The Lost City

by Amanda Hocking

  “Sure thing, sir.” Dagny took off her latex gloves, then tossed them in the garbage as she followed Pan out of the lab.

  Elof had set aside his pen and paper, and he propped his head on his hand. “Why don’t we just talk and relax for a minute? I know these questions can feel intense and invasive, so it’s sometimes prudent to take a moment.”

  “I’m okay, really,” I insisted. “I don’t even know what happened back there. I’m not usually a fainter, not even over the sight of blood.”

  “Like I said, this process can take its toll on everyone.” Elof leaned forward, studying me. “Your eyes are so fascinating. Firstly, with the sectoral heterochromia.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “Oh, you didn’t realize? Heterochromia is a difference in coloration in the iris of both eyes, such as when the left eye is blue and the right is green. In sectoral heterochromia, a single iris contains two completely different colors,” he explained.

  “With you, it’s your right eye.” He pointed toward it. “While your left iris is entirely amber, under your right pupil is a little splotch of dark green.

  “What’s more fascinating, to me at least, is that both of your pupils appear to dilate, but the left one is consistently much larger than the other, even when factoring in the difference in the size of your eyes,” he went on. “How is your vision?”

  “It’s fine.” I shrugged. “I don’t really notice anything, but my eyes have always been this way.”

  “I believe I understand the feeling.” Elof tilted his head, as if pondering something while he stared at me. “You really are quite striking, you know that.”

  “Um . . . I . . .” I shook my head and leaned back away from him, unsure of how to respond. “That’s . . .”

  “I’m sorry.” He waved his hands, as if he could erase his comments from the ether, and he scowled. “That didn’t come out the way that I meant it. As a rule, I make a point of not complimenting the appearance of my students or peers, since it’s not relevant to the work that we do here. And that’s true for you as well.”

  “But you decided to make an exception?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

  “I suppose I let my fascination get carried away,” he said. “We so rarely see any members of the Omte tribe, even TOMBs like yourself. The doors to the Mimirin have been open to all for decades now, but the Omte have not been quick to accept the invitation.”

  “I think that they’ve probably accepted the invitation in the exact spirit in which it was given—with resentment and disinterest,” I countered.

  “Fair point,” he conceded. “But to be clear, there are many of us all over the citadel who are genuinely thrilled to have trolls of all walks of life here. It’s impossible for us to truly learn about ourselves and where we came from and who we can be if we entirely ignore huge portions of our populations.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Good.” Elof smiled. “I look forward to working with you over the coming weeks.”

  15

  Record Keepers

  Long after my shift in the archives had ended, I was sitting cross-legged on the cold stone cellar floor, struggling to keep myself awake but refusing to give up. Last night, Hanna had relayed Dagny’s warnings about how I had to fight for my work, and that’s why I kept pushing myself, despite my blurring vision and cellar-dust-induced sneezing. But it was getting harder and harder to fight it. After a long day of reading and translating—not to mention a fair amount of blood loss—my brain felt like mush. All of the Omte records were so scattered and poorly filled out, there was hardly any information to be gleaned from them. (One particularly insightful form was a faded sheet of yellow carbon copy with the words Torun Winge Says No scrawled across the lines in big block letters.)

  That was the final straw, and I slammed the binder shut, preparing to put it back on the shelf. The gust of the slam caused a piece of paper to slide free, and it fluttered to the floor. It was no larger than a postcard, and most of the info had been blotted out with black ink.

  In fact, there was only one line visible, but when I read it, my breath caught in my throat.

  Orra Fågel.

  My fingers trembled as I hovered over the name, unable to bring myself to completely touch it, too afraid to confirm it in case this wasn’t real, in case this was a strange dream brought on by exhaustion.

  I finally let my fingertips graze her name, and my heart skipped a beat when the paper felt solid and didn’t give way like a mirage.

  “Call me Orra.” Mr. Tulin’s bedtime story echoed in my head. The Omte woman who had abandoned me had called herself Orra. Her name. This could be her. This was the first Orra I had found in the Omte records, alive and old enough to own property around the time of my birth. Old enough to be my mother.

  This could be my mother. She might’ve written this. Nearly a year before I was born, she would’ve held a pen in her hand, in an office somewhere in Fulaträsk.

  It was a long shot, and even if it was her, it told me almost nothing about her. But this was the closest I had been to her in nineteen years, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.

  She wasn’t a figment from my childhood stories. She was real. She really existed.

  I don’t know how long I sat like that, staring down at the paper, as if I could somehow memorize every detail of the ink and summon her to life. It was long enough, though, that the cold from the floor had seeped through my jeans, and I was dimly aware of the prickle of goose bumps running up my thighs and my back.

  It was Calder’s voice that broke my trance, a dry baritone coming from behind me. “You’re really burning the midnight oil tonight.”

  I gasped and looked back to see him standing under the arch at the bottom of the steps, only a few yards from me. “Oh, jeez, you scared me.”

  “You look like you saw a ghost.” His bushy eyebrows pinched together, and his mouth turned down into a scowl.

  “Not exactly,” I replied, but he wasn’t entirely off base.

  My mother had always been gone, but that absence had created a form of its own. Like a shadow in the dark I could never quite see, she was a specter hovering over my life, just out of reach.

  And this here, the old ink on faded paper—this was the first sign I’d ever really had of her. The first glimpse at the ghost of my mother.

  I attempted a half-hearted smile up at Calder. “I didn’t realize you were working late tonight.”

  He leaned his broad shoulder against the weathered arch and crossed one foot over his ankle. “I hadn’t really planned on it, but sometimes I get lost in my work.”

  “Yeah, I know how that goes.” I rolled my neck, stretching out the kinks from sitting hunched for so long. “Since you’re here, can I ask you a question?”

  “I’ll help if I can,” he replied reticently. “But it’s fair to say that we have more information here than one man could possibly memorize, so don’t be too shocked if I have to look something up to answer you.”

  “Yeah, no, of course.” I nodded and did my best to keep my voice and attitude super casual. “It’s not even about anything specific. I thought you might be able to tell me why something was blacked out.”

  “Blacked out?” he asked, and he stepped toward me, already peering toward the paper to see what it was.

  “Yeah, I hadn’t come across it before, but some of this page is blacked out.” I gritted my teeth, clamping them together so hard my jaws hurt, and I focused all my energy on keeping my hand steady so that when I held the paper up to Calder he wouldn’t see how badly I’d been trembling.

  Calder took it from me and stared thoughtfully down at the paper a few seconds before quietly musing, “This shouldn’t be here.”

  “What do you mean?” I stood up—slowly, because my feet had fallen asleep.

  “Anything blacked out should be kept with the sealed records in the private vault,” he explained.

  “A vault? There’s a vault of sealed records?�
� I asked in surprise. I had thought the whole point of the Mimirin was to discover and share knowledge between all the tribes. A locked vault seemed to contradict that.

  “Yes, of course.” He smirked, like I was ridiculous for thinking otherwise. “Not everything in our history is accessible for public consumption, nor should it be. Some things are incomplete, inaccurate, or dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Dangerous? How? Do you have the plans for some kind of psychokinetic nuclear bomb stashed away?” I asked.

  “Quite possibly,” Calder replied rather seriously, and my smile fell away. “Truth be told, I wouldn’t know. Not even I have that level of clearance.”

  “So you’re saying that it’s unlikely that I would get access to that vault?”

  “No, I’m saying that it’s practically impossible for you to ever gain access to that vault, through the proper channels or otherwise. The Information Styrelse takes security and privacy very seriously,” he said, referring to the board of intellectuals and influential Merellians who oversaw the operations at the Mimirin.

  “Could you tell me why something like this might be blacked out?” I asked.

  “I cannot.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” I challenged him with a smile, going more for teasing than confrontation.

  “I don’t know that I would if I could, but I honestly am not capable of it,” he said. “There’s not enough information here for me to go on, and I’m not privy to the machinations of the Styrelse as to what their reasons may or may not be.”

  “And how would I go about scheduling a meeting with them?”

  He snorted. “You wouldn’t.” He turned to start walking away, still carrying the paper with Orra Fågel’s name on it.

  “Where are you taking that? Shouldn’t I be putting it back?” I asked.

  “Like I told you earlier, this shouldn’t be here.” He paused, looking over his shoulder at me. “It belongs in the vault, so I’m ensuring that it gets back where it needs to be.”

  I shoved my hand in my back pocket, attempting my best impersonation of somebody who was totally calm and casual and not at all freaking out about the first clue about her possible-mother being taken away.

  “But it was already here,” I reminded him with an empty laugh. “What’s the harm of leaving it here?”

  “What’s the help of it?” he countered. “There really isn’t any information at all on here, is there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was right, and I knew he was right, so I squirmed under his disapproving gaze. It was all I could do to keep from running over and snatching it from his hands.

  “You know you have a mother, you’ve told me that you believe her name to be Orra and that she was Omte,” Calder elaborated reasonably. “While there is a likelihood that this woman mentioned here may be your mother, it is not a guarantee. Orra may not be a common name, but it’s not unheard-of among the Omte. But even if we assume this is your mother—and this paper neither confirms nor denies that it is her—what does it tell you that you don’t already know?”

  “I don’t know. . . .” I sighed and closed my eyes, focusing on slowing the panicked beating of my heart, before I finally said, “That she was real.”

  “Ulla, of course your mother is real. Trolls haven’t yet determined how to self-replicate, so you most certainly had a mother.”

  “I know.” I opened my eyes and exhaled. “Literally, I know that I had to have, but . . . other than the fact that I exist, I’ve seen far more evidence in favor of Santa Claus being real.”

  Calder softened. “Your frustration and desperation are understandable, they truly are. And I believe that you will find what you need to know about your parentage within the legal perimeters in which the Inhemsk Project functions. That’s where you should be putting your energy and your effort.”

  “I know that they’re using the information—and blood—I gave them to research as much as they can, but this is the only part that I can really do,” I said. “The only thing that keeps me from feeling like a bum that expects everyone to do the work for me.”

  “There’s no need for you to feel like that,” he said. “This isn’t any different than going to see a doctor when you feel ill. Sometimes you have to rely on the expertise of others.”

  “I guess I don’t really like relying on others,” I admitted.

  “Who does? But that is life.”

  16

  Runaway

  I had scarcely opened the door and stepped inside the loft apartment when Hanna pounced on me with a bright smile.

  “Hey, you’re home!” She bounced over from the kitchen and held out a plate of food. “I bet you’re hungry, so I made you a plate already. How was your day? Was it busy?”

  “Thanks.” I set down my bag and tentatively took the plate.

  The Karelian pie was a football-shaped crust overstuffed with a savory rice-and-potato mix, similar to a pierogi, and Hanna had stepped up her plating skills by adding a strategically placed evergreen sprig.

  Back at home, this was one of my favorite meals that Mia made, but I just didn’t have the energy to feel excited about it today.

  “Yeah. You look kinda pale.” Hanna nodded furiously, making her short curls bob like crazy. “Is that ’cause you had your blood drawn?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” I picked at my plate and walked over to the bistro table. “It was kind of a long day.”

  “Hanna had a long day too,” Dagny chimed in, and I finally looked over to see her sitting on the couch, with her longbow lying across her lap.

  “Whoa, what’s with the weaponry?” I asked in surprise.

  “I practiced at the archery range after work, and now I’m taking care of my bow.” Dagny rolled a stick of wax down the taut string of her bow, and then she slowly rubbed it in with a leather cloth. “There’s a competition coming up in a week and a half, and I want both me and my bow to be in top shape.”

  “Okay, that explains that.” I set the plate down on the table and looked over at Hanna. “Why did you have a long day?”

  “Dagny probably means that I spent the whole day slaving over the pies,” Hanna said quickly, and punctuated her statement with a nervous laugh, a combo that caused me to narrow my eyes at her suspiciously.

  “No, I mean that you had a long day because you spent the whole day running around town, and you didn’t get home until after I did,” Dagny replied. “She said she made friends with the girl with the ‘trippy hair’ that you saw when you first came into town.”

  “Dagny!” Hanna shouted in horror. “I thought you said you’d keep it to yourself.”

  Dagny scoffed. “No, you asked me to, and I said that it makes sense that you’d want me to. I never agreed to anything.”

  Hanna folded her arms over her chest and pouted. “I’m not gonna tell you anything if you just turn around and tell Ulla everything.”

  “Good,” Dagny replied without looking up from her meticulous care of the longbow. “I don’t want you to tell me anything. Secrets are for friends. You’re not my friend. You’re like an invasive species who I tolerate because you make delicious food and your benefactor pays rent.”

  “That’s harsh,” Hanna said flatly.

  Dagny shrugged. “That’s life.”

  “This is exactly what I’m talking about, Hanna,” I said. “You’re far too trusting and sheltered if you think Dagny is your friend.”

  Dagny held up her wax stick, chiming in with a raised hand. “I gotta second that one, Hanna.”

  “Ugh!” Hanna groaned in frustration. “This is ridiculous! You guys don’t need to gang up on me for being nice!”

  “We’re not ganging up on you, and my complaint isn’t that you’re nice,” I calmly explained. “It’s that you tagged along to somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, and then you left the safe place where you were supposed to stay to explore a strange city by yourself, and then you attempted to make friends with some daredevil tha
t seriously damaged the car your dad lent me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah, it sounds bad when you put it like that, but that’s not how I meant it.”

  Dagny interjected, “It doesn’t matter what you meant. It only matters what you do. Intentions are the lies we tell ourselves. Actions are the truth.”

  “So, anyway, what exactly were you doing with the trippy-haired girl?” I asked.

  “Her name is Eliana, and she’s more than the colors of her hair,” Hanna replied coolly. “She’s a lost runaway, and she’s trying to get by. I think something bad happened to her where she came from, but she doesn’t seem to really be able to remember a lot.”

  “What is she doing here?” I asked.

  Hanna shook her head. “I don’t know, because she doesn’t know. She seems nice but lost.”

  I’d finally taken my first bite of the pie, and it was every bit as good as I’d hoped, so I let out an involuntary moan. “Sorry. This is really good, Hanna,” I said with my mouth full, and I hurried to swallow it down so I could say, “She should talk to security or a doctor or something. They have the resources and knowledge to help runaways and amnesiacs, assuming that’s what she really is.”

  “It’s not like that!” Hanna rested her arms on the table and leaned forward, so she could look up at me with big, pleading eyes. “She doesn’t know who to trust. She’s scared and alone.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I was wandering around town, and I saw her stealing a mango,” Hanna said.

  “If she went to a shelter or got help from the proper channels, she wouldn’t have to steal.”

  She exhaled loudly through her nose and narrowed her eyes. “Okay, well, you’re obviously never going to believe me, so we should just go find her.”

  “What?” I said. “Right now?”

  Hanna stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “Yes. She needs help, and I’m going to help her. You can go with me tonight, or I’ll have to go out by myself tomorrow.” She shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “Do you wanna meet her so you can see I’m telling the truth? Or you can stay in tonight and worry what I’m up to all day tomorrow.”