Crossing the bridge confirmed it.
Oro thought this was the first time she was seeing the isle. Isla didn’t go so far as to pretend she was in awe of the floating city, but she did keep quiet.
They left the base of the lower village and walked into a set of woods. Isla couldn’t help but swallow. She wondered if the forests on Lightlark were like the ones on Wildling. Dangerous. Deadly. Even fools feared the forest. No one went inside without protection. It was why Oro’s rash had been so surprising. Plants could be as wild as animals. They could strike, maim, kill. Terra said that was why powerful Wildlings were so important. Only they could tame nature. Protect others from it.
But Isla wasn’t a true Wildling ruler. Plants did not obey her. She had many scars that had taken years of elixirs to fade to prove it.
What would the king think if they struck her?
Would he blame the fact that she was supposedly cloaking her powers, at his request?
Would he become suspicious?
Luckily, when she entered the woods, nothing happened. The trees stood tall, like everything else on Sky Isle, like the people themselves. They bore sky-colored berries the size of buttons and wore dandelions up their branches, like they had gotten caught on bits of cloud. The temperature dropped quickly, and Isla wished for a cape, one of the ones big enough to wrap around herself. She thought of the king’s secret. It did get noticeably colder away from the endless hearths and fires on the Mainland.
Oro didn’t consult a map, but he walked assuredly, the island seeming to have a gravitational pull just for him. “I’ve identified two places on Lightlark that have an unusual number of the plants you indicated in the garden,” he finally said. “One here. One on the Mainland.”
The forest ground turned into a steep incline, and they climbed it in silence. The king could have flown, she knew. It would have saved a lot of time. There must be a reason he wasn’t. He had alluded to searching for the heart for over half a century. Perhaps he had flown over every inch of the island and had still been unsuccessful.
This time, it seemed he wanted to be thorough.
Finally, the hill crested, and Isla stared down into a valley full of purse plants. Relief was cool down her back. This variety of nature wasn’t dangerous. She would be relatively safe here.
But there was a new concern. There were thousands, taking up every inch below, from mountain to mountain. Miles and miles. Searching the entire area as carefully as they needed to, on foot, would take days. “How will we know we’ve found it?”
“You’ll know. The power it radiates is unmistakable. But only detectable from a very close distance.” Sothatwas why he hadn’t abandoned her to fly the length of the valley in minutes.
Isla didn’t trust her ability to sense the heart solely from its power. Not when she didn’t have any of her own.
“Will it ... look special?” she asked.
The corners of his lips turned down, their favorite placements. “Yes, Wildling,” he said. “It will lookspecial.”He turned to the left without giving her a second glance. “I’ll start over there.”
Good. At least they wouldn’t be searching side by side.
She looked back into the valley and swallowed. There really was a lot of land to cover. It all looked the same too. It would be easy to mix up where she had and hadn’t looked, especially over days. She needed a strategy.
Isla found a pattern in the plants, rows that weren’t clear cut but were easy to spot once she knew their shape. Now, she just needed markers to indicate the areas she had already searched. Her eyes took in the land, looking for a color that stood out. A different sort of flower, maybe. A special type of vine.
But there was nothing. The plants all looked the same. Even the ones in the forest behind her were too similar in shade.
Shewas the only thing that stood out in the entire valley.
Isla sighed and reminded herself this was the best way to gain access to the Sun Isle library before ripping the bottom of her favorite shirt.
There. That would have to do.
She was efficient. After four hours, Isla had covered a good chunk of her area. She had developed a system. Purse plants opened when their tops were stroked. It took a few long moments for their leaves and vines to uncurl, and a couple of more seconds to get a good look inside before they closed again. At her fastest, she was able to get to five a minute. Once she was finished with a row, she marked it by tying a strip of fabric to its last plant.
By the time Oro came to collect her, Isla had looked inside over a thousand purse plants. And her shirt had been reduced to ribbons. Before, it had nearly reached her knees. Now, it ended far above her navel.
The king looked horrified. She grinned, reveling in the fact that she looked as wild as he believed her to be, covered in dirt, her hair curled around her face, clothes cut to pieces.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
She crossed her arms across her chest. “What Ididwas cover this entire area,” she said, motioning toward a large grove sectioned off by her fabric.
The king’s eyes briefly darted to the spot she had indicated. He didn’t look impressed.
