The jar is empty now.
Elisa’s coughs subside, but just barely. Her breaths are still wheezy and hoarse.
“Just breathe, baby,” Mama says, rubbing circles across her back. “There you go.”
I glance into the empty jar again. We are officially out.
And Elisa’s next coughing fit could happen at any time.
Mama follows my gaze to the empty jar. “Bryn,” she says with forced lightness, “why don’t you run to the herbalist and trade for some more starflowers, okay?”
“What am I going to trade?” I ask quietly.
Mama doesn’t answer right away. She rubs Elisa’s back more briskly. “I’m sure I can find something. Come inside for a moment.”
Mama leads Elisa inside and settles her onto our bed to rest. I trail after them, setting the useless jar on the table and handing Elisa both of her dolls.
Mama rummages in the dresser beside her bed, pulls something out, and hands it to me. “See if you can trade this,” she says.
I look at the object in my hand and gasp. It’s the necklace of icefox crystals Papa made for Mama many years ago. He found every one of these crystals in the Realm himself and handpicked them for the necklace. He gave it to her as a wedding gift.
“Mama,” I say quietly, “are you sure you want…?”
I can’t read her expression. She places a soft hand on my shoulder. “You should be able to get a fair number of starflowers for it,” she says. “Don’t let the herbalist undersell you, all right?”
Always practical, even when trading away her most prized possession. “I…”
“Hurry, Bryn,” she says firmly.
I turn and run from the hut, slipping the necklace into my pocket.
But I don’t go to the herbalist.
I run past Runa’s farm and out to the beach faster than I’ve ever run before. I’ll bring home starflowers, but I won’t do it by trading away Mama’s necklace. All I have to do is find some in the Realm. I know they’re rare, but Papa’s told me where they tend to grow, and I bet I could find them in the northern forests.
There’s just one problem: it’s the middle of the day. Seeker Agnar will be headed for the training session in the arena, but the other three Seekers will all be working in the Realm right now. Any one of them could catch us.
The Realm’s a big place. They could be in a completely different territory. There’s no reason to expect them to be in the same forest.
But Lilja isn’t exactly easy to hide, and one of the Seekers or their dragons could easily sense her presence or see her flying overhead. Not to mention that the mystery person using Vondur magic could be there again.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t have a choice. I can get way more starflowers by going into the Realm than by trading Mama’s necklace, and this way she won’t have to lose it. It should be a quick, easy trip.
I just have to hope we don’t get caught.
Lilja is asleep when I reach the cave and looks confused to see me. She blinks sleepily, and her tail gives a few half-hearted thumps against the rocky floor.
“Sorry, Lil, I know I’m a bit early,” I say. “But we’re going to go on a fun trip, okay? And you’ll get to fly fast.”
Lilja’s energy rises up to meet mine, like she senses that something’s wrong and is trying to figure out what it is. I wind my gift through her life source in what I hope is a reassuring manner. “Come on, let’s go for a flight!”
A few bilberry bribes later, I manage to get Lilja out of the cave and into the air. I let her fly much higher than normal, hoping it will keep us out of sight as she passes over the mountains and into the Realm.
The daylight has completely transformed the Realm from the last time I was here. Miles and miles of lush greenery spread out below us, interspersed with mountain peaks and the shimmery gleam of crystal-blue lakes and rivers. The dark line of the lava fields cuts a diagonal gash through the greenery, while to the far north, the snowcapped peaks and glaciers turn everything white. It’s a riot of color that’s been invisible to us at night, with only the moon and stars to illuminate the darkness.
It’s so jarring that it takes me a moment to recognize the correct forest and send Lilja in that direction. I have to make her fly lower in order to get a better look, and my heart pounds in my chest at the risk. But there are no other dragons in the sky and no sign of where the Seekers might be.
As long as they’re not in the forest…
As long as they don’t see us…
I steer Lilja toward the clearing she landed in before, causing a stir from the many birds chirping loudly in the trees. The ground is an unfamiliar field of green grasses mixed with flowers of all colors, and that’s when I realize the new problem.
Starflowers only bloom at night.
Finding them during the day is going to be much harder.
Lilja looks at me with that confused head tilt again, probably wondering what we’re doing.
“It’s all right,” I tell her. “I just need to find some flowers and then we can go, okay?”
I hardly dare to breathe as I make my way through the forest, casting out my gift for any hint of starflower magic. If I can just find the right spot, then I can identify the flowers themselves even if they’re not blooming. They may not look like much, but I’ll know what they are.…
Lilja crashes through the underbrush, making enough noise to wake the dead, but I don’t dare leave her behind in the clearing. She might run off if she senses other dragons nearby, or one of the Seekers might find her, or she might get lost and I’ll have to track her down, or…
The trees finally part again, and I stop. This is it. I can feel it.
We travel alongside a stream for a few minutes, following the faint echo I can feel in the air. I’d know the feeling anywhere.
We come to a little hollow beside the stream, and there, tucked away under the trees, are nearly two dozen tiny plants.
The starflowers don’t look like much now, just thin green stems with tiny furled buds on top. But they’re the right flowers, I know. I can sense their essence with my gift.
Lilja is intrigued by the river and the promise of fish, so I let her hunt in the water a little as I get to work digging up as many starflowers as I can carry. The sun beats down overhead, and I scrape through the dirt with nothing but my pocketknife and frantic speed, pulling up entire flowers and stuffing them into my pockets.
What feels like hours later, I’m covered head to toe in dirt and have a dozen starflowers weighing down my pockets. Strands of hair have come loose from my braid, and I brush them aside as I sheathe my pocketknife and whistle for Lilja. She bounds up a moment later, splashing through the water and drenching me.
“Good dragon,” I say, patting her nose and giving her a bilberry. “All right, let’s go.”
Lilja doesn’t have enough room to take off in this small clearing, so we trudge back through the forest into the larger space before launching into the air. Again, I direct her to fly higher than usual. By the time we leave the Realm and arrive at the caves, I’m feeling light-headed from either exhaustion or the thin air or both.
That’s probably why I don’t sense them at first.
Lilja figures it out before I do—moments after landing on the ledge outside her cave, her whole body suddenly stiffens, the spines on her back rising in alert.
I reach for my gift on instinct and immediately feel it too.
There are three life forces inside Lilja’s cave. Two of them are human. And one of them is a dragon.
We have to run, now, before they sense us—
“Bryn!” A familiar voice booms loudly from the cave.
The same voice that echoes across the arena to announce the winners of the competition.
Seeker Larus’s voice.
We could still fly away, but it wouldn’t matter. They know we’re here.
We’re caught.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Bryn,” says Seeker Larus again in
a terrible, terrible voice. “Step away from that dragon at once.”
Beside Seeker Larus stands Seeker Agnar, his arms folded across his chest and his expression sterner than I’ve ever seen before. Behind them, something moves in the shadows of the cave—I can’t see it, but I can tell it’s another dragon.
“I… I can explain,” I say, not knowing how else to respond. How much do they know? How did they find this place?
“I would certainly hope so,” says Seeker Larus firmly. “I’m sure you can imagine how shocked we were to discover that a village citizen—and one of our former competitors, no less—has been illegally hiding a dragon outside of the Realm.”
I gulp. At this point, there’s pretty much nothing I can say to save myself. I’ve been caught red-handed with Lilja. But I still need to speak very, very carefully. I need to find out if they know about Ari and about our trip into the Realm. If not, maybe there’s still hope for a lesser punishment.…
“I…,” I start, and stop again.
Seeker Agnar takes advantage of my stumble. “We were told that you were hiding a dragon in this cave, and what do find here but you and a dragon?”
They were told?
It takes me a minute to puzzle this out. My first assumption was that they must’ve seen me and Lilja in the Realm just now. But that can’t be, because then they wouldn’t have known the location of the cave. They were lying in wait here. In fact, if I’d stuck with my normal routine, I would’ve been here sooner.
Someone told them that I would be here.
But no one knows about this place except Runa and Ari. So who would tell them?
“Bryn,” says Seeker Larus again. “You are Seeker Jakob’s daughter and one of the competitors, so I trust I don’t have to explain how serious this is. Magical creatures belong in the Realm, where they can be both free and safe. To hide a dragon outside the Realm is to risk letting it be harmed, not to mention the risk it poses to others. What if this dragon had entered the village? What if it had wandered onto a farm and helped itself to the livestock? What if it had become injured or—”
“As a former competitor,” Seeker Agnar cuts in, “you really ought to know better.”
Heat floods my face, but I can’t tell if it’s shame or anger or both. “And how would I know anything,” I snap back, “when I haven’t been allowed to train?”
Antagonizing him right now is absolutely the worst thing to do, and as soon as I say it I wish I could take the words back. Seeker Agnar looks livid. Seeker Larus doesn’t, though. In fact, his expression is… sympathetic? Whatever it is, it’s gone in an instant, so maybe I just imagined it.
“Why?” Seeker Larus asks. His voice is almost quiet. “Why didn’t you tell us about this dragon? Why did you hide her?”
All at once, a horrible sickening feeling tightens in my stomach. I didn’t tell them because Ari and I suspect that one of them is trading with the Vondur, and we still don’t know if that’s true. I can’t say anything about that. And I can’t even explain how Ari got Lilja’s egg without incriminating him, and it doesn’t sound like they know he was involved.
I won’t be the one to tell them about Ari if they don’t already know. At least one of us has to become a Seeker. It can’t be me now, so it has to be him. One of us needs to be able to take care of Lilja.
So I lie. “I thought it would help me win the competition,” I say quietly. Maybe, if that really was sympathy on Seeker Larus’s face, maybe… “I thought it was only fair, since everybody else got to train. I needed a way to learn too.”
“So you stole a dragon from the Realm?” Seeker Agnar says. Where Larus and I have gotten quieter, his voice has only gotten louder.
“I didn’t steal her,” I say. “I found her egg… on the beach. I didn’t know how it got here, but I wanted to protect it. I was going to turn it in, honestly I was, but then it hatched and… and I thought maybe if I kept her for a while, just for a few weeks during training…”
“You cheated,” Seeker Agnar fumes. “And where were you just now? Did you fly this dragon into the Realm?”
I bite my lip and tell another lie. “Of course not. I know only Seekers can enter the Realm. Besides, I knew if I did that we’d be seen.”
Seeker Agnar starts to say something else, but Seeker Larus holds up a hand, cutting him off. “The welfare of our island’s creatures is a Seeker’s first and foremost responsibility, Bryn,” Seeker Larus says sternly. “Your behavior was selfish and could have caused harm to come to this dragon. While I am inclined to agree that you deserved a fair shot at training with your fellow competitors, that doesn’t give you an excuse to break our most important rules and endanger a magical creature in the process. If you were still participating in the competition, this alone would disqualify you.”
Heat floods my face again, and this time it’s definitely shame. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I never meant for anything to happen to her. I thought I was keeping her safe.”
“This dragon belongs in the Realm, with its family,” Seeker Larus says, more gently. “She must be taken there, Bryn.”
“Wait.” I glance back at Lilja, who is glaring at the Seekers, her spines half raised warily. “You’re going to take her there now?”
“Immediately,” Seeker Larus says.
“But—”
But that means I will never see her again.
It’s all over. I can’t become a Seeker. I can’t ever fly into the Realm. Lilja will be reunited with her fellow dragons, but I won’t get to see it.
“Say your goodbyes,” Seeker Larus says softly.
I reach out for her, wrapping my arms around her leg and giving her the closest thing to a hug I can manage. “You’re such a good dragon, Lil,” I whisper against her scales. “The best dragon ever.”
I reach into my pocket, produce my last handful of bilberries, and present them to her.
Lilja knows something’s wrong; she can sense it in my gift. She studies me carefully for a moment before lowering her head and swiping the berries from my palm.
“Don’t worry, Lil,” I say. “You’ll like the Realm. It’s nice there, and you’ll make lots of new dragon friends.” Sniffling, I give her another hug. “Don’t forget about me,” I whisper into her scales.
Her gift twines around mine, her heartbeat thudding in my ears. I memorize the feel and sound of her as Seeker Larus leads me down to the beach, away from my dragon.
Blinking back tears, I can’t do anything but watch as Seeker Agnar climbs onto Lilja’s back.
She flies high into the air and over the mountains, where the sun shines down on the Realm.
I watch through the blur of tears until even her shadow has disappeared from view.
TWENTY-NINE
It doesn’t make any sense.
I have plenty of time during the long, cold walk home to turn everything over in my head, but I can’t figure it out.
Someone told the Seekers that Lilja and I would be in the cave in the afternoon. Someone told them I’d been hiding a dragon. But who?
Only Ari, Runa, and I knew about Lilja. Runa would never have said anything—and even if she did accidentally let something slip, she would have warned me. Besides, she’d never even been all the way up to the cave. She didn’t know which cave, specifically, was the one where Lilja was hiding. But the Seekers did.
And Ari never would’ve said anything. I don’t think he’d betray me like that, and anyway, he loves Lilja too much. He’s lost access to her now too, unless he wins the third trial.
Who else would have known exactly where and when the Seekers could find us?
I kick a pebble down the path, watching it disappear into the trees. Maybe it was the person who almost caught us in the Realm. Maybe they knew more than we thought. Maybe…
Maybe they’re a Seeker?
My mind is racing so fast that I can’t think straight about anything anymore. I don’t want to go home, don’t want to tell my family what’s happened, but I need to
talk to someone who can help me sort this out.
Without thinking twice, I race down the path and head for Runa’s.
I find her in the garden, pulling up weeds. She takes one look at my face and drops the clump of roots in her hand. “Bryn, what’s wrong?”
“They took Lilja,” I wheeze. “They took her!”
“What? Who took her?”
“They knew! The Seekers knew.”
“Whoa, slow down,” Runa says, stepping closer. “Take a few deep breaths, then start from the beginning.”
I do. After I’ve told her everything, Runa gasps. “I can’t believe it. How’d they find out? You have to go back to the Seekers and tell them the whole story. They’ll change their minds! Besides, it was Ari who found Lilja and hid her in the first place. Not you.”
“But we both knew about her,” I say bitterly. “If I tell them about Ari, they’d just disqualify him. And right now, it’s either him or Tomas or Johann who will be Seeker. It should be him.”
“It isn’t fair,” she says. “It isn’t fair. He’s the one who found Lilja. He broke the same rules.”
“What else can I do?” I sink to my knees in the dirt, finding comfort in the life sparks of the plants all around me. I nudge them with my gift, tugging little bits of their energy into mine. It makes me feel stronger somehow.
“There has to be something,” Runa says. “This is your dream, Bryn. You can’t just quit.”
“I’ve tried everything. I practically begged them to let me stay in the competition yesterday, and they wouldn’t. And now they’ve taken Lilja, too.”
She shakes her head. “The Bryn I know always finds a solution. When Seeker Agnar kicked you out of training, you found a better way.”
“And look where that got me.”
“What it got you was an awesome dragon and the skills you needed to win,” Runa argues. “Maybe you just need to talk to the Seekers again. If you can explain to them that you didn’t let any harm come to anyone, that you were only making up for the lack of training… If they see you compete in the final round, I know you’d win. If they’d just give you the chance—”
Seekers of the Wild Realm Page 25