The Morning Flower

by Amanda Hocking

  “Did he die saving a life or defending the kingdom’s honor or some such thing?” Dagny asked.

  “No, they were fighting over dragons.”

  She’d been taking a drink, and she nearly choked on it, stifling her laughter. “Dragons? Were they children too young to know that dragons aren’t real?”

  “No, they were fully grown adults—I think—who probably drank way too much eldvatten,” I said, and she nodded in understanding at that.

  “Well, I’m glad you made it back safe and sound.” Dagny smiled and held up her cup of tea, almost like she was toasting me. “With you and Hanna and Eliana gone, it’s been way too quiet around here. Even the dog was much cleaner and more civilized than you three.”

  “How have things been here?” I propped my elbow on the back of the couch, leaning on it as I looked at her.

  “Not that exciting, honestly. Elof has been focused on analyzing Eliana’s sample, but the whole thing has him baffled.”

  “Has Elof ever seen any Älvolk blood samples?” I asked. “In real life or case studies?”

  She shook her head. “No, he’s never found any concrete evidence of the Älvolk. The blood he’s taken from those who claim to be Älvolk only comes back regular troll mixtures—mostly Trylle and Omte, for some reason. But that could be because they were lying or because Älvolk blood is no different than troll blood or because the Älvolk don’t really exist.”

  “I think they exist … I mean, right?” I asked. “But there isn’t real evidence…”

  “That doesn’t mean anything either,” Dagny said. “Humans have been studying blood and DNA for decades. Trolls have only recently decided to really delve into troglecology and all that that entails. We’ve been able to piggyback on the humans’ research in a lot of areas, but since they don’t even believe we exist, they haven’t exactly been studying us or recording pertinent data.

  “So,” she continued, “the reason we don’t know more about the Älvolk or their biology is because they’re good at hiding and we haven’t been looking for very long.”

  “Basically, we don’t know anything because we don’t know anything?” I said.

  She snapped her fingers. “Exactly.” She attempted an optimistic smile, but it looked strange and unnatural. “But thanks to folks like you, we will know more soon.”

  “Glad to be of service.” I gave her a faux-salute. “Anyway, have you talked to Hanna lately?”

  “She emails me approximately twelve times a day, even though I have repeatedly told her that I will only reply to one email per day, maximum.” Dagny sounded so offended and bewildered by it that I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “The most confounding thing is that she keeps sending me passages from these books she’s reading for me to analyze, as if I’m some type of literary scholar.”

  “Really?” I asked in surprise. “She mostly talks to me about Eliana, and it’s a set of demands, with a few complaints about her horrible summer.”

  “She does ask me about Eliana, and she frequently complains that her younger siblings are making her life more difficult,” Dagny said. “But then it quickly devolves into important quotes from the ‘research’ she’s doing to find Eliana.”

  “What research?” I sat up straighter. “She hasn’t told me anything about that at all.”

  “I don’t know why she wouldn’t. It sounds like she’s reading old fables that used to belong to her dad.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “They had a lot of kids’ books there, but I didn’t see any ‘old’ fables there. And Finn definitely isn’t the type to be overly sentimental or into fairy tales.”

  “I don’t know.” Dagny shrugged. “She said they were her dad’s, and they were mostly about Adlrivellir.”

  And then it hit me—Hanna wasn’t talking about Finn; she meant her birth father, Nikolas. It’d been in her grandfather’s study, before Hanna had stowed away with me on my way to Merellä, that I had first learned of Jem-Kruk and Adlrivellir when I saw the book on the shelf.

  That could explain why Hanna didn’t say anything to me about it. She had spent so much time trying to convince me that she didn’t care about Nikolas at all. And now she was digging through his belongings, trying to connect his past with the events of her present.

  “Why does she think Adlrivellir is somehow connected to Eliana?” I asked.

  “Something that Eliana told her once.” Dagny furrowed her brow as she tried to remember. “She was looking at the sky one afternoon, and Eliana asked why we only had one star in the sky. Hanna figured out she was talking about the sun, and that Eliana thought there should be three.

  “It wasn’t until she got back home that she remembered reading about a land with three suns,” she went on. “Adlrivellir is a place from the old children’s fables, and now Hanna believes that that’s where Eliana is from.”

  “Could she be right?” I asked.

  Dagny shrugged. “Anything is possible. But I still don’t know where Adlrivellir is or how to get there. If it has three suns in the sky, I imagine it has to be quite far away.”

  21

  Internal

  The Inhemsk Project offices were empty, but that was to be expected for a Sunday morning. I sat outside Sylvi Hagen’s door on an uncomfortable plastic chair. Between me getting here early and Sylvi running late, I’d been waiting for thirty-seven minutes, and my thighs were going all pins and needles.

  Not that I had any room to complain. Sylvi was doing me a favor by meeting me like this. She’d held my internship open for me while I was gone, and she’d wanted to meet with me as soon as I got back so I could start working right away. Considering that I had a coveted paid internship (however low-paying it may be), Sylvi was being remarkably generous and gracious.

  I didn’t understand it, but I would accept help when it was offered.

  Sylvi finally arrived, looking very cool and aloof in her jeans, leather jacket, and dark-tinted aviators. She didn’t say anything to me at all—she just went straight to her door and unlocked it.

  It wasn’t until the door was completely open that she finally said a gruff, “Well, come on in, then,” without looking at me.

  I followed her into her office—going slow and unsteady like a newborn calf because of the pins and needles in my legs. If Sylvi noticed my wobbling steps, she didn’t acknowledge it.

  She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, then she flipped through her planner and sipped her black tea. I sat across from her, waiting in an excruciatingly awkward silence.

  Finally, without looking up, she flatly asked, “Did you find her?”

  “What?” I asked, more out of surprise that she had broken the silence.

  “The girl that you and the docent and Mästare Amalie are all so fond of.” She waved her hand dismissively. “You went to find her. Did you succeed?”

  “No.” I swallowed hard. “I would not say that we were successful.”

  Sylvi looked at me at last, her dark eyes a strange bleary type of scrutinizing, and then she leaned back in her chair, linking her fingers together across her lap.

  “Do you regret it?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Her eyebrows arched slightly, but she gave no indication as to whether that was out of disapproval or merely surprise.

  “Calder is expecting you back at work at eight A.M. tomorrow.”

  “Great. I’m looking forward to it,” I said with a forced smile.

  “Panuk told me that you’re looking into the Älvolk,” she said impassively. “Is that for your parents or for Eliana?”

  “Both,” I admitted.

  She smirked. “It seems the old saying, ‘All roads lead to First City,’ is true.”

  “It does seem that way.”

  “All right.” She went back to sorting through the papers on her desk. “I’ll get the paperwork filed saying you’ve returned from your leave of absence. You can go now.”

  “Thank you,” I said and got up to go.<
br />
  “You’re getting a lot more leeway most others would than get. Don’t squander it,” Sylvi said without looking up at me.

  I paused at the door and turned back to face her, summoning my courage to ask, “But why?”

  “Pardon?” she scoffed.

  “Why am I the one getting the special treatment?”

  She lifted her eyes. “Didn’t you ever hear, ‘Don’t look a Tralla horse in the mouth’?”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to another. “I’m not trying to be ungrateful. I only want to know what I’ve done—or what I’m expected to do—in exchange for this treatment.”

  A subtle, impressed smile formed slowly on her lips. “It’s not as sinister as you may think. You seem to have friends in high places. The Trylle Queen, Mästare Amalie, the docent Elof, and even my top researcher Panuk all have sung your praises, though, to be clear, Panuk is the most vocal.” Heat flushed my cheeks, and I lowered my eyes. “That kind of thing makes me skeptical. But maybe you’ve done something to earn that admiration.” She wagged her head. “Or maybe you haven’t.

  “It doesn’t really matter to me either way, because my point remains the same,” she finished. “Don’t take opportunities for granted.”

  “I am trying not to,” I said carefully. “I left because I wanted to make sure my friend is safe, but I knew I couldn’t stay gone forever, so I came back when the trail went cold. But if I can pick it up again, I will leave again. I hope that Eliana is safe, and I hope that I am not called away before my internship ends. But I will never regret helping a friend in need.”

  “Noble,” Sylvi commented. “Naïve and wrong, but noble.”

  “I’ve been called much worse before.”

  “I’m sure you have,” she muttered, and her attention returned entirely to the work on her desk. “And if you stay much longer, you’ll be in the way. Panuk should be here shortly for our meeting.”

  “Sorry. And thank you again for all your help,” I said, but she was done with me.

  Once I left her office, I walked slowly and kept looking around, hoping to spot Pan—him on his way to the office, me on my way home—but I had no such luck. I knew I’d told him that I wanted to cool things off for now—even if it hadn’t really heated up yet—but that didn’t mean I didn’t still enjoy being around him.

  For the past week, I’d gotten used to seeing Pan every morning when I woke up, making unnecessarily elaborate breakfasts. And then every night he’d been there to go over our days with or to dance with, as old vinyl records crackled out songs. And as nice it had been staying up late and talking with Dagny last night, I still found myself missing Pan.

  Maybe I’d made a mistake slowing things down with him.

  Or maybe it was better this way, because I’d have fewer distractions and, like Sylvi said, I needed to take my position seriously.

  22

  Returns

  The archives were, in some ways, a labyrinth disguised as a library and box storage. It was a cold, dungeon-like space made of stone and dark wood without any windows. The ceilings were surprisingly high for a basement—over ten feet, at least—and the bookcases stretched all the way to the top, so ladders were needed to reach more than half the shelves. The design meant the shelves were really walls, with arches and tunnels cut through, and they led to more than the occasional dead end.

  Calder Nogrenn—the records keeper, head of the archives, and my immediate supervisor—manned the circular desk in the center of the room, straight down the tunnel from the main doors. The main purpose of the archives—according to Calder—was to maintain and add to the complete history of trollkind.

  It was not a place made for customer relations, which explained Calder’s personality. The intricately carved, beautiful circular desk he sat at made less sense since nobody ever really saw it but him.

  I wasn’t sure how he’d react to my return. I’d never really been able to tell if he liked me or merely tolerated me for efficiency’s sake. The last time I had seen him, Pan and I had stopped unannounced at his apartment, and he had grudgingly told us what little he knew about the Älvolk.

  He didn’t look up when the door closed behind me—he was hunched over his desk, his nose buried in a scroll, the sleeve of his caftan stained with ink. My footsteps echoed off the stone floor, and he remained head down, focused on his work.

  But he did finally look at me when I cleared my throat and said, “Hello.”

  “So, the rumors are true.” His gray eyes rested heavily on me, and his olive skin was a weathered map of wrinkles and time. “You’ve returned.”

  “Does that mean you’re not holding a grudge?” I asked.

  “A grudge?” He scoffed. “I hardly care what you do. My work continues on, whether you are here or not.”

  “What can I do to help you with your work today?” I asked.

  “Ragnall Jerrick and the Information Styrelse decided to go through many of our tomes from the early twentieth century. They’ve returned a large portion of them, but they still need to be properly shelved.” With his thumb, he pointed behind him to a cart overflowing with thick, dusty books, and beside it was another three crates of books. It had to weigh over fifty pounds.

  But I was strong. I could handle it, even if it wasn’t going to be fun or pleasant. So I smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll get right on it, sir.” I went around to the back of the desk and dropped off my bag before going back to gather the books.

  I could’ve used the cart—it would’ve been easier that way—but it wasn’t hard for me to carry anything under a hundred pounds, and the book cart’s wheels were all squeaky and squawky. It was the kind of thing that would drive Calder insane, even over his radio blasting out Bach.

  So I carried the stack of books through the maze of shelves, with tiny plaques and Calder’s vague directions to guide me through. The only thing the books had in common was that they were published in the same two decades, but the subject matters were so varied that they had me going to every corner of the archives.

  I’d only been working there since the beginning of June—minus my week off—so I wasn’t exactly an expert on how things worked, but I had never seen such a large haul of books needing to be reshelved. In fact, it was usually only one or two books, if any.

  That’s what made the archives different from the library. The books, records, and folders here weren’t supposed to be checked out or removed, generally speaking. They were intended to remain here to serve as a resource, but a safeguarded one.

  So I had to wonder why the Information Styrelse had suddenly requested dozens of books, and how unusual an occurrence it was. Calder probably knew, but I doubted he would tell me.

  I made note of the titles, but most of them were so generic— Common Surnames of Trylle Kingdom 1901–1925—or random—Country Food Recipes of the Kanin. And another specifically devoted to a nearly extinct yellow flower called Sorgblomma trollius funus. It didn’t sound like there was anything of serious value to glean from them, so I really had no idea what the Information Styrelse wanted them for.

  Sylvi’s warning about not squandering my opportunities had struck a chord with me, and I couldn’t waste a chance to learn something useful. When I came across any title that sounded even remotely related to Áibmoráigi, the Älvolk, or Jem-Kruk, I took a few minutes to skim it before putting it away.

  Even with my supernatural strength, by lunch my forearms were sore, feeling the strain more from the repetitive motions than anything else. And I was definitely craving a break. After I put away another armload of books, I headed back toward the desk, winding my way through the bookcases and thinking about how I was going to ask Calder if I could head to lunch.

  As I approached, I heard Pan talking—telling Calder a cheesy joke about a ghost always going through books. I rounded the bookcase, and I spotted him leaning on the desk.

  “Hey,” I said as I walked over to him. “What’s going on?”

  “Hey!” He
grinned when he saw me. “I knew you’d be hard at work, but I thought maybe you could use a break.” He lifted up a brown paper lunch sack. “I grabbed us a couple of strawberry gräddtårta from the bakery and fizzy pink lemonade, if you’re hungry.”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” I said, then looked to Calder. “If that’s okay.”

  Calder waved me off. “Yes, yes, yes. The sooner you go, the sooner you can get back to work.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  There wasn’t a real break room for the archives, just a large supply closet where we stored all the stationery and cleaning supplies. In addition to the shelves stacked with pens and papers, there was also an old couch, a minifridge, and a tea maker.

  It was dimly lit, with cold stone floors and exposed drywall, but it was nearby, and it was private. Using supplies we had on hand—a moving blanket and couch cushions tossed on the floor, a few of the tea lights we kept by the dozens for emergencies, and my cell phone in a paper cup for a speaker amplifier—we managed to set up a nice little picnic.

  “So, how’s it been for you since you’ve been back?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s been nice sleeping in my own bed again.”

  “Tell me about it!” He groaned in agreement. “Rikky’s couch was fine for a couch, but it was awful for a bed.”

  “I didn’t know you were uncomfortable. You should’ve said something. I would’ve switched with you.”

  “No, it wasn’t that bad, really.” He played it down with a sheepish grin. “I’m just glad to be home.”

  “Me too,” I said and sipped my fizzy lemonade.

  “It is strange not seeing you every day.” Pan lowered his eyes, staring down at his hands as he plucked a strawberry from the top of the creamy tart. “I’d gotten used to you being around all the time.”

  And then I remembered that he had his important meeting with Sylvi yesterday—that’s what he’d been called back for—and I nearly choked on my drink because I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to ask about something so important.