“Liam has tracker camp, and everyone else is too young to be away from home for six weeks,” Mia reminded her. “Besides, I thought you would enjoy having a break from your siblings.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean that I wanted to get stuck in some boring old house out in the middle of nowhere,” Hanna muttered.
When she was pouting like that, slouching and with her bottom lip sticking out slightly, she appeared to be even younger than she actually was. The smattering of freckles across her face only lent itself to her youth, and her bouncy dark brown curls didn’t help much either. Her thick eyebrows had started sprouting into a full-on unibrow over the winter—around the same time that I’d had to take her shopping for her first bra—and I’d taught her how to pluck and shape them.
“Have you finished packing yet?” I asked her.
“Have you?” she shot back, and her eyes met mine for a split second, long enough for me to see the hurt flash in them, and I realized that she was upset about more than being away from her friends.
My internship lasted six weeks. On my way there and back, I was dropping Hanna off and picking her up at her grandparents’. When we got back, I was moving out to a little apartment on the other side of town. I already had the first month’s rent and security down. Mia and Finn were being kind enough to let me store most of my belongings here while I was on the internship.
So this was my last official day working as a nanny and living with the Holmeses.
“Come on, Hanna.” I smiled at her. “We’ve got a super-fun road trip ahead of us. I already have playlists made for the road.”
“Yeah?” She lifted her head slightly.
“Yeah, and how often do you get to be outside of Förening and see the humans in their natural habitat?” I asked, since that was something I’d heard her whinge about on more than one occasion.
She stood up taller. “Yeah? Like we’ll be able to eat in a real restaurant with humans everywhere?”
“Yeah, we can eat anywhere you want.”
That wasn’t a total lie. We could stop at any restaurant, but in my experience, most food prepared outside of troll communities tended to make us sick. Since throughout most of our existence trolls had lived off the grid, hidden away and eating mostly what little fruits and vegetables we could get our hands on, we hadn’t adapted well to the rich diets of humans.
“I pick … McDonald’s,” Hanna announced, causing Mia to let out a small laugh.
“Well, if you wanna stop somewhere, you better get finished packing,” I told her. “I’d like to make it to your grandparents’ before dark, and since we’re driving fourteen hours, that means that we need to be on the road”—I glanced at the clock on the wall and groaned—“in fifteen minutes.”
Now, bolstered by the promise of forbidden treats, Hanna ran upstairs to her room to finish packing.
3
Farewells
We were running an hour behind. I don’t know how it had happened, but I was still loading up the Jeep at half-past ten in the morning. Finn had been kind enough to borrow the Jeep from the Queen’s small fleet of royal vehicles on the condition that I take Hanna to her grandparents’. It was a more-than-fair trade, so I had happily accepted.
“Okay, I think that’s the last of it, then,” I said, after carefully stowing Hanna’s violin between our bags.
Trolls tended to be hoarders, and I was no exception. One of the more obvious ways this presented itself was how much I overpacked. It didn’t help that all my stuff was essentially already packed for the big move, so why not just pile it in the Jeep in case I needed it during the next six weeks? Like literally all my clothing and jewelry. Would I need a winter jacket in June in Oregon? Probably not, but why risk it?
I had finally stuffed the Jeep as much as I could without risking injury or discomfort to Hanna and myself, so I closed the gate and turned back to face everyone. Mia and Finn had attempted to gather the kids to see us off, but it was hard to keep them all together. Liam and Emma kept running around chasing each other, Niko wandered off after a butterfly, Lissa was asleep in a bouncer, and Luna was fussing, so Mia rocked her gently and sang to her.
Hanna started crying when she realized she hadn’t said goodbye to her pony Calvin, so she darted off to do that.
“I bet you’ll miss all of this,” Finn said as he scooped up Niko before the toddler tumbled into the ditch.
“I don’t know if you’re kidding or not, but it’s definitely going to be bittersweet to be somewhere quiet.” I gestured vaguely around at the laughing and crying children who nearly drowned out the sound of the chirping birds and the warm breeze rustling through the trees.
“We were lucky to have you as long as we did,” Mia said, and she gave me a pained smile with tears in her eyes. “It may be hard to tell right now, but we really are all going to be lost without you, Ulla. It won’t hit the little ones until after you’re gone.”
“Come on, guys, this isn’t goodbye forever,” I said as I choked down my own tears. “When I get back, I’ll still see you around town.”
“I know, and you can always come back and visit,” Mia said, and that was more of a command than an invitation. She hugged me then, with Luna letting out an irritated squawk as she found herself smooshed in the center of it.
Niko squirmed in Finn’s arms, so I untangled myself from Mia and reached out for him. He let me kiss his chubby cheeks and hold him tightly to me, but only for a second. His attention was entirely focused on chasing butterflies, and he wouldn’t stand for being held for another moment, so I set him back on the ground to run circles around his mother.
“We’re really going to miss you, Ulla,” Finn said, and the honesty of his words made tears spring fresh in my eyes. He wasn’t much of an emotional guy, speaking in cool, polite tones that bordered on formal, and he chose his words carefully. That’s when I realized: this wasn’t the first time I was leaving my home, but it was the first time that I would be missed.
I wiped my eyes roughly with the palm of my hand and chewed the inside of my cheek to keep back the tears. “Yeah, well, thanks again for helping me out so much, giving me a roof and an education and now a Jeep and this internship. I don’t know if I ever would’ve gotten to Merellä without you.”
“It’s the Queen that deserves all the gratitude for that one.” He waved it away like it was nothing, but we both knew the truth. If not for his friendship with the Queen of the Trylle, and her writing a recommendation on my behalf, it would’ve been near-impossible for a nobody like me to land an internship in Merellä.
“And honestly, Ulla,” he went on, “it’s not nearly enough thanks for what you’ve done to help us. I don’t know how we could’ve managed with all the changes we’ve gone through over the years.”
“You only ever get what you give, you know?” I said, awkwardly repeating something that Mr. Tulin used to tell me all the time when I was a kid.
Hanna came running back from saying goodbye to her pony, wiping at her eyes in a hurry. “Okay, I think I got it all out of my system. We can go now.”