Lillya

Lillya’s feet slid against the slick rock. She yelped, scrambling to keep herself upright and out of the water. An awkward, hopping, flapping dance from damp rock to damp rock ensued. By the time she recognized the direction of her momentum as a very bad idea, she had hopped her way halfway across the river. Filled with what could best be described as rue, she gazed back the way she had come. It was a long way back.

A coal-black jaguar on the shore sat back on his haunches, blinking at her.

“Pepper,” she urged. “Go get help. Go find Ruby…or Iris.”

The big cat stood up, stretched every inch of his huge, furry body, and sauntered off, inappropriately unconcerned over this river debacle.

There was one perk to her current predicament. Lillya knelt down and dipped her hand in the ice cold water, drawing out a black rock laced with brilliant blue swirls. She dried the pretty rock on her long shirt and slipped it into a pocket of her jacket, buttoning it in securely. Taurin would be thrilled to add that rock to his collection. The ones on shore had been too small to suffice, but reaching out over the river and using a slippery rock to stretch further for the perfect stone had led to this disaster she was in now.

She tried to make her way back the way she had come, but the second her foot touched the closest rock, the tiny rock just barely poking out from the quickly flowing water must have turned into an iceberg. Her foot slid at once. She had stepped in the rushing water before she awkwardly righted herself on her original rock prison. Luckily Papa had insisted on the waterproof boots.

“Ok, Lil,” she told herself. “You can do this. You are smarter than a rock.”

The rock stared back, not so sure.

“Be quiet,” she complained. “Or I’ll turn you into…something. Don’t think I won’t.”

Actually, magic might work here. If she could freeze the river or fly across, that would be ideal, but Lillya knew her limits were somewhere in the range of flowers and butterflies. She was great at rainbows. Because she had threatened, and because it made her feel better, she waved her hand at the slick little rock. Stripes of color washed over it. The misbehaving stone was just as small and slick as before, but less smug, Lillya decided, almost festive. It was a chromatic improvement.

She heard rustling.

“Ruby,” she called. “Iris?”

No response. Now she was going to be eaten by forest monsters. Great.

“Lil,” came an answering voice. “Is that you?”

“This way!” she screeched back, trying not to sound too desperate.

Ruby dashed out of the forest, skittering to a halt at the river and taking in the situation. Ruby’s arms were full of the sticks she had been gathering for the night’s fire. The girl deposited those on the river bank. Pepper plunked himself down next to the pile, proud of himself.

“How’d you get out there?” asked Ruby, curious blue eyes taking stock of the situation.

Lillya did not feel like explaining how the rocks had it in for her. “Do you have anything that can get me out of here?” she begged.

“I have a rope,” Ruby offered, fishing it out of her pack.

“How does that help me?” asked Lillya, annoyed.

Ruby shrugged. “You could tie it around yourself, and then even if you fell in, I could haul you in before you washed downstream.”

It was better than nothing. After a few failed attempts, Lillya was holding one end of a dripping rope. She secured it around her waist.

“Now just run across,” coaxed Ruby. “You can jump those no problem.”

Lillya was about five rocks away from shore. The rocks were spaced awkwardly and of all different sizes and shapes. She had no idea how she had accomplished this feat the first time. Some of those rocks were tiny and quite a jump apart.

She pulled a ribbon from her jacket and tied back her straight blond hair while she stalled. Insensitive, the water continued rushing downstream like it was in a hurry to warm up after a cold day. Enough stalling. Lillya backed up so she could push off. Her feet refused to move forward.

“You’re from Taragon,” Lillya insisted, reviving the first plan. “Can’t you do something magical with rocks?”

Ruby cocked her head, thinking. “Ok, let me try.” She focused her bright blue eyes on the rock closest to shore, concentrating until it flickered and disappeared. “Well, that’s not good,” she muttered.

“Moss!” exclaimed Lillya proudly.

Ruby shot her a confused look, but Lillya had no time to explain. She knelt down and touched her little rock enemy with the tips of her fingers. It took a few tries to focus the magic she could sense but never quite channel the way she wanted. Eventually, green specks appeared on the rock and spread until her rainbow rock was coated in dark green moss.

“Take that!”

“Are you talking to a rock, Lil?” called Ruby.

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“You should have heard it earlier,” Lillya defended herself.

She reached out a foot and planted it on the mossy rock. The mossy surface was much easier to grip, and her boot stayed on its precarious perch. She could not quite reach the next rock from here, but she stretched out her hand. Moss slowly spread across the rock’s surface. Hopping from her tiny rock to the next, she teetered on her mossy landing pad. Her heart sped up, and she felt the rope tighten at her waist. She grabbed it to right herself. Ruby strained to hold the other end of the rope while Lillya got her footing. Her friend was barely taller than she was and not any stronger.

“Thanks, Ruby,” she said breathlessly.

The next jump was longer. How had she made that jump the first time? Tansy could have jumped this in her sleep, she told herself. Tansy could probably conjure a flock of hundreds of sparrows to carry her across the river, actually. Since Tansy was not here, Lillya stretched out her hand and coated the rock in an extra thick layer of moss. She could do this. Probably. Maybe.

“I could go get the Sorceress,” Ruby offered.

Lillya sighed. “She’d just stand there with her arms all crossed glaring at me. Then, she’d tell me to figure it out myself.”

“It’s not even that far anyway,” lied Ruby in an attempt to be encouraging.

Lillya leaped, but it was one of those jumps where she panicked in the middle. She landed just before the rock, and her feet slid out from under her. She tumbled downstream a few lengths until the rope went taught. She grabbed for it, gasping for air as the cold water washed over her. After a number of tries and some shrieking, Ruby hauled her over to shore.

A soggy Lillya shivered her way back to camp. Ruby draped her dry cloak over both of them, but the sun was dropping fast, and the woods were cold.

“You have some explaining to do,” Issabeth greeted her. Then she did a double take of the dripping girl. “Wait, what happened?”

“I had a fight with some rocks,” answered a chattering Lillya. “They won.”

“Well, get your wet clothes and your wet self drying next to the fire. Then you can explain why you brought a book as your personal item.”

Lillya peeled off clothes to a wet undershirt and held her shaking hands in front of the fire, feeling the warmth creep into her chilly fingers and toes. She must have looked pathetic, because she got quite a few “Glad you’re ok, Lil” greetings from the other girls and a minimum of teasing. She closed her eyes, basking in the feeling of being warm again. Eventually everything from her straight blond hair to her skinny knees were wonderfully dry. When she opened her violet eyes, Issabeth was in front of her, holding the offensive book in two fingers.

“Hey!” Lillya exclaimed, grabbing for her book. Papa had written it for her for her birthday. It was about a forest full of daring squirrels searching for the mystical nut kingdom.

“A book?” Issabeth exclaimed, lifting it out of her reach. “On a test of survival?”

“It serves two purposes, see?” Lillya insisted. “Entertainment, obviously.”

Issabeth’s eyebrows rose. She contested the veracity of the first purpose.

“The second is kindling in an emergency, right? So, it’s doubly practical.”

Issabeth would have none of it. “You owe me twelve chin-ups on that tree for bringing a book on my training expedition.”

“Isn’t that just the required number of chin-ups for evening exercise?” asked Pippa.

Issabeth grinned while pretending to scowl. “Are you asking for more?”

By the time they finished the required running and cooked the fish they caught earlier, the girls were exhausted. They dropped off to bed with a minimum of chatter. Lillya tried to read a few pages from the book Issabeth had begrudgingly returned, but she found herself rereading the same sentence over and over about the cursed squirrel princess looking for her nut kingdom. She gave up, hugging her book to her chest and burrowing in her blankets. Pepper was a giant, furry heater.

She snuggled into his soft fur.

“Lillya?”

Her eyes snapped open. Pepper was gone. She was no longer in the forest. She was in a bright white room. She sat up faster than a bolt of lightning.

“It’s ok, child,” the voice assured her. “You’re sleeping.”

“This is a dream?” Lillya squinted in the bright light.

“I didn’t say that,” replied the voice.

The shape of a dark woman appeared in the blinding white. Her figure sharpened as Lillya focused on her. She had dark skin and draping, thin clothing of bright colors. Her hair was fire red, a mass of tiny braids twisting this way and that in an intricate, hypnotizing pattern.

“You’re Arlana, the Flifary Seer,” Lillya exclaimed. She had consumed every word in the palace about the Flifary. She so desperately wanted to visit the magical island, no matter what Mama said about it being inexcusably hot.

Arlana smiled in acknowledgment, but her smile was tired. Her father always described the Seer as whimsical and light, but this lady seemed full of trouble and as old as time itself.

“Is everything all right?” Lillya asked.

“I don’t know, child,” Arlana answered.

A chill swept over Lillya. “How can you not know?” she whispered. “Isn’t that what you do? Know?”

Arlana traded her lost expression for the beginnings of a tremulous hope.

“Not knowing just means the power lies in us for success. There’s no reason to think we may not find a way.”

“Find a way to what?” asked Lillya.

“Your note will tell you,” said Arlana. “Take it to Daniella and no one else.”

“Wait, what’s going on? What note? What can I—”

“All I can tell you right now is to check again.” Arlana’s head cocked to the side, and dangling feather earrings brushed her bare shoulders. She was listening, but Lillya heard no sound. Arlana’s face clouded with an expression that was neither uncertain nor hard to read—terror. “Lillya, I must—”

The same moment, Lillya was awake in the dark night wrapped in blankets on the cold ground. Next to her, Pepper batted at a phantom rabbit in his sleep and settled down like nothing had happened.

“What note?” she whispered. “I was only dreaming.”

In one hand, she held her book, open. In the other, she held the tiny pencil she had secretly smuggled on the trip in defiance of the one personal item rule. She squinted at the book in the dark. She had been writing on the pages, in between the lines.

She scanned the other Sorceress trainees, girls all sleeping peacefully in the dark, oblivious. Aunt Issabeth was dead asleep, clutching her bow. No matter how many tests Issabeth tried to devise, there was no sense of danger while she was near. She would never let harm come to any one of them. Not permanent harm, anyway. Her presence calmed Lillya’s racing heart.

Lillya pulled a blanket over her head so she was buried in the dark. She held two fingers in front of her. As she separated them, a tiny spot of glowing green light appeared in between. Slowly, she spread her fingers further until the light grew just enough to assist her eyes. She had perfected this maneuver from years of secret bedtime reading. She pushed the glowing green spark toward the book.

She must have written in her sleep, but the handwriting between the lines of her book was tiny, meticulous, and perfectly even. She was a rather remarkable writer for her young age, but not that skilled. Also, she could not read a word she had written. The words were neither Terran nor Naxturaen. Was it written in Flifary? Did Grandmama know Flifary? She must, if the Seer said the note was for her.

Lillya let the light grow brighter, hoping to recognize something, anything, but it looked like a jumble of letters to her. Maybe it was just gibberish after all.

Jadelynn murmured in her sleep, and Lillya clasped the light in her hands in panic. She wondered why as she huddled in the dark, holding her breath. This felt like a big, important secret.