The Lost City

by Amanda Hocking

  Finally, after the sky was dark and the fire went out, the Markis’s shadow disappeared into the darkness, and the Markis went to bed.

  When he awoke in the morning, the Markis was surprised to see that his shadow had not returned. He searched everywhere, even in the brightest light, but it could not be found. Try as he might, he could not grow another, so he moved on without it.

  Soon after the loss of his shadow, the Markis ran out of money and energy, so he decided to return home to write of the beauty he had seen on his brief travels. He devoted his entire being to the study and creation of beauty and goodness. Over the next seven years, the Markis tirelessly wrote and painted and worked in his garden. His passions paid little, and his inheritance ran out, but the Markis was undeterred, even as he grew poorer and thinner.

  One night, a knock in the middle of the night roused the Markis. There on his doorstep stood the Shadow, no longer lost or slight. Through the intervening years, the Shadow had grown robust, his airy darkness taking on a fully trollian appearance, so he looked nearly identical to the Markis—or at least to how the Markis had looked in his prime, some years ago.

  The Markis invited the Shadow in, and they stayed up all night discussing what their lives had been. How the Markis’s diligent pursuit of purity and beauty had left him penniless and alone, while the Shadow’s wanton hunt for excess and debauchery had rewarded him with wealth and adventure.

  Despite his comparative misfortune, the Markis insisted that his was the only true way to live fully and appreciate the world. On the contrary, the Shadow argued, it was he who saw the world as it truly was, not the Markis.

  The Markis and the Shadow remained friends, and over time the Markis only became sicker while the Shadow only grew fatter. Eventually the Markis became so ill he had no other choice but to accept when the Shadow made him a rather taboo offer.

  The Shadow promised to get the Markis healthy and wealthy again if the Markis allowed the Shadow to pose as the Markis and the Markis to pose as a shadow, thereby reversing their original positions. Gravely ill, the Markis soon relented, fading into the darkness as he followed the Shadow’s every move.

  Now the master in the relationship, the Shadow took the Markis on travels around the world. Slowly, the Markis grew stronger and happier, and it was around that time that the Shadow met a beautiful Princess. They danced together—all the while, dragging the Markis along with their feet—and the Shadow and the Princess immediately fell in love.

  The Markis had had enough of the charade, and before the Shadow and the Princess were to be married, the Markis took the Shadow aside and insisted that they switch back or he would tell the Princess the truth about everything. The Shadow promised that he would, but he wanted to explain it to the Princess himself.

  That night, when all the lights were out, and the Markis had disappeared into the darkness that all shadows vanished into, the Shadow was alone with the Princess. Then he confessed his entire story to her—that he was really the Markis, and it was his Shadow that had gone mad, and now he wasn’t sure what to do.

  The Princess reasoned there was only one thing to do with a deranged shadow like that: to do away with him quietly, putting him out of his misery, before the wedding was under way. After all, they wouldn’t want to start their marriage under the dark cloud of accusation.

  The Shadow and the Princess were wed the following afternoon, with the Markis executed earlier that morning.

  “Your mother used to read you that story?” Hanna asked in surprise.

  “That is kind of a dark bedtime story,” Dagny agreed.

  “It seems to have an awfully ambiguous moral,” I said. “Is it an old-timey way of saying, ‘Greed is good’?”

  “Not exactly. I always took the story to mean that sometimes we can be blind to the darker parts of the world.” His gaze rested heavily on Eliana. “To the darker parts of ourselves.”

  Eliana had been chewing her lip, not saying anything, but she finally nodded. “I think I get it. You can’t shy away from the truth just because it’s scary or hard.”

  “That does tend to be the best approach, I’ve found,” Elof said.

  “All right.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll do it. I’ll come back to your office tomorrow so we can figure out who I really am. But no more needles.”

  “Never without your permission, I promise,” Elof assured her.

  36

  Flowers

  Dagny left at the crack of dawn for work, like she always did, but Elof had insisted that Eliana needn’t rush, so she decided to go a bit later in the morning, when I went to work. Hanna, naturally, wasn’t about to let Eliana go off alone—not that Eliana would’ve gone without her, anyhow.

  But I wasn’t used to sharing the solitary bathroom, not in the morning with the other three already competing to get ready at the same time, and we ended up finally heading out fifteen minutes later than normal. That meant messy bun with sunglasses and iced lemon tea for the road, and I was still slipping on my jewelry—a few rings and bracelets—as I headed to the door.

  “Hey, wait for us!” Hanna complained, shoving her laptop into her backpack as I opened the door. She was bringing it along, so she’d have something to entertain herself with while Eliana was getting examined.

  “Yeah, our little legs can’t keep up with you,” Eliana chimed in.

  I looked back at them over the top of my sunglasses. “I’m not that much taller than you two. You can catch up. Come on.”

  It was a beautiful summer morning, with a warm breeze coming up from the sea and the sun already dancing brightly above us.

  At corners and intersections, old wine barrels served as planters, adding cheery color to a crowded pastoral metropolis. All of the quaint homes and centuries-old buildings were built squished together, so there was hardly room for a patch of grass or any plants, really, downtown. On the edges of town, running along just inside the walls, was where the gardens were and where the farmers lived.

  So the barrels—each containing a small flowering shrub—were the only real spots of lightness and summer. They were beautiful little plants, with dusky pink bells that smelled sweetly of honeysuckle, and Eliana couldn’t resist stopping to sniff every single one.

  “What are these called?” Eliana asked, for the third time that morning.

  “Still the Linnea twinflower,” I replied dryly, then I stopped and turned back to her. “Do you honestly not remember me telling you that two minutes ago?”

  “No, I think I do. I just don’t remember,” Eliana answered vaguely.

  “Try repeating it to yourself three times,” Hanna suggested. “That’s what helps me when I’m trying to remember something.”

  “Let’s talk and walk,” I said, and I was already on the move as Eliana repeated Linnea twinflower to herself over and over again. I stayed a few steps ahead, weaving a path through the crowd without losing track of Eliana and Hanna, who had gotten into a very focused discussion about the plants.

  “Why is it called a twinflower?” Eliana asked.

  “Because the flowers—the pink bell parts—there’s two of them on each stalk, and they hang in mirrored pairs,” Hanna explained. “Like twins.”

  “Oh.”

  Eliana fell silent for a moment, long enough that I stopped and looked back to make sure she was still there. She was, but her eyes were downcast and her face was all pinched up in thought.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She rubbed at her temple. “I guess I don’t know what twin means.”

  “It’s when two things are identical, like the flowers,” Hanna said. “But mostly it refers to two babies that are born at the same time. When three are born together, they’re called triplets.”

  “Like any two babies?” Eliana asked.

  “No, siblings. Like sisters.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Eliana?” I pressed. “You seem even more spacey than normal.”

  She tilted her head at
me. “How do you mean?”

  “You seem to be struggling to understand things and are more forgetful.”

  “I do have a lot on my mind today,” she admitted. “That might explain the forgetfulness. But the understanding . . .” Her frown deepened, and she shook her head. “Maybe it’s because twins are such an alien concept to me.”

  “But . . .” I paused, studying the apparent confusion and frustration on her face. “You understand the idea of alien, or at least ‘alien concept,’ enough to understand that twins are an alien concept to you, but you seem baffled by twins. Where you come from is everyone an absolute complete individual, unlike and unconnected to anyone around them?”

  “No. No.” She shook her head more fiercely now. “I think it’s the opposite of that, actually. I feel like . . . I was not the only one. I was part of many. I had many twins.”

  For some reason, that admission made my blood run cold.

  “Do you mean you had twin sisters or had babies that were twins?” Hanna pressed, completely unfazed.

  “I don’t think I’ve had any babies, so I must mean sisters,” Eliana decided.

  “I have three sisters,” Hanna said. “Emma is all by herself, like me, but the babies Lissa and Luna are twins.”

  “All sisters are not twins, but all twins are sisters?”

  “Or brothers, or sometimes a brother and sister,” Hanna explained. “If you get really technical with intersex and conjoined and all the combos between, there’s probably like a hundred different gendered variations for twins.”

  “You know, if you really wanna know more about twins and sibling biology, Elof is basically an expert on that kinda thing,” I said. “So why don’t we get over to see him, and you can ask him all sorts of questions, and he can give you real expert answers, not the educated guesses that Hanna and I are giving you.”

  That got them moving, and it finally seemed like we were really on our way to the Mimirin. We had almost made it to the door—the lines to get through security were mere feet from us—when a woman handing out flower-chain necklaces shouted at us.

  “Are you ready for the Midsommar?” she asked as she thrust the necklaces at us. “This year’s theme is In Bloom.”

  “What is the Midsommar?” Eliana asked, and I groaned inwardly.

  “Only the biggest festival of the summer!” The woman smiled brightly.

  The tiny pink and blue flowers were carefully braided together to make a chain necklace, each one equipped with a matchbox-sized square of burlap, and the woman pointed to it, tapping the message stamped on it in ink. The necklaces were essentially a rustic take on flyers.

  “All the info is right there,” she explained. “It’s a really amazing night, and the best-dressed wins an awesome prize!”

  “It’s this Friday,” Hanna announced before I even had a chance to read it myself. “In a big fancy ballroom at the Mimirin!”

  “Thanks for letting us know, but we gotta get to work.” I grabbed Hanna by the arm—careful not to squeeze too hard as I pulled her away.

  “Did you know about this, Ulla?” Hanna asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Can I—”

  “No.”

  “But I’ll still—”

  “No.”

  “What about—” Eliana tried to join in, but I cut her off.

  I stopped and faced them both, holding up my hands to silence them before they even had a chance to start in. “I am already late for work. I do not have the time or energy to argue about this. Tonight, after I get home, I’ll go around and around about this for hours with you, okay? But right now, can we leave it, and let me get in there and get my work done?”

  Hanna draped her necklace around her neck and raised her chin haughtily. “Fine. But you know you haven’t heard the last of this.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed with a sigh. “I know that.”

  37

  Älvolk

  I jogged into the archives, out of breath and sweaty, and Calder was already waiting for me behind the curved desk.

  “Ulla, I wanted to speak with you.”

  “I know, I’m late, I’m sorry.” I rushed through my apologies as I slipped off my bag and dropped behind the desk. “I’ll cut off fifteen minutes from lunch and tack on another fifteen at the end of the day, so I’m basically throwing in an extra ten minutes as penance.”

  “Good. But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I sat down in my chair and let out a rough breath. “Okay. What is it?

  “I wasn’t entirely truthful with you yesterday,” Calder admitted quietly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He paused, finally, almost reluctantly, saying, “When I said I hadn’t seen the symbol from that telegram.”

  “You . . .” I sat up straighter. “Do you know what it was? Er, what it is?”

  “It seemed familiar to me. After you had gone for the night, I went down to the catacombs, and it refreshed my memory further. It’s the symbol of the Älvolk.”

  He set a thin book on the desk in front of me. It was little more than a pamphlet, really, held together with flimsy fabric-covered wood. Like the book I’d seen in Johan’s office, this one had no title on the cover—just the viny triskelion. Although, this one was only a faded stamp, nothing as glamorous as the gold embossing of Johan’s book.

  “What are the Älvolk?” I reached for the book, but Calder put his hand on it, stopping me.

  “This book”—he paused to tap his fingers on the worn cover—“came from the Catacombs of Fables. You understand what that means, yes?”

  “That it’s a fairy tale, not a history book.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Precisely. With our kind, the lines can get blurred, which makes it imperative that we must always distinguish fact from fiction, truth from lies.”

  “Critical thinking is great,” I agreed hurriedly. “I think I can apply it to old folktales.”

  “The Älvolk are monklike trolls that serve as the guardians of the Lost Bridge of Dimma,” he answered finally.

  “I don’t know what that is or why it needs guarding.”

  “Legend has it that the Lost Bridge is the entrance to Alfheim.”

  “Alfheim?” Unlike the bridge, that actually sounded familiar to me. “Wait. Doesn’t that have something to do with Valhalla? I thought that was just human mythology, like Mount Olympus and Wonderland.”

  “We’ve lived among them for so long, some of our mythologies cross, which is the only explanation I have for that superhero saga,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Stories of the Älvolk were most popular in the tenth century, when the trolls were traveling with the Vikings. I assume that’s how the stories of Alfheim got folded into their Norse mythos.”

  “Okay, so the Älvolk monks guard the Lost Bridge? That’s what this book is about?” I pointed to it.

  “This book outlines a series of relatively benign rules and theories on our existence,” he said with the same condescension he used whenever he mentioned humans. “You can read it for yourself, but I’m certain, like me, you’ll find it to be a benign fable. This is not why I remembered the symbol or the Älvolk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In your history classes, did you learn of how hard the Industrial Revolution was for trolls?”

  “Yeah, our society hasn’t really recovered since.” It was one of the few world subjects we covered at length in school, just before I left in grade nine, when Finn and Mia started homeschooling me.

  “It was especially hard in the beginning, with human technology outpacing our magic and their progress devastating our homes, and our offspring stopped coming back . . .” He let out a rather disgusted sigh. “During times of upheaval, it can be tempting for some to lean on the old ways and myths for comfort.

  “That is what some trolls decided to do,” Calder went on. “They became followers of the Älvolk, and in depressingly short order they warped into a cult, worsh
ipping a strange dogma that promised eternal life across the Lost Bridge of Dimma. The followers were soon consumed by their deranged pursuit and turned to violent and sadistic means to get their objectives.

  “To stop the influence of the cult, the Älvolk and their literature were banned from the Mimirin,” he finished grimly.

  “Are you worried that me reading one boring old book is going to lead me to join a cult?” I asked.

  He managed a thin, humorless smile. “No. But you must always be careful of the information you choose to ingest. That’s all.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “You can’t take it with you, but you may read it on your breaks.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said sincerely.

  “I’m sure you’re excited to get into it, but you made a commitment to the Mimirin, and you have much work to do here,” he warned me.

  “Yes, of course. Absolutely.”

  He turned to walk away, saying over his shoulder, “And remember, you promised me that extra fifteen at lunch.”

  38

  Disarray

  The book was short enough that I hadn’t needed an entire lunch break to get through it. It was a few pages of large handwritten commandments, a dozen or so stanzas of clunky poetry, and a few drawings of the Lost Bridge as well as a few sketches of an underground temple in Áibmoráigi, the legendary First City in Scandinavia.

  When Calder was in the bathroom, I grabbed my Moleskine notebook from my bag. I always brought it with me in case I learned anything I needed to jot down, and I ripped a few sheets of paper from it. I laid the pages over the drawings and carefully—but quickly—traced them all. When I was done, I discreetly tucked the pages into the notebook and put it back in my bag just as Calder returned.

  He got settled into his seat with another of his phlegmy coughs, and I walked over and handed him the book.