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“Yes, Mom. I don’t think it’s really a secret.”
She purses her lips. “I also overheard Ocharta some time ago—she mentioned a heart. It’s what you’re here to find, is it not?” Her face is inscrutable now, and I wonder what she’s put together.
Azar nods slowly.
“You’re going to Iceland, because Liz was almost thrown into the volcano there, and she said that there were people there chanting hjartanu, aren’t you?”
That’s not the only reason. Azar’s tail is swishing, like he’s agitated. The bond is a deep yellow, and I can’t decide if that’s pensive or irritated. I’m sure he’s not used to being interrogated by anyone other than maybe his father.
And me, I guess.
“Pardon my impertinence in asking all this,” Mom says, “but are there any reasons that have nothing to do with Liz?” She arches her eyebrow, acting like I’m not even here.
“Mom, they’ve been here for a month, and they’ve been searching everywhere for this heart. They’ve found no evidence of it anywhere. But Azar can see my dreams, and he saw the whole thing himself.”
Mom flinches, but she never turns my direction. Her eyes stay trained on Azar. A muscle in her jaw starts to pulse, and she says, “Then I think you should know something.” She pulls a phone out of her pocket and sets it on the ground in front of her. “I charged up my phone. Liz can show you how to use it. I have a file in there labeled Iceland. It has the video footage, the police reports, everything from that miserable nightmare.”
“Mom, what are you?—”
“After being stolen by Slavic sex-traffickers—” Mom flinches, but keeps talking. “She was taken, along with half a dozen others, by a faction within the organization.”
“Mom, you’ve never said?—”
She ignores me and plows ahead. “They didn’t mean to come to Iceland, but two of the people were from here, and they thought they could hide. They were running from their boss—they were about to sell her when they realized they’d been found.”
“They were taking me to the volcano,” I say.
“When we found her, she had shoved one of them—the woman—into the volcano where they had hoped to hide and stabbed the other. She had freed herself and was running down the mountain, her feet run ragged. The police located the third member of the group of people who took her, badly injured on the side of the mountain, near the entrance to the volcanic ledge. When we arrived, we’d marshaled the local police and our own support team, and we had already located the five other girls they’d left when they were trying to complete the sale of Elizabeth. What we didn’t find were any groups of people in or around the volcano. No one was chanting. No one was watching.” My mom clears her throat. “No one else was there at all, not even the buyer they had been messaging. We believe he had already sold them out to their boss for a hefty fee.”
“Mom, there were dozens and dozens of people, all gathered there. They were all saying the same strange thing over and over.”
She still won’t meet my eye. She’s staring up at Azar. “Trust me when I tell you that if there really were any other people there during her ordeal, we’d have found some evidence of it.”
“Evidence?” I have no idea what she’s saying. “Like, what? Glass slippers they left behind?”
“On the day we located Elizabeth, other than the people who dragged her up that hill, there were no humans present. There was nowhere for a hundred other people to hide. We’d have seen them, or some evidence of their presence. When the local police were finally able to interrogate the survivor, almost a week later, he would only say one phrase, over and over. In Icelandic, it was hinn bölvaði, which in English translates as ‘the cursed.’”
“Are you saying I made those people up? That they didn’t exist?”
I saw them in her dreams. Bless Azar for backing me up.
“Her father believes that her mind created them as silent witnesses to her story. The psychologist we hired said she probably feels tremendous guilt for killing those people, and that she needed an explanation. She needed there to be others there who saw what she went through and could testify that she had no other choice. She had to believe she was in mortal peril.”
“Mom, I’m right here. Stop saying she.”
But she doesn’t turn around. She won’t even meet my eye.
“Elizabeth was very afraid after that event, and she spent most nights sobbing. Her father insisted that we put her in training to defend herself, but as soon as we did, she manifested a disturbing amount of zeal for it.” Mom drops her voice. “She was a natural fighter—vicious, talented, and almost preternaturally fast. All her teachers said so. She surpassed their skill within months, and we had to locate someone more talented to train her. I wanted to put a stop to it, but her psychologist insisted it was a healthy outlet.”
“Mom, I’m right behind you. Please stop talking about me like I’m not even here.”
“I disagreed with them,” Mom continues as if I never said a word. “I thought it was bad for her. Those three people forced her to do something no child should ever have done—murdering another human. But her father listened to the experts and he kept agreeing to advance her more and more, training the violent streak that had manifested into something much stronger, an almost homicidal glee in fighting.”
Her words are like daggers in my heart. Is that why she never came to any of my matches? I thought it was her fear for my safety. I had friends whose loved ones couldn’t watch.
But my mom—was she afraid of me?
“If you’re relocating all the blessed to Iceland on the basis of her experience, I believe you to be making a significant mistake. Respectfully, I suggest that you take additional steps to make a plan before relying on her story.”
