Dex fumed as Mr. Forkle ordered him and Keefe to test the gadget to make sure the lufterator still worked. They had to stand so close their noses practically touched.
“Gross,” Keefe whined, spitting out his mouthpiece. “The air tastes like Dex breath.”
“Keefe breath’s just as nasty,” Dex snapped.
“But you can breathe?” Mr. Forkle clarified.
When they nodded, he ordered everyone into the water. They gasped as the cold soaked through their clothes—except Della, who strode through totally dry.
“Did you know your mom could do that?” Sophie asked Fitz.
“I did,” Biana jumped in. “And I will figure out how to do it.” She blinked out of sight, and when she reappeared her hair was dripping wet and stuck to her face. “It’s going to take some practice.”
“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me Mom was with us,” Fitz grumbled.
“Now you know how I felt when you and Dad were busy planning all your secret visits to the Forbidden Cities.”
Sophie had never considered how much the search for her had affected the Vacker family. They’d all lived with secrets—and broken the law—for twelve years.
The river grew deeper, and they switched from wading to swimming. Sophie struggled to paddle while holding her backpack, until Fitz reached over and carried it for her.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, wishing she could swim so effortlessly. Within minutes he’d reached the elephant-size water dinosaurs.
“Eckodons are friendly, right?” she asked Biana.
“Of course.” Biana swam to a purple-toned eckodon and stroked the base of its neck. “See? Totally harmless.”
Sophie swam to a blue-toned eckodon and it made a gurgley, growling sound.
“That’s how it says hi,” Fitz promised, pulling himself onto his green eckodon’s back.
Sophie copied him while transmitting Friend over and over. Her tweaked genes allowed her to communicate telepathically with animals. She couldn’t tell if the eckodon understood—some creatures thought in images or emotions. Still, the eckodon didn’t chomp her head off, so she took that as a good sign.
Dex and Keefe, meanwhile, were having a very difficult time figuring out how to sit on their eckodon. After several hilarious attempts, they settled for Keefe facing backward with his arms wrapped around Dex, and Dex reaching around Keefe to hug the eckodon’s neck.
“You guys look so cute,” Fitz told them.
“Dude, your payback is going to be legendary,” Keefe warned.
“Lufterators in!” Mr. Forkle called, before Dex could add his own threats.
Sophie took one last deep breath and slipped the gadget into her mouth. She’d barely grabbed her eckodon’s neck before Mr. Forkle shouted, “Dive!”
Down, down, down they plunged, all the way to the bottom of the river, where the water felt cold and gritty. Sophie’s balefire pendant gave her just enough light to see Fitz as his eckodon swam up beside her. He held out a thumbs-up to ask if she was okay.
She nodded, taking several shallow breaths as he pointed to where Mr. Forkle and Della had taken the lead. Sophie was glad her eckodon seemed to be following on its own, since she had no idea how to steer a plesiosaur.
Fitz stayed beside her, with Biana right behind, and Dex and Keefe a little farther back. The eckodons swam at a steady pace until the shore dropped away and Sophie realized they’d reached the ocean. Then each eckodon stretched out its neck, tucked its flippers, and let out a piercing scream.
The shrill whine was louder than whale song, richer than dolphin squeaks, and powerful enough to part the tide. The sound pitched higher, then lower, swirling the water into a funnel that blasted the eckodon forward like a rocket. Whenever the vortex slowed, the creature cried again, blasting them faster and faster, until Sophie was sure they’d crossed the whole ocean. And maybe she was right, because when they finally slowed the water was tropical teal and swarming with colorful fish.
They surfaced minutes later, floating along a river that cut through an enormous underground cavern. A thin crack split the ceiling, letting in just enough sunlight to bounce off the glinting rock walls. Everywhere the light touched, life had followed, transforming the cave into a subterranean forest. The farther the river led them, the more the cave widened, until all Sophie could see in any direction was the ever-stretching paradise.
“Can you believe this place?” Fitz whispered.
Sophie inhaled the sweet, heady scents: honeysuckle, jasmine, plumeria—plus dozens of other aromas she couldn’t recognize. It definitely wasn’t the bleak cavern she’d expected after her previous experience with a Black Swan hideout.
“Okay, I am done with Dex snuggle time,” Keefe announced as he and Dex’s eckodon swam up beside Sophie’s. He leaped from his plesiosaur to hers and prodded Sophie’s eckodon to swim away from the rest of the group.
“Relax,” he said, tightening his grip on Sophie’s waist. “I won’t let you fall.”
That wasn’t why she felt nervous. The last time she’d sat like this with Keefe, they were flying with Silveny across the ocean. The alicorn had been carrying them to the Black Swan that night as well. Sophie hoped this time wouldn’t end so violently.
Keefe must’ve been sharing the same terrifying memories, because he whispered, “I will never let my mom hurt you again.”
“You didn’t let your mom do anything, Keefe. You know that, right?”
“You heard what Oralie said. The Council’s blaming my dad for not knowing what my mom was up to. But . . . he’s not the only Empath who lived with her.”
“You told me yourself, you can’t feel a lie—only the emotions that go along with it.”
“I still wasn’t paying close enough attention.”
“Why would you? No one assumes their family is evil.”
He tensed at the word and Sophie glanced over her shoulder. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes you did. And she is. And I should’ve seen it.”
“You can’t do that, Keefe. Edaline told me once that hindsight is a dangerous game. The clues seem too obvious when you know what to look for. Believe me, I would know.”
She’d replayed her kidnapping—and Kenric’s murder—more times than she’d ever admit. And each time she saw more warnings she shouldn’t have missed. But she couldn’t let herself take the blame. The Elvin mind couldn’t process that level of guilt. Their sanity shattered under the weight of the burden. She’d watched it happen to Alden over his guilt from what happened to Prentice—an innocent member of the Black Swan he’d condemned to madness and Exile before he realized the Black Swan weren’t really the villains. The only reason he could still function was because Sophie had found a way to heal him.
“Please,” she whispered, “you have to protect your mind, Keefe. We both do.”
“Okay,” he said after a painful silence. “So we catch these guys and make them pay for what they’ve done.”
“Can you really do that?” Sophie asked. “I mean . . . it’s your mom. I know you think it won’t matter, but—”
“It won’t. She used me. Tried to kill me. Tried to kill my friends—and don’t say she saved Biana on Mount Everest—”
“But she did! They would’ve rolled off that cliff if she hadn’t stopped them.”
“Right, so she was saving herself, and Biana was lucky enough to benefit.”
Sophie wanted to argue, but she could tell it wouldn’t help.
Plus . . . maybe Keefe needed to hold on to his anger. Anger was safer.
“If you ever need to talk,” she whispered.
“Thanks,” he whispered back, so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. His arms tightened ever so slightly, making her heart switch to hummingbird pace.
“Listen, Sophie, I—”
“You’re still wearing your Sucker Punch,” Dex interrupted as his eckodon caught up with them. “If he’s annoying you, just knock him off with a good backhand.”
>
“Man, one second you’re sharing your air with a dude, and the next second he’s trying to get you punched in the face,” Keefe mumbled.
“Isn’t that pretty much what everyone wants to do after they meet you?” Fitz asked as he and Biana swam up beside them on their eckodons.
“Keep it up, dude. You’re just adding to my list of reasons to punish you,” Keefe warned.
Fitz shrugged. “Bring it on.”
“You guys are ridiculous,” Biana said, staring at the glinting rocks of the cave above them. “Does anyone know where we are?”
“Yes,” Mr. Forkle called from up ahead. “Your new home.”
SEVEN
THE DWARVES CALL this cavern Alluveterre,” Mr. Forkle said as he slowed his eckodon to let Sophie and her friends catch up. “Which in dwarven means—”
“The sands of dawn,” Sophie translated.
Keefe laughed. “Always gotta show off.”
Mr. Forkle ignored him. “The dwarves view this place as a testimony of our planet’s power to re-create itself. Above us is a barren wasteland of human pollution and destruction. But look what has surged to life in the safety below, thanks to a little light and a little peace. The dwarven king brought me here when I revealed the existence of our organization. He thought it would be the perfect place for us to make a fresh start.”
“So King Enki is on our side?” Della asked.
“He’s not against the Council, if that’s what you’re wondering. But he has felt for some time that the Councillors’ methods are not working. Many dwarves have offered their assistance—though at the moment most have returned to their cities. They need time to mourn their friends who fell in the battle on Mount Everest, and to treat their wounded.”
Sophie tried to remember how many dwarves had died that day—was it three? Four?
She hated that she didn’t know—hated how easy it was to focus only on the people she knew, and forget that there were dozens of others risking their lives for the Black Swan’s cause.
Before she could ask how the injured dwarves were doing, Mr. Forkle said, “Here are your new residences.”
He pointed ahead, to where an arched bridge with a black gazebo in the center connected two enormous trees standing on either side of the river. Their trunks had been wrapped in wooden staircases that wound up to the tallest branches, where two massive tree houses overlooked the entire forest.
“The residence on the east is for the girls. And the west is for the boys. The bridge in the center has a common area for you to share meals together.”
“See, I think a group party house sounds way more fun. Who’s with me?” Keefe asked.
Nobody agreed—though Dex looked like he wanted to. So did Biana.
The eckodons crawled ashore, and Sophie transmitted, Thank you, as she and Keefe slid off her plesiosaur’s back. Three gnomes popped out of the bushes to greet them, flashing wide, green-toothed smiles and shaking the leaves off their earth-toned skin as they set a bucket of nasty wriggling things in front of each eckodon. Sophie had thought the sludgers she fed Iggy, her pet imp, were disgusting. But these looked like the evil spawn of scorpions and maggots.
“Larvagorns,” a gnome with long braided hair said as the eckodons gobbled the creepy-crawlers up like candy. “Believe it or not, the dwarves consider them a rare delicacy.”
Sophie was very glad to be an elf. The squisssssssssssssh-CRUNCH alone made her gag.
“I thought we trained animals to be vegetarians,” Biana mumbled.
“Only the ones we keep at the Sanctuary,” Della said. “It would be pointless to bring them there for preservation, only to have them hunt each other. But those in the wild are free to choose their own diets.”
“So these things seriously live around humans?” Sophie asked as the eckodons licked the bug slime off their chops and waded back into the river.
“Technically,” Mr. Forkle said, “they live in underwater caverns. And they swim far too fast for humans to spot them or catch them. Still, we make sure they’re safe and undetected. And one of these days we will catch that tricky lake dweller who keeps making headlines.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” one of the other gnomes told him. Sophie assumed the gnome was a “he,” since he wore grass-woven overalls instead of a grass skirt like the other two. But it was hard to tell. Gnomes all had the same huge gray eyes and bodies like children. They lived with the elves by choice and were incredibly industrious creatures. More plantlike than animal, they absorbed all their energy from the sun, and needed very little sleep—and even less food. But they craved work and loved to garden, so they traded their harvest with the elves and filled their sleepless days with elvin tasks. Alden had called it a symbiotic relationship, and the longer Sophie had lived with the elves, the more she agreed. The elves cared for the gnomes, and the gnomes worked happily, neither side imposing upon the other.
“I’m Calla,” the gnome with the braid told Sophie, “and this is Sior and Amisi. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”
Sophie fidgeted as Calla dipped an exaggerated curtsy. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
The other gnomes nodded and turned back to the eckodons, but Calla kept right on staring at Sophie. Her expression was a mixture of awe and curiosity, and Sophie wondered what the Black Swan had told the gnomes about her.
“We’ll take your bags to your rooms,” Sior—the gnome in the overalls—said. He grabbed Sophie’s backpack from Fitz.
“And we have fresh clothes for you upstairs,” Calla added. “Well, for most of you. I didn’t realize you were coming, Miss . . .”
“Della. And not to worry, I’m a surprise visitor.”
“Should we add a room in the east tree house?” Calla asked.
Mr. Forkle nodded. “Preferably up high, so it overlooks both residences.”
“I thought the Collective had to approve me staying,” Della said.
“They have to approve you joining our order,” Mr. Forkle corrected. “But either way, it would be too risky to send you home. The Council has surely discovered that you’re missing. So consider yourself our guest, and a much needed chaperone.”
“Chaperone?” Keefe whined. “That’s going to cramp my style.”
“Yes, it is,” Della agreed. “Remember, I kept Alvar in line for years.”
Keefe sighed dreamily. “Alvar’s my hero.”
Sophie had only met Fitz and Biana’s older brother a few times, and he’d always seemed very polished and professional. But she’d heard rumors of Alvar’s wild side before, and knew it had to be pretty crazy for Keefe to look up to him.
“We should have the new room ready by sunset,” Amisi—the third gnome—said. “Though there are fewer of us, so we might need another hour.”
“Yes, where are Gora and Yuri?” Mr. Forkle asked. “I didn’t see them yesterday, either.”
The three gnomes shared a look.
“They . . . have gone to stay near Lumenaria,” Calla said after a moment. “In the hopes they’ll be allowed to visit the refugees. Yuri had family in Wildwood.”
“I did not realize,” Mr. Forkle whispered. “I hope good news finds them soon.”
“So do we.”
Charged silence passed before the gnomes grabbed the buckets and satchels and shuffled off into the trees.
“What’s Wildwood?” Sophie asked.
Mr. Forkle sighed. “Is this how it’s going to be? Constant questions?”
“Pretty much,” Sophie agreed.
“Well, do not expect an answer every time. But Wildwood was where a small colony of gnomes lived. Most of their race fled to the Lost Cities after the ogres overthrew Serenvale, their ancient homeland. But a few gnomes refused to leave and took up residence in one of the Neutral Territories, in a grove not far from the borders of what has now become the ogres’ capital city.”
“Why are you speaking past tense?” Della asked. “Calla said something about refugees.”
“A better
term would be ‘evacuees,’ ” Mr. Forkle corrected. “Some sort of plague struck the colony a few weeks back, and forced them to flee. They arrived in Lumenaria three days ago for medical treatment. And that is the extent of my knowledge. The Council has been extremely guarded with their information, and at the moment they’re allowing no visitors. But I do know that all of our best physicians are working to isolate the pathogen. I’m sure they’ll find the cure soon.”
Della looked less than satisfied with the answer.
Sophie wasn’t thrilled either. “Oralie told us before we left that she thought the ogres were stirring in the Neutral Territories. Does this have something to do with that?”
Mr. Forkle scratched his chin. “Interesting that a Councillor would agree with the theories.”
“What theories?” Sophie pressed.
“This is your last question,” he warned. “The Wildwood Colony has claimed ogre sabotage for centuries. But they’ve never been able to provide proof. I’ll have to rally my sources and see if Oralie has evidence for her suspicions. In the meantime, please put this out of your mind. You know better than most, Miss Foster, how truly powerful our medicine can be. I have no doubt the gnomes will recover soon. Shall we?”
He motioned for everyone to follow him toward one of the stair-wrapped trees, and they climbed to the bridge that connected the two houses.
He pointed to the gazebo in the center, filled with pots of vibrant flowers and a round table with cozy chairs. “Since you’ll be dwelling in separate residences, we arranged this common eating area. Dinner will be served here—and you’re in for a treat. Calla’s starkflower stew is life changing. Otherwise, boys are that way”—he pointed to the tree house across the bridge—“and the girls are just above us. I must return to the Lost Cities and be seen for a few minutes.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of green-and-orange-speckled berries.
“So that’s how you de-Forkle!” Dex said. “I should’ve guessed it was callowberries. My dad uses them in his anti-inflammatory ointments. They smell like flareadon poop.”
“Taste like it too,” Mr. Forkle agreed.
“So all we need to do is crush a few of those into your breakfast, and bam! Instant Forkle-reveal?” Keefe asked.