“Royalty tend to have super immaculate records, even for the paperwork-hating, privacy-obsessed Omte.” He tapped the page and stood up. “I’ll go grab the royal books, and we can see if there’s anything more there.”
He jogged up the stairs, and a few minutes later he returned with a crisp-looking book with bronzed edges on the pages.
“Oh, it’s all gilded and shiny?” I asked.
“Of course it is.” He sat back down beside me. “Do you think the information on Kings and Queens can be stored in plain old pages with a boring cover? Please.”
I laughed. “How silly of me.”
Pan started flipping through the book, running his fingers along the columns as he read the names at lightning speed. “The Elaks have been in power for some time now, but I wasn’t completely wrong.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He tapped the newest entry in the book. “The current Queen Regent of the Omte, her name is Bodil Elak, but her maiden name was Fågel. When was Orra born?”
“In 1969,” I said, without even having to check my notepad.
“The good news is that she’s in the book,” he said. “The bad news is that she—along with her entire immediate family—is dead.”
“What?” I leaned over, looking at the multiple entries that ended with a solitary bold word: Deceased. “Did they all die in a war or something?”
“No, it looks like they were all spread out.” His fingers trailed down the years—ranging from 1964 all the way up to the year 2006. “She had four brothers, and all of them died when they were fairly young. Only she and one of her brothers lived past age five.”
“Oh, that’s awful.”
“Unfortunately, this kind of childhood mortality isn’t uncommon, especially not for the Omte,” he said solemnly. “A lot of the babies and children fail to thrive.”
“What about Orra herself? When did she die?” I asked.
“She’s listed as having died in 2006 and there’s a footnote at the bottom of the page that explains . . .” He squinted and held the book closer to his face to make out the tiny print, and he read aloud, “‘Declared dead in 2006, after missing for years, at the behest of her next of kin, her cousin HRM Bodil Elak, Queen of the Omte.’”
In this case, HRM stood for Her Royal Majesty.
“Great. Is there a way that I can contact her?” I asked, then I realized that I hadn’t ever tried to reach a Queen before. “Does she take calls?”
“We can put in a requisition through the Inhemsk offices, but I would be surprised if we heard anything back within the next six months, and I am not optimistic that she would reply positively,” he said.
“So the first lead I get is actually a dead end?” I leaned back against the window.
Pan closed the book and turned to face me. “Have you eaten anything?”
“That’s an abrupt change of subject,” I said with a laugh.
“You look like you need a break, and I’m starving. Let me buy you lunch,” he insisted. “You gotta fuel your brain if you wanna keep at this for another four hours.”
I smiled. “All right. Lunch, it is.”
20
Ögonen
Pan led me up to the widow’s walk at the very top of the Mimirin. He kept promising, as we climbed the endless narrow stairs, that it would be worth the effort when we finally made it to the top.
We’d gone down from the Tower of Avanor to get our food in the cafeteria, which was on the first floor of the institution, and then we had turned around and gone back up a different set of stairs—this time in the center of the Mimirin—and Pan expected me to climb them all the way to the top, unlike in the Tower of Avanor, where my search had never taken me higher than halfway up.
Finally, though I was struggling to catch my breath, we made it, and Pan opened the hatch that led us up to the roof of the Mimirin. The walk was a narrow pathway, maybe about four or five feet across, that ran along the length of the highest point of the roof of the main building. Either side of the path had wrought-iron railings, preventing someone from sliding over the edge and down the shingles of the roof.
From here, the entire city and the ocean were visible. The first thing I could think of was a Claude Monet painting I remembered from the art magazines that Mr. Tulin kept around the house. The beautiful ocean on the rocky shore and picturesque village around us.
I breathed in deeply, and the air tasted sweeter and saltier up here than it did in the city. “This is spectacular.”
“I know. And the best part is that nobody is ever up here.”
“Why not?” I leaned against the railing and admired the enormity of the view before me. The ocean, the sky, the city all around me. “I know all those stairs are a deterrent, but this view is totally worth it.”
“The stairs don’t help any, but the real issue is the Ögonen.”
Pan motioned to the octagonal glass atriums that sat at the top of the thirteen towers that ran around the edges of the Mimirin. The towers were all much smaller than the Tower of Avanor—maybe ten feet tall and just as wide.
Each one of the atriums held a tall, sinewy sliver of a trollian being. They stood nearly seven feet tall and couldn’t be more than thirty inches around, but it was hard to say for sure, since they had a strange skeletal fluidity to them, like a jellyfish with bones.
The Ögonen were covered in leathery ocher skin, but like it had been stretched out so thin it was slightly transparent. With the afternoon sunlight shining through them, they seemed to be glowing burnt orange. Their heartbeat—a rapid pounding of their curved oblong heart in the center of their shallow chests—was easily visible.
But the eeriest thing about them had to be their eyes. They came in various shades of brown, and they looked like every other troll’s. It was the normalness of it, the ordinary everyday trollian eye, in such an otherworldly being.
Outside of their very distinct appearance, I didn’t know much about the Ögonen. They were the androgynous guardians of the Mimirin and the citadel surrounding it, using their very extreme psychokinetic powers to hide everything under a protective cloaking veil.
“What’s wrong with the Ögonen?” I asked in a hushed voice. “Do they not like it when we’re up here?”
“As far as I can tell, they don’t care one way or another. They don’t ever talk to me, and other than the occasional look my way . . .” He paused to motion toward a nearby Ögonen, who very slowly turned to stare at us fully, unblinking for several seconds, before slowly turning back around. “That’s it. That’s the extent of every interaction I’ve ever had with them.”
“What’s the problem, then?” I asked, even though I thought I knew. When the Ögonen looked at me, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
“They kinda weird everyone out, and I know there’s a big fear that the Ögonen read everyone’s thoughts all the time.”
“Can they?” I asked, whispering despite the probable ineffectiveness of that.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe? Probably? But if they can, I hardly think it matters if we’re up here or even down in the cellars. They’re cloaking an entire city and all its inhabitants. If they wanna know what you’re thinking, they’ll know.”
“Do they ever speak?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard.” Pan sat down, threading his legs through the railing so they hung over the roof, and I sat beside him, doing the same. “They stand up here, and when they change out shifts, they go to the edge of town, where they have strange homes built into the ground, like rabbit burrows. The powers that be are very secretive about the abilities and activities of the Ögonen. Hell, I don’t even know for sure what they are.”
He reached into the paper sack and pulled out the two veggie wraps on flatbread he’d procured in the cafeteria, along with a couple cartons of water and baked zucchini chips.
“They are trolls, aren’t they?” I asked as he divided the food between us.
“They’re troll-l
ike, that’s for sure,” he conceded. “And I don’t think they’re immortal. There’s a graveyard in their little neighborhood just for the Ögonen. The headstones have names on them, but they’re all basically just one syllable, like Ug or Br or Non.”
“That sounds very strange.”
He took a big bite of his wrap and waited until he swallowed it before agreeing. “It’s a surreal little plot of land, all right.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“In the city?” he asked, and I nodded. “Almost two years. Why?”
“You seem to know all sorts of hidden gems, for not being here that long.”
He laughed and absently picked at the tomatoes in his wrap. “I guess I’m a naturally curious kinda guy. I like to know as much as I can about as much as I can.”
“Me too.” I smiled at him. “And I’m curious about you. You seem to be a little secretive and mysterious.”
He laughed again, more heartily this time. “No, I’m not. At least not on purpose. It’s just easier for me here if I don’t talk about myself a lot. But really, I’m an open book. If you wanna know anything, you only have to ask.”
“Okay. We’ll start easy. Where are you from?”
“Ottawa,” he replied, and my eyes widened.
“Wait, you didn’t grow up around trolls? Were you a changeling?”
Pan shook his head adamantly. “Nope, not even close. My mom’s human, and she grew up in the Inuit village of Iqaluit, which isn’t that far from Doldastam. As she grew up, she started trading and working with the Kanin.”
Trolls actually had a very interesting relationship with the native peoples of North America. We had lived side by side for nearly a thousand years, and we both had a general distrust of outsiders, which made sense given our respective experiences with conquerors and pillagers.
While trolls generally did our best to remain entirely hidden from all humans, the nature of surviving in the harsh winters of arctic living meant that we had to take all the help we could get. Because of the mutual enemy of overhunting/overmining/overfishing imperialism, we had developed an understanding with the local native humans.
“Eventually my mom actually became an accountant for the royal family, helping them to legally funnel money so they could keep the taxman off their back,” Pan elaborated.
“And that’s how your mom met your dad?”
“Yep. But things got very complicated very, very quickly.”
“Was he a member of the royal family?” I asked, and when he didn’t answer right away, I went on, “You said they refused to list him as your father in the Avanor records, so I figured he’s gotta be someone with some pull.”
He exhaled through his nose and admitted quietly, “He was the King.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I didn’t fully believe it either, not until I got the blood test with a cousin.”
“How did you not know that your dad was King?”
“The King couldn’t be involved with a human, not without risking banishment, but he and my mom fell in love anyway, so they had a secret affair. When she found out she was pregnant, she left for a while to protect him, and to protect us, and I was born in Ottawa, but my dad missed us and pleaded with us to come back,” he explained.
“I was still a baby when we moved to Doldastam, with him sneaking around to see us when he had the chance,” he went on. “But when I was about a year old he fell ill and he died unexpectedly. He didn’t have a clear heir, and there was a coup at the palace. I don’t remember him at all, and after the uprising, things were really scary and unsafe for me and my mom, so she took me away, and we never went back.”
“I’m sorry. That’s so sad.”
“It wasn’t so bad.” He sighed and shrugged. “I mean, my childhood was mostly normal, at least for a human. I didn’t even know I was a troll until I was a teenager.”
“How’d you find out?”
Pan rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. “It’s super embarrassing.”
“Okay, well, now I have to know.”
“Well, I’m Kanin, and even though I’m a half-TOMB, my father apparently had a powerful enough bloodline to pass his abilities on, even to a human,” he explained. “I didn’t notice anything, not as a kid. But after I hit puberty, I, uh . . . my skin would change color when I saw a pretty girl.”
He laughed nervously but went on, “It wasn’t like blushing, and it wasn’t on my face or anything. My whole chest and sometimes my neck would get all blotchy and start changing to match the color of whatever shirt I was wearing.”
“That doesn’t sound so rough,” I said, trying to comfort him.
“Yeah, at least I lived in Canada, so I had a good reason to wear turtlenecks and scarves all the time,” he agreed. “I did get a handle on it eventually.
“But right after it started happening, I went to my mom, and she sat down and explained it all to me,” Pan said. “I wanted to go back to Doldastam to find out more about what it meant to be a troll, but she was too afraid because of the violence that happened after my father died. Considering that my father’s successor was eventually assassinated, she was right to be worried.
“She’s still always been nervous that someone would hurt me because of my ‘birthright,’” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Being half-human, I have no claim to the throne whatsoever, and I’ve always known that, and I never even wanted the crown at all.
“After I turned eighteen, I went to Doldastam,” he went on. “Things had calmed down in the aftermath of the war, and the new King seemed a lot more progressive. They didn’t exactly welcome me with open arms, but they tolerated me, and I was able to learn more about Kanin society and my family. Then I heard about the Inhemsk Project, and I applied and got some killer letters of recommendation, and here I am.”
“Can I ask you something without you taking it the wrong way?”
“Sure?”
“Where do you think you fit in?” I asked carefully. “In troll society, I mean.”
“Um . . . as of right now, I would say that I don’t, not really. But I think there’s enough room that I can carve out a little space. It takes more work, but hopefully it’ll be easier for the half-TOMBs that come up after me.”
“So, you plan on living among the trolls for the rest of your life?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say,” he replied thoughtfully. “I lived most of my life with humans, but I feel like I make more sense here than I did anywhere else out there.” He looked over at me. “Since you asked me, I’ll ask you something. Do you think you’ll live with trolls forever?”
“I don’t know.” I leaned against the railing and stared out at the ocean, the waves rolling ceaselessly toward us on the shore. “I guess it really depends on if I find any family and where they live. Right now the only family I really know—the only ones that I could even consider my family—live in Förening, so I’ll probably end up near them. Or I might end up somewhere else entirely.
“I don’t know,” I decided finally. “I’m still figuring out who I am and what I wanna do with my life.”
“I’m excited to see where you end up.”
I smiled at him. “Me too.”
21
Visitors
The afternoon I spent researching had left me in a better mood, even though it had mostly been dead ends. My disposition probably had far more to do with hanging out with Pan than it did with the work I had done, but it still felt good to be doing something.
I was smiling as I climbed the stairs to my second-story apartment, but I paused when I heard something strange. Laughter and voices coming from the open windows. Hanna, and someone I didn’t recognize.
My smile fell away, and I hurried into the apartment. When I opened the door, I discovered Hanna sitting on the couch next to a beaming young girl.
But it wasn’t just any girl. Her hair was this ombré of pale orange shifting to neon-pastel-pink. It was like she’d had very
fine blond hair, then someone had gone over it with a bright pink highlighter. Her face was distinctly heart-shaped, her chin coming to a dainty point. A broad, flat nose sat between her narrow, wide-set eyes. The apples of her tawny brown cheeks were full and prominent, and her top lip was thinner than her bottom, giving her a slightly pouty look.
“Hello!” She practically shouted with glee, and she was already on her feet, rushing over to greet me, before I even had a chance to close the door behind me. “You must be Ulla! It’s so great to finally meet you! I mean, I know we bumped into each other before, but that hardly counts, since we did not have a proper introduction.”
When she spoke, her voice was light and sweet like cotton candy, with a slight accent chaser. It was lyrical but rough, with an exaggeration on the vowels, and I couldn’t place it at all.
“Um, hi,” I replied uncertainly.
“Oh, my,” she said with a small laugh—a giggle, really. “You’re so shy, it’s wonderful.”
I gave her an uneasy smile. “I wouldn’t really say I was shy.” I slipped my bag off my shoulder, dropping it by the door, and edged my way farther into the apartment.
Dagny stepped out from where she’d been hiding in her room, her face scrunched up in annoyance. “This is what I’ve been dealing with all afternoon,” she said, casting a pointed glare at Hanna and her new friend. “Why haven’t you been answering your texts?”
I could only shake my head apologetically. “I don’t even get texts here half the time. You know my phone gets almost no reception here, and it drops to literal zero inside the Mimirin.”
“We’ve got to come up with a better system, then,” Dagny muttered.
“Sorry,” Hanna said with a sheepish smile. “Eliana is so excited for you to be here.”
“So, this is the infamous Eliana?” I turned my attention back to the girl with her highlighter hair and her megawatt smile.
“That’s me!” She laughed again—louder, more boisterous this time. “I want you to know that I’m not bappers. And I’m going to have your carriage fixed up in a real hurry. I don’t know how—yet—but I’ll find a way, I promise.”
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