Lillya

The portal had sucked the smoke and mist with it before it closed, but remnants of fire still smoldered in the branches of their trees. The girls had to come down eventually. Jadelynn dropped out of her tree first. One by one, the rest of the girls thudded to the ground like soot-smeared, frightened monkeys. Lillya was already on the ground, and she did not bother standing. Her hands were shaking, so she wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her trembling hands under her elbows. Pepper rested his head in her lap. Ruby was sobbing. The rest looked stunned.

“I think they’re gone,” whispered Ivyliss, because somebody had to say something.

“What if they come back?” choked Ruby through her tears.

“What were those things?” Jadelynn asked dully.

Everybody’s eyes gravitated to Pepper. The attackers had looked just like him. Nobody wanted to say it. Had anybody seen the people but Lillya? Aunt Issabeth had. Lillya tried to call for her, but her voice would not cooperate.

“Are we all here?” asked Iris. “Is everybody ok?”

“There’s only five of us,” Ruby panicked.

“You’re not counting yourself,” Jadelynn snapped back.

“Aunt I—Issabeth,” Lillya stuttered, hardly raising her voice high enough to be heard by her fellow trainees, let alone the missing woman.

“It sucked her up,” blubbered a frantic Ruby. “That black tear thing. It took her.”

“Calm down, Ruby!” Jadelynn snapped. Her tone was not calming. “She’s here. Somewhere.”

She had to be. The girls searched as far as they were willing to venture, calling her name and looking behind the nearest trees for signs of her. Pepper did not even rise to look, which sent chills through Lillya’s heart. Eventually the girls stopped their search, reconvening in a dejected, soot-streaked huddle around Lillya and Pepper.

“Maybe this is just a test,” suggested an expressionless Jadelynn.

Nobody believed that.

“I did not make fire powder that strong,” mumbled Pippa out of nowhere. “I didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” said Lillya. She wished she could stop trembling.

Pippa opened a pouch and peered inside. “I’ve made it a hundred times before. It’s never done anything like that.”

“Good thing it did,” muttered Jadelynn. “Those creatures would have killed us all.”

“But I didn’t do it,” insisted Pippa. “Look. Look at these purple crystals.”

She thrust out a handful of the powder. It was filled with dull purple rocks.

“Who added these?” she accused.

Nobody took the credit. Blame? Lillya had half an idea, but just the half inside her brain where nothing was connected to anything else. Somebody had modified that fire powder. Without the malfunctioning fire powder, they would not have burned breakfast or changed direction to head toward the orchard. Had the powder saved their lives or put them in danger?

“Pippa, calm down,” ordered Jadelynn. “And put away the super-charged fire powder, ok?”

“What are we going to do?” sniffled Ruby.

Five girls looked Lillya’s way. Most of them were older and far more capable of taking care of themselves in the wilderness. Jadelynn was the natural leader. Ivyliss was the oldest. Still, there were odd times when they all defaulted to Lillya like she had the answers. She did not feel like she had stellar leadership qualities, nor did she like being in charge, but Papa said it was just one of those things people expected from her.

What would Aunt Issabeth do?

Lillya cleared her throat and hoped her voice was steadier than she was. “We need to get out of here. Grab your packs if they’re still here.”

Trembling fingers retrieved packs. Pippa stuffed her strewn objects back into her bag. Issabeth’s pack just sat there, discarded. Lillya reached for it. It felt like heartache. Plus, it was heavy. She could not haul this pack in addition to her own. They were going to have to redistribute the useful items.

Lillya dug into Issabeth’s pack, feeling sick to her stomach. If Aunt Issabeth came around the corner and saw— A lump formed in her throat. That would be wonderful. She would be so happy to run three furlongs as punishment if her aunt popped up behind a tree and said this was all some elaborate ruse.

“We need to split up some of these things,” Lillya forced herself to speak aloud.

Dejected scavengers, the girls took blankets and cooking supplies, hooks and poles. The group was rapidly overloaded, but they had no idea where they were and no idea what they might need. Eventually the pack was light enough for Lillya to carry. She slung it and her own bag over her back.

“Looks like I have half a day’s worth of emergency food,” said Lillya, trying to sound hopeful. “Let’s find some water, eat, and figure out what to do.” She looked at the dark, gnarled trees in all directions. “Which—which way do we go?”

“Downhill,” more than one girl murmured.

They chose a course and set off together, a blackened, scratched-up, and generally bedraggled group. They walked in silence, giving Lillya too much time alone with her thoughts. Those people, whoever they were, had come for her. She was sure of it. They would come back to finish the job. She wanted to be home so badly.

“Listen,” exclaimed Iris.

Stolen novel; please report.

Lillya’s heart was thudding in her ears too hard to listen, but Pippa exclaimed, “Water!”

Suddenly they were running as fast as their overladen packs and the hard-packed root-strewn landscape would let them. The sound of rushing water grew louder as they ran, until they broke out of the trees and stopped, open-mouthed. Packs thudded to the ground as they marveled at the sight of a waterfall high above them, plunging down from towering cliffs. Sunlight sparkled off the roaring water.

“This is Diamond Falls,” said Lillya. “I know where we are.”

Little good knowing did. They were on the wrong side of the Ascleon mountain range in terrifying Thorn Forest. No wonder the trees looked malevolent. Half a day of travel south would put them in Bellican territory. Lillya had met a few Bellicus, and she preferred not to take a chance on their hospitality, no matter how fond they were of her mother.

It was a good place to stop. Lillya dug out the remaining food from Aunt Issabeth’s pack, and the girls distributed it evenly. They were going to need another food source soon.

“If we follow the river,” suggested Jadelynn, “maybe there’s a quiet place where we could fish. We have all the fishing gear.”

The girls agreed on this course of action, but no one wanted to move right away. The waterfall was stunning, and the sunlight was welcome.

Lillya used the time to dig through the rest of Issabeth’s pack. She found some climbing equipment at the bottom, shuddered over what Aunt Issabeth envisioned them climbing, and moved to the pockets. A hard, flat object was sealed behind one.

“Of course,” Lillya exclaimed, digging out the object with trembling fingers. The mirror! Aunt Issabeth could use the enchanted mirror to communicate with Crystal Palace. The pocket refused to open, despite her frantic tugging. Lillya stopped and breathed. The pocket was securely tied. She could barely convince her hands to be still long enough to undo a knot, but she persevered.

Ruby and Pippa had taken notice of her excitement, and they gathered.

“What is it?” asked Iris, joining in.

“It’s the mirror,” said Lillya proudly, finally gaining access to the pocket. “Now all we have to do is contact—” She pulled out the mirror with a flourish, and broken shards flung out of the pocket. “No,” she breathed, watching slivers of mirror tumble out onto the hard ground. “No, no, no.”

“It’s an enchanted object,” insisted Ruby, desperately grabbing for the shards on the ground. “Can’t we just put it back together?”

“The coating on the mirror was enchanted,” disagreed Pippa dully. “It won’t— It’s not going to work.”

Still, Ruby tried to reassemble the pieces.

“Stop it, Ruby,” chided Jadelynn. “You’re going to cut yourself.”

Lillya’s tears came in earnest now. It was better to have no hope than to lose it all at once.

Iris wrapped her arms around Lillya. “It’s ok, Lil,” she promised. “We’ll be ok.”

It was such a beautiful, caring lie that Lillya just sobbed harder. Ivyliss came over, and soon they were six girls in a forest alone, crying and clinging to each other, even Jadelynn who had six older brothers and was as tough as they came. True to form, Jadelynn broke the huddle first and sniffed back the rest of her tears.

“We get that over with?” she said, pretending to be annoyed. “Let’s go catch some fish or something.”

The girls scattered with new purpose, filling water containers and repacking to carry the extra equipment. Lillya finished digging through Issabeth’s bag. It felt wrong, but if her aunt had embarrassing secrets, she would not have brought them on a week-long camping expedition with six nosy girls. Besides, the idea of being yelled at later was comforting.

She reached her hand into another pocket on the outside of the sack and unearthed a folded piece of thick, unnatural paper.

“What’d you find?” asked Ruby, and suddenly Lillya had another audience. Hopefully she was right about that deep, dark secret thing.

She unfolded the paper with the texture of no plant fiber Lillya had ever touched. Where there should have been creases, the paper was still smooth. And yet, this mysterious object had been wasted on one of the worst landscape drawings Lillya had ever seen. It was an ugly birds-eye view of mountains, maybe, but they looked like jagged circles all inside each other for no reason. The only color aside from the boring black ink lines was a single red dot. It was sort of below the squashed mountain range.

“Oh, good,” exclaimed Ruby. “At least we can figure out where we’re going now.”

Everyone stared at Ruby. She knew something they had all missed, which was odd for Ruby. She may have been a gemstone savant, but she was not usually the first one to figure out useful solutions to problems.

Ruby must have noticed the blank stares. “It’s a map,” she declared.

All eyes drifted back to the paper.

“I don’t know, Ruby,” said a disbelieving Jadelynn. “It kind of looks like—”

“My three-year-old sister trying to draw flowers,” interjected Iris.

“It’s from on top,” countered a smug Ruby, clearly enjoying her moment of superiority. “Because the Ascleons are so tall, sometimes maps of Taragon have to show height, too, so the mountains look like rings. The red dot is us, right by Diamond Falls.” She jabbed at the map. “See, that’s Crystal River and the Trikle.”

Lillya readjusted and looked again at the squashed art. She was unsure whether to laugh or cry. They were a long way from Crystal Palace, plus their path was blocked by a wall of mountains.

“It doesn’t look like there’s any way through those mountains,” noted Pippa glumly.

“We’ll have to go south and around,” pointed Ivyliss.

“It’s so far,” moaned Iris. “How will we ever—”

One obstacle at a time,” interrupted Lillya, although there was plenty to moan about. As the leader of this expedition, it looked like she was going to have to pick optimism, no matter how she was feeling. “Great job, Ruby! This will save us so much time.” She handed the map to a beaming Ruby. “First, we fish and find a safe place to sleep.” The girls seemed to accept Lillya had any idea what she was doing, and they shuffled off to finish shoving their things into bags.

Issabeth’s pack was empty now, and Lillya considered leaving it behind, but she could not. She folded up the course fabric and hugged it to herself.

As they walked downstream, Lillya thought. She thought about what had attacked them and why they were after her. If magic was involved, these people were confused or misled if they had chosen her over Tansy.

She gasped and stifled her dramatic reaction with her hand, checking to see if her companions had noticed. Luckily, they were too tired and absorbed in their own problems. That was good, because she did not want to explain her panic. What if Crystal Palace was under attack? And with no High Sorceress to defend it!

Was she aggrandizing the problem? Grandmama said she and her siblings were always doing that. She could see baby Tansy, stomping her foot in front of Grandmama. “Not aggwandizing!” Tansy hollered. “End of world! End of world!” End of world to Tansy might have been a playdate ending too soon or fallen ice cream. This seemed more serious.

In this case, Grandmama would have told her Crystal Palace was a magical fortress, and they would have to be pretty powerful to attack it, whoever “they” were. That was probably why they tried to kidnap Lillya outside the castle—out of the Glade, even.

She stopped dead in her tracks. She was still in danger. Her friends were in danger by proximity. If she ordered them to go a different direction, could she survive on her own? Was that the right thing to do?

“What’s wrong, Lil?” asked Iris.

“I think,” Lillya squeaked before clearing her throat and trying again. “I think they were after me. So if we go opposite directions, you can hurry to Taragon and get word to Crystal Palace. Then I can hide, and none of you will get hurt because of me.”

They had all stopped their forward progress at this point. Five sets of blue eyes and one pair of feline brown eyes blinked at her.

“What are you talking about?” snapped Jadelynn first.

“They were after me,” Lillya repeated.

“They? The big cats?” asked Pippa, confused.

“No. I saw people, and one of them grabbed me. Aunt Issabeth—” The words caught on a lump in her throat. “She saved me.” She tried to clear her throat again.”I don’t want any of you to be in danger.”

“That’s what Sorceresses do,” Jadelynn shot back, annoyed. “They face magical danger. Set things right. How pathetic would we be if we left you?” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t even suggest it again.”

“I’d rather not split up, Lillya,” said Ruby, “especially if you think somebody might try to do something bad to you.”

So, just like that, Lillya was overruled. So much for leadership. At least she managed to catch the biggest fish for dinner, so she was not entirely useless.