder of Sunday was restful, but that did little to make the transition to Monday morning easier. I thought that being away from kids would make my time here in Merellä like a vacation, but between the internship in the archives, my investigation with the Inhemsk, and dealing with Eliana and Hanna at home, living with five kids under the age of ten sounded like a piece of cake.
I arrived at the archives in the morning in time to see a batch of fresh crates brought in from Isarna. Calder rubbed his hands together as I pried open the crates, and with a bit of morbid glee he told me, “Another old Marksinna without heirs died, and we’re getting all the books in her estate.”
Unfortunately, as it would turn out, the Marksinna’s collection had been badly damaged by a flood some years back, which meant that we spent the morning wearing rubber gloves and face masks trying to salvage moldy books—most of which were far beyond saving. The only things we managed to save were several morbid scrapbooks of dried, pressed flowers from funerals and headstones, each one labelled Mourning Flowers.
I skipped most of the breaks that day at Calder’s request, including lunch, but by the afternoon my stomach was grumbling at me so loudly that even he insisted I get something to eat. Since it seemed likely that he would ask me to stay late organizing the new texts, I realized this might be my only free moment to look for info on my parents.
With that in mind, I grabbed a bag of plantain chips from the vending machine and snuck down to the cellar to dig in. I had finally moved out of taxes into a section simply titled INTERCEPTED UNCLASSIFIED COMMUNICATIONS.
I grabbed a stack of binders, set the time on my phone to fifteen minutes (I thought about subtracting the four minutes I spent getting the chips and getting down here, but honestly, I earned the whole fifteen today), and I dug in.
Seven minutes in, I found it. A crisp white half sheet of paper printed with a blotchy pale blue ink.
NORAM TELEGRAM
province of fulaträsk 2 dec 1998
c/o p.o. box 117 latania springs, la 70750
after much discussion we have decided that an intervention must be undertaken. a peaceful resolution is only possible with an intermediary. orra fagel has been dispatched to the first city as an emissary for the kingdom.
h. t. otack, adviser to the king
Beneath that, a handwritten message had been scrawled:
Orra has not yet returned. What is the status of her whereabouts?
H.R.M. Bodil Freya F�
�gel, Consort to the King
8/Nov/1999
Bodil Fågel would one day go on to marry the King and take his name. The Omte tried to block out any communications or documents about the royalty, so this must’ve gotten through around the turn of the century. Before Bodil was the Queen Regent, and back when she and Orra were low-ranking Marksinnas.
At the very top of the page, halfway covering the name of the communications company, was a red waxy seal, embossed with a familiar symbol.
I had only seen it once before, but it had been just a week ago that I’d first seen the viny triskelion. It was at Hanna’s grandparents’ house, on the cover of one of Johan’s books. Jem-Kruk and . . . something.
I read the message over three times before deciding that this was only wasting time. If I wanted to get more info from this, I had to get out of the cellar. I crumpled up my bag of chips and tucked the binder under my arm.
A few minutes later, I was jogging back into the archives.
“Good, you’re back,” Calder said, without looking up from the book he was translating. “I trust you had a leisurely break.”
“Yeah, it was a really leisurely race through a bag of chips and speed-reading in the cellar,” I muttered.
He glanced over at me with an arched eyebrow. “What was that?”
“Never mind.” I shook my head and gave him a weak smile. “I know you’re busy, but can you look at something for a sec?”
He sighed and rested his arms on the desk. “I’ll give you twenty seconds, but not a moment more.”
“Perfect,” I said as I slid the telegram in front of him. “Do you know what the symbol is?”
“The one in wax?” Gingerly, he picked up the paper so he could peer down at it, and then shook his head. “No, I can’t say that I do.”
“You sure? You’ve never seen it before?”
“In my work, I see many symbols and shapes that are virtually meaningless—appearing once and then never to be seen again.” Calder handed the paper back to me and returned his attention to his work.
“What about Jem-Kruk?” I asked quickly, knowing that my twenty seconds had to be about gone by now, and he shook his head. “And the . . . the Addle-river?”
He chortled. “You mean the Adlrivellir?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said excitedly.
“It’s mentioned once or twice in fairy tales,” Calder said. “There’s nothing too substantial written on it, and there’s no evidence that it ever really existed. And now I think that your twenty seconds is long over.”
“Just one more question,” I said, and he glared up at me. “Where would I find those fairy tales? If I wanted to read more about Adlrivellir?”
“The catacombs,” he replied with tired disinterest. He closed the book he’d been looking through and stood up.
“Catacombs? Like for mummies?”
“No, the Catacombs of Fables—the labyrinthian chambers underground that house all our fairy tales and myths, all the fictions that could be misconstrued with fact to make a confusing and dangerous situation. Accordingly, they’re locked away, to protect them and to protect us.”
With that, he gathered up his books and turned his back to me as he walked away. “I suggest you get to work now, Miss Tulin. Those books won’t translate themselves.”
I looked back at the crates, and their stacks and stacks of blurry tax returns and banal correspondence. On the side of each, written in big bold letters, was the place they had come from—Isarna, the troll city in Sweden.
“These are all from Sweden?” I asked Calder’s retreating figure.
“You already know the answer,” he replied gruffly, and that was enough of a confirmation for me.
In late 1998, Orra Fågel had been sent on a mission to Sweden, by the King of the Omte. A year later, she still hadn’t returned, and in 2006, her cousin—Bodil, the Omte Queen Regent—had her declared legally dead.
35
Shadow
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.” Dagny let out a satisfied groan and pushed her plate away.
“Yeah, you really outdid yourself this time, Hanna,” I agreed as I finished scooping up the last few bites of the meal on my fork. The four of us sat around the table eating a delicious veggie pizza.
“The pizza was all Eliana,” Hanna demurred. “She has to have the most perfect palate or something.”
Eliana grinned. “I don’t really understand what that means, but I’ve taken it as a compliment.”
“That’s the correct thing to do,” Dagny assured her.
A knock at the door interrupted our post-meal recovery haze.
“Ulla, you get it,” Dagny commanded as she leaned back in her chair.
“Why do I have to get it?”
“It’s probably for you,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s probably your boyfriend.” Hanna went all singsong at the end, the way she did nearly every time she referenced Pan since he’d had supper with us the other night.
“Shush. He’s not my boyfriend.” I got up and answered the door anyway, but mostly so they wouldn’t see the blush forming on my cheeks.
I opened the door, half expecting it to really be Pan, but instead it was Elof Dómari, looking rather uncertain.
“Elof!” I said in surprise, and no sooner had his name left my mouth than Dagny was up and rushing to the door.
“Elof, is everything okay? Did you need me for something?”
“No, everything is fine.” He held up his hands in a gesture of peace and reassurance. “I’m sorry to intrude. I just wanted to stop by and check in to see how Eliana was doing.”
“Yeah, of course, come in.” I moved back and opened the door wider for him.
“Do you want anything?” Dagny asked, hovering beside him. “Tea? Coffee?”
“A raspberry crumble with spicy rose petal foam?” Hanna asked, offering him up the dessert that we’d all had to decline because we were too full.
“I don’t think I have ever heard of such a dish, so yes, I absolutely must try that. Assuming, of course, that it isn’t too much trouble,” he said with a smile.
“If it was trouble, I wouldn’t have offered,” Hanna told him and headed to the kitchen.
“Thank you.” He set his sights on Eliana, the only one still seated at the table. “Hello, Eliana. Do you mind if we sit down and chat?”
“I don’t mind as long as you don’t jab me with anything,” she replied unenthusiastically.
“I promise that I will never lay a hand or an instrument on you without your permission. Not now, not ever,” he promised her emphatically.
“I did try to stop the second you asked me to,” Dagny added, not for the first time. “I just didn’t want to hurt you worse.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t know that I didn’t like needles before, but now I do,” Eliana said.
Elof climbed up onto the chair beside Eliana—a bit of a difficult maneuver because of his short stature and the bar-height of the stools. I moved toward him, to help him somehow, but Dagny’s arm was up in a flash, blocking me, and she shook her head no. Within moments he was comfortably seated next to Eliana, entirely on his own.
“How have you been recovering?” he asked, while Dagny and I hovered in the background.
“Fine,” she replied noncommittally. “My arm is healing up fast. I wasn’t really that hurt. More freaked out.”
“Can I ask what it was that upset you so much?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned. “It hurt, and I was scared, and . . . I felt like if I stayed there I would die, so I had to run and get away.”
“Dagny told me that you ran to the ocean,” Elof said.
“I hadn’t seen it before. Not up close like that. I’ve seen it from the top of the buildings before, but it’s not the same as being right there and touching it.”
“That is very true,” Elof agreed as Hanna set a plate with the raspberry crumble in front of him. “Thank you, Hanna. This looks amazi
ng.”
“Eliana did most of the work,” Hanna told him.
“Did you?” He took a bite, then let out a pleased moan. “This is delicious. You two are quite the culinary experts.”
“We try,” Hanna said with a light laugh, and she sat on the chair on the other side of Eliana.
“Were you known for your cooking skills back where you came from?” Elof asked Eliana.
“I don’t know. I might’ve been.”
“Did Dagny tell you about the two trolls that Eliana saw after she ran off?” Hanna asked.
“She did mention something, actually.” Elof spoke between bites of the crumble, careful never to speak with a mouthful or let a pause go on too long. “Would you want to tell me about that?”
“Sure. I mean, I don’t have anything to hide.” Eliana repeated the same explanation that she had given the other day—nearly verbatim—about the non-fire-breathing dragon and the “darker” shadow.
“A shadow?” Elof echoed. “Does that mean she copied your every move? Or she was always a step behind you?”
“A little of both, but also neither. She was . . .” She trailed off, searching for the right word, but in the end she finished with a weak, “A shadow.”
Elof set down his fork. “All this shadow talk reminds me of a story that my mother read to me as a child.”
“What was it?” Eliana asked, her interest piqued at any mention of a new story.
“It was called ‘The Markis and the Shadow.’”
Eliana shook her head. “I’m not familiar.”
“Would you like to hear it?” Elof offered, and she nodded excitedly.
Once, many years ago, a young Markis in the north traveled south to visit his cousin. He’d only just come of age but he already considered himself a learned explorer, and he wanted to see all the world had to offer.
One night, after he’d reached the southern beach, he sat on the porch of his cousin’s house, watching as the sun went down. He watched his shadow grow long, following his every movement, and he imagined that his shadow was another troll, laughing and dancing on the beach around a fire, just as the Markis and his cousin did.
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