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I blinked, feeling crisp threads of air slip through my down, chilling my skin and making me shiver. I felt a little floaty, like I was drifting down. At the same time, I was hearing everything . I heard Eg nestling in mum’s down, and Mrs. Plithiver rustling near her, and I even managed to hear mum and da’s hunting cries as they caught prey.
It was strange—I could tell I was falling, something told me I was about to die, but it was so slow. And then it wasn’t. The ground rushed forward, faster than I had ever seen anything move. Not Mrs. Plithiver when Kludd cursed when our parents were away, not my mum and da as they raced through the forest when it was light out. And I felt myself slam into it. At least, I thought I did, but before I knew, everything turned dark.
And that was the last thing in my life that I fully understood.
“Well, what did you expect me to do? Leave a puddle of blood in the hollow and make it entirely obvious to my family before you and the High Tyto deem it ‘appropriate,’ or kick him out exactly as I did?! I didn’t think he would survive the fall.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Kludd dear. You know that.” The soothing voice contained a hint of suppressed annoyance mixed with pleasure. “I thought he would die too. He still might—you never know; this could go perfectly in your favor. And if he doesn’t, the High Tyto is always looking for new recruits.”
“With luck he’ll be a blade of grass after this,” Kludd muttered. “Look, Nyra, I don’t think you know my brother. He might not know me, but I know him. He’s a sniveling Guardian-lover who I just can’t see bending to a Worthy Cause.”
The mutterings…what do they mean—who is Nyra anyway?
I grasped at the words but couldn’t seem to understand them. I was trying—really trying—but something in the back of my mind told me that it wasn’t just that I didn’t have the full picture, it was that my thoughts weren’t moving right. They were broken, and I didn’t know why. And I was scared. And I still didn’t know what usurp really meant.
I moved and instantly regretted it. My head swam even though my eyes were closed, and my gizzard lurched. Oh, please. Please no. But what does usurp mean?
“He’s awake,” the one Kludd called Nyra whispered. “Just like we said earlier. It might work.”
“Only if he’s demented,” I thought I heard Kludd respond grouchily.
But I still don’t know what demented even means. Or usurp, for that matter.
I heard paper wings rustle and then fall—I think—before feeling something cool—a shaded hollow, maybe?—beneath my back. My head dropped before I thought it through, and I groaned as it sent a horrid stab of pain through my skull.
“Darling, are you alright?” Nyra’s honeyed voice slid through the glaring shards in my head.
“What does usurp mean?” I whispered.
“What?” Nyra asked. “What do you mean?”
“Okay, he’s officially nuts.” I heard Kludd declare. I chanced opening my eyelids a slit immediately squeezed them shut again. Bad choice, bad choice, bad choice…usurp.
It was silent until Nyra spoke again. “Are you alright?”
Is she talking to me? “Usurp,” I whispered again. “Please.”
“Umm, I think it means take over or something,” she responded hastily. “But are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” I wanted to know. I really did. But I just didn’t. It scared me. It’s supposed to not make you scared, not knowing, but it didn’t work.
“You’ve got a nasty bump on the back of your head,” Nyra noted this time. It sounded like she cared. Maybe.
Before she could say anything else, though, I felt a blanket behind my eyes, a searing hot blanket that hurt more than anything. I cried out because it hurt and what else was I supposed to do? It sounded like Kludd muttered something Mum and Da never would have let him say and then—
Blackness again. At least the blanket stopped burning.
Even now, as I look back on my life, it’s all choppy and strange, constantly changing like the Sea of Hoolemere. My memories are never really solid; sometimes I remember one, other times I come up with another.
Gylfie finds it strange. She’ll mention something, question me about something that I’ve told her. I’ll stare at her blankly and say, “I didn’t say that. That never happened. At least…I don’t think it did.”
After a few times, she stopped getting perturbed and instead of abandoning me, she simply accepted I didn’t get it all. I don’t know why she stays, but I’m glad she does.
My brain still hasn’t put itself back together—I don’t know why.
All I know for certain are the facts:
Nyra is bad.
Kludd is bad.
I have three weeks of on point memories.
I can’t trust anything that happened after I fell out of the tree.
I can trust Gylfie, Digger, Twilight, Eglantine, Otulissa, Ruby, Martin, and Ezylryb.
"Usurp" really does mean what Nyra said it did. And she did it to my mind.
The Legends are true.
The Guardians are real.
And everything else is a haze.