“The rules are simple. You may use your gifts if you wish. You may explore the arena as you see fit. You may not, however, enter the stands or interact with any of the spectators or the council before you’ve completed the task. If you leave the arena during the competition for any reason other than an emergency, you will forfeit your place. You may interact with your fellow competitors if you like; after all, real Seekers rely on one another in the field. But you may not attack or fight your fellow competitors in any way, including with magic, and you may not use magic to impede the progress of anyone else. Anyone found deliberately fighting or sabotaging another competitor will be automatically eliminated. Are there any questions?”
“What do we do with the two items once we find them?” Tomas asks. He’s been so quiet today that I almost forgot he was here. Another competitor to be wary of.
“Present them to the Council of Seekers for inspection. We will be seated at the judging table at the top of the arena. Any further questions?”
“Does quantity matter?” I ask. Everyone stares at me, and I force myself to speak louder. “Do we only need one of each of these items, or is there a specific number we need?”
“One of each will suffice,” Seeker Agnar says, “though in the case of plants, they must be whole—roots, stem, and petals must be intact for it to be considered a single item. Half of a crushed stem or root will not count.”
“How about quality?” Ari asks quietly. “If one of us has items that are, say, bigger or stronger or have better magical qualities than someone else’s, does that matter?”
“Any intact item will be sufficient to pass. But if more than five of you complete the task, the quality of the items you collect will be taken into consideration by the council as we judge.”
“So what are the two things we have to find?” Johann asks impatiently.
Seeker Agnar smiles; this seems to be the question he was waiting for. “First: snowpetals. Second: a gyrpuff feather.”
Murmurs and gasps sound from most of the boys. Ari and I glance at each other. Neither item is particularly rare, and we’ve already practiced tracking gyrpuffs. How hard can they be to find in the arena?
“Now,” Seeker Agnar says, “it is time.” He leads each of us to the small doorway in the back wall, which opens directly onto the arena’s floor. As we shuffle forward into the space, gasps rise up again, and this time one of them is mine.
I was wrong. This is going to be much, much harder than I thought.
The arena has been transformed.
FIFTEEN
I can hardly believe my eyes.
Where once there was a bare, open space, there is now a sprawling forest, complete with towering trees, thick underbrush, and every plant imaginable. I wouldn’t even believe I was still in the arena if not for the stands holding the spectators that wrap around this incredible space, barely visible through gaps in the trees.
“Begin!” Seeker Agnar shouts, but I barely hear him. I don’t know where to start. Forests in the Realm are dense, of course, and navigating them is tricky. But there’s at least some natural order there—a central forest might contain birch trees and figroses, while an ice forest would contain pines and snowpetals. Even in the thickest of foliage, I always had an idea what I was looking at.
But there’s nothing natural about this forest at all. It contains everything. Snowy pines are mixed with coastal horsetails and towering poplars. I even see hints of beech ferns that grow in lava fissures in the volcanic regions of the Realm. And all of it is thrown chaotically together, one on top of the other.
This is impossible.
Around me, some of the boys have already taken off running, crashing here and there through the foliage, but I don’t move, trying to figure out what I’m looking at. Ari does the same, lingering beside me, his eyes wide. Tomas is hanging around too, studying our surroundings with a critical eye, but most of the other boys disappear into the trees.
“How are we supposed to do this?” Ari says, sounding almost outraged. “If nothing is in its natural habitat, how can we find it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. My heart is thundering frantically in my ears. “I don’t know.”
Snowpetals. Gyrpuff feathers. Two very small objects that could be anywhere in this massive sprawl of a forest. We could search every inch of it at random, but it would take hours upon hours, and whichever competitors found it would simply be a matter of luck. That can’t be what the Seekers intend. There has to be some kind of meaning, something that they want us to do.
Cheers and shouts go up from the spectators as they watch the boys crash around, and my stomach sinks. The whole village is out there. The whole village is going to watch me fail. Most of them are probably rooting for it. And all I can do is stand here stupidly, not knowing what to do. Everyone is going to see. Ari’s mama. The Seekers. Elisa—
Elisa, who won’t have starflowers anymore because of me.
My papa, who’s counting on me to follow in his footsteps.
And my mama, who believes in me even though she thinks I might be setting myself up to fail.
I cannot fail.
I straighten my spine, throw my shoulders back, and close my eyes. One, two, three. I inhale slowly, counting my breaths until my heart rate slows down. Now I can think.
Okay. Clearly the Seekers want us to know more than just which habitat to look in for a particular item. It’s not enough to know that snowpetals grow in the ice forests; they want more. So what else do I know?
I open my eyes. Ari is watching me, and he smiles. “Looks like you figured something out.”
I frown. “Why do you care?” Lowering my voice in case anyone overhears, I add, “We’re not working together on this, Ari. Not today.”
“Maybe we should be,” he murmurs. “If we team up, we can make sure to beat the others.”
I narrow my eyes. “You just want to team up because you don’t know what to do. You want me to give you the answers.”
“No,” he says. “Actually, I just used my gift, and I figured something out. I know where one of the items is.”
I study his face, trying to figure out if he’s telling the truth. His empathy gift doesn’t work on plants or objects, so it’s not like he can just sense them directly. Even if he could, there’s way too much foliage here to pick out individual plants; my nature gift isn’t doing me any good. I don’t know how he could have figured something out already.
On the other hand, he might be right about teaming up. If each of us goes after one of the items and finds enough to share…
“Which item?” I ask, unable to keep the suspicion out of my voice.
“The feathers,” he says.
“And you’re sure you know where they are?”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says. “I’ll find two feathers. You find the snowpetals and get enough for both of us. That way each of us has to search for only one thing instead of two, so we’ll be done before the others.”
I wish I had more time to think this through, but the clock is ticking. Tomas is already moving away into the depths of the arena, leaving only Ari and me still standing at the entrance. The one thing I don’t have is time.
I guess it can’t hurt to go along with his suggestion. If Ari is lying about knowing where the feathers are, then I’ll just have to go after them myself—which I’m going to have to do anyway if we don’t team up. “All right,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
“Deal.” He strides away briskly, but he doesn’t step into the forest; instead, he circles around the edge of the arena, disappearing around the curve and out of sight. Interesting…
I need to focus. What else do I know about snowpetals?
They cling to snow-covered trees in the glacier region of the Realm. They’re some of the few flowering plants that flourish in frigid temperatures, drawing upon the magic of the Realm to actually feed off snow and turn it into fuel. Anywhere there’s both consistent snow and magic, there will also be snowp
etals. But that’s a wide swath of the Realm, and they don’t grow in every forest. Most of them are found where magic is the strongest.…
Oh. Ari already figured it out, and practically told me the answer.
I close my eyes again, but this time I reach for my magic, feeding it through my body and out through my fingertips. The sheer number of plants around me would be overwhelming if I focused on each one of them individually, which is why I didn’t try this before. But if I don’t focus on them individually, if I let them all blur together into one, a clear picture emerges. Or rather, a pattern.
The amount of magic around us ebbs and flows, like a slow-moving river. The northeastern side of the arena, the direction in which Ari disappeared, has a much stronger magical pull than the rest of the space, as most of the magic seems to be flowing there. It’s the same direction Tomas disappeared too. They both figured it out before I did. All magical items can be found more abundantly where magic is strongest, so of course we should try to find the pattern within the arena.
“Is that girl just going to stand there all day?” says a loud voice from above me. I open my eyes and turn. The nearest spectators are staring at me.
“What’s she even doing down there?” says another. “Doesn’t she know this is a Seeker competition?”
Heat floods my face. I’m not just going to stand here and let the boys win. I’ll show them all what a real Seeker looks like.
I turn around and plunge into the trees.
The underbrush is nearly too thick to walk through, but I let my gift rush out, nudging the life sparks of the plants right in front of me to direct their branches out of my way. They bend to my will, forming a rough path. The ground is relatively even under my feet—this is the arena, after all, not a real forest—so it’s actually easy to run once the plants are cleared out. I pass one of the boys, who’s cutting his way through the thicket with a knife and watches me openmouthed. After recovering from the shock of seeing me rush past behind a row of shifting plants, he tries to follow, using the path I’ve created. I quickly direct some of my magic behind me, sealing the path back up once I’ve passed so that he and anyone else who tries to follow me will be stuck in the brush.
Using my gift this way is exhausting, but I don’t have much distance to cover before reaching the northeast corner, and all the magic surrounding me provides extra fuel. I cut the most direct path possible, and within minutes I’ve arrived in the right location.
Unfortunately, there’s still a fairly large section of the forest in front of me, and the magical current feels equally strong throughout. I’ve narrowed the search down to just this corner, but how am I going to narrow it down further?
There must be something I’m missing.
What else do I know about snowpetals?
They have many uses, since they remain cold to the touch even after they’re plucked. They’re too bitter to make good food, but they’re often eaten by—
By vatnaveras. Who live in lakes.
I cast my magic out wider, searching, searching…
There. I didn’t imagine it. There’s a small body of water somewhere ahead. Freshwater, it seems, just like a lake. Exactly the kind of environment a vatnavera might choose to live in. A cold lake surrounded by snowpetals would almost be guaranteed to have a vatnavera in its depths.
Maybe the Seekers want us to assume that the reverse is true too—where there’s a vatnavera, there are also snowpetals.
I creep forward, getting closer and closer to the water. Ahead of me, the foliage has gotten so thick that it practically forms a solid wall, blocking my line of sight. I push my gift forward, shoving the branches out of the way—
Thwap.
Something collides with the back of my knee, and I stumble.
Thwap.
Another tree branch hits me, in my arm this time. I spin around, trying to figure out what’s happening. In every direction, the wall of branches and leaves has turned into a writhing mass, all of it moving and shifting. All of it attacking me.
I duck as another flying branch aims for my head, but I trip over a coiling tree root that just rose from the ground. A shower of leaves falls into my face, temporarily blinding me, and in the meantime another branch slams into my ankle, knocking me off my feet.
I crawl backward, putting distance between myself and the seemingly murderous plants. What’s happening? What did I do wrong?
I can still sense the lake, somewhere ahead of me. And I don’t feel any other bodies of water nearby.
Maybe it’s not what I’m doing wrong, but what I’m doing right. I’m close to finding the snowpetals, and the arena is trying to make it harder for me to get there.
The foliage went still after I backed away, and everything looks deceptively calm. But I suspect that the minute I try to pass through it, I’ll be attacked again.
This makes absolutely no sense. In the Realm, trees don’t just come to life and attack you like this. What is it that the Seekers are trying to prove?
I get to my feet and take another look at the jumble of plants surrounding me. So many different kinds, all mixed together.
Maybe that’s the point: this isn’t the Realm at all, and isn’t supposed to be. Everything we have to do here is meant to show the Seekers something.
What do they want me to show them now?
I think back to how I approached the wall the first time. I was moving quickly, using my gift, all things I’d think the Seekers would appreciate—
Except maybe it was the way I was using my gift. I was aggressive with the plants, trying to push them out of my way. But that’s not what naturalists do. That’s not what Seekers do.
I call my magic back out—slowly and carefully this time. I gently ease it toward the nearest tree, seeking out its life force. It’s not hard to find—a strong, steady pulse, like a heartbeat.
I funnel my gift into the plant, letting it draw on my magic, letting it grow. I do the same to the tree next to it, and the one beside that, and the one beside that…
I nurture the forest, and it explodes.
For a split second I think I’ve made a terrible mistake—as new branches and leaves burst to life in front of me, it looks like I’m about to be buried beneath them. But, just as suddenly, the plants move again. Branches bow out of the way; limbs retreat; leaves disentangle themselves.
A path appears, leading me forward.
I creep closer to the lake, moving much more stealthily this time. Partly because I don’t want to anger the forest with any sudden movements, but partly because, if I’m right, I don’t want any of the boys to know that this is here. It will be a dead giveaway, if they make the same connection I did. But the lake—more of a pond, really—is small and well hidden, so that only a naturalist would be likely to sense it with magic alone. If I don’t give it away, some of the others will never even know this is here.
Creeping through the trees and carefully parting the underbrush, I catch my first glimpse of the water. It’s an awfully small pond, so small that I could easily walk a circle around it in less than a minute. For a second I think I’ve gotten it all wrong—no vatnavera would ever be found in such a tiny body of water.
But this isn’t the Realm. Everything in this arena has to be done in miniature, since there’s such limited space. This entire arena could be filled with water and it still wouldn’t be as large as some of the Realm’s smallest lakes. The size isn’t the point.
And besides, what a clever way to hint at the presence of a vatnavera. A creature whose size isn’t always what you’d expect. Because it can shrink and grow at will.
I pull all of my magic in to circle the pond, trying to get a sense of what’s growing here. Grass frozen over with ice, a tangle of juniper trees, lots of weeds and bramble and—
And something with a bright, pulsing magical spark.
No, two somethings.
A little clump of snowpetal flowers, dangling on the far edge of the pond.
And the ti
ny vatnavera that’s eating them.
SIXTEEN
The vatnavera hasn’t noticed me yet. Its long, coiled body arches up out of the water, reaching for the fluffy white petals of the flowers beside the pond. For a second I can hardly breathe—it looks just like one of Papa’s drawings, only smaller, its body no wider than my palm. I can’t see how long it is, since the rest of its body disappears into the water, but it hardly matters. The vatnavera can lengthen itself whenever it wants. Which it will probably do, as soon as it sees me. Vatnavera may be friendly toward humans, but they definitely don’t like anything that tries to take away their food source. Like, say, the snowpetal flowers it’s currently munching on. There’s a pretty good chance that it will enlarge and try to scare me away if I come any closer.
Of course, there’s also a chance that it will shrink and hide, giving me a chance to snatch up the flowers. And vatnaveras don’t typically harm humans, so even if it tries to scare me, it probably won’t bite me or anything. But it could. And somehow I don’t think that charging toward it blindly, with no plan at all, is going to impress the Seekers. I don’t know if they can see this little pond from way up in the arena, but I should act as if they can.
I need to come up with a solution, and quick, or the vatnavera is going to eat all the flowers before I can grab a single one. And I need two, one for me and one for Ari.
I approach quietly, coming in from the side so that the vatnavera will be able to see me. The last thing I want to do is startle it. The creature finally senses my presence, turning its head in my direction. Its eyes are small and yellow. Two curling brown horns jut out from its head, and a forked tongue flicks from its mouth.
“Hello there, beautiful vatnavera,” I say softly. I give it the smallest of nudges with my magic, letting it sense my gift. Its life spark is cool and humming, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Its magic moves like the slow yet powerful current of a chilly glacial river.
Seekers of the Wild Realm Page 14