“Elof and the troglecology department aren’t really allowed to study them, but Elof suspected they might be something like a sentient plant,” Dagny said, then quickly added, “a sentient psychokinetic plant.”

“It sounds like they were strange to begin with,” Bryn muttered between punches.

“Right, but their behavior is different. They’ve changed,” Dagny persisted. “Now I’m seeing them all the time, wandering around town on their own. Hardly ever in groups. And when I pass by, they stare at me. They’ll turn so their eyes follow me. And it’s not just the one I met, the one that tried to recover my memories. That was Mu, and they’re on the short side for their kind.”

“They probably have a hive mind,” Bryn said. “No mouths; they’re telepathic. Some aspens have thousands of trees in a single organism. It’d make sense that if one of the sentient plants knew something, they could all know it.”

Dagny frowned. “That’s kind of disturbing.”

“All of that does sound odd and maybe unsettling, but I don’t see why you think they’re connected to the eclipse,” I said.

“On the map of the area that had total darkness during the event, Merellä was dead in the center,” Dagny said. “Like the eye of the storm.” She whispered again when she said, “The Ögonen are the most powerful beings in the citadel. If they worked together, they could easily pull off something like this. Maybe the eclipse was a side effect of something, or maybe they did it as a distraction, or maybe they wanted the cover of darkness.”

She exhaled. “Or maybe they just wanted to blot out the sun.”

“But if the Ögonen are as all-knowing and all-seeing as you think they are, how did Eliana sneak in?” I asked. “How could there be such a breach in the security?”

“Maybe she was powerful enough or small enough to slide by?” Dagny shrugged.

“Or maybe they let her in,” Bryn suggested.

After that, Dagny changed the subject, saying she’d already talked about them too much, and we finished off the bowl of berries while talking about the woollies. Both Bryn and Dagny were surprisingly interested in hearing all about the baby elk I’d nursed after the eclipse.

We were all exhausted—especially me and Bryn—so we tucked in early, and I slept for fourteen hours straight.

Dagny woke me up the next day and told me that Elof had gotten the results from my and Bryn’s familial blood test. I got up, got ready, and the three of us headed down to the Mimirin.

When we got to the lab, Elof took Bryn back to his office. It was a small room attached to the back of the lab. I sat on a stool at one of the islands, and Dagny grabbed a stack of papers and started reading through them, highlighting numbers and dates for Elof’s research.