Neverseen

by Shannon Messenger

  “Where are you going?” Fitz asked, racing up beside her—and triggering a panicked plummet.

  “Sorry,” he said as she fought to regain her concentration. “Didn’t mean to scare you. When I saw you jump, I jumped. Biana tried to come too, but our Coach grabbed her. What’s wrong?”

  “Someone needs help. I can hear them calling me, but I don’t know where they are. I’m trying to track them now.”

  She closed her eyes, but all she could hear were the angry voices shouting from the cliff above. Sophie was pretty sure they were setting a record for Exillium disobedience.

  Fitz grabbed her hand so they could keep pace together. “How can I help?”

  “Can you boost my concentration? It might clear my head.”

  “Done,” he said as warmth trickled into her mind.

  The extra energy snapped everything into focus. “He’s that way,” she said, pivoting in midair and running toward the densest part of the woods.

  They sank lower as they moved, until their feet were skirting the tops of the withered trees.

  “Down there,” she whispered, pointing to a small clearing.

  The speckled leaves made a sickening squish as they touched down.

  “He’s here somewhere—I can feel it,” she said as they combed the ground, kicking up the fallen leaves.

  Several agonizing minutes passed before Fitz shouted, “I found him!”

  Sophie raced to his side, feeling her stomach lurch when she saw the body lying in the shadow of the tallest, most shriveled tree.

  The frail gnome’s eyes stared blankly ahead, and his skin was covered head to toe in the same speckles as the leaves.

  “What do we do?” Fitz asked, shaking the gnome gently by the shoulders. “He’s breathing—but only barely.”

  Sophie’s brain felt like it was trying to run in sixteen directions at once.

  She took a breath. “Okay, we need to get him to the physician. Maybe he has some medicine that would make the gnome stronger. And then we’ll have to figure out how to get him to the quarantine in Lumenaria.”

  “So back up the cliff?” Fitz asked.

  “Yeah, is your levitating strong enough for that?”

  “No idea.” Fitz scooped up the unconscious gnome. “When I jumped I just focused on your mind and followed your lead, like our Cognate training.”

  “Well . . . I guess we should do the same thing again, then.”

  Her panic fueled her push as she shoved against the forces in the air and launched straight up, with Fitz keeping pace beside her. The shouting grew to a deafening roar as they landed on the cliff’s ledge and faced the gathered crowd.

  “We need the physician,” Sophie said, running toward the small tent.

  The purple Coach blocked her. “You’re exposing us all.”

  “The plague only affects gnomes and plants,” Sophie said, but she noticed the other Waywards were still scrambling away from her. “Please, this gnome needs help—it’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  “Stay right there,” the physician called, shoving his way through the cluster of onlookers with the help of the red Coach. He helped Fitz set the gnome on the ground and checked the gnome’s pulse. “I’m not familiar with gnomish medicine. Even if I had a full apothecary, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Then we need to get him to Lumenaria—quickly,” Sophie told Fitz.

  “That’s impossible,” the red Coach called from the front line of Waywards. “All of us are banished from the Lost Cities.”

  “Who cares?” Sophie asked.

  “Yeah, do you seriously think the Council will arrest us for delivering a sick gnome?” Fitz added.

  Councillor Alina probably would, but Sophie decided not to mention that.

  “Even if the Council would spare you,” the blue Coach said. “You’re forgetting that none of us have crystals to leap you there.”

  “We don’t need a crystal,” Sophie told him.

  And she was tired of wasting time.

  She turned to Fitz, glad to see he was already ahead of her.

  He lifted the gnome over his shoulder and carried him to the cliff’s edge.

  “Lumenaria’s on the other side of the world,” the purple Coach told them. “You can’t levitate there.”

  “No,” Sophie said, reaching for Fitz’s hand. “But we can teleport.”

  They jumped without another word, holding tight to each other as thunder crashed and they slipped into the void.

  Sophie started to envision Lumenaria, but all she could picture was the burly goblin guards, blocking the city’s gates with their deadly swords.

  “Do you think the Council will have us arrested?” Sophie whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Fitz admitted. “I want to say no—especially since we still have the cache. But last time we were around them it didn’t go so well.”

  His hand moved to his chest, rubbing where the arthropleura barb had pierced him.

  Sophie decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

  She’d also realized there was a safer place they could take the gnome, where he could get medical treatment, and they could count on a few allies.

  “Change of plans,” she said, then pictured their destination so vividly that white light cracked the darkness.

  They launched out of the void and Sophie focused on the force of their fall, using her newfound levitating skills to make her first gentle landing.

  Their feet touched down on the soft purple grass outside the glass pyramid in the center of the Foxfire campus.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  SOPHIE HAD NEVER thought she could feel more conspicuous than she had on her first day at Foxfire, when Dame Alina had literally shined a spotlight on her to introduce her to the other prodigies.

  But as she and Fitz clomped through the glittering main building in their crazy Exillium uniforms, she felt like they might as well be carrying a sign that said WE DON’T BELONG HERE!

  Instead, they were carrying a very sick gnome, so she was glad it seemed to be the middle of session. The colorful halls were vacant, and Sophie was very familiar with the path to the Healing Center. They rushed through the doors in record time.

  Sophie called for Elwin as she surveyed the three rooms—a treatment area, a working laboratory, and the physician’s office.

  All three were empty.

  “Now what?” Fitz asked, setting the gnome on one of the beds in the treatment area.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie admitted. She’d never considered that Elwin might not be there. “I guess we could leave him here and go find Magnate Leto.”

  But then she imagined the gnome waking up all alone, not knowing where he was or what had happened to him.

  “Should one of us stay here?” she asked.

  The slamming of the Healing Center’s doors saved them from making a decision.

  “This is why you’re not supposed to catch more than one lightning bolt at a time,” Elwin said, leading a familiar round-faced boy into the treatment area.

  “I thought I’d found a way to do it,” Jensi said, patting the ends of his brown hair, which was sticking out in every direction.

  Both Jensi and Elwin froze when they spotted Fitz and Sophie—and the panic in their eyes reminded Sophie they still had their masks on.

  “It’s okay,” she said, tossing back her hood and shoving her mask up on her forehead.

  Fitz did the same, and Jensi and Elwin each did a double take.

  Then Elwin laughed. “Should’ve known you’d find a way to end up here,” he said, wrapping them up in a group hug.

  Sophie hugged him back, remembering how once upon a time she’d been afraid of Elwin. It hadn’t been Elwin’s fault—she’d been afraid of all doctors after growing up with needles and hospitals and scary human medicine. But now she knew that Elwin was a giant teddy bear, with dark, messy hair, and smiling dragons all over his tunic.

  “Yeah—they told us you were banished,” Jensi said in his trade
mark rapid-fire manner. “But I knew they couldn’t keep you away—and cool—you have to tell me about Exillium—are those the uniforms—they’re awesome—but what are the masks for?”

  The happy reunion lasted about ten seconds, until Elwin noticed their patient.

  “What happened?” he asked, scrambling for his crazy iridescent spectacles and flashing a blue orb of light around the gnome. “Where did you find him?”

  “We were in Bosk Gorge today,” Sophie said.

  Elwin frowned. “Bosk Gorge?”

  “It’s in the Neutral Territories,” Fitz explained.

  “I know. But that doesn’t make any sense. I heard the goblins reporting in when I was working in Lumenaria a few days back, and Bosk Gorge was still on their safe list.”

  “Well, the plague must’ve spread,” Sophie said, “because the whole place was overrun with it.”

  “That doesn’t make sense either. All our reports say the plague moves slowly. Wildwood took weeks to get overwhelmed.” Elwin switched to a red orb of light. “And he has injuries that aren’t plague related. Like these here?” He held up the gnome’s limp hand, pointing to the blisters on the palms. “These are burns.”

  “Maybe he lit a fire to keep the plague away,” Fitz suggested.

  Elwin scratched his chin and flashed a few more colored orbs. “Well, I can treat the burns and get some fluids in him. But all the remedies are in Lumenaria.”

  “Remedies?” Sophie asked.

  “Not a cure,” he said. “But they slow the symptoms, and make it a bit more bearable. It’s a good thing you guys found him—he’s progressing faster than I’m used to seeing.”

  Sophie sank onto the edge of one of the beds, more exhausted than ever. Maybe it was the adrenaline fading, but she had a feeling it had more to do with how much she’d been hoping Elwin could fix everything.

  “Hey now,” Elwin said. “Don’t go looking so defeated. Bullhorn’s staying quiet—see?”

  He pointed to the bed in the corner, where the beady-eyed banshee was resting. Banshees could sense when someone was dying, and squawked his heads off around anyone in mortal danger. So if Bullhorn wasn’t bothering to get up, the gnome still had some time left. But how much time?

  “I’d better hail Magnate Leto and let him know what’s going on,” Elwin said. “You’re both going to need to shower and change uniforms—and you’re both getting a full checkup.”

  “What about me?” Jensi asked. “I need a new uniform too.”

  “And a checkup,” Elwin agreed. “But first I need to take care of the fugitives.”

  Elwin said it with a smile, but the word still turned Sophie’s stomach.

  Jensi tugged on his cape, showing Sophie the blackened edges. “This reminds me of the first time we met—remember? I walked you to your elementalism session—and I warned you not to get zapped?”

  Sophie smiled. “I remember.”

  Jensi was one of the first kids who reached out to her at Foxfire.

  “So how’s it been around here?” she asked.

  Jensi looked away, his words slower than normal as he said. “Not the same.”

  Magnate Leto arrived then and put the Healing Center on lockdown. After that, there was a lot of showering and changing, and drinking ten billion elixirs. Sophie was stunned that Elwin could find signs of everything she’d been through, from the healed burns of her Dividing to the light poisoning Della had treated after they’d gone to see Gethen. But the weirdest part was putting on a Foxfire uniform again. Magnate Leto had brought her a green Level Four uniform, and Sophie kept staring at her reflection, wondering if she’d ever make it back to Foxfire to wear one for real. She suspected Fitz was thinking the same thing as he fidgeted with the cape of his white Level Six uniform.

  “Are you going to tell the Council we brought the gnome here today?” Fitz asked.

  “Of course,” Magnate Leto said. “They should know who the true heroes were.”

  Fitz smiled at that—and Sophie tried to do the same. But it was hard to feel heroic every time she looked at the gnome. Elwin had moved him to a clear quarantine bubble, and his skin looked less pale—and his sleep looked more restful—but he was clearly very, very sick.

  “You kids should head back,” Magnate Leto said. “Assuming Elwin’s given the all clear, of course.”

  “Yep, they’re totally clean,” Elwin said. “Though I hate to see them go.”

  “Me too,” Jensi agreed. “Will you tell Biana I said hi—and Dex and Keefe?”

  Sophie nodded, her voice too thick to work.

  “Don’t worry,” Magnate Leto said. “I suspect this won’t be the last time we see you standing among these halls.

  Sophie stared out the window at the expansive Foxfire grounds and let herself hope he was right. But as she took Fitz’s hand and prepared to leap to the Crooked Forest, she realized getting back into Foxfire wasn’t their biggest problem.

  After everything they’d done, and all the rules they’d broken, there was a very good chance they’d gotten themselves expelled from Exillium.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  SOPHIE HADN’T KNOWN what to expect when she and Fitz arrived in the Crooked Forest, but she’d assumed lecturing and freaking out would play a major role.

  Instead, her friends greeted them with the tacklehug to end all tacklehugs, and when they finally let them breathe—and were done pestering them for every detail about their time at Foxfire—she noticed Calla watching from her perch on one of the curved trunks.

  “We’re safe,” Sophie promised. “Elwin quarantined us before we left.”

  “I can tell,” Calla said. “I just . . . don’t know how to thank you. The risk you both took . . .”

  She looked away, trailing her green thumb along the straightened edge, where the tree had morphed into a survivor.

  “I wish we could’ve done more,” Sophie said, swallowing back the knot of all her frustrations. “How bad was it at Exillium after we left?” she asked her friends.

  “Well, let’s see,” Keefe said. “The purple Coach fainted when you guys teleported, and I’m pretty sure the other two peed their pants. Then everyone started screaming and freaking out about the plague, and it took a couple of hours for the Coaches to calm them down. That’s when a group of Waywards started demanding to know if you guys were going to be ejected or expelled or whatever they call it—”

  “Are we?” Fitz interrupted.

  Dex, Keefe, and Biana shared a look.

  “They wouldn’t give me any extra beads when I asked for them,” Dex said, “which turned into another whole-school shouting match. But the Coaches said their decision was final.”

  “So I guess that’s that,” Sophie mumbled.

  “Not necessarily,” Biana said. “Before we left, the Shade came up to me and did this freaky whisper-in-my-head thing.” She shuddered. “And he said to tell you ‘If you really want to prove the Coaches wrong, you should return with your friends and make a stand.’ So I’m guessing he wants you to leap with us in the morning—but I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

  “Me either,” Dex said. “Who knows what the Coaches will do?”

  “I don’t think the Shade would’ve suggested it if he thought we’d be punished,” Sophie said. “He told me when they punish someone, they punish everyone.”

  “Maybe he thinks we’re all going to be punished anyway, so he wants you to suffer with us,” Dex said.

  Sophie shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “But you barely know him,” Fitz reminded her.

  “Yeah, and isn’t this the guy I heard the boobrie dude warn you about?” Keefe asked.

  “It is,” Sophie agreed. “But I think the real reason the Coaches don’t like him is because he disagrees with their rules and finds ways around them—sound familiar?”

  “Right,” Keefe said. “But I’m not a Shade.”

  “You’re seriously going to judge him because of his ability?” Sophie
asked.

  “We do it with Pyrokinetics,” Dex jumped in.

  “And I don’t know if that’s right either,” Sophie admitted. “Think of how much the ban on pyrokinesis has made them what they are. That’s why Fintan rebelled. And why Brant joined the Neverseen. If being Talentless hadn’t made him a bad match for Jolie, their story might have had a very different ending.”

  “Maybe,” Keefe agreed. “But Shades will always be shady. It’s in the name! And they control shadowvaper, and call it ‘the darkness within us all.’ ”

  “Does that mean they can control us, like Mesmers?” Sophie asked.

  “It’s more about being able to read people,” Fitz said. “It’s kind of like what Councillor Terik does when he descrys someone—only Shades are looking at your potential for darkness.”

  “Tell me that’s not creepy!” Keefe said.

  “Uh, I can inflict pain on people,” Sophie reminded him. “Besides, how is judging him for his ability any better than judging people for being Talentless?”

  “So you’re saying you want to trust him?” Fitz asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should see what the Collective thinks. They may not want any of us going to Exillium anymore, so we can focus on what’s happening with the plague.”

  She was honestly hoping for the latter, so they could go back to Bosk Gorge and figure out why the plague seemed to be spreading faster there, and make sure no other gnomes were stranded in the area.

  But when they returned to Alluveterre, Mr. Forkle was waiting for them in the bridge’s gazebo—and he’d brought Sophie and Fitz new Exillium uniforms.

  “I take it this means we’ll be going to school tomorrow,” Fitz said.

  “You did the right thing, helping that gnome,” Mr. Forkle told them. “The Coaches should see that.”

  “And if they don’t?” Dex asked.

  “Then it’s your job to convince them. We need to get them on our side—they know more about what’s happening in the Neutral Territories than anyone.”