“You think she ran away?” Mom asked, her interest piqued. “Why would she run off?”
I pursed my lips, wishing there was another way to say it. My mom was not a particularly hateful or vengeful person, but I couldn’t blame her for the anger and distrust she still felt toward Konstantin. After all, he had nearly killed both her husband and her daughter.
“I think Konstantin warned her,” I said finally. Mom lowered her eyes and shifted her weight in her chair, growing irritated, but I pressed on. “After what happened with Emma Costar in Calgary, when Bent Stum killed her, I think Konstantin didn’t want anybody else to get hurt.”
“Bryn.” She raised her eyes so she could stare harshly at me. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
“There’s something really weird going on in Storvatten,” I said, ignoring my mom’s challenge. I couldn’t win that argument, so I didn’t engage it. “It doesn’t fit Konstantin’s pattern—he had been targeting Kanin changelings still living with humans. Linnea was a Skojare Queen in her palace, and she’d never even been a changeling.”
Mom fidgeted with her tea cup, twisting it on the table and staring down at it. Her shoulders were rigid, her entire body held at nervous attention.
“Let’s say I believe you,” she said, almost reluctantly. “Why are you here? What light do you hope I can shed on any of this?”
“If I’m right, and somebody warned Linnea that she had better get out of Storvatten, where would she go?” I asked.
Like my mother, Linnea had been born and raised in Storvatten. She had probably never met a human and hardly stepped out of the palace, except to go for a swim or visit other royalty. Thanks to her Skojare gills, she would never be able to blend with human society.
The Skojare didn’t have that much money anymore, and most of what they did have of value were jewels locked up in safes. None of it had been reported missing when Linnea had disappeared, so if she was on the run, she had no money with her.
Her options as a penniless, sheltered, beautiful but mutated teenager were extremely limited.
“When I was growing up in Storvatten, locked up in that frozen palace while my parents tried to sell me off to a suitor for the highest price, I often dreamed of running away,” Mom admitted quietly. “I finally did when I ran off with your father, but I hardly imagine that Linnea is hiding among us in Doldastam. We Skojare tend to stand out here.”
She offered me a weak smile then, and I knew how painfully true her statement was. Thanks to the unique fair skin of the Skojare, Linnea would be unable to blend in with any of the other tribes of trolls.
“There’s nowhere?” I pressed. “Didn’t you tell me once about how you and some of your friends took off somewhere for a week when you were a teenager?”
A look of wistful surprise passed across her face, and the corner of her mouth curled up slightly. “The ton?ren. I’d nearly forgotten about that.”
“Yeah, the ton?ren,” I said, trying to remember what she’d told me about it.
“It wasn’t an official thing,” Mom explained. “That’s just the word we used for when the royal teenagers grew restless and didn’t want to stay cooped up anymore. Those without gills would sometimes try to make a break for the human world, heading out to cities for a week or two before coming back.
“But my best friend had gills, and I didn’t want to leave her behind, so we had to choose another option.” Mom took a long drink of her tea. “Lake Isolera.”
“Lake Isolera?” I asked. “You never told me about that.”
“I’d nearly forgotten, and it feels like a half-remembered dream.” She shook her head. “It was a story we’d heard from our childhood. A magical place that an ancient powerful Queen had a put spell on, so it would always be warm and private. An oasis to swim in when the harsh Canadian winters bore down on us.
“But it had an enchantment on it, to keep humans or unwanted trolls from stumbling upon it,” Mom went on. “Everyone who says they’ve been there is never entirely sure if they really went or if they only imagined it.”
“So, is it real?” I asked her directly.
“I…” She furrowed her brow in concentration and sighed. “Honestly, I can’t say for certain. But if Linnea was running from someone, and she believed Lake Isolera was real, the same way I believed it was real when I was her age, then that’s where she would head.”
“Where is it?” I asked, stifling my excitement.
“Swim one day along the shore, and then walk half a day due north, and you’ll find it under the brightest star if you’ve followed the right course,” Mom said, sounding as though she were reciting an old nursery rhyme.
“You don’t have more accurate directions than that?” I asked hopefully.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “For a magical place that probably doesn’t really exist? No, I’m sorry, I don’t. It’s like asking for specific directions to Narnia.”