Fi rushed forward, and she fell to her knees beside the nearest one. She ran her fingers over the slender shoots twining together to form a springy weave that would soften in just the right places when a person lay down upon it. The shoots rose ever so slightly to press against her hand. When Fi turned back to the others, her cheeks were wet, and the bitter twist of her lips had been smoothed away.
“A greenwitch was here?”
“Several years ago, yes. Katherine brought her. She insisted that we had to work together, all of us, no matter what world we were born into, if we were going to defeat the priests. She hoped that united we might be able to achieve what eluded us separately.”
“And the greenwitch? Is she still alive? Did the priests catch her?”
“They did. I’m sorry. She was very strong—the blood in her veins was too bright for her to blend in anywhere on this world.”
Arvid turned to Griffin and gestured upward. “This is why Dr. Hibbert is such a threat. In the early days when Earth’s Keepers made contact, Philip gave us the mechanism to create light deep underground. Dr. Hibbert nurtured the few sjel tree seeds we’d been able to save into saplings, and she planted them here. The Keepers gave us back our trees, and the few of us trusted to travel below the city learned how to dream again.”
Griffin walked over to one of the trunks and leaned against it, looking up. His face was full of memory, and of loss. Fi craned her neck upward. “What do you mean, dream again?”
Arvid clasped his hands behind his back. “Our dreams leave our bodies with our breath, and they rise to create those clouds. The clouds sustain the trees who, in turn, offer communion with us. That connection makes us impervious to the priests’ mind control.”
How many times had Fi stood in the ceremony, loathing the brainwashed people of Somni for their weakness? She’d never once imagined what it must feel like to them—to be trapped inside their minds, held against their will. Fi shuddered, following Arvid as he led them to the cavern wall, where several pieces of paper were preserved inside a resin case.
One was a drawing of sjel trees. Tiny script detailing soil composition, ideal humidity levels, trimming, and pest control filled the margins. Another was a diagram of the prisms on the ceilings of the caverns. A third contained instructions for sustainable sap harvest. The last was a sketch of three people. One, Fi recognized as Dr. Hibbert. The other two—she hardly needed to glance at Griffin’s face to know she was looking at a portrait of Philip and Katherine Fenn.
Griffin crossed to the wall and trailed his fingers along the sheet of resin covering his parents’ faces. They weren’t smiling in the sketch, but they didn’t need to. They fit together—her tucked under his arm and him leaning instinctively toward her. Griffin pressed himself against the resin, wishing he could cross over to that time before anything had torn his family apart.
Arvid lifted the top of the case and placed the new sketch beside the others. “When we lost Katherine, Earth went silent, and we’ve been working blind ever since. This is what we’ve been missing. So thank you. For returning hope to us.”
Fi leaned closer, inspecting the recent addition. There were two parts to the drawing, a sketch of a man kneeling beside a box with fire inside and inserting a long metal rod through the opening. Around it were drawings of tear-shaped pendants. Irritation chafed at Fi like a rash. “I don’t understand. What does any of this have to do with toppling the priests and kicking the soldiers out of Vinea?”
Arvid turned to face her. “Here in these caverns, we’ve made a haven for ourselves, and we’re learning to use the magic of the communion between humans and trees. But when we leave these tunnels? The dreams fade. And magic eludes us.
“You must understand that the first world the priests colonized was their own. Of course we’d like to free Vinea from Somnite control. But we also want this world back. Desperately. We want the sacred sjel trees to thrive again above the surface. We want our own dreams to feed them, not the coerced ones of prisoners. It poisons the magic of this world. It twists it into the vile stuff the priests wield, until it’s something ugly we no longer recognize.”
Liv turned to Fi. “Because we joined our blood with the malva vine before we ever came in contact with the priests’ mind control, it doesn’t affect us. So what’s stopping our resistance from overthrowing Somni?”
Fi frowned. The answer was painfully obvious. “The soldiers. They’re everywhere.”
“Exactly. We can spy on the priests. We can collect information. But we can’t infiltrate the soldiers’ ranks.”
At this, Griffin spoke up. “Because all the soldiers are from Somni. And they look different from you Vineans.”
Fi was about to snap back, something about stupid questions and even stupider answers. But then: “Oh. The Somnite rebels could blend in with the soldiers.”
Liv nodded. “We haven’t risked coming out of hiding because we always knew we couldn’t do it without their help. When Katherine was betrayed, trust between our worlds eroded. We stopped working together. And all our plans to attack the priests were put on hold. But now, thanks to you and Griffin, we’re talking, for the first time in years.”
Fi turned on Arvid again. “Then what’s stopping you? Why didn’t you help us to free Vinea ages ago? And how are necklaces going to help anything?”
Arvid frowned. “The pendants join the magic of our worlds. They are made from glass fused with a small amount of the sjel trees’ lifeblood, given willingly. Philip designed them, and we believe that by wearing them we can take the sjel trees’ magic aboveground with us.
“You see, since we are exposed to the priests’ mind control at birth, your malva vine doesn’t work on us. Without the sjel trees growing wild on the surface like they did before the priests wrested control, we need a way to take their essence with us when we travel above. And we need to be able to pass that essence to the sleeping masses so that when Somni rises up, all of us rise together. Because even if we took over the military, liberated your dreamers, and evacuated every servant from the temple, we’d still be left here with a hundred priests holding our citizens under their sway. It will never end, not for us, not unless we can defeat the priests. And for that, we need those pendants, one for every single Somnite.”
Fi backed up until she was pressed against the cavern wall. It all sounded so hopeless. To hear it laid out like that—everything that needed to line up perfectly in order for the resistance to win—it seemed impossible.
Liv came to stand beside her, and she draped her arm over Fi’s shoulders. “If the priests are taken out, everything else will fall. But if we only try to get all the servants home again, even if we can manage that, and even if every last soldier is kicked out of Vinea, Somni will still be under the control of the priests. And they’ll never stop looking for a way to come back to Vinea.”
“You forgot to mention the raze crews. We have to get them out too.”
Liv patted the girl’s shoulder, but she didn’t meet Fi’s eyes.
“Liv—” Fi sputtered.
“This is a war, Fi. There are casualties.”
“You can’t just give up on them! They’re Vinean too. They’re just like us.” Fi’s voice thinned until it was shrill as an icy wind cutting through a stand of pines.
Liv turned on her then. “Fionna, once the priests know their servants are spies, if the resistance survives, we can never go back to the way things are now. We’ve only got one shot at this.”
“But why can’t we free the raze crews at the same time?”
“It’s too much exposure. The crews are stretched out all over the wastelands. It would take too much time to locate them all, much less free them. And if we tip our hand just to save the raze crews, giving up the secret that the priests’ mind control doesn’t affect us, we’ll have lost the element of surprise, and the whole effort will fail. I’m sorry, Fi. It’s simply too risky.”
“But—”
“Enough. They knew what they sign
ed up for. There’s nothing we can do for them now.”
21
MIXING MAGICS
Griffin had spent enough time with Fi to get that she wasn’t all barbs and spines. It’s just that she knew when to hide what she felt deep inside. She knew how to hold it there, let it smolder until it was time to let everything burn down. A few days ago, Griffin would have melted when Arvid refused to help. He would have collapsed, giving up on himself and his plan. But not anymore. Griffin took all that frustration, he took the defeat, and he tucked it away.
He needed to think.
Fi had stormed off after the argument about the raze crews. Liv and Arvid were on the other side of the main cavern studying a map of Somni. They’d probably forgotten all about him now that they’d gotten what they wanted.
So Griffin was left alone with his thoughts. He leaned against the cavern wall, and he dug under his stola for his dad’s journal. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, then flipped to the pages on Somni. The first one was a diagram of the bull’s-eye, noting the subtle differences in the glass. The next page was about atmospheric conditions and the altered melting points of various metals. The third held instructions for mixing an unfamiliar compound into the glass. Griffin hadn’t thought twice about that entry until he’d seen the hungry way Arvid had stared at his mother’s sketch, the way the Somnite spoke of fusing the sjel trees’ lifeblood with glass.
Mixing magics from two worlds.
It was a daunting idea. And a powerful one. Griffin eyed the kiln across the cavern. It would take a few tries, but he was pretty sure he could do it. He wanted to rush over there and get started right away, but the day had already been impossibly long. He could barely keep his eyes open.
You can’t rush things when you work glass. If you skip straight from the coarsest grit to the finest one, the polish is never going to be smooth enough. If you don’t let the glass cool bit by bit when you take it out of the kiln, the whole thing will shatter. It was one of the first things he’d had to learn in his dad’s glass studio, and it hadn’t been an easy lesson.
Griffin needed to get some sleep. Once his head was clear, he could take his time, make exactly what Arvid needed. Then Griffin would have the upper hand. He wouldn’t let Arvid say no. He’d force the Somnites to rescue his dad.
22
BENEATH THE TREES
A spy is no good on an empty stomach. So while Liv and Arvid talked strategy, Griffin and Fi were fed until their bellies were round and their eyes began to droop. They were tucked into beds beneath the sjel trees and left alone with their thoughts.
“Fi?”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to say—I’m sorry.”
Fi dragged her eyes away from the shifting cloud and turned toward Griffin’s voice. He lay on his side, his head pillowed on his hands. He looked so earnest.
She sighed. “For what?”
“When I came here, I was so worried about my dad and so hung up on trying to figure out who I could trust and who I shouldn’t that I didn’t think about anyone else. I never thought about what this whole mess must be like for you.”
“Oh.” Fi interlaced her fingers under her head and raised her eyes once again to the canopy. There was no breeze in the cavern, but if you watched long enough, if you let your focus slip and your soul soften, the highest branches seemed to bend and sway, as if they were reaching out to draw the dreams up.
“I should have trusted you.”
“Yeah.”
“I do now, though, if it’s not too late.”
She didn’t answer, but the beginnings of a smile pulled at her lips, tugging them up at the corners.
Griffin propped his head on his hand. “My mom told me a story about Vinea once. She said it was beautiful.”
“It is.” There was a long pause, and when Fi continued, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what Earth is like—I heard you have greenscapes. But it’s not the same. On Vinea, the green is more than just the landscape. It is the beating heart of our world. You have to feel it, maybe, to understand.”
“You miss it.”
A groan slid between Fi’s lips before she clamped down on it. Her voice, when she finally spoke again, was like a dead thing. “Vinea is dying, bit by bit. The priests are furious that the greenwitches kept the green magic from them. The mind control may not work on us, but we bleed like everyone else. So there are soldiers everywhere, making sure we remember how easily they can make us bleed. They steal us from our families, force us to work as servants, and then, when we’re of no more use to them, they send us out of sight, to the raze crews. To die.”
Fi’s fingers drifted down to the shoots that formed the bedframe beneath her. The plant softened at her touch, the faint pulsing beneath its skin soothing her raw edges. “Do you have any idea what it’s like for them? They grow up in a world overflowing with life, and then they’re dragged here and forced to stamp out anything that even tries to grow.”
But Griffin had settled on something else Fi had said. “So, after you’re done being a servant, you’ll be sent to the raze crews? You’re never going home? Not ever?”
Fi closed her eyes as pain squeezed her lungs. “No.” It was barely above a whisper. “We know when we give ourselves up to the soldiers that there’s no going back, not unless we destroy them.”
“Wait—you gave yourself up?” Griffin’s brow creased in confusion. “Why would you do that?”
Fi sighed. “The soldiers on Vinea do sweeps of the wildlands. They don’t like to go out there—they think the jungle is against them. And they’re right. But the priests demand more servants, all the time, so the soldiers burn and slash and capture anyone in their path.
“Then, in the middle of the night, the resistance sneaks into the fort and trades their own members for the innocents who were captured. They go free and we are put in their place to be sent here. We know when we leave Vinea that we’ll never go back. We’ll be servants, and then, when the priests are done with us, we’ll be sent to the raze crews.”
“But the resistance is going to fight back now, right? And then you can go home?”
Fi’s eyes grew hot, and her insides twisted in on themselves. They weren’t going to fight for everyone. Sure, the resistance was going to bend over backward to save the people of Somni. And Earth. And to rid Vinea of soldiers.
All that was good. But Fi hadn’t signed up for the resistance to free people in other worlds she’d never even heard of. She came to Somni to find her family. To free them from the raze crews. And now—the resistance had forgotten them. She knew what it felt like to be angry. She was used to grief. But betrayal? That was new.
If you know you’re going to take a punch, at least you can brace for it, clench your muscles, and tuck against the blow. It’s the hits you don’t see coming that knock you flat.
The cavern was humid; Fi shouldn’t even need the blanket she’d pulled taut under her chin. But she was shaking, her legs trembling and her jaw chattering no matter how tight she ground her teeth together. After all those years working for the resistance, questioning nothing, it was like a part of her was sloughing off; a second skin was being shed.
Fi couldn’t trust them anymore. And maybe they shouldn’t trust her, either.
ALL TUCKED IN AND READY for your story?
I could keep going, you know—a different one every night about a new and mysterious world. I haven’t told you yet about Arida, the desert world, or Glacies, the ice world. And I could spend all night describing the wonders of Stella, the night world, and its beautiful darkness.
But there is a point to all this, of course. Stories usually have a point, don’t they?
This time, sweet boy, it’s magic.
I knew you’d like that!
You’ve heard some of it already. Somni’s magic is in the mingling of sjel trees and dream clouds. And Vinea? That’s right. The greenwitches—it is a wondrous thing to watch them work. Cal
igo’s Levitator keeps everybody floating in those mists. And Maris’s magic is found in the music of the seas.
What’s that? You think Earth doesn’t have any magic? I suppose you’re right, in a way. Our world used to hold so much more. But there are glimmers left, if you know where to look.
Think, Griffin. You know the answer.
No?
In the beginning, Earth’s magic was found in its elements. Carbon. Gold. Manganese. Helium. Boron. Calcium. And yes, did you guess? Silicon. If you mix silica with lime and soda, what do you get?
Glass.
That’s right! You’d spend all day in the studio with your dad if he’d let you, wouldn’t you?
But here’s something I bet he never told you: Glass is magic.
No, I am—I’m being perfectly serious.
If you ever wanted to visit one of those wonderful worlds, do you know what you’d need?
Yep, magic. And the kind of magic you’d need? Glass.
It’s the way between worlds.
Tonight while you sleep, search your dreams, my love, and see if they don’t tell you it’s true.
23
DREAM CLOUDS
Waking beneath the sjel trees was different from any other kind of sleeping or waking Griffin had ever known. For the first time since his father had been kidnapped, Griffin didn’t feel utterly alone. It was as if his dreams had been guided by someone—or something—else.
Griffin watched the cloud weaving like gossamer between branches. Were his dreams a part of that cloud now too? He arched his back and stretched his arms over his head. He’d dreamed of his mother again, replaying one of her stories. It was as if she were right there, cradling his head and speaking in soft tones while his eyes grew heavy and his mind became still.
The Lighthouse between the Worlds Page 11