“I can help you in other ways.” My voice trembled as I pleaded with him, talking fast, hoping anything would stick. “I have other skills. I can read six languages: Swedish, Inuit, French, Norse, Tryllic, and English. I can lift five times my body weight. I can—”

Indu looked sharply at me, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. Suddenly animated with a fresh intensity, he rushed to my bedside and I flinched, pulling as far away from him as I could. Behind, over his shoulder, a wilting sorgblomma sat in a beaker, its golden yellow petals turning brown and shriveling.

“You can read Tryllic?” Indu asked, close enough that I could smell the death on his breath.

“Ulla?” Elof asked, sounding concerned, and he put his hand on my arm to get my attention.

I blinked, the bright, lush plant coming back into focus in front of me. “The Älvolk already had the sorgblomma. When we were there.”

“I thought they might,” Elof said. “That’s why I brought you here.”

I looked over at him in confusion. “Why?”

“The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, and the sorgblomma has a very unique scent,” he explained.

“Yeah, it definitely does,” I said under my breath. “So you want me to . . . just try to remember?”

He nodded. “Go ahead.”

I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply through my nose—

—the häxdoktor’s room again, but this time the straps were off. Indu wasn’t there, it was only me and Lemak, with a row of wilting sorgblomma in the glass beakers, more of them now, their dead petals littering the apothecary table.

“These are what he wants you to work on today,” Lemak said, handing me a narrow tube of paper.

Slowly, I unrolled the scroll, and I saw the jagged letters—

—a screaming shot of pain exploded in my skull and down my spine. I clamped my hands to my ears as tightly as I could.

24

Walls

Once the pain passed and I had caught my breath, I tried again. I breathed in the scent of the flowers, the memory resurfaced—Lemak handed me the scrolls but when I tried to remember it, the pain came back again, only worse this time.

My brain felt like it was going to explode, and I pressed my hands to my head, as if I could hold it in. I collapsed to my knees and painfully began to retch. Once I stopped, I wiped my mouth with the back of my arm, and sat back on my heels, gasping for breath.

Elof’s hand was on my shoulder and his voice low in my ear. “Ulla, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just . . . I can’t remember. There’s a wall of pain I can’t get through surrounding the memory.”