Acknowledgments
To those who told me the truth, and pushed me to keep digging, and helped me see how much I could do if I kept at it. Thank you.
Chapter 1
A dream, just a dream was what a piece of my mind told me, but the terror and pain ‘just a dream’ evoked seemed no small thing. Yet, I couldn’t escape it.
The new growth of the pale green ferns tickled my bare legs, stroking my ankles as I tiptoed through low lying bushes, a giggle trembling on the edge of my lips. I wrapped my fingers around the vines climbing alongside me, as I peered through the mist of the forest. Hide and seek was my favorite game, well, my and Cactus’s favorite game. The sound of his footsteps reached my ears a split second before he ran around the side of a medium-sized redwood. I dropped to the ground and wiggled my fingers. Vines and foliage moved swiftly at my request, covering my body, and hiding me from his view. I covered my mouth with my hands, stifling the laughter as I watched him stand there in a huff, his legs spread wide.
“Lark, I can’t find you. Are you cheating again?”
Lips clamped tightly, I almost fell for his trick, my leg muscles bunching to push me out of my hiding spot. I would never cheat. I was a king’s daughter, after all. Even though I was not a legitimate heir, I was still a princess. At least, in my own head. As such, cheating was not allowed.
But then I saw the curl of a laugh on Cactus’s lips as he spun in a circle, looking for me.
“Lark?” He put his hands on his skinny hips, and blew out a long, noisy sigh. “Fine, you win. Again. You’re just too good at this.”
I curled my finger into the soil and pushed a gentle pulse of power through the ground, and into the soles of Cactus’s feet. He turned toward where I hid, a smile on his face as he felt my call to him. This was something we’d just learned, how to reach out to each other through the earth when we were close to each other.
I sat up and waved at him, the vines sliding off my shoulders. “Over here, silly loser.”
Groaning, he tromped over to me. Red-haired and green-eyed, he was as much an anomaly in the Rim—our home here in the Redwoods—as I was with my blonde hair and eyes of different colors. One amber, one green. We’d found each other in the early summer months when the low fog was deep on the woods, and we’d been inseparable ever since.
“Do you want to hide now?” I patted the spot beside me, clearing away the foliage so he could sit.
“No, you’re too good at this game for me. What else can we play?”
I looked into the air above us at the heavy fog making up the clouds of the forest. There was one place we were supposed to never go. Close to the edge of my father’s kingdom, right next to the human roads that led to their cities. A place forbidden to those who weren’t Enders—the kingdom’s guardians. A thrill of excitement went through me at the thought of seeing a human in person, and not just in a book. Cactus, though, would be hard to convince. “Why don’t we go exploring?”
His eyes narrowed. “Where? We know the forest better than anyone, what more can there be to explore?”
A grin slid over my lips. “The Edge.”
His eyes popped open wide. “If your mother catches us, we’ll both get a beating.”
I snorted and slid a piece of grass through my fingers. “My mother doesn’t lay hands on me, not like yours does.” I cringed as the words slid out. I put a hand on his arm to soften them. “Besides, my mother is busy with the baby. She won’t even know we’re gone.”
And just like that, we were off. I didn’t know how big the cloud forest actually was; at ten, I didn’t pay attention to those kinds of things. The redwoods were our home, where we were safe to run and play from morning’s first light until late after the sun had set. But I did know that the human road on the outskirts of the forest was to the west, and the closest city from there was to the north. A place where there were cars and electric lights, a place where the women wore pants and the men wore earrings. At least, that was what I’d seen in Belladonna’s, my oldest stepsister, Rolling Stone magazine.
“The date on it was funny, not like how we count seasons,” I told Cactus. “November nine, one nine seven two. I asked my mother what that meant and she said it’s how humans do things. They have to label everything.”
Cactus grunted, but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t interested in human things.
Belladonna had shown me the ‘magazine’ just the other day and the images had burned into my mind. I wanted to see if they were real or not. If the humans really did all those strange things.
“Lark, do you think one day the other elementals will like us? Maybe Fern even?” His eyes darted to me, and then away to the treetops.
I climbed over a large, half-rotten log with flowers sprouting out of the composting material, then reached back to help Cactus up. “Of course. Because one day they will see just how strong we are, and that we could be heroes. And Fern will see how handsome you are, and stop being so mean to us. Maybe she’ll even let you kiss her.” She was the worst of the bunch, worse than my own siblings even, always teasing and making us look bad in front of others. That didn’t stop Cactus from staring at her with longing every time we saw her. She was, after all, the prettiest girl in the forest. No, that wasn’t true. My mother was the prettiest girl in the forest with her long blonde hair and violet eyes that seemed to see through a person.
His eyes lit up. “Really? You think she would let me kiss her?”
I nodded, not bothered that he mooned after Fern. “My mother told me one day you and I would be heroes, and she would never lie about that. Why wouldn’t Fern want to kiss a hero?” Even so, I felt a twinge in my heart. Cactus wasn’t really that strong with earth, not like he should have been. His talent lay more in his father’s realm.
He was more Fire and I’d heard that his mother might be sending him to the Pit to be with his father’s family. To train there.
A shudder rippled through me. Half-breeds like us, a child who carried two types of elemental abilities, had a much harder time making it in the world. But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t make it. Just meant there was more work to do. That’s what my mother always said.
“Cactus, do you ever get to see your father?”
He shook his head, and I watched in fascination as his face suddenly seemed ten years older. Like he grew up right in front of me. “No.”
“Do you want to?”
The age fell away from him and he was just my friend again. “I don’t know. I get scared sometimes. My fire gets away from me, and I can’t hide it. I think my mom is going to send me away.” His voice lowered. “My father, I don’t think he’s a nice man.”
I clutched at his hand, lacing our fingers together and squeezing them tightly. Not like his mother was all that kind, either. How she had a sweet boy like Cactus, I didn’t understand. “I won’t let her. You’re my only friend, and I’m yours. No matter what happens, we’ll always be friends.”
He smiled at me and I smiled back. I looked away in order to get our bearings. “We’ve veered off track, I think.”
Cactus didn’t let go of me as he turned, which meant I went with him, looking back the way we’d come. “Did you hear that?”
We both went still, listening to the sounds of the forest. The steady calls of birds had gone silent, and even the bugs seemed to have dulled in their constant songs back and forth about where the best place to burrow was. Only the steady dripping of water plunking through the leaves and the fog was left of the sounds I’d expect. Around me, the foliage trembled, as if a wind blew, but there was no wind. This was not the forest I knew, the paths I’d grown up on. Then a sharp, cold blowing gale that didn’t belong in the forest coursed down through the treetops, drawing tendrils of the condensed air with it.
&
nbsp; I squeezed Cactus’s hand tighter and whispered, “I don’t like this. It feels strange.”
He pulled me against him, wrapping his arms around my narrow shoulders. “Can you hide us?”
Without another word we dropped to the ground, and I coaxed the vines and undergrowth to cover us. We pressed our bellies hard against the earth, and Cactus kept his right arm over my back. Our breathing slowed as we naturally synced with the earth below us, our hearts beating with the one we all called the mother goddess.
Even with that comfort, though, fear tightened around us, bearing down on our bodies like a large stone lowered slowly, torturing us with what could be coming our way.
The air swirled and then came the heavy pounding of running feet. A voice crying out made my heart leap out of control, constricted my muscles, and tightened my throat until it seemed to close over.
“Lark, run!” My mother’s words ripped out of her, shattering the unnatural stillness.
Cactus’s eyes widened as he gripped me tightly and held me to the earth. No words flowed between us, but we both knew. My mother wouldn’t tell me to run for no reason. The whispers at night for the last few weeks, the fear on the still air as I woke each morning, and the odd look in my mother’s eyes as she stared at my brother and me suddenly seemed to have more meaning.
The currents grew thick, ozone gathering into deep layers around us. Air elementals, Sylphs, were the only ones who could manufacture a storm within the cloud forest like this. I knew; my mother had been teaching me about all the elementals. I pushed Cactus off me and rose just far enough that I could see above the stalks of grass. In the clearing where Cactus and I had been standing moments before, my mother now stood. Her back to me and her blonde hair dancing in the wind so it never touched the earth as it normally did. A soft cry, and I knew she had Bramley with her, my little brother.
What happened next . . . I could barely understand. Five figures, clothed in shimmering shadows, floated down from the treetops. A glimpse of pale skin here and there was all I saw until they landed, encircling my mother.
“You didn’t think you could outrun us, did you? You’re an abomination, a child of Spirit that should have been eliminated when you begged for sanctuary here, and then to seduce the king and give birth to monstrosities. What did you think to accomplish but your own death?”
That voice I knew all too well. My father’s wife, the queen. Cassava. She stepped out of the cover of the trees, her long spider web train floating on the breeze behind her. Short and powerfully built, she was the polar opposite of my mother’s lithe, lean body and ethereal beauty. From where we hid, I could see her face. She was pretty in the way of the earth elementals, her dark hair and bright green eyes flashing.
“Do as you will with me,” my mother said softly, the timbre of her voice soothing me even though I knew she was afraid. How could she not be afraid, though? The queen was terrifying. Yet my mother stood firm. “But leave my children be. They are innocent in this affair.”
The queen snorted and flipped back the hood of her cloak. “And have them tattle on me? I think not. You will die, and your children will die with you.”
Below my bare feet and hands the earth trembled, an anger swelling from the core, up through the layers of all that we held to be holy, and into my body. Before Cactus could stop me, I was up and sprinting toward the closest of the four figures in the black hoods. Without another thought, I flicked my hands at the cloaked body and the vines that had been so kind, so soft under my hands, reared up, wrapping themselves around that one. The vines tightened and the crunch of bones snapping rippled through the air.
“Lark, no!” My mother spun, her ocean blue eyes streaming with tears as they tracked down her cheeks. “Run, sweet pea, run!”
She moved to hand me Bramley and was jerked backwards by invisible strands of air. I caught Bram, clung to him as our mother was torn from us, her body flung high into the air, far into the clouds above the forest. I trembled where I stood, unable to obey her. Bramley let out a wail, his chubby fists clenched, and his face red with anger and fear. I counted the seconds, waiting for her to fall. And when she did, the whoosh of a body coming back to the earth through the clouds stilled my heart.
The world slowed as my mother’s body cascaded down, her hair flying up as if she were a kite, the string broken and the body free of tethers. My eyes were unable to close, I watched her fall, her body breaking as she hit. The fall shouldn’t have killed her, yet in my heart I knew she was gone.
She was gone, and there was only the two of us. Shock, unbound and filling my whole body, left me shaken to the center of my being. My mother—the one person I knew who loved me, the one who was soft with all those she encountered, giving those who had less than her all we had, sheltering those who had nothing.
Gone, in a split second on the whim of a jealous queen.
“You see what will happen if you don’t do as I say?” Cassava smiled at me, her lips tight and barely turning up at the edges. Hard. She was granite, with none of the beauty true granite held. “Now, give the brat to me,” she snarled, then glanced at her friends. “Wicker, kill the baby first, and the girl last. He is the one my fool of a husband has named as his heir.”
“What about the other half-breed?”
Cassava glanced at Cactus. “I will wipe his memory clean. I think I will have a use for him later.” Then she reached for us, as if I would hand Bram to her.
“NO!” All my fear and emotion poured out of me in that single word and the dirt around us exploded. Stones and chunks of earth flew through the air. The projectiles missed us, but the queen wasn’t so lucky. Something, a hunk of quartz by the flash of it, smashed into her temple and she went down in a heap. One of the tall, cloaked figures took a rock to the head, which slashed his face on the left side.
A distant part of my mind wondered where our Ender was. Father would never let us be without protection. Where was he? He was supposed to keep us safe from things like this.
My thoughts scattered as I faced the danger alone. Taking down the queen left three figures, Sylphs, who closed in on us. I clutched Bram to my chest, holding his squirming body with all I had. His tiny fingers gripped my hair, digging in hard as he whimpered.
“Mama.”
I backed away, fear pounding a steady tempo inside my head and heart, drowning out the anger that had sustained me.
The figure on the left burst into flame, his scream snapping me out of the fog I moved in. Hands grabbed me, and with Cactus at my side, we ran as fast as I could while carrying Bramley. The wind swirled, dragging us back, inch by inch. We leaned into the sudden wind tunnel, our bodies jerked around like puppets on strings. I clung to Bramley, his crying barely audible over the roaring of the wind around us.
I did the only thing I could. I called on the earth, begged the mother earth to save us.
“Please!” My scream was ripped away from my lips and I didn’t think anyone heard me.
I was wrong.
The ground shook and our legs sank, the dirt forming an anchor around us, stopping our backward slide. Hunched over my brother, I fell forward, keeping him between the ground and me. Curling around him tight, I screamed as he slid a little from my arms. With everything I had in me, I tightened my grip on him, but I was only a little girl, and the wind was so strong. Laughter filtered around us, somehow making it through the windstorm. I lifted my eyes and looked over my shoulder. The queen stood, blood dripping from the side of her face where the rock had struck her. She flicked her hand and the anchor around our feet released.
Bramley was snatched from my arms, his blond locks tugging in every direction, his eyes like mine, one amber and one green, filled with tears and terror as he flew through the air and into the queen’s hands. She grabbed him by one arm, dangling him as if he were just a hunk of meat. With a flick of her wrist at the Sylph, the windstorm eased. I gasped for breath, realizing the wind had been stealing the air from my lungs.
“Pleas
e, give him back to me.” I didn’t care that I begged. I would do anything for him.
She smirked at me. “You want him back?”
“Yes, please, he’s just a baby and he’s scared.”
She tipped her head, long curls of dark brown hair spilling over her shoulder. “Doesn’t seem scared to me.”
He hung from her arm, silent, his eyes closed.
Chest unmoving.
Body still.
Tingles of apprehension flowed through my body and my vision darkened. Below me, the earth shot a thread of power through the soles of my feet, snapping me out of my stupor.
The queen had killed my brother.
She’d killed my mother.
Cactus tugged on me. “Lark, we have to get away.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the queen, my brother dangling in her hand. An image of my mother floating to the earth, her hair spilling upward like some broken doll.
Brother. Mother. Family. The words were staccato, playing over and over in my head, a record stuck on a loop. She threw his body to me and I scrambled to catch him.
She was speaking to Cactus, but I barely heard her. Dropping to my knees, I held Bram in my arms. Maybe he was just sleeping, faking so the queen wouldn’t hurt him again.
I brushed my fingers over his face, stroking his cheeks. “Bram, baby boy, please wake up.” My tears burned hot streaks down my face, my skin feeling as if it were on fire.
But he was gone, his life taken when he was just beginning to live and grow.
Around me, the world seemed to shift, the ground rumbling under my knees, a steady thrum that coursed through my body.
I lifted my hand, feeling the earth’s power running through me, giving me the strength and understanding I needed. The trees bent backward, as if reeling away from us. All I saw were those who’d done this. Other elementals, ones who didn’t belong in the forest. Who should never have dared to come into our home.
And then the trees loosed. Snapping forward, they slammed into the remaining two air elementals, flattening them into the ground. They didn’t have time to scream, to cry for help.
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