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 tonåren. I’d nearly forgotten about that.”

“Yeah, the tonåren,” 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.”

“You just go through the wardrobe to get to Narnia. That’s pretty specific.”

Mom rolled her eyes, but she pushed her chair back and stood up. “Let’s go to your dad’s study. If we look at a map, I might be able to figure it out better.”

I followed her back to my dad’s cluttered office, and she pulled down his heavy, worn atlas from a shelf and spread it out on his desk. Unlike the atlases humans might find in their world, this one was marked for troll territories, major cities, and places of importance, all overlaid atop the human landmarks so we could find the troll locations when we ventured out into the human world.

As Mom bent over the atlas, she mumbled to herself. I stood beside her. I didn’t catch every word she said, but from what I gathered she was trying to remember how fast she could swim.

Then finally, after some deliberation, she took a pen off my dad’s desk and circled a blank spot on the map in Ontario.

“There. That’s Lake Isolera,” she proclaimed rather proudly.

I leaned forward, squinting at the map. There were plenty of blue splotches covering the area, indicating all of the lakes. But the spot Mom had circled was completely devoid of water, an odd dry patch in an otherwise watery land.

“Are you sure that’s the right place?” I asked. “There’s nothing there, but there are tons of lakes around it.”

“Well, either it isn’t real or it’s hidden under a magic spell, so of course there wouldn’t be anything on the map.” She straightened up and folded her arms over her chest. “But if it does exist, that’s where it is.”

“If Linnea ran away, you think that’s where she would be?” I looked up at her.

“Either at the lake, or trying to find it.” Mom nodded, her lips pressed into a grim line. “Assuming she isn’t dead, of course.”

SEVEN

abscond

“You have to talk to Ridley,” Tilda told me firmly, and I groaned and slumped back against the wall.

After talking with my mom, I’d snuck into the school, barely managing not to be seen, and then lay in wait in the locker room that doubled as a women’s restroom. Thanks to her pregnancy, Tilda had to use the bathroom rather frequently—as she had lamented several times—so I knew it wouldn’t be too long before she came in.

In fact, I’d only hidden in a stall for fifteen minutes before she entered. I waited until she’d finished, and when she came out of the stall she nearly screamed at the sight of me. Once she calmed herself, she gave me a hard look—one that could cut twice as deep as any lecture.

I hurriedly explained my absence from training today, and my plan to find Linnea and why I thought it was so important. As she listened, the steel in her gray eyes began to soften, but she didn’t exactly look at me with approval either.