43

Worldly

Pan slid open the barn-style door on his friend Hugo Rohm’s garage. Hugo worked with him as a peurojen, and he fixed cars on the side. Over the summer, he’d been very slowly working on the Jeep that Finn had lent me to drive to Merellä from Förening. It was from the Trylle kingdom’s fleet, and Eliana had crashed through the fabric top when I first arrived at the citadel.

Hugo had stopped working on it while we’d been busy, because he wasn’t sure what to do with it, and that had slowed his progress. But he’d gotten it all fixed up in time for me to drive back to Förening.

The bright mojito green Jeep Wrangler was dusty, but otherwise it looked good as new. The canvas canopy was shiny and intact, and the scratches in the paint were gone.

“This looks really great,” I said as Pan and I inspected the Jeep. “Thanks again. How much do I owe you?”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars.” Hugo stood beside us, half leaning on the vehicle. Grease stained his white shirt, his dark brown hair tangled curls that landed just above his jaw.

I hid my wince as I pulled the cash out of my bag. It really wasn’t a bad price, but that was 250 fewer dollars that I had to fund my two-day road trip to Minnesota. I wasn’t flat broke yet, but my savings were very, very scant.

That was another reason I had to get back to Förening. I wanted to ask Finn and Mia for a small loan. Just something until I could get a paying job again. When I’d lived with the Tulins, I’d worked at the inn, and when I lived with Finn and Mia, I helped watch the kids (and cook and clean) for ten-plus hours a day.

So I was used to working, and I hadn’t been sitting idly. Dealing with the fallout of being captive in another kingdom took time, and it felt like I was so close to understanding and remembering what had happened to me.

I might have to spend every penny I had, but it would be worth it to know the truth and to stop something terrible from happening. And then I could move on. Decide where to live and find a job. And spend quality time with Pan.

After I paid Hugo, he gave me the keys to the Jeep, and Pan and I got in and began the short drive back to the apartment.

“I wish I was going with you,” Pan said quietly.

Yesterday, when I’d been making the plans, we’d decided it was best if he stayed back. Eliana insisted on going, and we all thought that Jem and Sumi shouldn’t be separated from her. With the four of us, that was basically a carload. Plus, Pan had been missing a lot of work, and he was needed here.

Dagny and Elof were continuing their research into what was wrong with Eliana, what the Älvolk were up to, and how to recover our memories safely, and Pan could help them with that. It all made sense, and he understood and agreed with all of it.

But that didn’t really do anything about this trepidation. I knew that Pan was nervous that something bad might happen with Sunniva and the memory recovery, and he didn’t completely trust Jem-Kruk and Sumi.

Those are the things he’d told me, when he voiced his concerns the previous day. But I also suspected there was another silent fear lurking under everything: the fear that I wouldn’t come back. That I would go to Förening and stay, the way Rikky had done before.

That was the only way I could explain the way Pan kissed me after we said our goodbyes. Jem and Sumi had put the last of their things—they only had a few bags between the three of them—in the back of the Jeep while Eliana hugged Dagny.

“I’ll call you when I get there,” I told him as we stood by the driver’s side door in the warm morning sun.

And then suddenly, he grabbed me, pulling me to him, and he kissed me fiercely, deeply. It stole my breath away and made my knees weak. Fortunately, his arm around me stopped me from going full swoon.

When we stopped kissing, he rested his forehead against mine and breathed in deeply. “Come back to me, Ulla, safe and sound.”

“I’ll always come back to you,” I promised him.

I hadn’t told him what I’d seen in the memory—the two of us saying “I love you” to each other—or that I knew I loved him still. Just before I left didn’t seem like the right time, especially when we hardly had a moment alone.

So with that goodbye, I got in the Jeep and got on the road. Things took a bumpy turn right at the start, with Eliana and Sumi getting into a heated debate about what music to listen to, but they finally shut up when I put on Queen.

The drive was supposed to be split between two days, with us ending up in Bozeman, Montana, very late the first night, if we stayed on track, but Eliana was dead set against keeping to our schedule. She was an exuberant tourist. Everything that even remotely counted as sightseeing—including a very, very large tree and a woman giving away puppies at a gas station—she wanted to stop for.

When we were through a long, open stretch of road, she yelped in the back seat and slapped the window with the palm of her hand. “Look at them!”

I slammed on the brakes, only to see the danger Eliana was alerting me to was half a mile away. A pack of six silvery gray wolves raced through a grassy field that ran alongside a twisting shallow river.

Since the vehicle had stopped moving, Eliana opened the door and dove out.

“Eliana!” I shouted, and I turned the Jeep off, since there wasn’t another car around for miles.

“Ellie, don’t go near them!” Jem warned as he slid out of the back seat after her. “They look dangerous!”

“I won’t!” she yelled, but she jogged a few more feet before stopping.

Some of the wolves stopped, apprehensively looking our way, but the rest kept on running.

“Stay back!” I told Jem and Sumi, since I was probably the strongest one, and I didn’t want the wolves getting spooked. They were close enough and big enough that they could do real damage if they decided to attack.

Eliana stayed still, her hair shimmering golden brown in the evening sun, and a cool breeze blew through the nearby evergreens and over the river, ruffling the wolves’ fur. One giant canine looked like it was holding Eliana’s gaze with his golden amber eyes.

I walked slowly behind her and grabbed her arm. “Eliana, come on.”

“They won’t hurt me,” she said, and didn’t budge.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she insisted, then looked up at me. “Be still, Ulla. Enjoy the moment.”

I sighed and didn’t let go of her arm, but I also didn’t throw her over my shoulder and carry her back to the Jeep. Compromise.

The wolf kept looking at her, until another wolf howled somewhere in the distance. Then he cocked his ear and took off with the rest of his pack.

“Thank you,” Eliana said quietly as she watched the retreating canines. “I know we’re in a hurry, so thank you for letting me have this moment. They were stunning creatures, and I want to see as much of this world as possible while I can.”

“Well, I’m glad you got to enjoy this,” I said, softening. Another five minutes wouldn’t destroy our timetable. “But you can’t scream and jump out of a vehicle. You have to ask and wait for me to pull over.”

“I understand,” she said with a wistful smile. “I knew this would be special, though.” Suddenly, she whirled around and hugged me. “I’m so happy that you’re here. I always wanted a sister.”

“You have a twin sister,” I reminded her.

“That doesn’t count. She’s not like you.” She released me and frowned. “She can’t love.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She shrugged. “She didn’t love me.”

“Has the danger passed?” Sumi asked as she walked up behind us.

I nodded and glanced back at her, her lovely long coils of hair hanging past her shoulders. Her loose tank top and tight leather pants made her look like a boho rock star, like an olive-skinned Janis Joplin.

“The wolves are gone.” I pointed to the trees they’d disappeared in, about a hundred meters away.

“They didn’t seem so dangerous,” Jem said as he joined us. “Our kuguars are twice that big back home.”

“Were you hoping to end the day with a mauling?” Sumi asked him wryly.

He laughed. “I suppose not.” He breathed in deeply. “It is lovely here. The sunsets remind me of home.”

“Maybe that’s why I like them so much,” Eliana said as she stared at the pink sunset.

“The good news is that we can enjoy them from the car,” I said, and started back that way.