Exile by Shannon Messenger
“Oh. I’ll get her,” Sophie offered.
Grady didn’t protest as she moved past him and headed down the curved staircase to the second floor. Even with the sunlight streaming through the crystal walls, the hallway leading left seemed to be shrouded in gloom. Sophie hurried to the end, where there were three narrow doors. Doors that were always closed.
The center door was slightly ajar.
“Edaline?” Sophie whispered, not wanting to startle her as she tiptoed into the quiet bedroom.
Sophie had only been in this room once in all the months she’d lived there—and only by accident. But it looked exactly the same. She suspected it had been exactly the same for the last sixteen years, though the room felt dim and dusty—like someone desperately needed to flick on the crystal chandeliers or pull back the faded lacy curtains and let in some light.
Edaline didn’t say a word as Sophie crossed the soft carpet and sat next to her on the edge of the canopied bed.
“Grady and I are ready whenever you are.” Sophie’s voice echoed through the silent room.
Edaline swallowed as she nodded, then turned to face Sophie. She sucked in a breath when she spotted the broach.
“I don’t have to wear it if—”
“No.” Edaline stopped her from unfastening it. “You should wear it. I’m sorry. It just surprised me because it makes you look even more like her.”
The words were strange, prickly things, and Sophie never knew what to do when Edaline said them. She knew Edaline meant them as a compliment, but Sophie couldn’t help wishing that she didn’t have to be the shadow of someone else. Or worrying that the similarity had anything to do with why they adopted her.
She followed Edaline’s gaze to the framed photo on the desk across the room.
A carefree Grady and Edaline stood with their arms around a slender blond girl—Jolie, when she was about Sophie’s age.
Jolie had Grady’s light hair and Edaline’s bright turquoise eyes. She was striking and graceful and smiling, with rosy cheeks and gleaming white teeth.
Sophie walked over to the floor-length dressing mirror in the corner and tried to see the resemblance.
“My goodness you have strange eyes,” a high-pitched voice announced.
Sophie whipped around. “Who’s that?”
“Vertina.” Edaline gave a sad smile and made her way over to Sophie. “I guess you’ve never seen a spectral mirror before?”
Sophie turned back to the mirror, gasping when she noticed a tiny face in the upper left side. A girl with shiny black hair, pale skin, and sapphire blue eyes. She looked like she was about fifteen, and she had that snotty I am older and cooler than you glare that Sophie had seen a lot of back in the human world when she was stuck as the twelve-year-old high school senior.
“What is it?” Sophie whispered.
“It?” the tiny girl snapped, her pretty face twisting into a scowl. “Who are you calling ‘it’? You’re the one with the freaky eyes.”
“Hey!” Sophie still wasn’t totally comfortable being the-only-elf-with-brown-eyes, but she wasn’t about to let some mirror-girl insult her.
“Now, now, Vertina,” Edaline said, placing a hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “That was out of line.”
“Sorry.” She didn’t sound like she meant it, though.
Sophie reached up and touched Vertina’s face, half expecting it to feel like warm skin. All she felt was smooth, cold glass.
“Get your smudgy fingers away from me!” Vertina huffed, ducking under Sophie’s hand. “It’s bad enough I’m up here alone all the time, gathering dust like some common piece of furniture.” She turned her tiny face away, her glassy eyes staring somewhere beyond them as she whispered, “I miss Jolie.”
“Me too,” Edaline said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Sophie pulled Edaline back, and when they were far enough from the glass for their reflections to disappear, Vertina vanished.
“What was that thing?”
It took Edaline a second to answer. “Spectral mirrors help you get dressed or style your hair.”
“Is it alive?”
“Just a clever bit of programming. A novelty that never caught on because people realized they didn’t want their mirror to tell them they looked tired or out of fashion. Jolie loved hers, though. They became friends. She even used to come back to visit Vertina on her rest weekends from the elite towers. They were that close.” Her voice broke again.
“Come on,” Sophie said, leading her toward the door. “Grady’s waiting for us.”
Edaline wiped her eyes, casting one last glance over her shoulder at the now silent mirror before she followed Sophie out to the hall.
They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor at a crawl. Edaline seemed in no hurry to get where they were going, and scaling the stairs was always a challenge for Sophie, especially in the low heels she’d decided to try. She was thirteen now—seemed like the time to switch to more mature footwear. If only she had the balance to pull them off. She tripped so badly on the last step that she would have fallen if it weren’t for Grady’s quick reflexes.
“Still getting the hang of walking, huh?” he teased as he caught her with his free arm. His other hand held a red satchel, which he handed to Edaline.
“Hey, I can’t be perfect at everything,” Sophie retorted with a smile.
“True enough.” Grady held her hand as she climbed onto the platform under the glittering chandelier in the center of the cupola. Five hundred intricately faceted crystals hung individually from silver cords, forming a sparkling sphere. The Leapmaster 500.
Edaline fidgeted with the satchel she’d slung over her shoulder and Grady stared at the ceiling, neither seeming ready to give the command.
Sophie cleared her throat. “Where exactly are we going?”
A few seconds passed before Grady whispered, “The Wanderling Woods.”
The Leapmaster sprang to life, twisting until a single crystal lowered enough to catch the sunlight streaming through the windows.
Nobody moved toward the beam that refracted to the ground.
Sophie could imagine them standing like this every year—too sad to step forward. But this year she was there to help them.
Slowly, gently, she pulled them into the light.
SEVEN
SOPHIE HAD BEEN IN QUIET places before, but she’d never experienced anything like the silence of the Wanderling Woods. There was no chirping or tweeting. No branches creaking or rustling. It was like all sound—all life—had been sucked out of the scenery, leaving nothing but a thick, almost tangible emptiness.
Even the silver pebbles didn’t crunch under her feet as she followed Grady and Edaline down a winding path, which seemed to glow as she moved, shining the way to the narrow gateway ahead. A vine with white star-shaped flowers trailed up two gilded columns to an arched golden sign with looping, intricate letters that spelled out:
Those who wander are not lost.
“I’ve heard that before,” Sophie said, mostly to herself.
She racked her brain, needing to be sure it was her own memory, not something someone put there. An image of a short poem flashed in her mind and she stopped walking. “That’s from The Lord of the Rings. Well—not exactly. But it’s close.”
“The Lord of the Rings?” Edaline repeated.
“It’s a series of human books. And it has elves in it.” Elves that had some similarities to what elves really were, now that she thought about it.
“Are the books older?” Grady asked.
“I think Tolkien wrote them during the Nineteen Thirties or Forties.”
“That’s back before the Human Assistance Program was banned.” Grady smiled when her eyebrows shot up. “We used to send members of the nobility in disguise to try to teach humans our ways. The treaties had fallen apart, but we still hoped to guide them, bring them out of the darkness and into a new age of light. In fact, most of the great human innovations of the last few centuries happened u
“What does that have to do with The Lord of the Rings?”
“Let’s just say there were some who couldn’t resist manipulating the legends about elves a bit.”
“So . . . you’re saying J. R. R. Tolkien met an elf, and that’s where he came up with some of the story?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Though I’m sure he was only told bits and pieces. Do the books talk about the Wanderlings at all?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then he didn’t know what the statement meant.” Grady motioned for her to follow him. Edaline trailed silently behind as they crossed under the arch and entered the woods. “These are the Wanderlings,” Grady whispered.
It was unlike any forest Sophie had ever seen. The glowing path wound through a sea of carefully arranged trees, each one surrounded by meticulously groomed shrubs. No two trees were alike. Some were short and broad. Others tall and slender. Some had graceful branches that swayed in the silent breeze. Others looked stout and strong. There were leaves in every shape, size, and color. Some had flowers. One even had thorns. And at the base of each tree was a round white stone with a name carved in plain black letters.
Grady led Sophie to the nearest tree, which reminded her of a weeping willow—if weeping willows had red leaves and bloomed with thousands of tiny purple flowers.
“Each Wanderling’s seed is coiled with a single hair from the one who’s been lost,” he explained. “When it sprouts, it absorbs their DNA, taking on some of the attributes of the life they now share. Letting the lost live on.”
Those who wander are not lost.
“Cyrah had straight auburn hair,” Edaline whispered, running her hand through the swaying red leaves. “And flecks of violet in her eyes.”
Soft purple petals showered them, and Sophie caught as many as she could, hating that they would wither on the ground. “Did you know her?”
Grady brushed the bits of flower off his cape. “Not well. She was Prentice’s wife.”
The petals slipped through Sophie’s fingers.
Prentice had been a Keeper for the Black Swan, back before everyone knew they were working against the real rebels. Now he lived in Exile, his mind shattered by the memory break that the Council had ordered so they could find out what he was hiding. And the secret he’d refused to tell them was her.
Where they hid her.
Why they’d made her.
Who she was.
His wife died not long after his mind was shattered. Lost her concentration during a light leap somehow and faded away before anyone could save her. Leaving Wylie, their only son, orphaned. Sophie had never met him—he was in the elite levels at Foxfire and lived in the secluded elite towers—but she sometimes wondered if he knew she existed. And how he felt about her if he did.
She looked up and a ray of sunlight caught her eyes, sinking into her brain and pulsing with that same headache she kept getting.
“You okay?” Grady asked as she rubbed her temples.
“Sure.” She focused on the forest, surprised to realize how many trees there were. There had to be at least a hundred, spread among the meandering hills and carefully manicured bushes. It seemed like a lot, but . . . the Wanderling Woods was the elves’ only graveyard. Could they really have only lost a hundred elves in all the centuries they’d been alive?
She reached for Grady’s and Edaline’s hands.
They held on tight and moved slowly down the path, their glassy eyes staring straight ahead. The path twisted through the quiet forest, leading them through patches of shadow and light until they rounded a large bend and entered a small sunlit clearing.
A lump formed in Sophie’s throat.
Elevated on a small hill and silhouetted against the sky was a fragile-looking tree with pale bark, dark green leaves, and slender limbs that fanned out toward the sun. Soft yellow leaves draped off the end of each bough like Spanish moss, making the tree elegant and wispy. And large blossoms the exact same blue as Edaline’s eyes blanketed the branches, filling the air with a scent like honey and berries and sugar.
The graceful tree blocked the early afternoon sun as they approached. Sophie couldn’t take her eyes off the inscription on the white stone marking the grave.
Jolie Lucine Ruewen
Without a word, Edaline opened the satchel she’d been carrying and removed a clear fluted bottle filled with a deep purple liquid.
“A special tonic the gnomes make,” Grady explained.
Edaline popped the cork and drizzled the thick syrup along the base of the tree. When the last of the liquid had drained, she smacked the bottle against the tree’s trunk. The glass shattered into a million tiny flecks, sprinkling the wet grass. And as the sparkle-coated syrup sank into the ground, a bright green vine sprang from the dark soil and slowly coiled its way up the bark of Jolie’s tree. Ruffled purple flowers bloomed along the stem, and every inch of the vine gleamed, like it had been covered in glitter.
Grady wiped his eyes as he took Edaline’s hand. “The vine only lasts a few weeks, but it’s the best gift we can give her.”
“Plus this.” Edaline’s voice was barely audible as she gently pulled one of the branches down, revealing a silver charm bracelet tucked between the blossoms. She removed a tiny crystal star from her pocket and added it to the already full chain. “We gave her this bracelet when she started Foxfire, and we bought her a new charm every year on the first day of school. She used to wear it every day, but we found it when they gave us her things from the elite towers, so we brought it here, and give her a new charm every time we come.”
Sophie bit her lip, wondering if she should say something.
But what?
“I’m so sorry,” was all she could come up with.
“It’s not your fault,” Grady told her, squeezing her shoulder. But something in his tone had darkened.
Edaline started to shake with sobs and Grady pulled her against him, letting her cry on his shoulder.
“I’ll give you guys a minute,” Sophie whispered, backing away. She’d thought she could help by being there—but nothing would ever make it less painful. And Jolie’s loss was theirs.
She didn’t belong.
She slipped quietly down the path, trying to remember which way would take her to the entrance. She’d wound through the trees for several minutes before she realized she didn’t recognize any of them. Turning back didn’t help, and as she turned around yet again and still didn’t recognize anything, she was forced to admit that she was lost.
And she was alone.
She’d been wishing for solitude since the kidnapping—but standing there by herself in the eerie silence felt wrong. Like the woods were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.
She wasn’t about to stick around and find out what it was.
Running now—and cursing herself for wearing the stupid heels—she raced up the nearest hill, hoping she’d be high enough to get her bearings. But two small trees planted side by side at the crest distracted her.
Saplings.
Her blood turned to ice when she read the names carved into the white stone markers.
Sophie Elizabeth Foster
and
Dexter Alvin Dizznee
EIGHT
PAIN SHOT UP HER ARM as Sophie pinched her wrist, and she released the breath she’d been holding.
She wasn’t dead.
She wasn’t dreaming either—though this had all the makings of a nightmare.
Her eyes studied the trees, focusing on the one that was just slightly taller than the other. The pale trunk was scrawny and weak, but the tree still stood on its own. Golden, star-shaped leaves covered the skinny branches, with deep brown seedpods peppered among them. No flowers. No color. Just a plai
Her tree.
She couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed with it—especially compared to Dex’s, which had a twisted trunk, spiky, strawberry red leaves, and periwinkle berries. There was something so inherently Dex about it. Even without the marker, she could’ve guessed it was his grave.
She had a grave.
A glint of silver at the base of the thickest bough caught her eye and she reached out with shaky hands to unclasp a silver charm bracelet with two charms: an elephant covered in blue diamonds, and some sort of locket etched with intricate swirls.
The scenery blurred as the world started to spin too fast, and she sank to the ground, burying her face between her knees. She counted each breath, trying not to throw up her breakfast all over the grass. Sixty-three breaths had passed before Grady’s hushed voice shattered the silence.
“They kept the trees.”
Her head snapped up, but her eyes couldn’t focus on the two people standing over her. She thought it was the sudden bright light, but then something wet streaked down her cheek.
Grady and Edaline dropped to the ground beside her, strangling her with a hug. Sophie’s tears soaked Grady’s cape as Edaline rubbed her back.
“We should’ve warned you,” he said through a sigh. “I just didn’t want to upset you if they weren’t even here.”
Sophie tried to make her mouth ask any of the questions swelling inside her brain, but all she could choke out was, “How did they . . . ?”
Edaline must’ve known what she meant because she whispered, “We gave them a hair from the silver brush in your room.” She swept a strand away from Sophie’s cheek. “And we planted the seed at your funeral.”
Sophie closed her eyes, but it didn’t stop her from imagining them standing on that hill, crying as they placed her seed in the ground. Clinging to each other as they fastened her charm bracelet around the branch, planning to add to it each year.
Was Dex’s family there too?
Who else came?
Her mind ran through a list of names and she shook the upsetting thought away. She forced herself to sit up, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand. “But you know we’re alive now. Why are they still here?”