Part 2

“And this… Sheldon boy,” Yvette said, cutting her pancakes delicately, making every statement a velvet cloth draped over a razor as she interrogated her youngest daughter, “He comes from a good family?”

Idalese attempted a smile. “Well, his parents own a cabin up in Three Lakes,” she said.

“A landed family.” If she didn’t know any better, she might have thought she detected a trace of pride in her mother’s statement. That was the danger.

“The cabin was passed down from Sheldon’s Great Grandfather.”“At this rate, we shall have to stall your wedding: it won’t do for the youngest

daughter to be married off before the oldest.” Yvette dabbed her mouth with her napkin.

Idalese wilted in relief even as Nymea shot her a supremely dirty look across the table. She’d claim to be sick to get out of these morning interrogations, especially when her mother was analyzing prom for any possible trace of wedding bells, except for the fact that it would bring her parents’ attention to her even more. And Nymea would, no doubt, do something nasty to get it back.

“The only thing those girls are good for is marrying off,” Antoin said, putting down

his fork, “Not a brain in their skulls or the sense the green ones gave a rabbit. We

should have been getting offers for Nymea for years now.” He wiped his mouth, and

Idalese automatically served him another pancake. “And the boy’s lazy,” he added as

an afterthought, having run out of complaints early.

“Rean!” he bellowed at the door, “You’d better be out here when I’ve got the paper,

boy!”

As if she had never been interrupted – though she had stopped speaking when Antoin

had begun – Yvette fixed her attention on Nymea.

“Did you meet any young gentlemen at the dance?” she asked, as if daring her oldest

daughter to disappoint her.

Nymea scowled and stabbed at her plate – discreetly, as infringements of table etiquette

were hardly the way to get Yvette off her daughters’ backs – and Idalese could hear her voice

dripping with dark resentment and hatred when she replied.

“No,” Nymea admitted, “but Rean did.”

Idalese kicked her under the table, but Nymea only smiled a vicious smile. She

supposed that she should be happy that she had stopped being the target of her sister’s

wrath, but… life was just so difficult with Nymea in the house, and she had no illusions

that it would improve once both her older siblings left for college. Once she was the only

person under her mother’s watchful eye, she’d fall even further short of expectations than

she did now.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nymea,” Yvette said with a stern sniff, “Unnatural,

immoral behavior like that is not a joking matter, especially when you are making

such crude comments about your own brother. If this is how you speak with your

peers, it’s no wonder that you never have any young gentlemen interested in you,

just opportunistic young cads.” She took a delicate sip of orange juice.

“Your brother attended the ball with that Elvensong girl, and that, to my mind, is the right way to go about this. He is courting a lovely girl – an elven girl, whose family is very respectable, and whose father holds a prominent position in the community. If you hadn’t burned bridges with her, you might be keeping equally respectable company, Nymea.”

Idalese kept her head down throughout the whole lecture, wondering once more if her parents would ever start living in the current century. It wasn’t likely.

Nymea scoffed, “Ara? Her parents are peasants.”

Yvette’s gracious smile shrank a few millimeters and grew brittle for a

moment. “We must make every effort to be gracious to the noveau riche.”

In the kitchen, the sink dripped.

“Once the three of you are all married off, we will have taken the first step towards restoring

the family name and fortunes, cruelly stolen from us these many years,” she pronounced grandly,

and Idalese rolled her eyes at her pancakes. “Noveaux riche matters little for a woman, since she

will marry into a title which will make her position far more legitimate. You two, however, must

marry into position – I do believe, Nymea, that if you applied yourself you could easily secure an

engagement to the young Elkthorn Heir. We will have to ask your brother to arrange a meeting

via his sweetheart, since you cannot. I hear that her mother is a great friend of that family.”

Rean came in, hair rumpled, and sat down to the plate of pancakes that Idalese pushed in front of him. He’d beaten Antoin only by a couple of seconds, because their father tromped in with the paper, gave his son a suspicious look, and picked up his empty mug for inspection. Conversation in the room stopped.

“Coffee,” Antoin said, and Idalese went and fetched the pot.

“Good pancakes, Ida,” Rean said upon her return, eating as fast as was permissible under his mother’s stare.

“Fatty always makes pancakes,” Nymea sneered, “These ones can’t be any different.”“Don’t call her fatty, Nymea.”

“She is. She’s going to end up round like a hippo and just as ugly.”

Since neither of their parents seemed likely to intervene – their mother was

carefully not looking at them, sipping her coffee with an expression that denied

the possibility that her children would ever disagree, and they hadn’t yet reached

the point where their father would order them to shut up so he could read the

paper in peace – Nymea was making a game of taking this as far as it would go.

“Why don’t you tell mother about your date last night?” she asked, sweetly as a

poisoned apple.

Rean choked. “Date? What date? I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking

about, Nymea,” he said, finishing by calmly taking a huge gulp of juice to wash

his pancake down. He was clearly disturbed, but that was just because he was

having breakfast with the family. Ida wished that she had an excuse to try to avoid

it, like he did, but since she did all the cooking, it was literally impossible to skip

breakfast. Nymea was certainly choosing today to make him squirm, though.

Their mother had brought her attention back to the table, specifically to Rean. “No date?” she asked, “I thought you were going to the ball with that Elvensong girl.”

“Oh, Ara,” Rean replied, visibly relieved, “We’re not dating, we’re just really good friends.”

In his place, Idalese would have lied to put off the brittleness of their mother’s

inevitable disappointment. Of course, in his place, she would be the one expected

to continue the illustrious family line, needled about bringing home suitable girls

on a daily basis, the only son and heir, the future – she didn’t think she’d be able

to take it. And their mother was gathering her breath to say something really

cutting, she could tell.

Everyone had stopped paying any attention to Antoin, who had been completely absorbed in his newspaper. Now, he looked up, and stared at Rean for a long moment before slapping the paper down on the table and pointing to an article.

“Explain that, son,” he demanded.* * *

Aranel was still rubbing sleep out of her eyes when she stumbled downstairs that morning, and she was mildly surprised to see her parents still at the breakfast table. Achenar was busy trying to feed Ariadne without being decorated in banana and cheerios.

“So, what’s up?” Aranel asked her family, catching the sudden shake of Achenar’s head too late.

“Your name,” her father said, tossing the newspaper at her place at the table, “is in the newspaper. Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

“Sweet, I’m in the paper,” Aranel blurted out, picking it up, before it sank in that those words weren’t the best idea in this situation. She saw her parents exchange a look. Across the table, Achenar was facepalming quietly, which made Ariadne giggle.

“More, Neenaw, More!”Aranel read the article and the smile that her baby sister’s antics had

brought to her face slowly disappeared. At about the point where Rean and Trevor’s names were prominently featured as the couple that had almost been kicked out of the dance, it reached a state of negative existence and became a frown.

“I take it that you understand?” Viridia said, quietly.

“Yeah… I’ve got to go call Rean, warn him that he’s mentioned in the paper --”

“I meant that your behavior last night was out of line, Aranel,” her mother replied sharply, “You publically humiliated one of your school’s trustees, encouraged your classmates to ruin a school function, and led a large number of students to be cited for breaking curfew and disturbing the peace.”

That last bit, Aranel thought, was a little bit overboard. The partying hadn’t gotten out of hand until long after they’d left prom.

“I didn’t invent the afterparty, mom,” she protested, “and I never said that anyone should tear down the decorations or put soap in the fountain – people did that on their own. It was a walk-out protest, not -” she checked the paper, “not ‘a small riot,’ like this stupid reporter says. A couple people knocked over a few tables, somebody pranked the fountain, and a few balloons got popped. Half of that probably happened when prom was actually going on, not on our way out.”

“Yet you still publically humiliated Trustee St. Julien and his family.”That was the point where Aranel started to get mad. “He was publically

humiliating Rean! Somebody needed to stop him – I just called him out on it. I wanted him to know what it was like!”

“Well, you’ve certainly succeeded in giving him a taste of humiliation,” Viridia replied acidly. Achenar was paying very close attention to the crumbs on his plate.

“Mom, I can’t believe you’re defending this guy. He’s a total asshole – he’s a bully, and it’s his fault that some of the kids at school get off scott-free for whatever they do, because they’re connected to him somehow – and he’s been getting away with being a complete asshole to people for years because he’s a trustee - Mom, somebody had to stop him. Besides, you weren’t there, you didn’t see the way he was going after Rean – just ask Achenar if you don’t believe me.”

“Hey! Leave me out of this,” Achenar said.

“Your brother is in trouble as well,” Viridia interjected, with a sidelong glance his way, “In fact, the only one of the three of you who isn’t in trouble for taking off in the middle of the night without my knowledge is Anariel, because she at least had the foresight to call me and tell me that she was spending the night with Lydia.”

Quickly, Ara thought back to the night before. “You weren’t angry about it when we got back.”

“That’s because I thought you’d been at Prom the whole time!” Virida had stood up from the table and was now bristling like a hedgehog.

“So your problem is that I didn’t call? Why did you bring the rest up then!?”Viridia was just drawing breath to reply when Haldir spoke up.“You didn’t have to humiliate the man, Ara,” he said quietly, and for a second

the only sound in the room was Ariadne crying at full volume. Viridia, with a glare at her oldest daughter, went to scoop the toddler out of her highchair. Achenar took the opportunity to take his dishes to the sink and hightail it out of the room.

“Dad, what else was I supposed to do? He’d have kicked Rean out of the dance, and he’d have just kept on bullying students. Everyone knows he does it and nobody does anything – I needed to make people stop ignoring that the school system has been getting away with discrimination like that.”

Haldir gave her a level look. “How important is getting kicked out of a school dance, Aranel?”

“Not very, but still – it’s a matter of principle, dad. If we let people like that get away with throwing their weight around at a school and making students’ lives hell, they go on to support laws that enforce discrimination and racism and sexism and orientationism and classism, and the world just keeps hating each other for no good reason. They need to know that it’s not okay, and that people who they have power over can fight back. Besides,” she added as an afterthought, “You’re the one who told me to fight with words.”

The look she got from her father was equal parts amusement and exasperation. “That is not the spirit in which those words were intended.”

“Well, it was better than decking him. What else was I supposed to do?”“Let your friend handle himself, for one.”“They’d have used anything he did or said against him,” Aranel protested,

“The whole school system is set up so that students don’t have any rights and their parents don’t know what’s going on.”

“Rean’s parents could do something about it. If Rean’s sexual orientation was the only reason he was kicked out of Prom, they could file a discrimination suit – one which, win or lose, would cause Trustee St. Julien to stop singling students out.”

“Rean’s parents don’t give a rat’s ass about him,” Ara replied, slouching down in her seat.

“Aranel Elbereth, language,” Viridia said warningly, “do you really want your baby sister repeating that? And you know that’s not true.”

“Only when necessary,” Ara muttered under her breath.“What was that?”“You don’t know Rean’s parents,” Ara argued, “you haven’t seen how they

treat him when there’s no other adults around to call them on it. You only know them from when they’re acting for the neighbors and pretending they have the most perfect family ever.” She could feel the sarcasm almost oozing from her pores as she said it.

Viridia and Haldir exchanged glances over their daughter’s head. Their youngest daughter, who had been pacified for the moment by a handful of dry cereal, chose that moment to open her hand and drop everything on the floor. Cheerios rolled everywhere and Ariadne giggled.

“Mo’s go smash,” she observed happily.“No, Ariadne, you’re making a mess again,” Viridia reproved her tiredly, “we

don’t do that, remember?”“No!”

Viridia sighed “Ana– Ara– Achen– someone get the broom and clean this up.”“Bell-bell!”“What?” Viridia asked.The doorbell rang.“Bell-bell!”“Oh, you take her,” Viridia said to Haldir, gesturing at the mess their youngest

child had made, “Wipe her hands, she’s sticky again.”

“And don’t you think that this conversation is over, young lady,” Viridia added over her shoulder.

Aranel followed her mother towards the front door at a safe distance.

Rean shifted uncomfortably in the doorway. “Hi, Mrs. Elvensong,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind, but… I sort of don’t have anywhere else to go.”

* * *

With not three, but four teens in the house, life got a little hectic that summer. Achenar practically lived at the Elkthorn’s house when he wasn’t on dates with Arcadia, but given that Lydia had, to all appearances, taken up residence on the floor in Anariel’s bedroom, and that there were twice as many graduated seniors ringing the doorbell on a daily basis to see Aranel and Rean, it didn’t make for a significant reduction in traffic.

It did, however, make for a surplus of somewhat-willing babysitters for Ariadne.

This, in turn, allowed Haldir and Viridia to spend a lot more time together or with their neighbors and adult friends, and to spend some time talking about things that didn’t always revolve around their children.

Not that they didn’t brag and gossip about them anyway.

Viridia had been disappointed that Aranel hadn’t been allowed to attend graduation, but considered it a lesson that Ara had needed to learn. She’d been indignant about Rean’s exclusion, since unlike Aranel he hadn’t publically humiliated a school trustee, but since Rean clearly didn’t want to attend anyway, she didn’t press the issue too far at the PTA meetings. And she’d found an unexpected ally in Chris Bachman, the mother of a friend of Achenar’s, who called trustee St. Julien’s attitude inexcusable.

Unrepentant, Aranel had thrown a graduation party and given out fake diplomas, which were actually certificates thanking people for their support of civil disobedience, to her friends. Then she applied herself to scholarships with a single-minded determination that frankly astounded her parents.

Though Viridia had initially predicted that Rean’s parents’ shock and anger would wear off and the whole affair would blow over, June passed with no sign that the Greenleaf family was willing to approach the matter sensibly.

Despite the disruption to the Elvensong household, summer was working out mostly as planned for Lake Valley’s upcoming seniors. Of course, the plan revolved around working at the Elkthorn Inn more often than not or, as is tradition with teenaged employees everywhere, only pretending to work.

Somehow, the Inn had become a teenage hotspot, despite the fact that most of the teens who arrived had little interest in furniture, arts and crafts. Calla knew better than to fool herself by trying to insist that it didn’t somehow have something to do with the fact that Elirand spent most of his sales-floor time hitting on classmates.

The other part of that, the one that Calla would just as soon not admit was going on, was that Arcadia Ebadi had become a store regular, and she and her little floral tank top and cutoffs spent a lot of time looking at the pictures – and requiring Achenar to look at them with her.

Or maybe they were just talking. It wasn’t as if Calla was spying on them or anything.

Though, she couldn’t help having to restock just behind the next wall, and she certainly couldn’t help overhearing that the subject of Marine Biology came up a lot.

“So I guess all I’ve got to do is wait,” Arcadia said, “I’m almost done with my essays

and such, but I can’t apply to Academe Le Tour, even early decision, until the end of

August.”

“I think the dolphins will wait at least that long,” Achenar replied.

“Yes, but the research might not,” Arcadia replied, “all of the really good research into

psychology and language capabilities is just starting, and -”

“All right, all right, I get it,” Achenar replied, laughing. “You’ve got one more year until

you can go off and prove that dolphins are sentient beings, and you’re excited about it.”

“Well, yeah. Did you know, several different dolphin species are genetically close enough to produce fertile hybrids?”

“Not until you told me.”“Well, they’ve been doing studies on hybrids – false killer whales and bottlenose

dolphins, specifically, the babies are called wolphins – and they’ve determined that even though the false killer whales are about twice as big as bottlenose dolphins, the hybrids are fertile, whereas bottlenose hybrids with things like, say, spinners’ dolphins aren’t.”

“Right, but what does that have to do with their intelligence?” Achenar asked. Calla moved off to restock elsewhere, hearing laughter behind her.

Calla managed to pay no attention to anything but the stocking, until she came back to straighten frames and found Arcadia still hanging around, though Achenar had been called away to deal with an actual customer.

“Calla!” the bespectacled girl exclaimed, “are you busy?”“Kind of,” Calla lied, then immediately felt bad. Not six months ago Arcadia had been one of her

favorite classmates, and they’d had many a long conversation about classes, science, and the possibility of a new season of Hyperspace Adventures actually being released before they all turned grey.

But ever since prom, Arcadia had talked to Achenar about that, and the only thing she ever wanted to talk about with Calla was Achenar.

“Not too busy, I mean,” Calla amended, “I mean, I am working for my Dad, he won’t mind too much if I stop to talk to a regular customer.”

True to form, Arcadia managed to irritate Calla just by opening her mouth.“Oh, good,” she replied, “I’ve got to make this quick, anyway – do you know

where Achenar’s applying for colleges?”Calla stood there a moment before she even managed to consider the question. All

three of them were going to SSU together – at least, that’s what she’d assumed. There had been talk – months ago – of skipping the dorms entirely and getting an apartment.

“I think he’s going to SSU,” she replied, trying not to think about it too hard. “You know, like his sister.”

Arcadia wilted visibly. “Yeah, I guess he wouldn’t want to – well, most people go to SSU anyway. Just, you know, he really could get into Academe Le Tour, and they have this great aerospace program. I know he’s interested in rockets -”

“He’s been into rockets since we were six,” Calla interrupted her unnecessarily. “There was a point when we couldn’t get him to talk about anything else.”

“Yeah, I know, you probably knew that already,” Arcadia admitted, “After all, you are his best friend. I mean, you’ve known him so long, you’re practically his sister. Like a less scary version of Aranel.”

“I’m his best friend, not Elirand?” Calla asked, throttling her pen behind her clipboard. She didn’t want to concentrate on why Arcadia’s statement made her want to kill her writing utensils.

Arcadia laughed. “Well, your brother – no offense – but he’s not one to pay a lot of attention to other people unless he’s flirting with them.”

Which was technically true, but wasn’t helping Calla to actually like Arcadia. Then again, the comment probably seemed much more offensive than it was, given who it was coming from.

“I thought you said that you were really short on time,” Calla replied.“Right! I got sidetracked – anyway, there’s this massive application orientation

meeting next weekend for Le Tour, and I wanted to know if you knew if Achenar was interested in applying there. I know it’s a bit early, but I think he’d really like it and I was going to ask him to go to the meeting with me.”

“Next weekend?” Calla asked, “Oh, no, sorry, we’re going camping. Maybe you could ask him some other time?” She could feel her voice edging towards sarcasm and turned away from Arcadia to straighten the nearest thing that didn’t need straightening.

“Oh. Well, it was worth a shot,” Arcadia replied. “I guess I’ll have to sit through the boring orientation meeting on my own, then.”

What a terrible thing, I feel so sorry for you, Calla thought. “Looks like it.”“Yeah. Say, what colleges are you applying for?”“Sim State University.”

* * *

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind, even after the grueling four hour bus ride, that going up to Hollow Mountain had been a mistake. The three teenagers had ditched their stuff in the campsite’s lockboxes and immediately proceeded to the main hub of tourist attractions, the Cedar Plaza information center.At present, they were staring at a section of tree trunk that was taller than any of them.

“This says that the famous woodsman Paul Simyan cut this tree down,” Calla said, eyeing the sign by the log skeptically. “I don’t believe it.

“There’s a legend for everything if you look hard enough, Calla,” Achenar replied, “and if you think about it, we don’t have any idea of what is and isn’t possible in the world. A hundred years ago it was impossible to send a sim to the moon. And our own parents traveled between dimensions, and they come from a world full of magic.”

“Yeah, but… a blue ox?” Calla scoffed.“As long as the food around here isn’t mythical, I’ll be fine.” Elirand said, “I seem to

remember that they were advertizing Paul Simyan size flapjacks…”

Of course, they spotted a log roll on their way to the flapjack stand, and, given that it was one in the afternoon and sort of hot out, they had to give it a try.

In this case, “give it a try,” meant “set up a tournament to declare one of them king of the log, or, in case Calla won, Queen.” If it was good enough for lumberjacks, it was good enough for them, though privately Achenar was very glad that he wasn’t up first for a dunking.

“Hey, Elirand, prepare to meet the fishes!”

“You’re going to be Queen of the fish when I get through with you, Calla!”

“Elirand, that was as lame as your attempts to knock me off a log are going to be.”

“Then bring it on!”

“Best of Five?”“You bet.”

“One more,” Calla gasped as she dragged herself back up onto the deck.“Come on, Calla,” Elirand reasoned, “You’ve already lost.”“One more time.”“You like the water that much?”“Shut up, Elirand.”

“Have some more water then!”

“Woot! I’m Queen of the Log!” Calla yelled, before slipping and falling right back into the water with her twin.

Elirand was declared king of the log, with Calla and Achenar tied for second place. After everyone was dried off, they headed off to the axe – throwing games.

“It’s time to prove to Elirand that just because he’s gotten a scholarship for maxing his body points, doesn’t mean he’s going to automatically win everything,” Calla declared as they reached the targets. “This game, for example, involves actual skill, so, since none of us has ever played before, we should be evenly matched.”

Elirand scoffed in the background. “No matter what happens, I’ll still be King of the Log.”

With Calla named Queen of the Axes and a renewed appreciation for pancakes and grilled catfish, the three teens headed directly for the trails, hoping to get a hike in before sunset. Hollow Mountain Trail was supposed to lead more or less directly from the information center back past their campsite, though it continued on into the hills towards the mines for which the town of Hollow Mountain had been named.

The mountain trails were beautiful, but a four mile hike was much longer in the mountains than over flat land, and dusk fell quickly beneath the pine trees.

Eventually, they had to admit that they were at least a little bit lost. “We’ve been past this tree before, Elirand.”“No we haven’t. This one’s on the left.”“Yes, we have – we were going the other way.”“Yeah, but we were supposed to be heading up over the knees of Hollow

Mountain,” Elirand protested, “And we’re still going up, mostly.”“That’s my point,” Achenar replied, “shouldn’t we be headed down by now?”

“Oh… well, what about that way? There was that trail up behind those trees that Calla thought was too small.”

“I did not, I said it looked more like a deer trail than a real trail,” Calla protested. Achenar headed through the trees, leaving them to bicker.

“It goes on sort of south-west and it gets a bit bigger,” he announced from beyond the needles.

“Achenar, it’s not on the map,” Calla protested, “It can’t be a real trail.”“And the one we’re on is?”

“All right, fine, but if you lead us to a bear…”“We’ll be certain to ask it for directions, Calla,” Elirand replied, and the two of them

joined Achenar on the trail. They walked for five more minutes before emerging into a clearing bathed in the light of the setting sun, where their trail branched off into two others, both of which lead south.

“This place isn’t on the map,” Calla said, squinting up at a notched peak to their right. “I think we need to head south.”

“Yeah, but which way?” Achenar asked. “Does it really matter?”

Calla just rolled her eyes at Elirand.“Let’s take the one on our right, then,” Elirand said, “It’s furthest south.

And besides, I think I can see lights that way.” He grabbed Calla’s hand. “Come on.”

“Fine with me. Let’s do this before the sun goes down,” Elirand replied. “Though, I really wonder where that other trail goes…”

“Probably nowhere,” Calla replied. “Come on, Elir!”

It was fully dark when they reached the campsite, but the moon was already up so they could still see the tents down below, and the fire at the center of the campsite.

“See?” said Elirand, “I told you that we’d make it on time.”Nobody bothered to correct him. Both Achenar and Calla were hungry and had

sore feet, in that order. Besides, the prospect of their own sleeping bags was much better than that of a night spent out in the darkness of the mountains.

The last batch of young children at the campfire left as they approached with their hot dogs and buns, but the guide remained behind, staring into the fire, as they sat down and prepared to make short work of their dinner.

“You don’t want to go out on those trails to the north at night,” he told them, by way of greeting. “I couldn’t help but notice you sprinting into camp at the last of the light.”

“Yeah,” Elirand admitted, shamefaced, as he speared a hotdog, “we got a little lost.”

“Well, up there’s where we get all our bear sightings,” the guide said, “Bigfoot too, but that’s just a myth. Smart young people like yourselves ought to be more careful – more people have gone missing on that trail than any other.”

“It’s not very well marked,” Elirand mumbled around a mouthful of hotdog.“Well, we know better now,” Calla said, ignoring her brother, “Thank you

very much for the warning, though. If we’d known it was so difficult, we’d never have tried to walk Hollow Mountain Trail so late in the day.”

The guide’s eyebrows raised. “So long as you’re not those young thrill seekers that go looking for the entrance to Hollow Mountain mine,” he said. “You’ll be getting only sorrow from searching. The mine is cursed, you see.”

“Cursed?” asked Elirand, this time with his mouth empty. “Why would anyone go looking for it, then?”

“Well, because of the ores and gold they found down there when the mine was still operating,” the guide replied, “Mind you, it’s not likely there was much left down there, or that someone without the right training could find it. But legend has made it out to be a wonderful treasure, the kind that people kill and die for.”

“What legend?” asked Calla and Achenar at almost the same time as Elirand asked, “What treasure?”

The guide considered it for a moment. “I don’t know if I should tell you,” he admitted, “more people have been lost on those trails looking for the treasure than ever died getting it in the first place.”

“I think we’ve just proven to ourselves how bad we are at navigation,” Calla replied, with a sidelong glance at both of the boys.

“And since you’ve already started, you can’t just not tell us,” Elirand put in earnestly. “We want to know what the big deal is.

The tour guide sighed and stared into the fire. “Right,” he said, “well, if you really must know, best you get the true tale of the tragedy of Hollow Mountain Mine.

“Hollow Mountain is, and always has been, a mining town,” the guide began, “When this town was founded a hundred years ago, the mine at Hollow Mountain was one of the most prosperous in the North, and the Blue Mountain and Coal mountain hadn’t been opened. The miners worked hard in the dark under the mountain and when they came to town they had money to spare and spend, dancing and drinking long after dark by the light of bonfires and gas lanterns.

“Now there was a man who oversaw all the work in the Hollow Mountain Mine, called by his workers Alastair Harrison. He worked as hard as any of his men, often joining a gang for a while to lend a hand before moving off to check on the next one, but his real talent was for finding new veins of ore. The superstitious had it that he could hear the metals singing to him from within the stone.”

Calla and Achenar exchanged an incredulous glance, which the guide didn’t seem to see.

“He was a good man and fair, Alastair Harrison, but he expected his mining gang to work as hard as he did. There was no room for mistakes, not when he was opening a new shaft or shoring up a new tunnel. Men who weren’t cut out for the work got sent home right quick, and so did the ones who had a predilection towards causing trouble. But even a very good man can’t see everything, and it’s only human to make errors in judgment.

“There was one in Harrison’s camp, Samuel Carn, with a mind bent on mischief, only he was smarter and more subtle than the rest. He wasn’t a great miner, but he wasn’t a bad one either, and one way and another he got himself friendly with the boss, and managing one of the gangs.”

Despite the fact that the tour guide hadn’t yet gotten into the promised horrors of the tale, something about the sincerity with which he spoke of it made shivers run down the three teens’ spines.

“That in itself wasn’t a bad thing - Carn knew his men well enough and he wasn’t one to ruin a good thing – but it gave him access to the papers of the mining company, and Harrison went out of his way to teach him Geology, and maybe he got to knowing things that let his mischief grow. Maybe he grew jealous, envious of the ores and odd gem that he lifted into the light and then never saw again. Either way, he had his gang digging deeper and further than was wise. Maybe he found something, looking all that time into the dark, that looked back at him.

“Nobody living knows what happened that day, but the workers who escaped the blast agree: Samuel Carn attacked Harrison and two other managers with a shovel, then set the dynamite and he blew himself, his gang, and Allastair Harrison’s mine to smithereens. The miners dug for four days back down the main shaft, hoping to find survivors, but the rocks were too unstable to go far and all they ever found were bodies.

“To this day, Hollow Mountain Mine has never been reopened.”

“Well,” said the tour guide as he straightened up and held his palms out over the fire, seemingly immune to his audience’s sense of creeping horror, “That’s all the storytelling that I have time for tonight. You three stay on the marked trails and don’t leave the campsites at night, now.”

With that, he left, headed out down the main road away from the campsite, leaving the three of them in the dark circle of legends and firelight underneath the pale mountain stars.

Elirand was the first to shake the creeping horror off. “That,” he declared, spearing a marshmallow on a convenient stick, “Was better than ghost stories.”

“You would enjoy a story about a cursed treasure,” Achenar commented dryly.“Well, we can’t all be future rocket-scientists,” Elirand replied philosophically.

“S’mores?”Both Calla and Achenar replied that they weren’t very hungry, so Elirand

began scientifically singing his marshmallows to perfection.

Calla and Achenar lay down by the fire to gaze up at the stars, and the three of them sat by the fire long into the night, listening to owls in the trees and the snores of their fellow campers.

* * *

Back at home, night was falling, as it often did, on a birthday party. Orion Elvensong was more than happy to join the ranks of the neighborhood teens, along with his best friend Gallagher Newson, who had already had his birthday earlier in the rotation. Azalea Greenman and Sati Ramaswami had been invited at his mother’s suggestion, since Delphina was so close to Azalea’s quadruplet younger siblings, and Sati wouldn’t have her birthday until right before school started back up.

“So yeah, I’m pretty sure Daisy’s dog is a wolf,” Azalea said, concluding her story of her older sister’s untrainable pet. “Which would be cool, if he didn’t eat my shoes.”

Gallagher yawned visibly and Azalea gave him the stink eye. “Fine, if you’re so interesting, you tell us what went on this rotation. We’ve already talked how much we hate Mrs. Fisher’s essays to death.”

Gallagher shrugged. “My brother Gavin joined the Army,” he said.“Really?” asked Sati, “Are they sending him out to the desert?”“No, he goes to Camp Skillman in a week,” Gallagher replied, “He’s

happy, but Ginger’s not. Gabriella’s mad – I think , she’s never home anyway – and Georgia won’t stop crying. She thinks he’s going to get blown up.”

There was a short silence after that announcement. All present were old enough to know how possible that was.

“Well, anyway, your brother’s going to get to go to college when he comes back, right?” Orion asked, attempting to lighten the conversation. “I mean, last I heard, that’s how the army does this.”

“Yup,” Gallagher replied. “He’ll probably go into some kind of business, that sort of thing.”

“Hey, Orion,” Sati put in, “What are you going to choose as an aspiration?”Orion shrugged. “Well, I already know I’m not a family sim.”

That got a laugh out of Azalea and Gallagher, both of whom had made no bones about aspiring to Romance.

“Bet you anything it’s Romance,” Azalea told Sati, “Just you watch. These two goons are going to spend the rest of their natural lives trying to pick us up.”

“Time for cake!” Lydia yelled from the kitchen.

The party was, as everyone had expected, noisy and exuberant, especially after the new teens and their not-yet-aged confederate got into the cake.

Ana privately wondered if she’d begun to enjoy parties or if she’d simply accepted them as a fact of life when her family and her best friend’s family were so outgoing. Maybe it was just that she’d already known everyone there, and that Lydia, by right of seniority and bribing Delphina with the frosting flowers on top of the cake, had managed to secure them a relatively peaceful spot on the couch.

Lydia finally finished fiddling with her fork and took a bite.“Hey, Ana?” she asked, “Stick around to help take down the decorations,

would you?”“Planning on it,” Anariel replied.“Okay, good. Because after that, I have something to tell you,” Lydia

declared cheerfully, and polished off her cake in a rush.

“What do you have to tell me?” Ana asked, mildly confused. “Things,” Lydia replied vaguely, around her last mouthful, “I can’t tell you

in here.”Despite her best efforts, Ana couldn’t get another word out of her for the

remainder of the party. And if she was completely honest with herself, that sort of spoiled it a little.

“So, your baby brother grew up,” Ana said after the clean-up, when everyone else had been sent home besides Gallagher, who only lived across the way anyhow. “It seems like we haven’t been teens very long, though.”

“It’s been most of a year for you,” Lydia replied.“Orion turned out kind of cute.”“That’s disgusting, Ana.”“I’m not saying I’d date him, Lydia, I’m saying that your family’s got

pretty genes.”

Lydia grimaced a little. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Orion and Delphina are the ones sharing more genes around here.”

Ana just shrugged. “Delphina looks the most like Makir, that’s all. Orion mostly looks like your mom.”

There was a second of silence, until Ana said “As long as we’re admitting things -”

“Makir’s not my dad.”

“I sort of – What?” Ana was certain that she hadn’t heard right.“Makir. He’s not my biological dad.” There. She’d said it. “My mom had me

before she met him – I don’t know who my real dad is.”There was a puzzled second of silence. “Well, did you ask your mom?” Ana

asked reasonably.“She refused to tell me.” Lydia’s voice sounded bitter even to her own ears. “I

mean, it’s sort of obvious now that I think of it, but I didn’t have any idea of it until the beginning of the year.”

Ana sighed. “That’s sort of a long time to be sitting on a secret, Lyds.”Lydia’s first reply was a shrug. “I wasn’t certain how I felt about it,” she

admitted after a moment, “I mean, it’s not like Makir’s ever treated me any different from Orion and Delphina. And, since Orion’s only a year younger than me, I’m pretty sure that it was over between Mom and my dad when I was really young. But I’ve just been thinking about it and… well, it’s kind of lonely, thinking that maybe your dad doesn’t even know you were born.”

“Well,” Ana said slowly, trying to reason her way out of this mess, “maybe there’s a good reason why your mom stopped seeing your dad, which could be why she didn’t tell you who he was.”

“Yeah, but – it’s Mom. She won’t let us answer the door or the telephone with our own last name. For all you’ve ever complained about your mom being overprotective, mine’s just plain paranoid about some things. I think she’s afraid that I’ll run away to live with him or something.”

“Are you going to look for him?”“Well, yeah. I want to know, Ana. Even if it’s messy and complicated, it’s

better than sitting here just wondering.”Ana thought about it for a minute, before deciding that no matter what

happened, she could always count on one thing. Besides, even if she couldn’t imagine being in Lydia’s situation, she could imagine what it must mean to Lydia, to realize that she’d been sitting on such an unstable secret all this time.

“I’ll help you,” she said.* * *

Finally, August was drawing to a close. Boxes were packed, goodbyes were said, last minute registration information had been collected, and there was nothing left for Aranel and Rean to do besides sit on the bench in the sunlight, waiting for their taxi.

There was still something hanging in the air, though, like a shadow, and it made Aranel uncomfortable in the silence. She wasn’t a quiet person: she could do quiet, if she was trying to study or something, but when two people sat on a bench with nothing to say to each other… well, there were a lot of ways that could go wrong.

Especially when the only reason one of those people was there in the first place, instead of at home with his family, was because the other person had screwed up massively.

“Hey, Rean?” she asked, when the fidgety silence became too much to bear.He didn’t turn around and look at her, not yet. Come to think of it, he’d been

staring at the door for a while now, probably wishing that it was his door, and that it was his mom doing a horrible job of pretending she wasn’t waiting just behind it to see them off.

He probably didn’t wish that he was sitting on a bench with Nymea, though. That was sort of comforting, even if “better than Nymea” was setting the bar pretty low.

“Yeah?”“Hey, I just wanted to say… well… I’m sorry for… you know. Especially

with your family and all.”God, she was bad at apologizing. She’d made it a point to never get any

practice, because it was always awkward, and anyway people who were going to forgive you usually got to it when they were ready, not because you said something lame about wishing things had gone differently.

Rean sighed. “Ara…” he said, and Aranel braced herself. This was the moment when he’d say it, and worst of all, he had the right. After all, it wasn’t as if she had been the one to back him up when she’d gotten him kicked out of his own house. It was her parents.

He’s going to say we should just go to college and make new friends, she thought, and she was surprised at how much the thought hurt. Yeah, it would be easy for her to meet new people, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was, Rean was somebody she trusted, and she’d just proven to herself that she didn’t deserve to have his trust in return.

It occurred to her that whatever he’d set out to say, he wasn’t saying it. Not yet. He probably didn’t want to hurt her feelings – unlike her, he usually thought before he said anything.

“It’s all right,” she blurted out, “You can say it. I probably deserve it anyway.”

“Say what, Ara? That I’m angry because your harebrained idea got me kicked out of my house? Maybe that I’m just damn disgusted that my parents can’t accept who I am? At least when they didn’t know I had the illusion that they’d come to terms with it eventually, even if it meant that I’d have to put up with Nymea blackmailing me until I was ready to tell them. Thanks for taking that choice away from me, by the way.”

Ara winced. Deserved or not, that stung. “I… if I’d known that all this would happen…”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about hindsight.” Rean replied. The sarcasm had faded from his voice now. “Really, though, I don’t think it would have helped. If trustee St. Julien had ended up throwing me and Trevor out of prom, my parents would have found out eventually anyway. If you hadn’t made the paper with your little speech, then my parents would probably have found out on Monday anyway.”

“Oh, and let’s not forget, even if by some chance they’d never found out after Prom, Nymea would have told them before I left for college and she couldn’t squeeze any cash out of me anymore.”

Aranel chanced a glance over at her best friend and her mouth dropped open. He was smiling, and not in an ironic way either.

“You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” he said, “and yeah, I was angry at first, but I’ve decided that my parents, Trustee St. Julien, and above all Nymea deserve my anger a bit more than you. At least you were trying to help.”

Aranel opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. “Okay, so I’m not complaining that you’re not angry with me,” she said, “but… um…”

“You did make up for a lot of it by having parents willing to take me in,” Rean replied dryly. “Even if I know that part of it was that your Mom and Dad decided that you should have to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions, it’s still been a hundred times better than a summer at home would be.”

Aranel wisely shut her mouth. “Okay,” she said.Rean nodded once. “All the same,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you

to not try to help me that way again.”“… Right.”

* * *

* * *

It had finally happened.Idalese was alone.She sat on the lower bunk in the room that had always seemed too crowded

when she’d shared it with Nymea, a room that was so empty without the tacky fashion posters and the desk that her sister had hogged with her lipstick and her hairpins and her loud declarations of mine, don’t touch. It felt like a missing tooth.

She didn’t miss her sister. Nymea had always been better than her, always been loved by their parents in their own harsh and judgemental way more than Ida was, and she’d been strong enough that it didn’t really matter that their mother’s love consisted of seeing flaws and their father’s love was always postponed until a future date, when they were all grown and worth it, returning the glory of the family name.

Ida wasn’t strong.

She wasn’t capable of missing her sister. She regretted that her mother would now spend nearly all of her time criticizing Ida, holding her up to the vanished ideal of the perfect beauty, the older sister who had gone out into frightening empty world to seek her fortune and would probably succeed.

It would be just Ida left for her mother to spin tales of vanished riches and dignity to now, because Nymea wasn’t coming back.

In a way, she hated them both for leaving her.

She didn’t want to leave, to go out there into the world and get married and hold a job. All those things were too big for her: she’d be lost, like a single penny in a donation box, or a four leaf clover in a field. But being at home still felt like she was constantly wearing her shoes on the wrong feet. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but at the same time the fit was wrong.

There was no place in the world that fit her. * * *

All of Arcadia’s information about dolphins in this chapter is true. (To the best of my research, anyway.)

And thank God everyone’s headed off for college, finally. My chapters keep getting longer and my patience keeps getting shorter, I think. This didn’t take nearly so long to film as the last bit, (As evidenced by the fact that it actually exists right now,) but it felt quite long enough.

Oh, also (though I keep saying it,) the Newson and Greenman storylines are going to be updated soon on a “when I write bits” basis, though I can’t rule out their appearances in future chapters.

Author’s Note