Neverseen

by Shannon Messenger

  “The void?” Sophie asked.

  “It’s a confusing process,” Mr. Forkle admitted. “But I’ve brought a Conjurer to guide you through. She’s waiting for you in the main room.”

  Sophie dressed quickly, expecting to find another elf in a crazy disguise.

  Instead she found an achingly familiar figure in a simple blue gown waiting for her by the waterfall.

  “Edaline?”

  THIRTY-SIX

  TEARS STREAMED DOWN Sophie’s cheeks as she tackled her mom with a hug. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

  “I’m having a hard time believing it myself,” Edaline whispered. She glanced around the room, smiling at Della and Biana. “This definitely wasn’t what I’d been imagining for your hideout. It feels almost . . . homey.”

  “It’s not as good as home,” Sophie promised.

  Edaline traced her hands across Sophie’s back, and for a second it felt like they were back at Havenfield, everyone safe, nobody hurt or banished.

  “I love you, Mom,” Sophie whispered, taking her chance to say it.

  “I love you too.”

  Sophie leaned back, trying to read the shadows on Edaline’s face. Rings under her eyes hinted that she wasn’t sleeping, and a crease between her brows gave away her stress. But otherwise she looked pretty normal.

  A sniffle from the doorway made them turn to where Dex stood.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, wiping his eyes. “Just . . . you know.”

  Dex’s mom and Edaline were sisters, and they looked a lot alike—same wide turquoise eyes and soft, amber-colored hair.

  “Come here, Dex,” Edaline said, stepping aside to include him in the hug. “Your family is going to be so jealous when I tell them I got to see you.”

  “They don’t know you’re here?” Sophie asked.

  “No, even Grady doesn’t. He’s off with Alden. I was out working in the sasquatch pasture when Mr. Forkle appeared.”

  “Sorry to catch you by surprise,” Mr. Forkle said. “The Council is monitoring Havenfield extremely closely.”

  “Are they doing the same to my family?” Dex asked.

  “Of course,” Edaline said. “But your dad’s enjoying it. He’s been rigging traps all over Slurps and Burps to catch anyone snooping. Several Emissaries have left covered in pink slime.”

  Dex grinned. “Wish I could be there.”

  “He wishes you could too. But he’s so proud of you. Your whole family is—Oh! I can’t believe I forgot!”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wriggling bundle of orange fur.

  “IGGY!” Sophie and Dex shouted at the same time.

  The tiny imp squeaked and flapped his batlike wings, fluttering over to Sophie’s waiting hands. She kissed his furry cheeks, gagging from the Iggy breath.

  Dex coughed. “Whoa, I think he’s gotten stinkier.”

  “He has,” Edaline agreed. “He’s been refusing to clean himself. And if I leave him in his cage, he flings his poop. So I’ve been carrying him in my pocket and bribing him with treats.”

  Sophie poked Iggy’s belly, which felt chubbier—though it was hard to tell under the orange dreadlocks. His natural fur was gray, but Dex had a habit of slipping Iggy elixirs.

  “Next time you’re getting shorter fur,” Dex told Iggy. “So it won’t hold the stink in.”

  “You should make him blue,” Biana said. “With sparkles!”

  Iggy responded with an extraordinarily loud fart.

  “Fine, no sparkles,” Sophie said, rubbing his fuzzy chin and filling the room with his squeaky purr. “I didn’t realize how much I missed him. I wish Grady . . .”

  “I know,” Edaline said.

  “What is he doing with Alden?” Della asked.

  “Does it have to do with the scrolls I saw you reading through my Spyball,” Sophie asked.

  Edaline smiled. “I’ve wondered if you were watching.”

  “What’s in the scrolls?” Mr. Forkle asked.

  “We’re honestly not sure. The Council had ordered them destroyed, so Alden snuck them home to figure out why. So far they’ve all been about testing trees for something called drakostomes.”

  Sophie, Dex, and Biana shared a look.

  “Why do I feel like there’s something you haven’t told me?” Mr. Forkle asked them.

  Dex explained what he’d found in the archive, and how the drakostomes seemed like something the ogres held as leverage against the Council.

  Mr. Forkle rubbed his temples. “That’s the kind of information I expect you to tell me.”

  “We meant to,” Dex said. “But things have been crazy.”

  “Yes, I suppose they have,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “But if the Council wants those scrolls destroyed, they’re clearly trying to cover their tracks.”

  “So you think the ogres are behind the plague?” Sophie asked. “And that the Council knew it could happen?”

  Mr. Forkle sighed. “It’s looking more and more possible.”

  “Then why hasn’t the Council sent the goblins into Ravagog to shut the ogres down?” Dex asked.

  “Because war with the ogres will kill thousands,” Mr. Forkle reminded him. “And presently the plague hasn’t killed a single gnome.”

  “It could,” Sophie pressed. “Any day we might get the bad news. How could the Council not warn the gnomes that this could happen?”

  Mr. Forkle glanced over his shoulder, lowering his voice before he said, “You must be very careful with these accusations, Miss Foster. That is the kind of revelation that would shake the very foundation of our world. Let’s also not forget that the only gnomes currently affected are those who chose to live beyond the protection of the Lost Cities—and that we don’t even know what these drakostomes are. Can I borrow those scrolls when I bring you back to Havenfield?” he asked Edaline.

  Sophie grabbed Edaline’s hand. “You’re not leaving already, are you?”

  “No, but I’ll need to bring her home soon,” Mr. Forkle said. “So we should focus on hiding the cache.”

  Edaline flinched at the word. “I can’t believe you’re responsible for guarding one, Sophie.”

  “It’ll be much safer once the cache is tucked into the void,” Mr. Forkle promised.

  “Do you mean the same void I go to when I teleport?” Sophie asked. “How do you hide something there?”

  “Everything in the universe is connected,” Edaline said. “Tied together with thin threads of energy. The void is where all those threads converge. Conjurers can pull at the threads in small ways, snapping things back and forth.” She snapped her fingers and a plate of custard bursts appeared in her hands. When everyone had taken one of the crunchy-gooey treats, she snapped her fingers again and the plate disappeared. “I can also leave something tangled in the web, if I choose.”

  “Does that mean I won’t be able to reach the cache without your help?” Sophie asked.

  “Not if I do my job right. I can tie a new thread between your mind and the cache, which you’ll be able to pull on. I’ll also add an emergency command, to be safe.”

  That sounded a bit wibbly-wobbly for Sophie, but she took Edaline’s word for it. Plus, it explained how Oralie had made Kenric’s cache appear.

  “Do you have the cache with you?” Edaline asked.

  Sophie removed the tiny marble from her pocket. As soon as the light hit the glass, Iggy zipped off her shoulder and snatched the cache in his tiny paws.

  “Give that back!” Sophie shouted as he flitted to the top of the waterfall.

  Iggy’s eyes narrowed and he dragged his teeth along the cache with a cringe-worthy scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape.

  Edaline snapped her fingers and the cache popped back into Sophie’s palm. When Iggy dove to steal it back, Edaline snapped again, bringing his cage from Havenfield and dropping it right in his flight path. The startled imp crashed inside, and Edaline slammed the cage shut behind him.

  “Well,” Mr. Forkle said, clutching his chest. “Perhaps we
should send that infernal creature home, before it does any permanent damage.”

  “Aw, we can’t send him away,” Biana said. “He looks so sad. Can’t he stay here?”

  “You want to keep him?” Dex asked. “You don’t think he’s gross and stinky?”

  “Uh, I grew up with two older brothers—and Keefe. I’m an expert on gross and stinky—and troublemakers,” Biana reminded him. “Plus, he’s so cuddly, and my room feels so empty at night and—”

  “You want to keep him in your room?” Sophie interrupted.

  Biana’s cheeks flushed. “I know he’s your pet. I just thought it might help me sleep.”

  “He snores like a growling bear,” Sophie warned. “But if you want to brave it, I can tell Iggy likes you.”

  “I like him, too.” Biana slipped her fingers through the bars of the cage and Iggy snuggled against them.

  “Fine,” Mr. Forkle grumbled. “But I will hold you responsible if he causes any more trouble, Miss Vacker.”

  “He wouldn’t do that, now would he?” Biana said, proving how little she knew about imps. “Come on, let’s get you all set up in my room—and then we’ll see what we can do about this stinky fur.”

  “I can brew up a new elixir,” Dex offered, following Biana. “You really want him blue?”

  “I’d better make sure things don’t get out of control in there,” Della said, leaving Sophie alone with Mr. Forkle and Edaline.

  Edaline motioned for Sophie to sit in one of the shrubbery chairs. “We should get to work. So I need you to study the cache like it’s the only thing in the universe.”

  Sophie leaned closer, focusing on the cache’s minute details. She’d never noticed the hairline fissures peppered through the glass, or how each jewel was wrapped with a single threadlike ring. Some of the rings were silver. One was gold. The others were black. She was trying to guess the significance when she felt a soft Pop!, like what her ears did every time the altitude changed.

  A blue thread glinted off the cache like a laser, shooting straight into Sophie’s forehead.

  “That’s supposed to happen, right?” Sophie asked, resisting the urge to flail.

  “That’s the thread I tied between you and the cache,” Edaline explained. “It won’t always glow. Now we just have to move the cache to the void.”

  Edaline snapped her fingers and the cache disappeared. The glowing blue thread also blinked away. But when Sophie concentrated, she could still feel a soft tug, as if her mind were clinging to the string of a kite drifting high on the breeze.

  “Perfect,” Edaline said. “Now you can drag the cache wherever you want in the web. It works best if you find something identifiable to leave it near.”

  Sophie closed her eyes and tried to focus as everything turned swishy and swoopy. She noticed a patch of warmth, and it led her to what felt like a pool of bubbling energy. She was about to leave the cache there when she realized everyone probably chose the comfortable paths. She turned her mind toward the coldest corner of the void.

  Her teeth chattered as she left the cache surrounded by frosty waves. “Now what?”

  Edaline snapped her fingers, and it felt like someone shoved Sophie back into her body and dumped a bucket of water on her brain.

  “You okay?” Edaline asked.

  Sophie rubbed her forehead. “That was really weird.”

  “Conjuring is a strange ability,” Edaline agreed. “But now your cache is safe. And to retrieve it, all you have to do is find the pressure in your mind, wrap your consciousness around it, and focus.”

  Sophie did as Edaline said and . . . SNAP!

  “Okay, before we put it back,” Edaline said, “you need to think of a word or phrase—one you won’t forget, but also would never accidentally say.”

  Every word that ever existed vanished from Sophie’s mind.

  “Take your time,” Mr. Forkle told her. “This will be your failsafe if something makes you lose your hold. It will only work once, and it will sever all other connections.”

  Sophie’s brain darted to silly things like, Accio cache! Allons-y! Use the force! Bibbidy-Bobbidy-Boo! My preciousssssssssssssssssss. But then she remembered how when she was little and had moved to the “older kids’ school,” her parents gave her a code phrase to say if she ever wanted to be picked up and didn’t want anyone to know she’d called her parents. Her dad was a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, so he’d chosen “221B Baker Street.” She remembered complaining that no one could work those words into normal conversation, and her dad had just said, “But you’ll never forget them.”

  “I think I’ve got it,” she said.

  “Okay, keep those words as the only thing in your mind, and when I tell you to, say them to the cache.”

  Edaline’s brows scrunched so tightly they nearly touched, and the cache glowed warm in Sophie’s hand.

  “Now,” Edaline said.

  The cache disappeared as soon as Sophie said the phrase.

  Edaline leaned wearily back in her chair. “That should do it. If you say those words and snap your fingers, the cache will find you.”

  “Does that mean you guys can call for it?” Sophie asked. “Since you know the words?”

  “It has to be your voice,” Mr. Forkle said.

  “And remember, it will only work once,” Edaline added. “So keep it for a last resort.”

  “I assume this means we’re done,” Mr. Forkle said, pulling out his leaping crystal.

  Sophie threw her arms around Edaline, wishing she could beg her mom to stay.

  “At least this time I’m saying a proper goodbye,” Edaline whispered. “I’m sorry we didn’t before.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” Sophie said, wiping her eyes. “It made it easier, actually. Made it feel more temporary.”

  “This is temporary.” Edaline tightened her hold. “I won’t let the Council keep us apart forever—that’s a promise. And now I need you to promise something to me. Don’t worry, I won’t tell you not to take risks, or not to worry about us, or any other impossible things. I just need you to promise that you’ll never give up. No matter how hard it gets. Or how hopeless it feels. Never, ever give up.”

  “I won’t if you won’t,” Sophie whispered.

  “Never,” Edaline promised.

  “And tell Grady I love him.”

  “I will,” Edaline said, kissing both of her cheeks.

  She swiped a strand of hair off Sophie’s forehead. Then she took Mr. Forkle’s hand and the two adults leaped away, leaving Sophie alone.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  FITZ’S RECOVERY MOVED slowly, just like Physic had warned—and yet Sophie kept worrying it was too slow. He got dizzy every time he stood, and felt a stabbing pain in his chest if he took a deep breath. And the elixirs Physic gave him during her check-ins seemed to be making him worse.

  Sophie was starting to put serious thought into Keefe’s “kidnap Elwin” plan. But she knew she should at least wait until Fitz was done with the vile tea. If he wasn’t better after the last sip, she was running a heist in the Lost Cities.

  It didn’t help her mood that Calla still wasn’t back. The Collective also wouldn’t bring her to see Prentice. She’d offered many times, and they told her she needed to save her mental energy. But when Della asked to go, they agreed—which Sophie tried not to find insulting.

  Meanwhile Dex spent all his time wrestling with the Twiggler, and Biana was obsessed with Iggy. Dex had given the tiny imp a coat of silky blue fur, and Biana spent every free second trying to train Iggy to eat vegetarian.

  Which left Sophie on her own, with a notebook full of Cognate exercises and a bedridden telepathy partner. The only useful thing she could do was help Keefe search his memories. Part of her was desperate for them to find a clue about the Neverseen’s plan. The other part of her was terrified of how Keefe would handle that.

  “You never told me about the memory you thought was going to be useful,” she said as she paced around his room, noticing
he’d added new notes to the walls.

  “That’s because it was stupid.” He grabbed a crumpled piece of paper off the floor. “I was trying to figure out how she stayed in touch with the Neverseen, and I remembered she had this bracelet my dad hated, so I knew he didn’t give it to her. I thought maybe it was a communicator, but I don’t see how.”

  He uncrinkled the paper and showed Sophie a sketch he’d done of a bracelet made of round sparkly beads.

  “Wow, I didn’t realize you could draw.”

  “It’s no good.” Keefe snatched it away and crumpled it again.

  He was wrong—his drawing looked like a photograph. But he was also right—Sophie didn’t see how the bracelet could be a clue.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s why I’m here. It’s easier to see what’s important when you can look at the memory on paper.”

  She held up her memory log and flipped to a blank page.

  “We’ll start with something easy,” she promised when Keefe turned almost as green as Fitz had during the Great Vacker Hurlfest. “I was thinking it’d be smart to record your memories of the Neverseen’s attacks. You might spot something you didn’t notice before, and you’ll get a feel for how this is going to work. And it shouldn’t be too weird for you, since I was there.”

  Keefe’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah, I guess that could work. So how do we do this?”

  “Well, first you need to think about those memories so they’re in the front of your mind. And then you need to give me permission to enter your consciousness—and yes, I know, you think that sounds creepy.”

  Keefe smiled half a smile. “It sounds less creepy from you.”

  She reached for his temples.

  He flinched. “Sorry. Wasn’t expecting that. You don’t do that with Fitz.”

  “I’m so used to his mind I don’t need to make contact anymore. Just relax—this isn’t going to be a big deal.”

  Keefe nodded and held still, sucking in a slight breath as her fingers settled against his skin. That was when she realized how close they were standing.