Seekers of the Wild Realm

by Alexandra Ott

  The two Seekers stand beside each other, and we wait for them to speak.

  Clearly, that explosion wasn’t supposed to be part of the trial. So what’s going to happen now? Will we redo the second trial? Will all of us move on to the third?

  It’s Seeker Freyr who speaks first. “We would like to thank all of you for remaining calm during today’s difficult circumstances.” He casts a significant look at Emil, who’s still sniffling, and Johann, whose screams in the arena were the opposite of calm, before continuing. “Obviously we did not expect quite that level of reaction from the firecats we selected for today’s trial.”

  Ari and I look at each other. Does Seeker Freyr not know that it wasn’t the firecats who started the fire? Or is he the one working with the Vondur? Is he trying to cover it up?

  “That being said,” Seeker Agnar interjects, “you all knew what you signed up for. Being a Seeker and working with magical creatures is dangerous work, and these trials are not without some level of risk.”

  Seeker Freyr adds, “The council’s policy, in situations like this, is to select which three contestants will advance to the next trial based on your performance before and during the, er, emergency situation.”

  Johann looks up. “But, Seeker, shouldn’t we just do the second trial over again? Nobody got to finish.”

  Seeker Freyr shakes his head. “It is important that we appoint a fifth Seeker as soon as possible. Five is nature’s number, the number of the gifts, and having five Seekers is essential for maintaining the balance of magic in the Realm. And, as you saw today, it is also beneficial to have five Seekers to deal with any emergency situations that may arise. We do not wish to delay much longer.”

  Something shifts in Seeker Agnar’s expression, and he glances around at all of us. “We believe we’ve seen more than enough of your skills today to determine who can advance to the next trial. We would like the five of you to wait here. The council will vote on which of you will advance, and then we will make the announcement.”

  The Seekers return to the arena, and the five of us wait in tense silence.

  It feels like ten years pass as we stand around, staring at each other.

  “What’s taking so long?” Johann says finally. “How long can it take to hold a vote?”

  For some reason, Tomas glances over at me, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “This isn’t fair,” Emil says. “I didn’t even get a chance to work with the firecats before the explosion happened. What did you all do, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Johann snaps. “It wasn’t one of the firecats I was working with. I was facing them, and the explosion happened behind me.”

  Tomas frowns. “Wait, if it wasn’t one of yours, which one was it?”

  Ari and I glance at each other, but we don’t say anything.

  Johann misinterprets our expressions and sneers at us. “Must’ve been theirs,” he says meaningfully to Tomas. “Guess this is what happens when you let a girl and an empath near dangerous animals.”

  But Tomas is still frowning, gazing at us. He saw me only minutes before the explosion happened. He did agitate my firecat, but I don’t doubt he was still keeping a close watch on us. He knows that we had them under control.

  He looks like he’s about to say something else, but the sound of the arena door opening interrupts him.

  Seeker Agnar beckons us forward, and we file back into the arena.

  The crowd in the stands is restless, but they let out a cheer as we emerge and line up in the center of the scorched arena floor, facing the council’s table. Seeker Agnar hastens up the stairs to join the other three Seekers.

  In front of us, the firecats have all been herded into their enclosures, and Seeker Ludvik’s thick purple shields are keeping them in place. I glance around for Papa, but I don’t see him—he must have rejoined Mama and Elisa in the crowd.

  Finally, Seeker Larus’s voice booms throughout the arena once more. “Ladies and gentlemen. The time has come to announce the decision of the council. Though none of the competitors were able to finish today’s challenge due to extenuating circumstances, we have decided to select three of them to advance to the next round, based on the skill they showed us today. The council has voted, and we will now announce our selections for the third and final round of competition.”

  Cheers rise up from the crowd, and my heart pounds. I’m pretty sure I know who they’ve chosen. Surely not Emil, who was behind the rest of us even before the explosion. And surely not Johann, with the way he was mishandling his firecat… right? But there’s a chance they could select anyone. I’d bet that Seeker Agnar voted for Johann over me, just to save face. And I have no way of knowing how the other Seekers will vote. I forced my way into the second trial just by being one of the only five to complete the tasks, but this time the Seekers can vote me out if they choose.

  “Our first selection,” Seeker Larus booms, “is Tomas, Freyr’s son.”

  Cheers rise from the crowd. When they die down, Seeker Larus continues, “Tomas demonstrated the greatest aptitude for healing out of all of the contestants today, which of course we would expect from a healer. But he also demonstrated an ability to work well with his firecat and was in the process of completing a boundary spell before being interrupted. We believe he may have finished first, had the trial continued, and therefore deserves a spot in the third trial.”

  “I bet we would’ve beat him,” Ari mutters to me under his breath. “He’s been struggling with boundary spells in training. He’s slow at them.”

  “Our next selection also demonstrated aptitude for both defensive and healing spells and worked admirably well with calming two of the firecats even during extremely stressful circumstances,” Seeker Larus continues. “He not only demonstrated skill with his own gift but also a creative ability to master other types of spellwork. Therefore, our second selection is Ari, Petur’s son.”

  The crowd applauds, and Ari visibly deflates in relief. I should probably be polite and congratulate him, but my heart is in my throat.

  It’s got to be either me or Johann who’s being eliminated. There’s no way they passed Emil, when he never even finished the healing spell.

  “Our third selection,” Larus continues, “also successfully completed a healing spell and demonstrated a skilled gift following the explosion. Therefore, our third selection… is Johann, Viktor’s son.”

  The sound of the crowd is a roar in my ears. I don’t move. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe.

  I lost.

  Ari is murmuring something in my ear, but it takes me a minute to focus on the words.

  “—all wrong. It should’ve been you. I know it should’ve been.”

  He’s right. I was doing much better with the firecats than Johann. That’s just a fact. And I helped put the fire out after the explosion—or at least tried to, anyway. If the explosion hadn’t happened, Ari and I would’ve completed our boundary spells and probably been the first ones to finish the trial. Anyone who was paying attention would know that I should’ve passed.

  But the Seekers voted against me anyway.

  Ari’s still talking, but I shrug him off. It suddenly feels like everyone in the crowd is staring at me, witnessing my failure. I have to get out of here.

  “Bryn, wait!” Ari races after me as I stride past him, heading for the door.

  “Congratulations,” I mutter to him. “Good luck in the third trial.”

  “Wait.” The urgency in his voice is enough to slow me down.

  “What? What could possibly matter to me now, Ari?”

  “The Vondur,” he says, and I stop in my tracks. “Remember what Seeker Freyr said, about the explosion being caused by firecats? I don’t think they know. We have to tell them what happened. That was your idea, remember?”

  I turn to face him. “And you really think they’ll listen to us? Apparently the Seekers think so little of me that they ranked me below Johann. Why would they care about anything I have to say?”r />
  “Because I’m going to go with you. And we’ll tell them to ask the others, too—Tomas knows that it wasn’t a firecat, at the very least. He knows something’s wrong, and I think the Seekers suspect that too.”

  I kick a stone on the arena floor, watching it skip. “Go without me. I don’t want to talk to them right now. I don’t want to see the look on Seeker Agnar’s stupid smug face.”

  Ari shakes his head at me. “Who are you, and what happened to Bryn? The Bryn I know would never stop fighting to make the Seekers give her another chance. She’d march right up to the council and demand to be let into the third trial, and she wouldn’t let anyone get in her way.”

  “She’s tired,” I say. “She wants to go home.” But I straighten up a little. Could he be right? Could there be a chance I could convince the Seekers to let me stay in the competition? If there’s any chance at all, I have to take it.

  Ari senses the shift in my mood instantly, and he grins. “Come on.”

  We change direction, walking toward the steps leading up to the council’s table. “Did you just use your weird empath abilities on me?” I grumble.

  “Nope. This is all you.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “I don’t believe you. I saw you put some scared, angry firecats to sleep earlier.”

  Ari grins. “I might have been a little overzealous in calming them down. You know, since I feared for my life and everything.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s just a little firecat. What harm could it do?” I tease.

  Ari rolls his eyes. “Only you would say that.”

  We reach the council’s table, where the four Seekers appear to be in deep discussion about something. They all look startled when Ari and I approach.

  Ari fidgets with his cloak, suddenly looking nervous, so I speak first. “We need to talk to you about what happened. About the explosion.”

  Seeker Agnar cuts over me immediately. “If this is an attempt to get back into the competition—”

  “It wasn’t the firecats that caused it,” Ari jumps in.

  Seeker Ludvik straightens, looking more attentive, and Seeker Larus frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “None of the firecats caused it,” Ari continues. “Both of ours were under control, and so was Tomas’s. Johann was struggling with the other two, but he was facing them at the time, and he said the explosion happened behind him. You can ask him. Ask Tomas. They’ll tell you.”

  The Seekers exchange glances. “And if it wasn’t a firecat…?” Seeker Ludvik asks.

  “We don’t know exactly,” I say, “but…” I have to tread very carefully here, to pretend that I know less than I do. They don’t know that Ari and I went into the Realm once and sensed Vondur magic there. “I tried to put that fire out, and there was energy in it that wasn’t like anything I’ve ever felt before. That wasn’t ordinary fire. And it wasn’t someone else’s gift, either. It was… a dark kind of magic. Heavy feeling, kind of twisty and… and slow, without very much energy. It was… wrong.”

  A shadow has fallen across Seeker Larus’s face. “And you felt this too?” he asks Ari, his voice sharp.

  “Yes, Seeker. It’s just like Bryn said. There was another energy, and it didn’t feel right.”

  No one speaks for a long moment.

  “Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” Seeker Larus says. “We will investigate the matter further.”

  It’s clearly a dismissal, but I step forward. “There’s one more thing.” I take a deep breath, shoring up my courage. “I’d like to formally petition the council to be allowed to compete in the third trial.”

  “No,” Seeker Agnar says immediately. “We have already made our selections, and it would be unfair to the others to—”

  “I’m not asking you to kick any of the others out. I’m asking you to let four of us compete in the next round. You know this wasn’t really a good demonstration of our skills, and none of us got the chance to finish. But if we had, I know I would’ve finished sooner than Johann. Maybe sooner than Tomas, too. I completed my healing spell, I was handling my firecat, and all I had left to do was the boundary around the enclosure.”

  “We’re aware of your performance,” Seeker Agnar says. “We already held our vote.”

  “And how could you have voted for Johann?” I stare directly at Seeker Agnar. “With how poorly he was handling his firecat? And he was slower than me at the healing. And when the explosion happened, only one of us managed to put out any of the flames. Only one of us noticed that strange magical energy and brought it to your attention. If you’re going to give Johann a spot in the third trial, then I’ve earned one too.”

  Seeker Ludvik is smiling at me. Seeker Agnar’s jaw clenches. Seeker Freyr is unmoved.

  And Seeker Larus rises to his feet. “We do not allow contestants to question the decisions of the council,” he says firmly, but I sense that there’s something else coming. “However, you do raise some fair points. In fact, when it came down to our vote, there was a tie—two Seekers voted to put you through, and two voted for Johann.”

  This doesn’t surprise me. I can see how it happened—they all agreed to let Ari and Tomas through, but then only two of them were willing to vote for me. I’m sure it was Agnar who voted against me and probably Freyr, too—I bet he wants his son Tomas to win, and he’d rather put through a competitor like Johann, who doesn’t pose much of a challenge.

  “If it was a tie,” I say carefully, “then why did you select Johann and not me?”

  No one answers, and we all know what their silence means.

  Finally, Seeker Larus speaks. “I’m sorry. But as a council, we have rules we must adhere to—and one of them is the result of a vote. Our decision stands.”

  For a moment I swear my heart stops beating, and I forget how to breathe entirely.

  I’ve been eliminated from the competition.

  It’s over.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I’m sorry, Bryn,” Ari says again as we leave the arena.

  I shake my head, not entirely trusting myself to speak. “Just do me a favor and beat Tomas and Johann in the next round, okay?”

  Before he can reply, his mama rushes up, congratulating him, and I slip away through the crowd.

  I find Mama and Papa, who are talking in hushed voices.

  “It’s outrageous,” Mama says as I approach. “We all saw it—” She breaks off when she sees me.

  Wordlessly, Papa envelops me in a hug. “You did well, Bryn,” he says. “You should be proud of your performance today.”

  “But I lost.”

  Mama huffs. “That Johann boy almost got himself killed. We all know who really won.” She sweeps me up in a hug herself after Papa releases me. “Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself in the fire? Inhale too much smoke?”

  “I’m fine, Mama.”

  She looks me up and down, checking for injuries despite my protests. When she’s finally finished her investigation, she says, “It’s an injustice, that’s what it is. We all know what really happened.”

  “They told me it was a tie vote,” I say. “Between me and Johann. And they picked him.”

  “Cowards,” Mama says, so loudly that Papa glances around to see if anyone’s in earshot. “They didn’t want to cause an uproar by selecting you over one of the boys.”

  “Where’s Elisa?” I ask.

  Mama and Papa exchange glances. “She wasn’t feeling well,” Mama says. “One of the neighbors offered to take her home so your papa and I wouldn’t miss seeing you compete.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “It’s her cough,” Papa says. “She’ll be fine.”

  But worry lines crinkle his brow, and I don’t believe him.

  I’ve failed completely. I don’t know how we’ll get more starflowers now. I had one chance to help Elisa, and now it’s gone.

  My only solace is thinking about Lilja. She’ll have to return to the Realm someday, of course, but until then I can still see her. She’
s my dragon now as much as Ari’s, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.…

  Mama and Papa chatter away during the walk home and the entire rest of the evening, clearly trying to get my mind off the competition, but it doesn’t help. I excuse myself from dinner early and lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. I don’t have the energy to sneak out, to try to see Ari or Lilja. It takes too much effort to do anything.

  I’ll never get to be a Seeker now, and I don’t know what to do.

  The next day, I try to distract myself as much as possible. I spend the morning running errands for Mama and playing with Elisa in the kitchen. Elisa’s fascination with unicorns has morphed into a fascination with firecats now, and I spend several minutes explaining that no, her dolls cannot ride on the backs of firecats because they don’t actually allow human riders and also they’re covered in flames, but I somehow lose that argument. So we end up racing the dolls around the room as we pretend they’re riding firecats like horses, making Elisa giggle and causing Mama to send us out into the garden so we won’t “be underfoot.”

  It’s almost noon as we sprint through the garden, and I race to beat Elisa over the finish line, which is Papa’s patch of tomato plants. Skidding through the dirt, I slide past the plants so fast I nearly collide with the gate. “I win again!” I yell triumphantly.

  No response. I spin around, clutching one of Elisa’s dolls in my hand. She’s halfway across the garden, doubled over.

  I race toward her as her coughs get louder. “Elisa, are you okay?”

  She can’t answer. She’s coughing too hard. Her doll has fallen into the dirt.

  “Mama!” I yell, racing for the hut. I fling the door open and reach for the starflower paste, even as I shout for Mama, who instantly figures out what’s happening. We race back to Elisa together, and I hold the jar while Mama scrapes the medicine out. When the coughs don’t ease right away, she scoops out another handful.