I started to scream, but the attempt stopped in my throat. Or really, it had been stopped. I could almost feel the scream—ice-cold and frozen in place, a hard rock in my trachea, even though air passed through it as I breathed.
The Ögonen stood before me, holding their hand out with their fingers curled, making a clutching gesture in the air before my face.
I put my hand to my throat and let out a shaky breath, but I still couldn’t make a sound. The Ögonen stared impassively at me, blinking once slowly.
They were entirely androgynous, with no mouth and two slits in the center of their oblong face for a nose. The light from my phone hit their chest, shining through their semitransparent ocher skin so I could see the subtle beating of their heart.
Let me go! I screamed, but the words never made it out.
My main focus was on the Ögonen stealing my voice, but in my peripheral vision I saw the spiders, crawling over the walls and ceiling, covering the books and floor as they swarmed around us.
The Ögonen moved their hand, pointing down the hall behind me.
And then I was running. I don’t know if I had a choice or if my body was just moving, racing under the command of something else. When I came to a T intersection, I turned left without thinking or knowing why. My feet were following a path I couldn’t see, and as long as they took me away from the spiders and the voice-stealing Ögonen, I was happy to let them.
One more sharp left, and there it was—a set of rickety wooden stairs. They were steep—almost like a ladder—and I ran up them without hesitation.
At the top was another set of cellar doors, and I charged into them, but they didn’t give. I slammed my palm against the door and shouted for help—and finally, mercifully, my voice was free.
The door finally opened, and I ran out, practically tripping over the top steps, and I collapsed onto the stone floor.
“Ulla Tulin?” Elof Dómari asked. He stood over me, squinting at me as I brushed my hands all over my body, making sure that no spiders had hitched a ride. “Are you okay?
“Yeah, yeah.” I stood up and ran my hands through my hair one more time. “I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding, and you were screaming for help down in the catacombs. Forgive me if I don’t entirely believe that you’re fine.”
“Sorry. I went down to get a book.” I held it up to show him. “And there were all these spiders. Why didn’t anyone tell me about the giant spider infestation in the catacombs?”
Elof pressed his lips into a thin smile, and he went over and locked the cellar doors. “That’s because there weren’t any spiders.”
“No, there were, I swear.” I pointed at the door. “I just saw them everywhere.”
“No, you saw what the Ögonen wanted you to see.” He started to walk away. “Come back to my office with me. I’ll get you cleaned up and explain it all to you there.”
He led me back to the old brass elevator at the end of the hall, and as Elof controlled the lever and sent us up to the third floor, I briefly explained to him my experience in the catacombs, and he didn’t seem surprised by any of it.
We made it to his lab, and he unlocked the door—using a key from a ring of large brass keys. He instructed me to sit down on the squat stool next to one of the dwarf-height islands nearby. He flicked on the lights—not all of them, but enough so the classroom wasn’t completely submerged in darkness anymore.
Elof gathered up a first-aid kit, then he sat on the stool across from me. “You know the Ögonen are the guardians of Merellä, using their intense psychokinesis to mask its appearance?”
“Yeah, I think I understand, basically.” I understood the concept, but most sources were vague about anything pertaining specifically to the Ögonen.
Elof motioned for me to lower my head, so he could more easily reach my wound and clean it. I leaned forward, and he gently dabbed the cut above my eyebrow and a scratch on my cheek with an alcohol swab.
“Sorry, this stings a bit,” he said when I winced.
“It’s okay.”
“To do what the Ögonen do—essentially hiding an entire city with a bustling population in plain sight from humans—that takes a great deal of power. A cloaking spell of that size has them working at max capacity—so to speak—which is one of the reasons the citadel must be strict about admittance to the Mimirin and Merellä as a whole. Population control is a must.
“As powerful as the Ögonen are, they have their limits,” he went on as he gently applied a butterfly bandage to my eyebrow gash. “Which is why you’re able to see the city. Even half-TOMBs like Pan are able to see through the cloaking spell to the stone and flesh underneath.
“So.” Elof had taken care of my largest scrapes, and he sat back on his stool. “To guard the areas from the likes of you, they have to use different tactics. And it so happens that it’s far easier for the Ögonen to create visions than it is to hide something that is really there.”
“You’re saying that the Ögonen made me hallucinate spiders?” I asked. “To scare me away, like guard dogs?”
“Yes, exactly.” He tilted his head. “Which means that you didn’t have permission to be down in the catacombs.”
I sighed. “No, I didn’t. And I broke a bookcase, accidentally.” I groaned. “I should go back down there to clean it.”
“I’ll send someone down,” Elof said. “Unless you’re granted permission from the Styrelse, it’s best if you do not go back down again.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make such a mess.” I set the book down on the island and tapped the cover. “I thought this would help me figure some things out.”
“The archives are not under my domain, so I will leave it to you to discuss with Calder how to proceed with that book,” Elof said, and his gaze turned more severe. “And I do trust that you will tell him about what transpired today.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Good.” He relaxed again. “But there is something I discovered recently that I thought you might find interesting. It’s about the Ögonen, actually.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“How much do you know about chromosomes?”
I shook my head. “Not much.”
“Humans have forty-six chromosomes, and like many other animals, ours come in pairs,” he began. “In fact, most species work in similar ways with chromosomes in pairs or sets of three, from seedless watermelons all the way up to decaploids like certain types of strawberries, which have sets of ten.
“But they’re usually consistent, with minor variations. Down syndrome in humans has a single triple bond, resulting in forty-seven chromosomes. And then there’s the Ögonen. Every one I’ve tested has thirty-five chromosomes, compromised of seven pairs and seven trios.”
“Why? What does that mean?” I asked.
“There is still much that we don’t understand,” Elof admitted. “But we’ve recently been able to ascertain Eliana shares several sets of chromosomes with the Ögonen, and like them, she has a mixture of pairs and trios.
“But unlike them, she also has a few that match ours,” he finished. “She seems to be connected to us both.”
“What are the Ögonen? No one’s ever given me a straight answer,” I said.
“They’re a type of troll, but beyond that, it’s hard to categorize them,” Elof explained as best as he could. “I suspect that we must have common ancestors from long ago, but the Ögonen lived in complete isolation. For eons, perhaps. At some point, around a thousand years ago, the Ögonen were no longer able to survive on their own. The Vittra eventually came to their aid, housing the Ögonen in exchange for their protection.”
He paused, drumming his fingers on the island. “Or so the Vittra records say. It’s hard to ever know how accurate our history books are. We’ve all lived so much in secret, deliberately hiding as many of our tracks as we can.”
“And Eliana is related to them?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head once. “I’ve tried talking to the Ögonen, but it’s hard to communicate directly with them. They only speak in telekinetic images, which can be very tricky to decipher. I even had Mästare Amalie helping me to translate, and I don’t know that I was ever properly able to convey the idea of Eliana or the questions I had about her.” He sighed. “I suppose that’s a really long way of saying that I don’t know.
“But this is still good news,” Elof reassured me. “This is a connection we didn’t have before, and everything we learn bringsus one step closer to understanding her and finding her.”
“Good. Good.” I stared down at the floor. “I’m glad one of us is making progress. I’ve been doing everything I can to find the First City.”
He pointed to my book. “Is that why you took this?”
“Yeah. I was hoping this might give me something to go on.”
“Have you tried talking to Calder about it?” Elof asked gently.
“I have,” I admitted. “But I think he’s getting annoyed with me.”
Elof clucked his tongue in understanding. “There are other avenues outside of Calder. I would like it if you could come back when you’re feeling better—and Dagny is around to do the procedure—so we can run another blood test.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely, I’d like that too,” I said. Then, more hesitantly, I added, “I did have a … question. Could you compare my blood sample with a baby’s to see if we’re siblings?”
“You think you may have found a sibling?” Elof asked, surprised.
“No. I don’t know.” I frowned, thinking of Indu and all his dead children, and Bekk Vallin’s rotund belly. Her baby’s father was Indu Mattison, and I had begun to fear that Indu might be my father too. “There’s this guy who claims he’s Älvolk, but he’s definitely some kind of … romantic, we’ll say. I would feel better if I could rule him out.”
“Understandable. I can compare samples to see if there’s a familial match. Just send him my way, and I will do the draw.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”
He smiled. “I’ll be here.”