The Morning Flower Read online

  Me: That is what I was afraid of.

  Bryn: Did you meet the prince?

  Me: I didn’t meet him, but I saw a kid running around in his underwear with a stick scepter. I’m pretty sure it was him.

  Bryn: LOL. He’s a real piece of work. The Omte have a very particular way of doing things.

  Me: Don’t we all?

  Bryn: That’s true. I have to run. It’s Ridley’s mom’s birthday dinner tonight. But you can message me anytime if you have more questions.

  Me: Thank you. Have fun with your family!

  I slumped low in the seat and scrolled through my phone, checking my various messages. It was mostly junk mail, but there were half a dozen from Hanna—all basically demanding to know exactly what was going on and what I planned to do about Eliana. As if I had managed to figure out and solve the whole thing in the few days since I saw her last.

  There was one email from Dagny, written with all the emotion and flair I’d come to expect from her:

  To Ulla Tulin—

  I have learned nothing new about Eliana or her whereabouts. Elof is continuing to research your blood.

  Do let me know if you find anything that you think would be valuable to me or Elof.

  I assume you are otherwise fine.

  Best—

  Dagny Lilja Kasten

  Lab Assistant to Docent Elof Dómari

  Troglecology Dept. at the Mimirin

  Merellä, the Kingdom of Vittra

  I replied to her right away. It was easy because I had nothing to tell her, and I knew she wouldn’t immediately bombard me with a hundred replies demanding answers I almost certainly wouldn’t have.

  The Jeep was running so I could charge my phone while messaging Bryn. (The roaming drained the battery like nothing else.) Since the car was already running, I clicked on the radio. I had to surf through a mixture of country, blues, angry jazz, and more country before landing on some nice mellow pop.

  Humming along to the music, I leaned my head against the headrest and closed my eyes. The stress of the last few days weighed heavily on me, and I had no idea how I was going to figure it all out.

  I tried to think back to what Finn had taught me about meditation. He insisted that was the only way he could handle his demanding job, six children, and his mother moving back in with them. Breathe in through the nose, hold for three seconds, exhale through the mouth for six, and remember that I am a rock, I am the river, I am the storm before the rains.

  The door to the Jeep creaked, and my eyes snapped open. I looked over to see Pan leaning inside.

  “Is this seat taken?” he asked with a crooked smile.

  “No, of course not. Come on in.” I sat up straighter and turned down the Ed Sheeran song on the radio.

  Once he’d settled into the seat beside me, he asked, “How are you doing?”

  I shrugged. “Good, I guess. How ’bout you?”

  “I’m good,” he allowed. “But I’m not the one hiding out in the driveway.”

  “It’s not really a driveway, and I’m not really hiding out,” I argued, but Pan merely arched his eyebrows, resting his dark eyes on me. “I was texting an old friend to see if she could help me sort some of this out. But unfortunately, there’s not much to be sorted out.”

  “What do you mean?” Pan tilted his seat way back, like mine, and he put one arm behind his head.

  “Not everything has an answer.” I shook my head. “Ugh. That sounds so pretentious. I’m just trying to prepare myself in case I don’t ever find out everything I want to know.”

  “Well, yeah.” He laughed. “Nobody ever gets everything they want. Did you think that was an option?”

  “No, no, no…” I sighed. “I mean, you get it. You never met your dad, right?”

  “No, we lived near him when I was a baby, and he held me and visited us. But I don’t remember it, obviously, and my mom didn’t take any pictures.” He paused and exhaled loudly. “It’s almost like it never happened at all.”

  “How do you…” I spoke slowly, choosing my words very carefully. “How do you accept that? That you’ll never really know your dad? Sorry for being so blunt. I’m trying to figure out how to deal with the very real possibility that I might never find my mom or dad.”

  “For me personally, the truth is that I don’t,” he admitted in a thick, low voice. “I don’t rage about it every minute of the day, but sometimes, yeah, I still get angry about it. And if I let myself dwell on all the things that were taken from me, all the moments lost, I can be really angry for … for a while.

  “But then I try to remind myself of the stuff I do have and then focus on all the things I want to do,” he went on. “I can be sad and mourn the past, but I can’t live there, and most importantly, I don’t want to.”

  I smiled at him. “Thanks. I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Are you gonna hang out in the car for a while?” Pan asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said hesitantly.

  “The fireflies are starting to come out.” He pointed through the windshield at the infrequent little pops of light against the dusky pink sky and inky black water.

  “Oh?” I glanced around in confusion. “They’re nice, but I have seen fireflies before.”

  “Rikky said she’s going to feed Bitta the three-legged alligator once the fireflies are out. She says he always comes out around then, and she tosses him raw chicken off the back dock, if you wanna watch.”

  “Oh, yeah, I absolutely wanna see that,” I said. “Is she doing that now?”

  He nodded excitedly. “Yeah, about now.”

  “Then we should go.”

  10

  Maternal

  The airboat stalled out after lurching to the side. Pan had turned too sharply, barely swerving in time to miss a spindly cypress tree. I clung to the seat as the boat pitched to one side, and for a frightening moment I thought it was going to flip completely over, but thankfully it righted itself and lurched to a stop.

  “Oh, my gaad.” I laughed and looked back at Pan.

  He stood with one hand white-knuckled on the gear stick, and a nervous grin slowly spread across his face. “So maybe driving the airboat is harder than Rikky made it seem.”

  She’d had to work again that day, and the easiest solution for us getting around the swamp was to leave us the airboat. She’d given Pan a quick lesson in the morning, and he drove her to work and dropped her off. That had gone without incident, and now it was just me and Pan, speeding to the Postkontor office.

  “Are you sure you can manage it?” I asked, only half teasing.

  “Yeah.” He nodded as he got us moving again. “I’ll take it a little slower.” Another quick bump. “Or maybe a lot slower.”

  “I don’t mind getting there late. I just wanna get there, and preferably, not get drenched in swamp water.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  It was definitely a longer—and much bumpier—ride than it was with Rikky, but we made it to the office. Pan parked the airboat right on the muddy embankment, securing it with a rope tied to a post, and we walked up the mossy stone path to the door.

  “This place looks and smells like a cellar,” Pan muttered as we stopped inside, and I laughed because I couldn’t argue.

  “Hello?” I said into the empty waiting area.

  There was the loud crack of a chair, immediately followed by Bekk announcing, “I’m on my way.” A minute later, she rounded the cubicle barrier and smiled. “Hey, how are you doing? How was the meeting with the Queen Regent?”

  It hadn’t been awful, but Bodil hadn’t been exactly forthcoming. That was to be expected of the Omte, though, and I didn’t want Bekk to feel like her effort wasn’t appreciated. So I exaggerated slightly with, “It was good. Thank you again for setting it up.”

  “Great.” As she walked over to us, slowly, she glanced at Pan. “What can I do for the two of you today?”

  “This is Pan Soriano. He works with the Inhemsk P
roject.”

  She eyed him more seriously. “Inhemsk? I’ve worked with them before.”

  “We’ve probably spoken on the phone once or twice,” he admitted.

  She gave him an apologetic smile. “I hope I wasn’t too rude. The rules around here can be very restrictive about what information we can share.”

  “No, don’t worry about it. I know how limiting bureaucracy can be.”

  “It sure can,” she agreed. “What brings you here?”

  “We had some things we wanted to talk to you about,” I said.

  For a brief second her eyes flashed wide with surprise, but she blinked it away and smiled at us. “Sure, of course. Do you mind if we sit down and chat?” She nodded toward the seating area and rubbed her belly. “I can’t stay on my feet that long anymore.”

  “Yeah, definitely.” I stepped to the side to let her by.

  She sat down in a chair, and while she adjusted a thin throw pillow behind her back, Pan and I sat down across from her on the couch.

  “You know that I came here because I’m trying to find my mother,” I began. “My biggest contender at the moment is Orra Fågel, and her trail dries up in Áibmoráigi nearly twenty years ago. I was hoping that Bodil would know more about her, or at least give me a better idea of where the First City or the Lost Bridge were.”

  “And did she?” Bekk asked.

  I shook my head. “No. She didn’t have much to say about any of that.”

  “I don’t know how much help I can be,” she said, sounding rather apologetic. “I already showed you as much as I could when you were here before, and I doubt that I know more than the Queen does about any of that.”

  “Well, we came here with different questions this time,” I said.

  “I’ve been looking into the history of Áibmoráigi, which has led me to reading a lot about the Älvolk,” Pan said. “How much do you know about the Älvolk?”

  Bekk’s eyes were downcast, her expression blank, when she answered, “Not much.” Then she added, “Less than you, now, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t want to pry into your personal life,” I said gently, and I hadn’t even finished my request before she sighed, like she knew what was coming. “But I’ve heard you have had a relationship with someone who claims to be a member of the Älvolk.”

  She didn’t say anything at first. But when I said, “I believe his name is Indu Mattison,” she lifted her head. Her brown eyes were dark and calm, and she rubbed her belly again.

  “Yeah, I know him,” she admitted finally. “Or at least I know him as well as anyone can know someone like him. With Indu, you can never really be sure if anything he says is true, and even then I can’t say whether he’s lying or delusional.”

  “So, you don’t believe he’s an Älvolk?” I asked.

  “No, he might very well be an Älvolk,” she corrected me matter-of-factly. “His sole purpose in life might really be to guard the Lost Bridge and ensure the prophetic duties of the Älvolk. Every word he said might be the complete truth.”

  “But?” I pressed when she didn’t elaborate.

  “But…” She exhaled through her nose. “He promises a life of happiness and health, but then he leaves you entirely on your own to figure out how to achieve this magical life.” A pained smile passed over her lips. “He wasn’t around a lot—always stopping in Fulaträsk on his way to some other, unknown destination—but he seemed like he really believed in something, that he wanted a better world for all of us. We saw each other a handful of times over a few months, and then I told him I was pregnant—and that was it. Then he was gone.”

  I grimaced. “I’m sorry. That sounds very difficult to go through.”

  “Thanks, but I wasn’t looking for sympathy,” Bekk replied flatly. “I made my choices.”

  “We’re not here to make judgments or dig through your private life,” Pan reiterated in his gentle, soothing voice. “All we wanna know is if you have any way of contacting Indu Mattison.”

  “He really isn’t the kind of guy that leaves a forwarding address,” she said with an empty laugh.

  “So far, the only thing we really have to go on is that he likes to hang around the Ugly Vulture,” I said. “So really, anything at all would be immensely helpful.”

  Bekk stared into the corner of the room, her jaw visibly tensing under her olive skin. Her dark brown hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and she absently toyed with a loose lock of it.

  “You’ll be asking around town, then.” Her voice was emotionless, making it hard to tell if it was meant to be a question or just a realization.

  “That will be our next step in trying to find him,” Pan confirmed.

  “There’s something else you’re going to find out.” She looked down at her belly. “My little girl isn’t the only baby that Indu has fathered around here.”

  I exchanged a look with Pan and asked, “Really?”

  Bekk nodded. “By my count, he’s had at least three babies born in Fulaträsk alone.”

  11

  Serial

  “What?” Pan said, managing to find his voice while I stared at Bekk in shock.

  “But he doesn’t…” I tilted my head, trying to wrap my head around it. “He has multiple children here, but he doesn’t live here? Why does he keep coming to Fulaträsk?”

  Bekk let out a deep breath. “That is why. He thinks trolls are going extinct, and the only way to fight it off is to have babies with powerful trolls, and the Omte are nothing if not strong.”

  Pan made a strange sound—a click of surprise—and leaned back on the couch. “Did you…” He stopped himself and cleared his throat. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to ask you about that.”

  “I didn’t realize what his … intentions were until after I was pregnant,” she explained wearily. “Once I was, however, his true feelings became crystal clear. His peculiarities aside, I did want a baby. So it worked out in the end.”

  “Yeah,” I said lamely. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”

  After a beat, she quietly said, “I have a list. I don’t know much about Indu, but I wanted to know as much as I could about the family of my daughter. That includes her half-sisters.”

  “A list?” I asked.

  “I made it with information from the census.” She pushed herself up to her feet, then walked around the cubicle wall.

  I followed her and saw her taking a file out of the top drawer of her desk. It was a slightly battered, avocado-green file about a quarter of an inch thick and bound together with a rubber band.

  “Here.” Bekk held it out toward me. “You can go ahead and have a look. I have to use the restroom.”

  I took the file back over to the couch and sat down beside Pan. There were multiple stacks, separated by paper clips and labeled with names in brightly colored Post-it notes. Holt; Torsun; Sundt; Lund. I separated the piles, handing two to Pan so we could get through the info.

  Speed-reading wasn’t necessary, though. Once I read through the Omte legalese, there wasn’t much info, and it was easy to glean the basic facts.

  Meri Torsun gave birth to a premature baby way back in 1994, in the Omte village of Mörkaston in Nevada. The baby didn’t live long, but Indu Mattison was listed as the father in the official documentation. Meri herself died of cirrhosis three years later.

  Thora Lund—the only non-Omte member in the file—was born to Ebba Lund and Indu Mattison in Förening in 1997, but only a few months later she died, her cause of death listed as “complications due to birth defect.” On the last page of her stack, a handwritten note stated, Ebba moved to the human town of Winona a year after Thora’s death.

  More recently, Karrin Sundt had a baby named Alva. This was thirteen years ago, in the faraway Omte village of Sintvann. But within a year, both baby Alva and Karrin were dead—their deaths listed as SIDS and suicide, respectively.

  The final baby, Tindra Holt, proved to be an anomaly. Unlike the others, Tindra survived infancy. She was o
ver two years old when she drowned in a “freak accident,” if the Fulaträsk Tribune newspaper clipping was to be believed.

  Her mother Eyrun remained in Fulaträsk even after Tindra’s death in 2014, and according to a marriage certificate and another clipping, she’d gotten married and had two more kids with her husband.

  What really stood out about Eyrun, though, was that out of the eight trolls—four mothers and their babies—she was the only one alive who still lived with trolls.

  “What is going on here?” Pan muttered when he reached the end. “Am I reading this correctly? Because it really sounds like this guy keeps going around, making babies, and then … they all die.”

  I nodded once. “Yeah, I think you’re reading it right.”

  He tented his hands together, staring down at the file, his brow furrowed and his gaze pensive. “I honestly don’t know if this guy can help us at all. But … I wanna know what’s going on here.” He looked at me. “And it would probably be good if we figured it out while your friend Bekk is still pregnant.”

  12

  Long Days

  “Long days call for tall drinks,” Rikky declared after she got home from work. She was short on details about what made her day so long—other than vague comments about a couple kids who had broken each other’s arms wrestling—but she claimed the length of our day was written on our faces.

  That made sense, since we had spent the morning at the Postkontor trying to understand Indu Mattison and the trail of dead children he had left behind him. I wanted to ask Bekk more questions about all of that, but it felt hugely inappropriate to ask a pregnant woman, Hey, are you worried your baby is going to die like all the others?

  “Maybe it’s because he’s not Omte?” Pan had wondered once we were back at Rikky’s and free to talk without worrying about Bekk overhearing. He sat back on the couch, which was still in the slightly disheveled state of pillows and blankets he had left it in this morning.