“I somehow doubt that,” I muttered.

Tristan smiled. “Have a little faith, Cécile.”

We took our leave from Pierre’s little house. “You come visit me when Tristan starts to bore you, my lady!” he called from behind us. I turned to wave goodbye and had to hurry to catch up to Tristan.

A laughing group of children carrying books ran by and we were treated to a chorus of “Good morning, my lord,” along with many curious glances in my direction.

“Where are they going?” I asked, smiling at their antics.

“To school,” Tristan replied. “We’ll start here.”

He stopped next to a low, circular stone wall that stood in the middle of the street.

I turned back around to watch the children, girls and boys, disappear into a stately building. “Truly? The girls, too?”

“Truly,” Tristan replied, but his attention seemed elsewhere. “They all attend until they’re ten, and then they start learning their respective trades. But look here, Cécile. This is the tree. Or part of it, rather.”

With a wistful backwards glance, I turned to see Tristan standing on the stone wall, staring at empty space. “Where?” I asked, looking into the circle. There was nothing but stone.

“Here.” He clasped my hand and pulled it forward. Immediately, it was enveloped in liquid warmth. I jerked my hand back. “I can feel something, but I can’t see it.” My eyes searched the empty air, trying to find a glimmer of what he was looking at. Reaching into the magic, I ran my hand up as high as I could reach, even on my tiptoes, but I could not grasp what was in front of me.

“No, I suppose as a human, you wouldn’t.”

“But trolls can see it?”

“See isn’t precisely the correct word – we can sense it’s there. Me better than most, because the magic is predominantly mine.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling more than a little let down. I’d thought he was going to show me something impressive, but all I’d done was warm my fingers in a column of magic. “I could see the magic girders in the mines – they were all lit up.”

Frowning, he let go of my hand and cracked his knuckles. “Good idea.” Reaching out, he touched the magic and it burst into silver light.

“God in heaven,” I whispered, watching in awe as light flooded in a stick-straight column up and up. It reached the rocks above and bloomed outward into arches that canopied across the sky. Column after column lit up until all of Trollus glowed and I could see that the rock was supported much like the ceiling of the throne room, just on a larger scale.

My head tilted backwards, I turned in an awe-struck circle until the sound of shrieking children caught my attention.

The troll children poured back out of the school, running in circles around us yelling, “Light show!” over and over again. Tristan laughed at them, and suddenly bursts of light in all different colors exploded in the sky, like fireworks, raining bits of magic over the city. Fantastical creatures made of light soared through the air, diving down to circle the children, who screamed in delight, jumping for cover and then crowing for more. They made their own little flying beasts and sent them chasing after Tristan’s red and gold serpent, which circled around and gobbled the children’s creatures down.