I stumble to my feet and rush across the beach toward Lilja, who is shaking her head and looking dazed.
“Are you okay, Lilja?” I ask, as if she’ll answer me. I reach for her life spark with my gift.
Ari’s hands glow yellow with his. “She’s all right,” he says. “Not in pain, just confused.”
“Maybe we should check her for injuries just in case.” I approach her side and run my hand down her smooth scales.
“What, you don’t trust my gift?”
I have to stop myself from saying “not really” out loud. As I rub Lilja’s side, she twists her head around to look at me, her yellow eyes wide.
“It’s okay, little dragon,” I tell her. “You almost got the hang of it. Just one more try, okay?” The spines along her back slowly flutter downward as she relaxes. I wonder what it would be like to actually ride her, like Seekers do every day. She’s not so tall yet, really. It would be easy to…
“Hey, Ari, do you think she’d let us ride her?”
I don’t turn to look at him, but I don’t need to see his expression to sense his disapproval. “Are you kidding? She just crash-landed and you want to go for a ride?”
“She didn’t crash. She landed on her feet.”
“A technicality.”
“An important fact.”
Ari groans. “You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t mean that she’d have to take us anywhere yet. I just wonder if she’d let one of us sit up there. Even just while she’s walking around. She’s got to get used to us, right? If she’s going to take us into the Realm.”
“Now isn’t the best time, Bryn—”
“Ready, Lilja?” I slide my hands as high up her side as I can reach, tightening my grip along her back, and haul myself up. Ari makes various disapproving noises as I swing my legs around, using the ridge of one of her spines to steady myself. Lilja remains relatively still and doesn’t make a sound, as if I’m no more than a butterfly landing on her back.
I sit up straight and look down at Ari, whose mouth is hanging open. “See?” I say, more than a little smugly. But inwardly, I can’t believe it. I’m really doing it. I’m sitting on a real, actual dragon, with real, smooth dragon scales beneath me. I wiggle around a little, resting against an indentation in her spine right above one of her spikes, my hands finding purchase on it. “You want to walk around, Lilja?” I say softly. “Get used to me being up here for a bit?”
In response, Lilja’s wings snap open. Ari ducks, narrowly avoiding being hit in the face, as I grip her scales tighter to stay balanced.
“Um,” I say, “let’s take this slow, Lil—”
Her wings begin to move.
“Lilja?”
Abruptly Ari leaps forward, grabs hold of her scales, and swings himself up behind me. “If you’re about to fly somewhere, I am not missing this.”
“Maybe we should rethink—” I start, but I don’t finish.
Lilja bounds forward as if she were just waiting for both of us to climb aboard before she could take off. Her wings beat faster, and faster, and faster—
It’s all Ari and I can do to cling to her back as Lilja launches herself into the air, leaving the beach far below with just a few beats of her massive wings.
Ari yells something behind me, but the wind snatches his words away as we climb higher into the sky, higher than I’ve ever been in my life.
Lilja turns in the direction that the larger dragons flew from earlier. The direction of their home.
With Ari and me clinging to her back, our dragon heads straight for the Wild Realm.
TEN
Flying is incredible.
I can’t hear anything over the rush of the wind in my ears and the steady beat of Lilja’s wings, but I can feel everything: Lilja’s scales beneath my hands, the cold mist in the air against my skin, and the sensation of soaring, of going higher and higher and higher until there’s nothing between me and the sky.
Despite the dampness in the air, it’s a clear enough night to get a good view. The only thing better than the feeling of flying is seeing the Wild Realm spreading out below us, the landscape tinged with shades of deep blue and black and gray, illuminated only by the moon and stars. I have only ever glimpsed these mountains from their base, but now Lilja flies us directly over them, and it’s like we’ve entered another world. I have never seen the island like this before, and it’s even more stunning than I imagined.
The landscape is shadowy and uneven, filled with rolling hills and mountain peaks and low valleys. Lakes glimmer in the moonlight; the dark blurs of forests stretch out as far as the eye can see. Somewhere ahead lie the volcanoes, surrounded by fields of hardened lava, as well as the solid glaciers as tall and thick as the mountains.
I lean forward, trying to peer over Lilja’s head to see where we’re going, and something tugs sharply on my hair. I glance back at Ari, who looks apologetic. “You didn’t hear me over the wind,” he shouts. Even though he’s sitting right behind me, it’s still difficult to hear him.
“Sorry,” I say back, raising my voice. “What’s wrong?”
He cups his hands around his mouth. “We need to get her to land!”
“Why?” There’s still so much more of the Realm to see.…
“She’s never flown this far before. If she keeps going, she’ll get too tired to take us back.”
Oops. I didn’t think of that, but I should have. I’m still not sure why Ari’s so concerned about Lilja being in the Realm, though. He hasn’t told me why she isn’t supposed to be here, and I can’t think of a good reason.
Ari yells something else, but his words are snatched away by the wind. “What?” I shout back, leaning closer in his direction.
“I said, we have to get you back before your parents wake up!”
He’s right. I hate it, but he’s right. What will Mama and Papa think when they wake up and I’m not in bed? And what could I possibly tell them to explain where I went? If Mama finds out, she’ll never let me become a Seeker. We have a few hours, at most, to see the Realm before we’ll have to take Lilja back to the beach and return to the village.
“How do we get her to land?” I ask.
“We need to guide her with magic, the way Seekers do.”
Right. I should’ve thought of that.
I turn around, close my eyes, and reach for my magic. Within seconds, Lilja’s energy surrounds me, as bright as ever. I give her life spark a tiny nudge with my gift, urging her to fly lower. Lilja turns her head slightly, snorts, and proceeds to ignore me.
“Lilja,” I say, gritting my teeth as I try to keep a grip on my gift. “Don’t be stubborn. Come on, let’s check out what’s on the ground.”
As I give her another nudge, something warm and soft brushes up against my magic. The yellow light of Ari’s gift blends with the green of mine and the silver spark of Lilja’s life force. It feels like a soothing sip of tea after a long day, or curling up beneath a warm blanket at night. It’s somehow heavy and cozy all at once, and my eyelids almost droop in response. Lilja’s energy grows noticeably dimmer, like she’s getting sleepy too.
I understand what Ari’s trying to do—make Lilja sleepy so that she’ll want to land and rest for a while. It’s a good idea, but it’s working too well. “You’re overdoing it,” I yell. “She’s going to get too sleepy before she can land, and so am I!”
I think Ari yells, “Sorry,” but it’s hard to tell. His magic pulls back from mine a bit, and I give Lilja a firmer nudge with my gift. She turns her head again, hesitates, and angles her body toward the ground, flying lower. I open my eyes and grip her spine tightly as we descend.
Only now does it occur to me that Lilja might not know how to land, since she’s never done this before.
We might be about to crash.
As Lilja drops lower, a new sound is audible over the wind—a thunderous roar below us. I lean forward, trying to see around Lilja’s wings, and catch glimpses of the ground—or rather
, glimpses of water. Lilja is aiming for a wide clearing surrounding a lake. At the far end of the clearing, towering cliffs drop off, and a massive waterfall cascades from the rocks, the water plummeting into the lake below. The roar of the waterfall gets louder and louder as we descend, and I give Lilja a nudge with my gift, encouraging her to turn in the direction of the shore so she can land smoothly. But Lilja snorts again and ignores me. As we drop through the air, she passes right over the shoreline and heads straight toward the lake.
Ari figures it out at the same moment I do. “She’s headed for the water!”
At this point, we’re descending too fast for me to try to coax her anywhere with my magic. It’s too late.
“Hold your breath,” I yell. I suck in a gulp of air as Lilja dives into the lake and water rushes up to meet us.
I try to hold on to Lilja’s back, but it’s no use—the impact sends me spinning, water rushing all around me. I open my eyes, but it’s so dark and the water is so turbulent that I can’t see anything. I reach for my gift. Lilja’s life force is somewhere below me. There are small sparks everywhere, probably fish and plants, but it feels like there are trees above me. I start swimming, aiming for those sparks. The surface has got to be somewhere above.…
My lungs burn. I swim faster, straining for the surface, trying desperately not to inhale and choke. The water churns. It’s so cold that every part of me feels numb. I need air. Air. Air.
I rise what must be six feet, my limbs thrashing, my magic flung in every direction, seeking the surface. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t—
Lilja’s life force suddenly engulfs me, and something hard presses against my back, propelling me forward. In seconds, I rise through the water and the surface breaks around me.
I gulp for air, gasping and spluttering. Something solid rests beneath my back, lifting me out of the lake. I blink water from my eyes, but it’s hard to make anything out in the darkness. The waterfall is somewhere behind me, its roar muffled by all the water clogging my ears. I wrap my arms over my chest, shivering with cold.
“Bryn?” a voice calls. “Bryn, are you okay?”
There’s so much magical energy around me, more than I’ve ever felt before, and it’s making my head spin. Carefully I pull my gift closer to myself, trying not to sense so much at once. Then, just like I did the first time I met Lilja and had to get used to her spark, I release a tiny tendril of my gift.
The feeling of magic is still incredibly overwhelming, but there isn’t any one source. It’s like it’s in the air all around me, and in the earth, and in the water.…
Of course. I’m in the Wild Realm now. The source of all magic. This is what the Realm feels like.
As I regain my breath, I release a little more magic. The now-familiar feeling of Lilja is below me, almost as if—
Oh.
I’m sitting on her nose.
I glance down. Her silver scales are bright in the moonlight, shimmery with water. I’m sitting directly on her snout, my legs dangling off into the water. Lilja must have pushed me up to the surface with her head.
She saved me.
“Bryn!”
I look around again, and this time the shadows come into focus. A figure stands at the edge of the lake, not clear enough to actually see, but from that funny empath-life-source feeling, it must be Ari. It occurs to me that he’s been shouting my name for a while.
“I’m okay,” I yell back, immediately followed by a cough. Recovering my breath, I slide carefully off Lilja’s nose and into the water. The dragon’s yellow eyes are wide as she looks at me. “Thanks, Lil,” I say, rubbing the end of her nose. “Thanks for saving me. But no more water landings from now on, okay?”
She taps me with the end of her snout, nudging me toward the edge of the lake.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m all right.” But now that I think about it, I am very, very cold. This water is freezing.
I turn away from Lilja and swim to shore.
Ari waits at the edge and offers me a hand up when I reach the embankment. I let him pull me to my feet and then stop to catch my breath again.
Like me, Ari is drenched. Water drips from his curls, and he’s taken off his heavy, waterlogged coat. “Are you okay?” he asks again. “I couldn’t find you in the water, and then when you took so long to surface…”
“Lilja found me,” I say quickly. That’s twice tonight that I’ve felt so embarrassed in front of Ari. I really shouldn’t be showing my competitors what a bad swimmer I am. The fact that he got to the surface perfectly fine on his own makes it worse.
To distract myself from the heat rising in my cheeks, I shrug off my coat and wring it out as best I can, the water puddling at my feet. Fat droplets fall from the end of my braid, and my boots are soaked all the way through, as well as the rest of my clothing. I quickly put my coat back on. Even though it’s summertime and we’re not in the northern part of the Realm, it’s still much colder up here in the highlands than it is in the village, and the water is frigid.
I have to hope that the flight back home will help dry me off. Mama will certainly notice if I’m still soaking wet when she wakes up. Maybe I can hide these clothes somewhere.…
“Well,” Ari says, interrupting my thoughts. “This is it.”
I follow his gaze. The black surface of the lake shimmers with pinpricks of light from the stars above. Only the curve of Lilja’s back and the top of her head are visible above the surface. The waterfall towers what must be a hundred feet above us, pouring over the jagged cliffs. A clearing stretches off to our right, filled with flowers and bordered by tall, thick trees. Framing everything are the sharp peaks of the mountains in the distance, with the sea lying somewhere beyond them. It’s the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen.
We really are in the Wild Realm.
“Look, Bryn,” Ari says, pointing across the lake. A dozen tiny pinpricks of light are flashing in and out. “Fireflies.”
“I wonder what else might be around here,” I say. As pretty as the fireflies are, they’re common outside the Realm too. I want to see something magical. “I wish it weren’t so dark,” I add. “Then we could see more.” I let my gift shine brightly around my fingertips, trying to illuminate as much as I can, and glance toward the clearing, where I can just barely make out the shapes of flowers in the distance. “I wonder if…”
I walk away from Ari, winding around the edge of the lake and heading into the grassy clearing. I call my gift into my fingertips, letting its green light shine as brightly as I can to illuminate the ground in front of me.
Most of the flowers look—and feel, with the sense of my gift—like ordinary, non-magical plants. Wild thyme, arctic poppies, and what looks like purple saxifrage and mountain avens are grouped together, along with bunches of white-tipped cotton grass and dandelions. But I sense a few clusters of flowers with stronger, more magical life forces—plants infused with the magic of the Realm that can only grow here. Fireflies cluster nearer to these plants than any of the others. I step closer to one of them, my wet boots squelching, and lean in for a better inspection.
“Fairy clovers,” I whisper, my eyes widening. They’re fragile little plants, with short stems and four wide leaves that, according to legend, look like fairy wings. The fairy bit is probably nonsense—Papa says fairies have never been spotted in the Realm, contrary to legend—but I do know that if you chop up a handful and mix them with herbs, you can make a magic tonic that cures headaches. I’ve seen the village herbalist give Papa a whole bottle of Mama’s favorite skin ointment or two flasks of salt in exchange for only a handful of these clovers.
“Did you find something?” Ari calls, coming up behind me. I tense. For a second I’m defensive—I found the clovers, and I don’t want to share them. But that isn’t really fair. Without Ari, I never could’ve flown here in the first place. And there are more than enough plants here for both of us.
“Fairy clovers,” I explain, pointing. I reach
into my coat, searching for the pocketknife Papa gave me for my eleventh birthday. “The herbalist will make a good trade for those.”
“We can’t,” Ari says.
I stop digging through my pocket, looking up at him. “What are you talking about? They’re right here.”
“Think about it, Bryn. Neither of us is a Seeker yet. Neither of us is supposed to be here. You can’t just march into the herbalist’s shop with a handful of fairy clovers. How will you explain how you got them?”
I shrug. “I can just say that Papa’s had them for a while. He still trades things he found in the Realm sometimes.” But even as I say it, I know Ari’s right. If Papa had found clovers in the Realm years ago, they’d be dried and yellowed after being plucked from their roots. Their magic would have faded. These are bright and fresh and brimming with life.
With great reluctance, I step back. “Fine. We won’t take the clovers. But I really need to find some more starflowers—not to trade, but for medicine. Will you help me look?”
I expect him to refuse for some reason. But he doesn’t. “Of course. Where do starflowers usually grow? They’re forest flowers, right?”
I hate that he knows that. “Yes. I don’t actually think we’ll see any this far south. Papa says they’re most common in the northern forests. But they do bloom at night, so now’s the perfect time to try to spot some.”
“We have to hurry,” Ari says, “but we can look for a bit.” He glances back at the lake, where Lilja has disappeared under the surface. “She’s hunting, I think. So she’ll be fine for a while.”
“Should we let her do that?” I ask. “We don’t want her to eat any magical creatures in that lake.”
“Yeah, but we must be within the dragons’ normal territory. Otherwise Lilja wouldn’t even be able to enter this part of the Realm. If the Seekers haven’t put up boundary spells to keep dragons away, then it must be okay for her to hunt here.”
Seekers of the Wild Realm Page 9