“Almost there,” Ari says, answering my question. “You can look up, Bryn. I’ve got her nice and calm now.”
Cautiously, not quite ready to believe him, I tilt my head up. The fox’s spikes are receding, her fur now covered only in small, harmless crystals. Her jaws are closed, and while her ears are pointed toward us in curiosity, she isn’t growling or looking defensive anymore. I nudge her life source gently with my gift, letting her sense me. Her tail swishes.
“I think we can approach her now,” I say. “She’s not giving off any threatening signs.”
Ari nods. “You’re right. Her energy is curious but more relaxed.”
Slowly, I climb to my knees on the ledge, while Ari does the same beside me. We scuffle forward on our knees, remaining at the fox’s height, while she sniffs in our direction. Four pairs of eyes—her curious cubs—watch us from the dark entrance of the den.
“Hello, Mama Fox,” I say quietly. “Sorry to have scared you.” I place my hands flat on the ground in front of her, letting her sniff them carefully to verify that I have no threatening claws. Ari copies me, and she sniffs him too before sitting back on her haunches.
I raise my hand slowly, letting her see it, and when her body language doesn’t change, I carefully touch her shoulder.
“She wants to be petted,” Ari says, his hands still glowing yellow with his gift. “She likes the attention. I think maybe she’s had an interaction with a Seeker before. She doesn’t seem confused by what you’re doing.”
I hum a little bit more, softly, and begin to pet her, stroking all the way down her back with my gloved hand. Her fur is thick, and ice crystals break off under my touch, dropping to the ground.
As I give Mama Fox another pet, one of the babies emerges from the den, followed by another. Ari laughs. “They want the attention too!” he says, grinning.
“Make sure the mama is okay with it before you touch them,” I say, and Ari follows my advice, keeping a wary eye on Mama Fox as he introduces his hand to the nearest baby and gives it a pet. The baby icefoxes are adorable: tiny bundles of white fluff, small enough that I could lift each of them with one hand. Their little paws patter against the rock, their tiny tails swishing. They’re too small to form many crystals of their own yet, but I detect a few glimmers here and there. Give them a few more months in the Realm, and the magic will suffuse them so completely that they’ll be brimming with crystals, just like their mama.
The one nearest to me lets out a tiny whine, asking for attention, and I use my free hand to pet it even as I continue stroking Mama Fox’s fur. Within minutes, Ari has one fox cub curled in his lap and one nipping at the fabric of his gloves while he gives the third a scratch behind the ears with his other hand. The fourth cub nudges me insistently with her nose whenever I stop petting her for even a moment.
“That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I say to Ari, laughing as the second cub tries to run off with his glove.
“These little fluffballs are attacking me!” he says jokingly, grabbing his glove from the runaway fox even as the one in his lap starts to nibble at his coat.
“They really like you,” I say, grinning.
“A little too much,” he grumbles, tugging his coat’s button out of the baby fox’s mouth. But he’s smiling, and yellow light shines around his hands as he intertwines his magic with their life forces. I do the same with mine, strengthening the little foxes’ sparks to make sure they’ll stay healthy.
I wish we could play with baby icefoxes forever, but we have to move fast if we’re going to get Mama Fox to lead us to some potential potion ingredients. The sooner we start looking, the more time we’ll have.
Ari must be thinking the same. He looks over at me and says, “So how do we get her to lead us to anything?”
I bite my lip in concentration. Papa has told me before that icefoxes can act as guides, but he’s never told me how. “Let’s try visualizing,” I say. “We should both picture what we want to find, and try to share that with her.”
“Um, how do we share it?”
“We picture what we want to happen when using our gifts, right? Let’s do the same thing, but share our gifts with her life force at the same time. Maybe she’ll understand.”
Ari looks doubtful, but he doesn’t argue. “So what should we try to find first? I was thinking about meadowsweet.”
“Really? Why?”
“It’s got healing properties, right? The herbalist says it’s always in demand, because he uses it for lots of things. Asked me to bring him some if I could ever find it.”
I shrug. “Okay. Worth a shot.” I know what meadowsweet looks like, since I’ve seen it in Papa’s sketchbook. It has clustered, creamy-white flowers that shouldn’t be too hard to identify.
Together, Ari and I close our eyes and start to visualize. I picture the meadowsweet flowers in my mind. As I imagine them, my gift flows through my fingers, and I reach out blindly for Mama Icefox’s life spark. As our gifts mingle, I imagine the meadowsweet flowing toward her, mixing with her energy the way it fills mine.
I open my eyes. Mama Icefox tilts her head sideways, looking at me.
“Do you think you can lead us to more of these?” I ask. Which is dumb. It’s not like she understands what I’m saying. But her ears perk up, and she leaps to her feet.
“Is it working?” I ask Ari.
“Her emotions changed,” he says, closing his eyes in concentration, “but I’m not sure—”
Mama Fox is now nudging each of the four babies back into the den, out of sight. She makes a sort of yipping sound at them, communicating something, before turning back to us. Then she sniffs, makes a low whining noise, and begins picking her way down the rocks. She glances back at Ari and me, as if to ask us if we’re coming.
“I guess that’s a yes,” Ari says. I follow Mama Fox back down the rocks, with Ari clambering after me.
Mama Fox makes it to the bottom much more easily than we do, jumping nimbly from one rock to another while Ari and I climb, but she waits for us at the bottom. I think my first instinct was right: she’s had interaction with Seekers before. She knows how to guide us.
Still, she seems a bit impatient, swishing her tail back and forth as Ari and I drop to our feet at the bottom of the rocks. She takes off running across the glacier as soon as we reach the bottom, and we have to scramble across the ice to keep up.
Mama Fox scurries across the glacier and into the nearest forest, where the trees’ limbs are choked with ice and a heavy layer of snow crunches underfoot. Ari and I travel in silence, just trying to keep up with the icefox, until suddenly I spot something clinging to a snow-covered tree.
“Hold on,” I say to Ari, skidding to a stop. “Those are snowpetals!”
Ahead of us, Mama Fox senses that we’re no longer following and turns around. She swishes her tail impatiently, but she waits as I approach the trees.
“Are you sure?” Ari asks. “All of these plants look so similar when they’re covered in snow.”
“I’m sure,” I say. “I can feel it with my gift.” Snowpetals are one of the few flowering plants that can flourish in frigid temperatures, drawing upon the magic of the Realm to actually feed off snow and turn it into fuel. I draw my knife from my pocket and cut two of the flowers from their stems, being careful to leave the roots so that they can regrow. The flowers are beautiful, with tiny white blossoms. I haven’t seen one since the first round of the Seeker competition, when we were tasked with collecting them.
With a flourish, I hand one of the flowers to Ari. He examines it closely before tucking it into his pocket. “Thanks,” he says.
I nod toward Mama Fox. “I think our guide is getting impatient. We’d better keep moving.”
We continue through the forest for several more minutes before Mama Fox veers south, and the landscape begins to change. The layer of snow beneath our feet thins and then disappears altogether, even as it vanishes from the plants around us and the trees overhead. This far
south, the trees are coated in moss rather than ice.
I’m beginning to suspect that this icefox is leading us in hopeless circles when Ari cries, “Look!”
Nothing is visible in the darkness of the trees, but Ari isn’t looking with his eyes. He’s using his gift. I do the same, letting my magic stretch out before me. Something sparks in the distance, something huge and flowing and full of life. No, more than one something. A bunch of tiny plants, all growing side by side.
I gasp and run forward, Ari on my heels. We follow Mama Fox, bursting through the trees and into a little hollow beside the stream. Strewn all along the ground are tall-stemmed plants covered in creamy-white flowers.
Meadowsweet.
There are so many.
Mama Fox sits back on her hind legs, panting from exertion but looking quite proud of herself. I channel a bit of my gift into her life source as a reward, giving her more energy.
Then I study the plants. It’s important to make sure I can recognize them again; if this does end up being the right ingredient for Runa’s potion, we might need lots more. I close my eyes and let my gift flow around me, taking stock of the surroundings to make sure that I can always find this place again. We’re deep within the western forests, beside a stream, just northwest of the line of lava fields….
Once I’m certain I’ve got it down, I dig up four plants and slip them carefully into my pockets. Ari joins me, grabbing a few flowers of his own.
We work in companionable silence for a minute. It’s almost peaceful, somehow. “Thanks for helping me find these,” I say finally. “I really think we can find a cure.”
Ari glances sideways at me. “You’re pretty set on this, aren’t you?”
“Of course. What could be more important than saving the Realm?”
Ari smiles gently. “But we don’t have to do it single-handedly. We’re not on our own anymore. The other Seekers can help us. I think we should listen to what they have to say.”
“I am listening,” I insist. “But just because the other Seekers have a lot of experience doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong. And they don’t listen to me. So I’ll just have to prove to them that I can do this. That we can do this.”
“You’re already a Seeker,” Ari says softly. “The time for proving yourself is over.”
“Is it?” I look him straight in the eye. “Because no one seems to act like it. The other Seekers treat us like we’re students, giving us training and not letting us go anywhere alone. They don’t listen to us, and they don’t let us make decisions. They should trust us, but they don’t.”
Ari frowns, but I can tell he’s considering it. “You’re pretty good at this, you know. Being a Seeker.”
I smile. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Ari tugs the flower free and tucks it carefully into his pocket. “Guess we’d better head back,” he says. “It’s getting late. Or early, really.”
“Guess so,” I say, slipping one last flower into my own pocket.
Mama Fox leads us back through the forests and out to the glacier at a more leisurely pace this time. After we ascend the rock formation, we find her cubs waiting in their den, and they rush out to greet us. We give all of them a few more pets, but then Mama Fox nudges them back inside. She turns to us one final time at the entrance of the den, and I give her a goodbye scratch behind the ears, sending a shimmer of crystals falling to the ground. “Thanks for everything,” I say. “I’ll come back to see you soon.”
“Yeah, thanks for not eating us,” Ari adds.
As we scramble back down the rocks, my heart is filled with the same kind of warm, fuzzy feeling I always get after spending time with Lilja or looking at Papa’s sketchbook. The feeling that I get only when thinking about magical creatures. About how much I love being a Seeker. Nothing else in the world is like this. Nothing else makes me so light, so energized, so warm.
I knew it even before I won the competition: I was born to be a Seeker. My dream has come true—the Realm is all around, its magic filling my every breath.
Now I have to make sure I do a good job. I have to keep the Realm safe.
But as Ari and I trudge back across the glacier toward the edge of the ice forest, the warmth in my chest is replaced with a heaviness that sinks into my stomach. Maybe Ari’s right. The other Seekers certainly have more wisdom and experience than us. What if there’s nothing that can be done to make a cure? What if we lose all the gyrpuffs? What if the plague continues to spread?
After all this time, after working so hard to become a Seeker…
What if I can’t save the Realm?
TEN
The next morning, the other Seekers give us absolutely nothing to do.
Seeker Larus arrives at the Point in a hurry and hardly glances at us as he calls his dragon. “We’re focusing on boundary spells around the cliffs today,” he says as his dragon appears in the sky, “so your assistance won’t be needed. Enjoy the day off!”
As he flies away, Ari and I glance at each other. “Well,” he says finally, “what now?”
“I’m going to go see Runa and find out if she’s made any progress with the healing potion.”
Ari nods. “I was thinking I might go visit Elder Oskar. He’s one of my neighbors, and I’ve seen him around a lot since he retired from being a Seeker. I thought maybe I’d ask him some questions about the plague, see what he remembers from the last time this happened.”
My eyes widen. “Ari, that’s brilliant! Okay, you do that, and I’ll talk to Runa, and then we can share what we’ve learned tomorrow.”
Ari looks a bit relieved at my reaction, though I’m not sure why. Is he just glad we’re on the same page? Or glad I’m not talking about going into the Realm on our own? Probably both.
We walk back down to the village and part ways. I head straight to Runa’s.
She meets me in the sheep pasture, where her sheepdog, Hundur, runs straight toward me, wagging his tail. I give him a quick rub behind the ears, letting my gift flow with his.
“Should’ve known you’d be back so soon,” Runa grumbles, straightening the sleeve of her tunic. “I haven’t had time to do much yet, Bryn.”
“I brought you a surprise,” I say, drawing the meadowsweet from my pocket.
Runa’s eyes widen. She reaches wordlessly for the plant, and I hand it over. “These are really useful in healing,” she says. “They—”
“I figured you could try them in a batch of the potion,” I say. “Maybe they’ll work?”
Runa shrugs. “As good a try as anything, I guess. I still need to get some mountain avens, though.”
“Have you spoken with Elder Ingvar yet? About the apprenticeship.”
Runa looks away. “He’s probably busy.”
I frown. I know she’d be absolutely brilliant as an apprentice. And even if I didn’t need her help, I’d still want her to get the job. I want to see her reach her dream of becoming a doctor, the same way I became a Seeker. She just needs someone to give her a little push.
And after all the help she’s given me, I need to do something for her.
“Let’s go,” I say, turning on my heel and marching out of the field.
“What? Where are we going?”
“Come on, keep up!”
Runa races after me, hiking her skirt up to her knees, the meadowsweet still in her hand. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to get you an apprenticeship right now.”
“Right now? But—”
“No time like the present!” I say cheerfully.
Runa stops in the middle of the path. “I don’t know, Bryn.”
I stop too and face her. “You do want to become an apprentice, don’t you?”
“Well, yes,” she says. “But they probably won’t hire me, so there’s no point.”
“But if I could help you get the job, would you want that?”
“I… Yes.”
“Okay, then. You’re always doing all of these favors for me
. Let me do this for you.”
“But how are you going to do it?” She gives me a very suspicious look, which is completely unfair. My ideas are always good ones—well, okay, most of the time.
“You’ll see. Let’s go.”
By the time we reach the village and stand outside the herbalist’s shop, Runa is fidgeting with the end of her braid. She adjusts the collar of her shirt and brushes a tiny fleck of dust off her sleeve. I roll my eyes. “You look fine,” I say. “Just follow my lead.” I wrap my Seeker cloak more firmly around my shoulders so that it’s clearly visible from the front, straighten my spine, and stride into the shop.
“Good morning, Seeker Bryn,” Elder Ingvar says, glancing up from his desk at the back of the small, dimly lit shop. “What can I do for you today? Oh, and hello, Runa.”
“Hello,” she says back, her voice a little squeaky. I can’t believe that Runa, my supremely confident friend, is suddenly so nervous. She must really want this job.
I decide that the direct approach is best—that, and making as many references to my new Seeker status as possible. “Elder Ingvar,” I say, “I heard from Seeker Larus that you might be looking to hire an apprentice.”
“Er, well, I suppose it’s been a while since I took one on, yes, though I wasn’t actively looking…”
“Well, that’s good, because I have the perfect candidate for you.”
“You do?” His brow furrows in confusion.
“The rest of the Council and I want to make sure that you have all the help you need to keep this shop running smoothly,” I say. “We’ve discovered several new magical plant populations in the Realm, so we expect that we’ll have a lot of new plants to trade very soon. We want to make sure you’ll be able to handle the influx of business, so we’ve taken an interest in identifying the brightest young healer in the village for the job.”
Elder Ingvar still looks confused, so I’m not entirely sure that he’s following along, but I plow ahead. The best way to appear confident and official is just to keep going like everything I’m saying makes perfect sense.
“Who did you have in mind?” Elder Ingvar asks.
Legend of the Realm Page 9