They were so close; Wylie felt it. Yet it had been three hours, and they had gotten no further than they'd been at the beginning.
Maybe he just wanted to be close, so he told himself they were. So close... and yet we're missing something...
He bored his eyes into the map, laid on the table he and Sophie had sat at two meetings ago. Now, everything had changed. Now, they knew where the Purities had met—but the map told them nothing about where they were going to meet. All they had to go on was the one paper—the others Linh and the Wayward had found were coded, so they couldn't help.
"I envy your ability to be so still," Linh murmured, contorting her fingers to call the fountain's water to her. "You're steady. A contrast to my turbulence."
Wylie frowned. She'd been oddly quiet since she had hailed him, all her thoughts bottled up inside. Usually when she spoke like this—in riddles—something was bothering her. But he'd also learned that the way to help her was to do the same.
"Does that scare you?" he asked.
"Quite the contrary. You're..." She searched for the right words, and that was what Wylie loved about her; she always thought before she said something. He knew at least a dozen people who could use the same quality.
"You're balanced," she finally said. "The storm inside you has calmed."
He wanted to argue, wanted to comfort her—you're not alone—but sometimes the greatest comfort was to know you were alone, yet there was still a way out. A way to find peace.
That was all Wylie wanted: peace.
A perfect world, where no one got hurt.
He knew it was impossible, yet there was still a tiny part of him that pushed on, that didn't care how crazy the dream was. He could still reach for it. He could still be better. He could get as close to it as possible, and perhaps even reach beyond that.
But the first step was figuring out this map.
He studied it some more, as if he had missed something the previous twenty times. It was simple, hand-drawn, upside-down V's indicating mountains and W's representing lakes and rivers. Each landmark was labeled with initials, as well as each Territory—those were separated by thin gray lines.
W.W. stood for Wildwood; B.G. for Bosk Gorge; M.M. for Merrowmarsh; and on the list went. About ten of the Territories were marked with big black dots—clearly places where the Purities had met.
And in three hours, this was all they had figured out.
"Why would they keep track of where they've met?" he asked out loud, knowing Linh wouldn't answer, but also knowing these kinds of questions prompted deep thought in her; it wasn't that she was ignoring him, just considering. "I mean, if it's so random—as Councillor Emery said—then what purpose would a map like this have?"
He almost wondered if it wasn't a map of the meetings at all—but no. It was too much of a coincidence—them finding out the Purity meetings occurred in the Neutral Territories, then finding the map.
The treehouse descended into a thoughtful silence, the kind that caused Wylie's mind to wander rather than speculate.
So he asked another question: "What do we know about the Purities? Their goals, what they stand for... Maybe that can help."
Proffered with an inquiry she could answer, Linh said, "They're nonviolent."
"As of right now."
It was an automatic answer, one Wylie didn't think twice about, but Linh's eyes grew large.
"Why do you say that?" Her tone was on the verge of anger, but Wylie wasn't sure he'd ever actually seen her lose her cool.
Still, he lifted his arms in a sign of peace. "I don't know. I guess that's just an assumption, given the Neverseen."
"Yes, but don't you see? That right there—assumptions based on the actions of their predecessors—is exactly what the Black Swan and Council are claiming to fight. The humans made mistakes, and that has sown distrust among the elvin world. The Neverseen did the same, and when another rebel group comes along, we assume they are the same as well? It's hypocrisy."
Wylie opened his mouth, but he wasn't sure what to say.
Linh bit her lip and leaned back. "Sorry. I shouldn't have snapped."
"No, you're... you're right. We don't know enough about the Purities to judge them. But we do know they're advocating for 'purity' or whatever, which means they're anti-human, and with the Council pushing the Human Reinstatement Program... There's a good chance they will get violent. I'm not saying we should make presumptions, but being prepared couldn't hurt either."
"I agree," she said, though it sounded distant, as if she were musing on a new thought.
He knew better than to ask.
"Okay, so we also know they protest for the most part in Eternalia—that's more than likely because marching in the elvin capital is a statement, not exactly some master plan," he thought aloud. "Although there is some strategic soundness to that. It means you have more eyes on you, and it shows you're brave enough to stand up for your beliefs. That could attract more moderates who can't decide which side to choose.
"There has also been a lot of conflict in Mysterium and Atlantis. The Purity supporters target those cities because so many elves there are anti-Purity.
"Also, the Purities wear addlers to mask their identities, which supports the idea that prominent figures don't want their reputations tarnished if the rebellion turns south."
"It also shows that they are smart," Linh said. "They must know the consequences the Neverseen faced after the war, and to avoid that, they've become secretive."
"So they've studied the Neverseen. Good to know; maybe they've picked up some tactics from them?"
"How would that apply to the map?"
And they both went back to staring at that seemingly insignificant piece of parchment. It was so small, and yet the secrets it contained had to be vast.
They had to.
Or else this had all been for nothing.
Wylie felt a whisper of the helpless bitterness and pain he had felt so many years before. So many, and yet they felt like a week ago, yesterday, three hours from now. As if they—though dimmed—would never fade away.
If they're a part of me, then I might as well let it fuel me, he thought, determining then and there he would figure this out. Because if he didn't, the pain might surge... and he couldn't burden Linh with that. With him.
Here, in Alluveterre's treehouse, he was reminded even more starkly of the ways she had already suffered because of him. Sleepless nights, hoarse screams... and Linh was always there, beside him, ready with the water and her songs.
She had sacrificed her time, perhaps even her happiness, all because of him. Every day since, he had been trying to return the favor, but nothing he could do seemed to match what she deserved.
"Are you thinking of your burns?" she asked now, and he blinked to find her silver eyes watching him.
"Yeah."
"Here," she murmured, stepping closer and twisting the water into the shape of a deer. "Remember this one?"
He nodded, unable to speak.
The only light in those dark days had been her. Even then, he mostly remembered fear—for him, his mom, his dad. At the time they were all questioning what the Neverseen's game was. How Cyrah had died, why Prentice had called "swan song"...
Wylie's head snapped up. "Linh, that's it."
"What is?" She dropped her hands, dispersing the deer into a large ball of water that shot into the fountain.
"The Lodestar Initiative, remember?"
"It's hard to forget." She said the words softly, not sarcastically, but Wylie's lips still pulled into a grin.
"Before we figured it out—or part of it, at least—Sophie found the lodestar symbol in my dad's mind, right? And it was a map leading straight to the Neverseen's hideouts. I know this isn't quite the same, but maybe the Purities figured the whole hideout thing wasn't going to work with such large numbers, and also because they want to keep their anonymity—but what if this map isn't just a map of where they've met, but a map of where they will meet? That explains why they'd need to label it; maybe it's a code of some sorts, and in order to figure out where to meet next, you have to go to the next location the code tells you to!"
Linh nodded not nearly as enthusiastically as Wylie imagined he had sounded—but that was just her way. She figured things out before reacting.
Wylie stayed standing, but Linh sat, leaning closer to the map, as if proximity and knowledge were directly correlated. The silence surged again, but Wylie fought it, tracing the map's dots with his eyes.
If there was a code, that meant there had to be a pattern. Maybe all the dots represented the only safe places to meet, and they determined which dot to go to next based on the one they had been at before.
Wylie inhaled sharply and reached for the file beside the map. It had gone unnoticed—he was too focused on figuring out the meeting place. Now, he pulled out a sheet of paper. Emery had given it to him, outlining all the information the Council knew about the Purities' operation in the Neutral Territories.
"Look," he told Linh, pointing to the top. "Emery's report says the last known location of a Purity meeting—the one the Emissary stumbled upon—was Brackendale. Maybe if we talk to the elf who found it—Navik Hishia—we can find a clue to where they'll go next."
Linh didn't answer, totally engrossed in her examination.
"Linh? Did you find something?" Still, she did not reply. "Should I get Dex, too, see if he can crack the code? He did that for the lodestar system."
"Mm, no," Linh murmured, waving her hand at him. "Look at this."
She pressed her finger to one of the dots—Merrowmarsh, Wylie was pretty sure—and dragged it to the right; to the next black dot. Then she slid it southwest, lifted her finger, and started at a new point. By the time she finished—seven dots in all—Wylie's eyes were swimming.
"I don't understand," he said. "I thought the dots were a code?"
"Or a picture," she breathed, holding out her hand. On the side of the ornate fountain, droplets of water trembled, as if fighting something. Then, suddenly, they flew to Linh's side, hovering above the map.
Linh started the process over again, the water standing in place of her previous stroke, until it formed a symbol:
⽔
"A symbol," Wylie laughed. "Like the lodestar."
"Except this one is a Chinese radical meaning 'water.' We learned a few written languages at Exillium, and since I'm a Hydrokinetic... Well, when I started connecting the dots in my mind, I thought I recognized it."
Wylie nearly laughed again. "Linh, that's wonderful! But... how does this help us, exactly?"
She stood and pointed to the bottom right point of the symbol. It was the only one without a dot. "Because all these dots match a point where the brushstroke ends. There are seven dots, but eight points."
"Which means the last point is where the Purities are going to meet," Wylie finished. He glanced at the initials on the map, then looked back at Linh. "That's Hollowed Hills."
She pulled out her Coach's pathfinder and twisted it to the right crystal.
They grabbed each other's hands, and Wylie was struck with a sense of unpreparedness. His heart started to race—what if they appeared in the middle of the Purities? Worse, what if they were wrong?
But he would never find out if he didn't take the first step.
So he squeezed Linh's hand a little tighter, looked down at her, and said, "Let's go."
Then he pulled them into the light.