She grins. “I am?”
“Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? The one thing that will always be present in the arena is air.” It’s a hard element to work with, not as easy as sensing the life force of a living being, but it’s something.
“Elisa,” I say, “when you make a shield appear out of the air, how do you do it? Like, tell me step by step.”
Elisa raises her hands. “I call my gift first,” she says, the sparks of violet dancing across the tips of her fingers. “Then I close my eyes.” She closes her eyes, continuing the demonstration.
“And then?” I prompt.
“Then the magic goes whoosh and all the little purple sparks go where I want them to go, and they make the same shape in the air that I pictured in my head. Then I open my eyes, and…”
As she speaks, purple magic shimmers through the air. A solid, square shield of violet, a foot in length and only half an inch deep, hovers in the air between the two of us, right at Elisa’s eye level.
“And what do you do when you want to move it around?” I ask. “Just tell the sparks where to go?”
“Yep,” she says. She turns abruptly, looking toward the corner of the garden where she was playing earlier. Just as suddenly, the shield whizzes over the top of her head, drops down into the garden, and slices through the top of the pile of dirt Elisa had built, sending pieces of earth flying. Before I can blink, the shield vanishes into thin air.
“See?” Elisa says, turning back to me. “Not so hard.”
“Right,” I say, wiping a speck of dirt from my cheek. I’m not sure exactly what “the magic goes whoosh” is supposed to mean, but the rest of her instructions seem pretty straightforward. The visualization seems like the key part, and that’s in line with what Papa told me too. Magic does what you picture it doing. What you will it to do.
“Does that help?” Elisa asks, picking a clump of dirt from the end of one of her braids.
“I think so,” I say. “Do you think you could show me—”
Elisa seems to be reaching for her magic again, the sparks dancing across her fingers, but suddenly she coughs, and the light of her gift vanishes. She coughs again, a deep, rattling sound from her chest, and opens her mouth to gasp for air.
Oops. I forgot that using her magic can trigger Elisa’s cough. “Do you need starfl—” I start to ask, but before I can finish she doubles over, her whole body racked with coughs. I leap up from the bench, turning toward the house to get the starflower paste, but the door of the hut flies open and Mama rushes out, the jar already in her hand. Mama quickly tends to Elisa, rubbing the paste across her chest and urging her to take deep breaths.
All I can do is stand there helplessly until the coughing fit subsides. When it’s over, Mama puts the lid back on the jar of medicine, but not before I see that it’s almost empty.
“That’s enough playing outside for now,” Mama says to Elisa. “This air is bad for the lungs. Come help me in the kitchen. I’ll show you how to make your favorite rice pudding.” They head inside, leaving me in the garden alone.
I sit back down on the bench, trying boundary spells again with renewed vigor. If winning this competition is the one thing I can do to help Elisa, then I’m going to do it. I will figure this out.
Manipulating the air around me seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Air has never been one of my favorite elements, since the slightest shift in the wind while I’m attempting to guide it can ruin a spell.
An hour of practice later, it’s almost time for me to go check in on Lilja, but I still haven’t managed to create anything resembling a solid shield, let alone a full boundary tough enough to deter a dragon. But I can’t quit. There’s only one thing left to do.
I just really, really don’t want to do it.
“Mama?” I say, entering the hut with great reluctance. Elisa must be in the back of the hut out of sight; Mama is alone in the kitchen, hanging laundry along the line.
“Yes?” she says without looking up.
“What’s the secret to creating boundary spells?”
Mama pauses for a moment before turning around. “You’re asking me?” she says, brows raised in surprise.
“Well, you’re a defender, aren’t you?”
Mama laughs. “Of course. You’ve seen me use my gift.”
“Yes,” I say, “but I need to know how it works. I need to figure out how, as a naturalist, to make boundary spells. It’s part of the competition.”
“Of course,” Mama says, nodding. “Seekers are responsible for the spells that prevent dragons from carrying off our livestock or setting fire to the village, that keep sea wolves from stealing our fish, that keep every part of the Realm exactly where it needs to be.”
“Right,” I say. “Papa’s told me that before. I’m just confused about how to do it, since I can’t make shields the way defenders can.”
Mama smiles. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told your papa, when he asked me that question: magic doesn’t come from nothing.”
“What?” I’m not sure which confuses me more: the second part of her response, or the fact that my papa, who always seems to know everything about magic, once asked Mama about hers.
Mama lowers herself into the nearest chair, leaning forward so that we’re eye level with each other. “When you see a defender make a shield, it looks like it comes from nowhere, doesn’t it? One minute there is no shield, the next it appears.”
“Right…”
“But that’s only how it looks. Magic doesn’t come from nothing. Naturalists and healers—and empaths, I suppose—all draw upon their own life force—their own gifts—and use them to interact with the life forces of others. Warriors use their gifts to interact with the objects around them, rather than living beings. But what is it that defenders do?”
My brow creases in confusion. “Create shields?”
Mama shakes her head. “Not create. Shape. We are not creating the magic that forms the shield. We are drawing it from within ourselves and shaping it in the way we desire. We do not make magic from nothing.”
“Oh,” I say. I guess that makes sense, although I never thought about it before. “But naturalists can’t do that.”
“Not in the same way,” Mama says, smiling. “But you shape your magic all the time. When you decide which plant to let it flow into, or which creature, or when you tell it what you need it to do, you are shaping the world around you. The only difference is this: you need anchors.”
“Anchors? Like on boats?”
“No. Anchors to help shape your magic. Us defenders, we do not use anchors to shape our gifts. That is what makes our ability so different from the rest. But naturalists do. When you set out to make a boundary, you must anchor your magic in the things around you—the earth, the trees, the plants, whatever it is that you naturalists use. If your gift is anchored properly in the natural world, it will respond more easily to whatever shape you wish to make. Do you understand?”
“I—I think so?”
“When a defender makes a shield, they draw upon their gift and shape the magic into a shield. When a naturalist makes a shield, they draw upon their gift, anchor that gift in the living things around them, and then use those things to shape the magic. Try it, and you will see.”
“Okay,” I say skeptically. “I’ll try.”
Mama rises from her chair and pats my shoulder. “You can do it, Bryn. You’re the daughter of a defender and an even stronger naturalist than your father, and even he got there eventually.”
“Really? He struggled with this too?”
Mama winks. “Don’t let him fool you. He didn’t always find magic so easy. Luckily he had me to teach him a thing or two.”
She gives my shoulder a squeeze, and I smile. “Thanks, Mama.”
“Go on,” she says, waving me toward the door. “Go out there and practice. You have work to do.”
I grin. “Yes, Mama.”
TWENTY-TWO
I practically race out of the hut earlier than usual that night, eager to try putting up the boundary spells for Lilja again. I’ve been practicing all afternoon—except when Lilja insisted I pay attention to her, so I had to feed her bilberries instead—and I think I might have finally figured it out.
Mama was completely right about the anchors. Before, I was trying to move the air without really realizing that was what I was doing. Of course it didn’t work—the wind was shifting too much to hold magic properly. But once I sink my magic into the living things around me—the grass and trees and earth—then I can draw upon it and direct it more easily, making it actually possible to shape the air currents into what I want. I practice with the water, too, which makes an even more effective boundary. Being skilled at both will come in handy for the competition, not to mention ensure that the boundaries I set to keep Lilja away from the village will be sturdy.
When I meet Ari at the cave, he recaps everything he learned in training that we didn’t have time to discuss earlier in the afternoon. As we predicted, Seeker Agnar spent more time on boundary spells.
“Agnar told us that there are spells all around the bay to protect the village, the farms, the docks, all that,” Ari begins. “Then there are the spells in the Realm itself that help keep creatures from leaving their territory, so they can’t prey on other creatures when they’re not supposed to or go to an area that’s not safe for them.”
I know all of this already, but I don’t interrupt him. I want to make sure I hear everything Agnar had to say, even if I’ve probably heard it before. I need to know what my competitors know.
“So, since neither of us is a defender, we have to find other ways to create a shield or a barrier, one that Lilja won’t want to cross,” Ari continues.
“Temperature,” I say instantly, thinking of Papa’s suggestion. “Dragons don’t like the cold.”
“That could work,” Ari says, “but there isn’t ice or anything to draw from out here. Anyway, that doesn’t help me much.”
“Oh. Right.” I bite my lip. I shouldn’t try to help him—after all, only one of us can win, and it’s got to be me. But it does seem unfair that he doesn’t have anyone to help him with his gift the way my family helped me today.
So, against my better judgment, I say, “Well, there’s got to be something you can do. If you can’t change anything around Lilja, then how about Lilja herself?”
Ari’s head snaps up. “You’re right,” he says. “My gift works best with emotions. Maybe I could try to change her emotions—like, so that she’ll feel a little scared every time she gets too close to the village, to stop her from heading in that direction.”
My eyes widen. “Will that work?”
Ari shrugs again. “I can’t create an emotion out of nothing—maybe empaths are supposed to have that ability, but I’ve never figured it out. I can adjust what’s already there, though. Make her feel some things more than others.”
“Okay,” I say, a plan starting to take shape in my head. “So how about this. I’ll try to figure out how to make a physical boundary around this area, and you focus on making an emotional one. Between the two of us, surely one of them will work.”
Ari nods. “All right. But what are you going to do?”
I glance out at the waves beyond the shoreline. “Leave it to me.”
Ari nods and turns to Lilja, who has been trying to get our attention during this conversation by huffing dramatically and scraping the rocky beach with her claws. I leave Ari to it and face the sea.
Magic is about will, Papa’s voice says in my head. I just have to will it to work.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes.
My gift rushes through my veins and pools easily into my hands when I summon it. Extending my reach, I can sense everything around me—the bright, dual sparks of Ari and Lilja behind me, the shimmering blur of overlapping life-forms that is the forest to the east, and the steady hum of the sea stretched before me, brimming with life.
I reach for the anchor points I find all around—the sparks in the trees, in the grass, in the sea. Keeping my eyes closed, I picture what I want. I imagine Lilja walking in the direction we don’t want her to go—toward the village—and then imagine waves cresting up from the sea, water spooling into ribbons that rise and rush onto shore, crashing forward into a solid wall of water twice as high and wide as Lilja. I imagine Lilja turning back, causing the wall to break apart, the water swirling back to the sea. I imagine it over and over again, to make sure I get it right. Then I picture Lilja trying to fly in that direction rather than walk, the water blocking her at every turn and height.
As I picture it, my magic seeps through my hands and out into the world. It sinks into the sea, the trees, the earth. It rests beneath the surface of things, like a fisherman’s net waiting to be raised, a trap ready to be sprung. I go over the images again and again, making sure I get them right.
“Well?” Ari asks when I finally open my eyes. “Do you think it worked?”
“Yes,” I say. “At least I think so. It feels sturdy enough.”
“I think mine worked too.” His eyes are shining. He loves figuring magic out—he always gets excited when he masters something. It must be hard, figuring out how to use his gift without anyone to teach him, but he’s always so happy when he learns things on his own.
“Should we test it?”
“Hold on,” Ari says, a puzzled look crossing his face. He’s watching Lilja closely. She’s stopped digging and is now sniffing around her own claws. “I think something’s wrong with Lilja.”
I snap my focus to her immediately and could kick myself for not noticing it sooner. He’s completely right. Lilja is sniffing at her foot the way dragons do when they have an injury. And she’s giving all of her attention to one particular claw, as if there’s something wrong with it.
Ari and I race toward Lilja at once, diving down to get a better look. “You think she hurt it in the sand?” I ask. It’s rocky enough that she could’ve cut herself.
“Most likely,” Ari says. He brings his hands closer, using his gift to illuminate her. “Look—is that blood?”
I see it too—a spot of red near the tender place where her claw disappears into the skin of her foot, one of the few soft places where she has no scales for protection. “Oh no,” I say. “That’s definitely blood. We have to heal her.”
“How?” Ari asks. It’s possibly the first time I’ve ever heard him sound a little panicked. “Neither of us knows anything about healing, and Agnar hasn’t covered that in training yet.”
“It’s just a tiny spot of blood,” I say. “How bad can it be?”
“Neither of us knows how to handle an open wound, Bryn. And what if it gets infected?”
“You’re worrying too much.”
Ari takes a deep breath. “I know, but… We can’t take her to the Seekers. We can’t. Anything that needs to be healed, we have to handle it ourselves. And we don’t know what we’re doing.” He sounds calmer now, more rational, but worry still creases his face.
My mind races, trying to come up with a plan. It is a tiny injury, but… But the idea of experimenting with healing magic on Lilja makes me very, very nervous. There’s way too much possibility that something will go wrong, that we might hurt her more accidentally.
Lilja looks at us with wide, trusting eyes, and I know we have to do something to help her. The wound must be painful, from the way she’s acting, so it can’t wait to be treated. We don’t have time to learn the spells we need. And we still can’t go to the Seekers.
There’s only one possible solution.
“I’ll get Runa,” I say. “She has healing magic. She’ll know what to do.”
Ari frowns. “Are you sure?”
“She’s a great healer,” I say, feeling defensive at the sound of his doubt.
“I’m sure she is, but it’s not like she’s ever healed a dragon before.”
I shrug. “She knows
how to stitch up open wounds. Besides, she’s more likely to be able to heal this than either of us, and I can’t think of a better option.”
Ari pauses for a moment but is clearly unable to come up with anything either. “How fast can she get here?” he says finally.
“You stay with Lilja. Try to keep her calm and get her to focus on something else. I’ll run to Runa’s and be back as fast as I can.”
“Okay,” he says. “Be careful. Don’t let her parents catch you.”
“I won’t.” But a little knot of fear slips inside my chest. I leap to my feet and take off across the rocky shore.
The night air is muggy and thick, and I have to stop twice to catch my breath before I reach Runa’s hut. I sneak around to the back door, knowing that’s the closest entrance to the place where Runa sleeps. Still, her parents won’t be far away—I’ll have to be very, very quiet.
The back door creaks as I ease it open, holding my breath. I tiptoe across the cool dirt floor, trying to make out the shape of things in the dark. I don’t know her hut as well as my own, of course, so it’s much harder to sneak around without being able to see. I dare to use a tiny spark of my gift for light and finally manage to orient myself. There, close to the hearth, is Runa’s tiny bed. And across the room, sound asleep, are her parents.
I hardly dare to breathe as I shuffle to Runa’s side and nudge her gently awake. Please don’t be a heavy sleeper, Runa.
Her eyes flutter open, and she jumps, seeing a stranger looming over her.
“Shh!” I whisper as loudly as I dare. “It’s me!”
Runa freezes, her eyes wide. “Bryn?” she whispers.
I lift one finger to my lips and gesture silently for her to follow me.
Runa shakes her head rapidly, then points to the corner where her parents are asleep.
But I wave her forward insistently, gesturing toward the back door. After a moment, Runa glances guiltily toward her parents one more time before slipping out of bed. She stuffs her feet into a pair of boots sitting beside the hearth and follows me out of the hut and into the night.
“What’s going on?” she whispers as soon as we’ve cleared the back garden.
Seekers of the Wild Realm Page 20