“This wasn’t just some teenager going wild at college,” Hanna insisted. “They were doing parkour on the roofs, and their hair was totally unreal.”
“I doubt it’s anything more than someone experimenting with potions,” Dagny said, and she tried to suppress a yawn. “The guards at the gate may not show it, but the security here is fairly tight. Since most of the protection comes from our supernatural abilities, there isn’t much to see, but trust me when I say that Merellä makes sure to keep any really dangerous riffraff out.”
“Well, I would like to get in touch with that security, then, to find out who we saw,” I said. “When they were doing their rooftop acrobatics, they slipped and fell into my Jeep, seriously damaging the canvas top, and I’d like to get it fixed before I have to head home.”
Dagny nodded, and this time she didn’t even try to hide her yawning. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to the Mimirin, and they’ll help you get everything all sorted out. But right now I’m exhausted, so I’m going back to bed. I’ll expect you to be up and ready to go by eight A.M. sharp.”
“Can do. Thank you.”
Dagny paused at her bedroom door. “How long are you staying?”
“For six weeks,” I said.
“Oh, you’ll be here for the Midsommar festival, then,” Dagny commented.
“A festival?” Hanna asked with wide, sparkling eyes. “That sounds exciting. What is it?” But Dagny’s only response was closing her bedroom door behind her, so Hanna looked over at me. “Do you know what it is?”
“It doesn’t matter, because you won’t be here for it,” I reminded her.
9
Provincial
Dagny led me through the twisting streets of Merellä, carefully navigating along the shops and carts and through all the rush-hour “traffic” of villagers all heading the same place we were. Hanna had been left behind at the apartment to entertain herself with her laptop and Dagny’s suggestion of “cleaning.” She hadn’t been happy about it, but I couldn’t very well take her to work with me, and she was old enough to fend for herself for the day.
As Dagny and I passed the third girl in a row sporting unnatural hair color—this time pastel cotton candy—I realized that she hadn’t been exaggerating about the wilder fashion sensibilities. Dagny herself wore a bright yellow shift dress, though that didn’t clash with the provincial village feel quite as much as some of the other choices I’d seen.
“I didn’t think that troll hair held dye that well,” I commented.
“They don’t use human dye. They use potions here,” Dagny explained, sounding bored, and she immediately changed the subject. “That’s where I spend most of my time if I’m not working or at home.”
She pointed across the road to a large brown building. The sign above the door featured a brightly colored bull’s-eye and the name Merellä Archery Club in big, bold letters.
“Are you any good with a bow and arrow?” I asked.
“Very,” she said. “But I do it because it relaxes me.”
I tried to take in all the sights around me, but honestly, it was hard, because I was exhausted. All the driving the last couple days had been particularly draining, and then sleeping in a new bed never went that well for me. Plus, Hanna had kept talking to me from her makeshift bed on the lumpy couch all night.
To make matters worse, Dagny was practically a speed walker, and I had to scramble to keep up with her.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find my way here on my own,” I said, attempting to make conversation with her in hopes that she would remember I was following her and slow down some.
“You’ll get used to it,” Dagny assured me flatly.
“How long did it take you to figure it out?” I asked.
“Oh, I knew my way around before I got here.”
“How’d you manage that? Did you use magic?”
She snorted. “Hardly. I studied maps and everything I could get my hands on. It took me nine months before I was finally accepted into my program, so I had plenty of time.”
“Why did it take so long?”
“So long?” she echoed scornfully. “It usually takes over a year for applicants to get in. I was fast-tracked because I graduated the top of my class at the Doldastam royal university.”
“Oh, I … I didn’t realize that, I guess.”
“I’m assuming that it didn’t take you that long, which means that you either have an amazing intellect, or…” She paused, her dark eyes appraising me as she clicked her tongue. “Or you have connections. So, which was it, Ulla?”
“It’s not like that, exactly. I wanted to join the Inhemsk Project to find my parents, and the only way I could do that was through an internship—”
Dagny held up her hand. “I didn’t ask why you were here, and honestly, I don’t care.” She turned on her heel and strode ahead.
“Well, it sounded like you cared,” I muttered as I hurried after her. She didn’t respond, so I decided to change the subject. “What brought you here?”
“I wanted to study environmental effects on parapsychological abilities, particularly in relation to the genetics and biodiversity among trolls, and Elof Dómari is the leading expert in troglecology,” she said. “He’s been a docent at the Mimirin since 2017, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work with him.”
We’d finally reached the stone fortress at the center of Merellä. It was a massive four-stone Romanesque building, with several towers stretching even higher. Most of the exterior appeared simple and clean, with very few Gothic flourishes to give it an air of aristocracy. The closer we got to it, the more imposing and formidable it felt.
In front of the main entrance into the Mimirin, everyone had to line up to pass through security. At the gates were several guards, running two different kinds of wands over everyone who passed—one that was electronic and scanned for basic weapons, and the other psionic, made with crystals and ancient twisted roots, to check for supernatural threats. The whole process didn’t appear much different than when I’d gone through security at the airport, the one time I’d flown.
Unlike airport security, the guards were armed, and they had their weapons on full display. Most of them appeared to either have a dagger or a sword sheathed on one hip, but they all had PSGs—psionic stun guns. They were stocky, nonlethal weapons, usually made from a carved hardwood with four sharp prongs at one end.
“What is a docent?” I asked Dagny, once we’d fallen in beside each other in one of the lines.
“It’s like an adjunct professor, but instead of taking a salary, a docent works for free,” she explained. “Elof teaches a few classes here in exchange for room, board, and access to their extensive research facilities.”
“Are the facilities really that great here that he’d forgo a paycheck?”
“I guess it depends on what you value more—money or the existence of our kind,” she said with a cynical smile. “The goal of Elof’s research is to discover the sources of our psychokinetic abilities and if there’s a relationship with tribal infertility. If we can do that, we might be able to strengthen our blood and our birthright. His work might be our only chance at stopping our own extinction. Personally, I’d take saving our kind over money any day, but maybe that’s just me.”