The Ever After

by Amanda Hocking

  “That’s different. Hanna didn’t have the Älvolk playing with her memories.” I’d been lying on my side with my back to her, but I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.

  The curtains were lacy and let in more of the glowing yard lights than I would’ve liked. The branches of the large weeping willow made dancing shadows across the room that looked like arms reaching out for us.

  Eliana had finally fallen silent, and the enn morgana fjeurn on ennsommora orn playing in my head reached a fever pitch. Since we’d left Merellä, the song had been on its usual loop, dully playing in the back of my skull no matter what else I heard or did. And now that I was finally trying to sleep, it grew louder and the baritone went screechy. It was like an audible headache.

  So now I was the one that wanted to talk. Not just to drown out the song, although that was a key motivation, but there were a few things—a lot of things, actually—that I wanted to talk to Eliana about, but it hadn’t felt like the right time. It wasn’t the right time now, probably, but neither of us could sleep, so why not now?

  “Do you remember our mom at all?” I asked.

  “No. When I think of the mumuh, I feel warm and safe,” she answered carefully. “But I have no memory of her. I tried to talk to Illaria about her, but she refused to tell me anything. She liked that it hurt me, not knowing.”

  “I’m sorry she’s so awful.”

  “It’s okay. She’s your sister too,” Eliana reminded me.

  I grimaced. I’d been so relieved that Noomi wasn’t my sister that I hadn’t really thought about how I’d traded one evil half-sister for another. At least with Illaria I understood she hated me because she hated literally everyone.

  “We should go to sleep,” I said finally. “It’ll make time go faster.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she said wearily.

  It felt like I’d only just closed my eyes when Eliana bounced on my bed, waking me up, but the sunlight streaming through the curtains let me know that she had at least let me sleep through the night.

  Eliana could barely contain herself while I got ready, and she wouldn’t even eat Birdie’s complimentary scones and tea. I drove the four of us across town to the Holmes’s house, and I swear that Eliana could sense when we were getting close. She leaned forward in her seat, practically pressing her face to the window.

  As soon as I pulled into the driveway in front of the large peridot cottage, Hanna burst out the front door and ran toward us. Eliana leapt out of the Jeep before I put it in park, despite the fact I’d just explicitly told her not to do that, and they ran to each other and hugged. They both made excited squeals that sounded like a cross between laughing and crying.

  Finn and Mia came outside with their gaggle of children, and that began the twenty minutes of introductions between everyone. Once that was over, Mia invited us all in, but Hanna had already taken Eliana’s hand and started giving her a tour.

  “I talked to Tove last night and set everything up for tomorrow,” Finn said as we made our way into the house.

  “Excellent,” I said with a nervous smile. It was what I wanted, but I was still scared of the pain and what I might find out.

  Mia led us into the living room, where we all sat around and made stilted, polite conversation. Or at least we attempted to, but it was hard with all the kids. Lissa climbed onto Sumi and kept playing with her hair, Emma kept interrupting to ask questions, Niko sat on my lap babbling, and Luna started crying.

  “How are you liking Förening so far?” Mia tried to ask over all the chaos.

  “We haven’t seen much,” Jem admitted with an uneasy smile.

  “Is that a real knife?” Liam pointed to the one sheathed on Sumi’s waist.

  “All right, that’s enough.” Finn stood and picked Lissa up, carefully untangling her chubby fingers from Sumi’s curls. “Liam, Emma, go up to your room and play.” He scooped up Luna with his other arm. “I’ll take the twins upstairs for my mother to watch.”

  Niko fell silent and sank deeper into my arms as he played with the polar bear necklace I always wore.

  “Sorry about all that,” Mia said once Finn had herded Liam and Emma up the stairs.

  “It’s no problem,” Jem said with a smile, and Sumi looked relieved now that it was quieter.

  Hanna suddenly bolted down the stairs, her laptop under her arm, and Eliana followed just behind her.

  “We just had the most wonderful idea,” Hanna announced. She set her laptop down on the coffee table and knelt in front of it. “We’re going to video chat with Grandpa Johan and Grandma Sarina while Jem and everyone are here.”

  “Your grandparents might be busy,” Mia warned as the laptop made its da-da-da ringing sound.

  But then the ringing stopped, and a moment later, I heard the familiar voice of Johan saying, “What a pleasant surprise, Hanna!”

  The way Hanna was situated, with Eliana sitting beside her, the laptop was facing the couch, where Jem and Sumi sat. I was on the chair off to the side of the room, and I couldn’t see anything from that angle, so I stood up, carrying Niko with me.

  There was Johan, readjusting his oval spectacles and grinning into the camera through his bushy beard.

  “I wanted to introduce you to some of my friends.” Hanna leaned back, so he’d more easily be able to see Jem and Sumi.

  Jem glanced back at me, a bemused expression on his face, and to encourage him to interact with Johan, I said, “He’s the one that wrote the book about Jem-Kruk and his adventures.”

  “Oh.” He uncrossed his long legs and leaned forward, closer to the laptop. “Good morning, sir.”

  “And good morning to you,” Johan said with a laugh.

  Slowly, Jem’s expression changed. His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw dropped. He leaned in closer to the screen, and in an awed voice, he said, “Oleva, Jo-Huk? Is that you?”

  45

  Time

  It took quite a bit of back and forth, especially with everyone talking over each other. Finn came back just when it was reaching a fever pitch, and he held up his hands. In his most commanding voice he said, “Everyone, quiet! One at a time, please!”

  Johan went first—maybe the threat of Finn’s angry-dad voice didn’t translate fully through the laptop speakers. He sat back in the chair of his study, a befuddled expression on his face, and cleared his throat.

  “As I was saying, I don’t…” He trailed off and squinted at the screen, at Jem-Kruk smiling uncertainly back at him. “I have a brother.” He put a hand to his mouth, and his eyes welled with tears.

  Hanna looked between the handsome, much younger Jem and her elderly grandfather. “You guys can’t be brothers. The age difference is … a lot.”

  Eliana leaned over the coffee table, her chin propped up on her hand. Her eyes watched Hanna intensely, and her heart-shaped face was sweet and youthful.

  “How old is Eliana?” I asked.

  “Ellie’s … well, she’s—” Jem said, then looked to Sumi, who just sighed.

  “It’s a harder answer,” Sumi said. “Eliana was born in Alfheim around four years ago, but in that time, thirty-two years have passed in your kingdom. Time moves differently in our lands, and she’s spent time in both places, so it’s very hard to say precisely how long she’s been alive. I would put her age at about seventeen.”

  “Illaria’s older because she spent much more time here with the Älvolk,” Jem added.

  “She’s closer to twenty-five,” Sumi clarified. “Jo’s been here for much longer than Jem, obviously.” She smiled at Johan. “I remember when Rinatte met you. She fell head over heels for you.”

  Johan chuckled softly. “I remember you now, Sumi. You’ve aged well.”

  “I’ve cheated,” she said with a rueful smile. “I spent time in Alfheim.”

  “Okay, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Finn said. “But what do you mean by time moves differently in our lands?”

  “One year on Alfheim is about eight years
here,” Sumi answered.

  “After Eliana and Illaria’s father was killed by a kuguar, Senka took them across the bridge,” Jem elaborated. “She used to travel with Jo-Huk, then she had the babies, and he fell in love with Sarina and ran away with her.”

  “I’m sorry, Jem,” Johan said, his voice thick. “Sarina wasn’t safe with the Älvolk, and I loved her. But I never thought I’d forget you. I never wanted that.”

  “I’m sure the two of you have a lot to talk about, and you definitely should, but I’m having a hard time with the whole time thing, so can we go back to that for a moment?” I asked.

  I moved Niko, holding him more on my hip so I could sway and bounce him more easily. Not that he was fussing. I just needed to do something.

  “When Senka left, the twins were just babies, crawling around,” Jem said. “For me, in Alfheim, that was only three and a half years ago. When I visited her once, she was trapped in an unhappy relationship with Indu and very pregnant with you.”

  “That’s when I met Jem,” Sumi explained. “I’d been living on my own, moving around the various villages and the wilds of the arctic lands around Áibmoráigi. I never ventured too far into the human world, and I did odds-and-ends jobs for trolls. I was recruited by the Omte King to help find the Lost Bridge, and I became friends with Senka through the whole ordeal.”

  “You knew my parents?” I asked, feeling dazed. “When they knew each other?”

  She nodded. “I knew Senka and Thor, but I didn’t know they were involved or had a child together. And I didn’t spend much time with the two of them together. When Jem visited Senka, I followed him back to Alfheim. And that’s where I stayed until Eliana went missing.”

  Finn sat down on the arm of the chair beside his wife. “But how does time move differently?”

  “The Älvolk always thought time moved more slowly because Alfheim is home to the gods,” Sumi said with a derisive snort. “After I was excommunicated, I did my own research, even using human resources. And that answer seems to be more scientific than mystical. The farther someone is from a gravitating mass, the faster time passes. Alfheim is just much closer to a much larger gravitational field than you are.”

  “Is the bridge to Alfheim incredibly long?” I asked, thinking of something I’d heard before: that the bridge took ages to cross.

  “Not that long, but the bridge isn’t how you actually get to Alfheim anyway,” Sumi explained. “It’s merely a gate, a lock to keep out those that don’t belong in Alfheim. On the other side of the bridge, there is a waterfall, and that’s the entrance. You pass through, and you’re in Alfheim.”

  “Then how does it have different gravity?” Finn asked.

  “Alfheim is much farther away than the journey implies,” Jem said simply.

  “So wait, are you my uncle?” Hanna interjected.

  “Great-uncle. I think,” Sumi said.

  Hanna stared at Jem a moment longer, then looked back at the computer screen. “How come you didn’t remember him anymore?”

  “I—” Johan shook his head, at a loss for words, and he was visibly choking back tears. “I have no idea how I could ever forget my brother. My family.”

  “A few things could be at play.” Sumi offered up an explanation. “The Älvolk are fond of playing with memories. They even know how to do something called fúinn muitit that causes memory to decay over time.

  “Then there’s the fact that going through the entrance to Alfheim is exhausting,” she went on.

  “I thought you said it was fast,” I said.

  “It is,” Jem assured me. “But it leaves you bone-tired and discombobulated. Usually, it passes within a few days, but if you’re not well when you go through, it can be much, much worse.”

  “That’s why we haven’t brought Eliana home yet,” Sumi elaborated. “But that puts us in a difficult position. I’ve begun to suspect that staying here long term is deleterious to pure-blood álfar.”

  She held up her hand and ticked off her fingers as she spoke. “Senka came back ill and died shortly after spending over a decade with the Älvolk, Illaria’s spent even more time here and she’s very unstable, and Eliana and Johan have serious memory issues, to say the least.”

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “The fúinn muitit. How do you know if that’s been done to you? How long will it take your memory to decay?”

  Sumi gave me a grim smile. “You don’t know. It can take years before you notice, and even then, there’s not much you can do about it. It’s one of the most powerful incantations known to the Älvolk.”

  46

  Veloma

  Hanna begged her parents for a sleepover, so Eliana stayed behind, but that worked because I had the hotel room to myself. All of us had spent the day talking about the Jem-Kruk/Alfheim situation. Niko even stayed for all of it, although he fell asleep halfway through.

  Once I got back to my hotel room, I flopped back on the bed. I didn’t know what to think about everything. The Älvolk had already messed with my mind so much, and now it turned out they might take even more? Sumi had spent a long time explaining the time differences, but I still wasn’t sure that I fully understood it.

  Not that it really mattered. My hope was that I’d stop the bridge from opening—not cross it myself. I didn’t want to go somewhere I could lose entire days for an overnight trip.

  And Sumi knew my parents. When they were together. I wanted to know everything she had seen. Were they in love? How did they meet? What did they think of me? Did they think of me?

  But Sumi said she wanted a nap. And I doubted she knew the answers anyway. I imagined that Senka and Thor’s relationship—as much or as little as it may have been—was presumably clandestine.

  Or maybe Sumi had known, but she’d forgotten it. The way Johan had.

  Throughout the conversation, both he and Jem had intermittently cried. They truly seemed to love each other, and Johan had once remembered his childhood well enough to write a book about it. But all of that had been stripped from his mind.

  It was a cold, horrifying thought that I could lose everything I cared about, everything I’d ever done. It could all be gone. The Älvolk could make me forget everything.

  A knock at the hotel door stopped my rumination, and when I answered it, I found Jem on my doorstep.

  “Sumi’s sleeping, but I’m not tired. I was hoping you might want some company,” he said with his razor-sharp smile.

  “Yeah, sure.” I stepped back and let him into my room.

  “How are you handling everything?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted wearily. “How about you?”

  “Well, for me, I reunited with my long-lost brother, so it’s been a happy day,” he reminded me.

  “Of course. Yeah. I’m so happy for you both.”

  Jem sat on Eliana’s bed, leaning back with his arms behind him, and he looked up at me with his dark eyes. He’d left his hair loose, and when he shook his head to get a curl out of his face, there was something oddly sexy about the gesture. My belly warmed, and once again I wanted to blurt out that I was seeing Pan.

  Instead, I played it cool and averted my gaze as I walked over to sit on my own bed. “Yeah, I’m just trying to keep moving forward,” I said, like I knew what that meant.

  “That’s the best way to live, I think,” Jem said.

  “If I ask you something, will you give me an honest answer?” I asked, giving him a sidelong glance.

  He was slightly taken aback. “I always try to be honest.”

  “You really didn’t know who I was?” I asked. “When you met me in Merellä. You didn’t know I was Senka’s daughter or Eliana’s sister?”

  “No, I had no idea. I was looking for Ellie, and then I met you.” He raised a shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Maybe subconsciously I saw a bit of Senka in you. You don’t look much like her. She looked a lot like Ellie, only taller. But there’s something in you that reminds me of her, an open kindness. There’s a warmth about you that
she had.”

  I smiled. “So Senka had a kind face?”

  “The kindest.” He nodded. “Big, wide, dark brown eyes, and she had a contagious laugh. It was impossible not to feel happy around her. And she was an amazing fighter. She was so fast and light on her feet, and she’d always stop to help anyone that needed it.”

  I suddenly remembered a passage from Jem-Kruk and the Adlrivellir.

  After they had gathered all the fruit they could carry, they lounged in the meadow. Jem-Kruk smiled at Senka, and it was the smile of a boy who has never been happier and who had never seen a girl prettier.

  “She sounds amazing,” I said.

  “She really was,” he agreed with a wistful smile.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text from Pan asking how things were going. I hadn’t talked to him yet that day, so he was probably getting a little worried.

  “Is everything okay?” Jem asked.

  “Yeah. Pan’s just checking in with me.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?” he asked, surprising me.

  “Yeah. Sorta. I think.”

  “Like veloma?” Jem asked, using the álfar word that meant “the one you choose to be with.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “Pan is my veloma.”

  “Good,” he said with an unreadable smile of his own. “I’m glad you have someone who cares for you so much.” And then he gestured broadly around. “You have so many that care about you. Senka would be so happy. All she ever would’ve wanted for you is a life full of love.”

  I swallowed hard, barely holding back the tears, and I managed to eke out, “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

  “It’s good that I stopped by then.”

  I wiped my eyes hurriedly and looked over at him. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been talking. You found out your brother is alive!”

  He laughed. “I last saw him four years ago, and now he’s an old man. I’d always hoped he was alive and well, that he had love and a family. It’s good to hear that that’s mostly been true.”