by Kobe Bryant
“You sound like a Realist.”
Pretia shrugged. “I’m half Realist, Rovi, even if I live in the Temple of Dreams. So listen. Maybe there’s something bad happening here. Just think of what happened to the kids on the first Field Day, and then to Leo.”
“And you think that has something to do with the tree?”
“I don’t know,” Pretia said. “But look at those trees in the water. What do they remind you of?”
Rovi didn’t answer.
“The Tree of Ecrof, right?”
“Maybe,” Rovi said. “What about those moons, though? What do they have to do with anything?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t figure them out yet. But that’s not important. The trees are dangerous. Something bad is going to happen at Field Day. Just like every time we’ve all competed together. Maybe you shouldn’t compete, after all.”
“I don’t think it’s the trees,” Rovi said. “It’s me.”
Pretia tugged his arm. “That’s ridiculous. Now get out of bed and come down to dinner.”
“Fine,” Rovi said. He’d go to dinner. But there was no way he was going near that tree. He didn’t trust himself. Maybe Castor was right all along and Rovi was killing the Tree of Ecrof. Maybe Pretia was right, too, and grana could be dangerous. Or maybe it was something else—maybe he was just like his father. Maybe he was going to lose his mind. One thing was for certain. He was not allowing the entire school the chance to witness him doing something dangerous like his father did. There would be no Dreamer Field Day for him.
* * *
After dinner, when Rovi was sure everyone was in bed, he slipped out of the temple and went looking for the Infinity Track. Earlier that day it had been hovering fifteen feet off the ground near the Thinkers Palace, and it was still there. He didn’t think. He just found the stairs to the track. Ten feet. Exactly the right height.
It took two laps of the track to build his courage. And then one more. Rovi ramped up speed—fast, fast, and faster. All it would take was one misstep, that’s it. On his fourth lap he sprinted into the turn and then let his mind relax—took his mind off his feet—did what he imagined Pretia did. He blocked his grana. And that’s all it took. Rovi went flying off the track, spinning top over tail toward the ground. And just before he hit the grass, he put out his hands. His right arm broke his fall. He heard a crack.
The pain in Rovi’s wrist was as horrible as it was relieving. It took his mind off the episode with Castor and the Mind Sharers. It allowed him to momentarily forget the sickly Tree of Ecrof. And even better, the pain in his wrist assured him that he wouldn’t be competing in Dreamer Field Day. Now he would have no reason to go near the Tree of Ecrof again, which is exactly what he wanted.
23
PRETIA
THE ROOTS
In all the commotion in the Temple of Dreams the morning of Field Day, Pretia didn’t notice Rovi was missing. When she woke up it looked like a factory of purple paint, purple glitter, and purple silk and satin had exploded inside the temple. Purple streamers hung from the ceilings. The walls were plastered with purple banners urging Dreamer victory. Purple confetti was strewn along the halls.
In the cafeteria, Pretia found that most of her fellow Dreamers had already painted their faces purple. Some had even sprayed purple in their hair. And, of course, everyone was dressed in head-to-toe purple. She moved through her housemates in a fog. They all looked so happy and excited. They couldn’t wait for Field Day. Their energy was almost infectious. Almost.
But Pretia wasn’t excited. She was anxious.
What if she was right? What if someone wasn’t harming the tree? What if the tree was harming the students? It sounded impossible. But she couldn’t shake the notion.
What had Saana told them on their first day in Granology? You will know when you have arrived at the right interpretation. You will feel it.
Well, Pretia had been staring at the image she’d chosen to represent her time at Ecrof for eight months. And for eight months, it had puzzled her. But now it was starting to make sense. She didn’t understand everything yet, but still—she could feel that she was close, just like Saana had said she would be. There was something bad in the trees: the leaf tornado, the branch that hit Castor, Petros’s fall, and the leaves that had suffocated Leo. She knew they were connected.
If the trees were trying to harm all the students, though, why was the image in Pretia’s Grana Book and not in anyone else’s? And what was she supposed to do about it? That’s what she needed to figure out.
Her anxiety mounted throughout the day, adding to the ever-present uneasiness that had plagued her ever since she lit Hurell’s flame. She was increasingly certain that something terrible was in store for the students at the Dreamer Field Day. There was something dark in the trees that came out during competition. Today would be no exception.
She joined a few other Dreamers in decorating the Tree of Ecrof. The tree’s condition didn’t seem to bother the other kids. But it made Pretia anxious, especially when she saw the dark patch of grass encircling the sickly Tree of Ecrof. Now the majority of the tree was black—black and dry. The branches looked like the limbs of skeletons, all bone and no life. She allowed a fifth-year boy to hoist her on his shoulders so she could throw streamers up into the tree, and when her hands touched the bark, they came away smudged with black ash that took a long time to wash off.
Pretia felt as if she were in a trance when she followed the rest of the students back to the Panathletic Stadium, where both the feast and the Field Day would be held. Despite the incredible spread of food, she had no appetite.
The Dreamers had managed to get even more of their streamers into the tree, but they didn’t look as vibrant or as lively as they had on Realist Day. They just hung limply from the crumbling branches. Just like the previous Field Day, the marching bands circled the students, trying to outdo each other with rival fight songs.
From where Pretia sat at the feast, she could already see where the high jump, the long jump, the triple jump, and the steeplechase had been set up. The jumping events took place on the track itself, while the steeplechase obstacles were both on the track and in the field at the center.
Halfway through the meal, hundreds of purple lanterns rose into the air, carried upward by small flames. When the lanterns had disappeared, Janos rose and blew his whistle. “Students of Ecrof, our tree might be sick, but our school spirit is not. Today is the Dreamer Field Day. They have chosen their events and their squad, and they have prepared for a hearty challenge from House Relia.”
He paused while both houses cheered raucously.
“Tonight we dine as friends,” Janos said. “But shortly, we will meet on the track as competitors. May the gods grant both houses exceptional grana, and may you meet in the spirit of respectful competition. And perhaps your spirits will raise the spirit of our treasured tree so it may thrive once more.”
Again, a chorus of cheers erupted.
Pretia was wedged between Hector and Adira, who were having a lively argument about which of their houses was going to destroy the other house in the impending competition.
“We’re going to beat you even without Julius and the rest of our Epic Elites,” Hector insisted. “We don’t need them to win.”
“Even if you had them, you wouldn’t beat us,” Adira countered, listing the Dreamer athletes who’d excelled at Epic Elite trials. “We are jumpers,” Adira continued. “That’s our thing.”
“Well,” Hector said, “we’re not just jumpers. We’re good at everything.”
Adira smoothed her headscarf. “We’re good at everything, too. Anyway, you don’t need to be good at everything to win this Field Day. Only jumping. Right, Pretia?”
It took Pretia a moment to tune in to the conversation.
“Right, Pretia?”
Pretia looked up and saw Adira stari
ng at her meaningfully.
“Oh, right,” Pretia said. “We’re really good at jumping. There were so many athletes to choose from, we could have fielded two teams.”
“See?” Adira said, putting a nail in her argument.
But Hector wouldn’t let it drop, and the two continued bickering and ribbing each other. Pretia tried to join in, but the image in her Grana Book kept returning to her. The reflected forest. The good trees and the bad ones.
Despite all the entertainment and distractions, the music and fireworks and lanterns, the banners and streamers and colorful signs, Pretia could not take her eyes off the sickly tree. How could it be hurting the students? What was it doing?
She was so distracted that at first she didn’t realize Rovi’s name hadn’t been announced as part of the Dreamer squad. It was only when the entire team had left the banquet that Pretia realized she’d slapped every athlete’s hand but Rovi’s.
She bolted from her seat and rushed to find Xandra, another seventh year, who had taken over as House Captain for the day while Cassandra was off with the Dreamer squad. “Where’s Rovi?” Pretia demanded.
Xandra looked at her, confused.
“Rovi,” Pretia insisted. “He was supposed to be on the team.”
“You didn’t hear?” Xandra said. “You must really be in another world.”
Pretia’s stomach started to churn. She felt as if she might pass out. “What happened?”
“He had an accident while training. Apparently, he fell off the Infinity Track and broke a bone in his wrist,” Xandra said. “Pretty stupid if you ask me.”
“He fell off the Infinity Track?” Pretia repeated.
“Gosh, Pretia, you sound relieved,” Xandra said.
“No,” Pretia snapped. “No, I’m not.”
But she realized that she was. Rovi wouldn’t be competing in the Field Day. He was safe in the TheraCenter. The minute she could slip away, she’d go visit him. But right now, with the entire staff in the stadium, there was no way to escape.
Pretia joined the group of students making their way to the bleachers. She watched the marching bands circle the track, entertaining the students while the competitors warmed up. She found a spot high up in the stands where she would have a decent view of the events but an even better one of the tree. She took a poster that read DREAM BIG and held it aloft as the competitors and the events were announced.
The bleachers were in an uproar by the time the competition started. The first event was high jump—which should have been Pretia’s event. The scoring system was the same: three points for first place, two for second, and one for third. Pretia watched the twelve competitors—six from each house—take three turns each. She barely noticed who won.
Virgil had been a last-minute addition to triple jump. His skill as a diver granted him the necessary footwork to execute the complicated approach to the takeoff board, a hop, then a skip, then a jump. When he took his first turn, Pretia joined all the other first years in getting to her feet and cheering. He approached the jump like a dancer, a graceful execution that saw him soaring like a bird, his legs pedaling through the air like he was riding an invisible bicycle that propelled him farther than he’d ever jumped before. Virgil made it onto the podium and finished in third place.
Next was long jump, then pole vault. Then steeplechase, Rovi’s event, was last. Only three more events and Field Day would be over.
Pretia realized she didn’t care whether the Dreamers won. All she wanted was for the events to conclude without anything horrible happening. Perhaps she really was imagining things, she told herself. Maybe the day would end without incident.
The Realists eked out a win on the long jump, snagging two out of three spots on the podium. The Dreamers, much to everyone’s surprise and delight, swept the podium at the pole vault. Cassandra, who’d also competed in this event, won by executing an enormous backflip that took her over the bar.
Now it was time for the steeplechase. While the Junior Trainers began to set up the obstacles, Cleopatra Volis came and stood in front of the bleachers. “We have a substitution today,” she announced. “Vera Renovo will be taking the place of Rovi Myrios for the Dreamers in the steeplechase.”
Pretia let out an involuntary cry that was swallowed by her fellow Dreamers chanting Vera’s name.
The runners lined up on the track, eight in total. A series of obstacles lay in front of them—long puddles, high hurdles, and other sorts of barriers that they would have to negotiate as they sprinted along the track. Pretia could immediately see why Rovi, with his nimble feet, would have been a force to be reckoned with at steeplechase.
Janos blew his whistle and the runners took off at a restrained pace. They splashed through the first puddle. They skirted the first hurdle. It was a pretty cool event, Pretia had to admit, all these tricky obstacles that had to be negotiated in totally different ways. You could never release fully into a sprint because you had to prepare for the next obstacle, but you also couldn’t afford to be overly cautious on the obstacles and lose ground to your competitors.
The course ran halfway around the track and veered into the field for the water obstacles. Then it cut across the field and finished on the far side of the track where the students and faculty sat in the bleachers.
Vera was in a breakaway pack of three. She and two Realists had dashed away at the start and were the first runners to finish on the track and turn into the field. Pretia joined the rest of the student body in leaping to her feet, cheering them on. She wasn’t just cheering for Vera and the Dreamers, she was cheering the end of the race—the impending end of Field Day.
As the runners were cutting through the field, though, passing to the left of the tree, the ground began to shift. At first Pretia thought she was imagining it. But no—it was happening. The ground was moving and black roots were rising from the green grass. They weren’t just rising, they were chasing the lead runners.
Pretia cupped her hands over her mouth. “Run, Vera!” she shouted.
All around her in the stands, the rest of the students were staring openmouthed as the large black roots rose from the ground like the tentacles of a huge sea creature. The roots had fully broken free of the ground and were lashing at Vera and the leaders.
Only Pretia seemed to have found her voice. The other students were too stunned to say anything. “Run!” she cried again. “Run!”
The roots were grabbing for the lead runners. And then, in a horrible instant, a black root curled around the ankle of one of the Realists next to Vera and pulled him back. As it did, there was a terrifying cracking sound and the ground around the tree caved downward like it was rotting. It swallowed the runners who’d been following Vera and the other leaders.
At the sound, Vera stopped. She turned and grabbed for the Realist boy who’d been yanked back by the root. She caught his arm and pulled, yanking him from side to side, trying to break him free from the root.
“Vera, let go!” Pretia called.
But Vera was, as always, determined. She was not going to let the root beat her. With a massive effort, she pulled her Realist competitor as hard as she could, breaking him out of the root’s grasp, sending the two of them flying backward onto the ground.
All the faculty were on their feet at once, rushing to the field. “Stay back!” Cleopatra shouted. “Everyone keep away.”
“Nobody move,” Satis called. “Nobody move.”
But there were too many students to hold back. Everyone was desperate to check on their friends. Pretia pushed past the throng of kids to the hole in the ground.
It wasn’t deep—which was good—no more than three feet. But it stank like rot, like the earth was sour and festering. The five students who’d been at the back of the pack lay tumbled where they’d fallen in a dank pit of wet earth and tangled roots. All of them seemed to have the wind knocked out of them, an
d all of them seemed to be struggling to get their breath back.
Everyone was talking at once. Some students were hysterical. Some were trying to pull the fallen runners from the pit. Pretia moved to the side to let the medics through. Her heart pounded; her mind raced. She had known something like this would happen. She’d seen it in her Grana Book. But she’d had no idea how she was supposed to prevent it.
She watched as the fallen runners were lifted one by one onto stretchers. Several of them had breathing masks placed over their mouths.
“Did we win?” Vera had appeared at Pretia’s side.
“What?” Pretia asked.
“I guess I got second, and that Realist came first, and the kid I pulled from the root got third, so that’s two points for us and four for them, right?”
“Who cares?” Pretia asked. “You just saved that kid’s life.”
Vera looked dazed. “I guess that was a dumb thing to do,” she said. “I mean, from the Dreamers’ standpoint.”
“No,” Pretia said. “It was brave. That tree could have pulled you into the pit.”
“Brave, huh?”
“Absolutely,” Pretia said.
Vera shrugged. But she couldn’t hide her smile. “Brave and stupid,” she said.
“You’re a hero, Vera.”
“Do you think he’s okay?” Vera asked.
“I don’t know,” Pretia said. She feared that everyone involved in the Field Day disaster was pretty far from okay.
“We should check,” Vera said.
Janos was blowing his whistle for the students’ attention.
“Let’s go to the TheraCenter after this,” Pretia said. “I want to see Rovi.”
“I want to go now,” Vera said. Then she cast a sideways look at Janos. “I really don’t care what he has to say.” And before Pretia could stop her, Vera raced off.
Janos’s powerful voice echoed through the stadium. “Students, to the bleachers.”