Hidden Power by Tracy Lane Page B

dropping his tool to the ground and racing toward the road just outside the farm.
    His daughter looked pale and hungry, hair limp and face drawn from her travels. “Where have you been, child?” he asked, grabbing Boer’s reigns and helping her down off her trusty steed. “Your mother and I have been worried sick.”
    Aurora leaned against his hip as he led her inside. “I was out searching for your friend, Lutheran,” she explained as he poured her into a wooden seat at the breakfast table. “I… I’m sorry, father. I got lost and never did locate his cabin.”
    Hilliard shook his head, chuckling. “I hope you weren’t out all night looking for his cabin, Aurora,” he said. “He’s just a friend who could help me refurbish the barn. I’ll find him on my own.”
    As his wife, Majorca, fussed over the girl with a cup of tea and a plate of fresh biscuits smothered in salt flower butter, Aurora smiled weakly up at him. 
    “The seamstress in town told me where to find his cabin, father,” she explained, slipping her knapsack over the edge of her chair. “It’s at the edge of Wandering Woods.”
    Majorca gasped, wagging a finger at her careless daughter. “Wandering Woods? Is that where you’ve been all this time? And where did you get that fancy new jacket? I thought you were going to get clothes for learning?”
    Aurora looked at her sheepishly. “It is for learning,” she insisted, before turning back to Hilliard. “And I wasn’t in the Wandering Woods the whole time. I went… I went to Mage City.”
    Hilliard nearly choked on his own sip of fresh herbal tea.
    “Ythulia?” he asked, shaking his head and looking at Majorca’s worried face, trying not to express his own sudden dismay. “Aurora, you’re hallucinating. Ythulia is a myth, just like the great Crystal City after which it’s named.”
    “But it’s not,” Aurora insisted, standing abruptly and pacing in front of the wood burning stove while waving her hands wildly as she wove a most extraordinary tale. “It’s real, and I saw it. I went up into it, in a Crystal Car that went all the way to the top. And there were mages there, with great flowing hair and stiff beards and flowing robes and wise eyes. And… and…”
    Hilliard pressed her shoulder gently, easing her back down into her chair. “Aurora, only mages, squires and those with the Sight can see Ythulia. You must be joking with your old man. And it’s too late in the morning to try that, young lady,” he warned, only half-jokingly.
    “But I’m not,” she pleaded, looking up at him earnestly. “I was there, honest. I looked down and saw the ground, and looked around and saw through walls. I… I… even met a boy, Kayne, who was being trained as a squire…”
    His daughter’s voice fading, Hilliard helped Aurora up out of her chair and guided her gently into her bedroom, where she slumped promptly onto her bed. 
    “My pack,” she insisted, calling for her bag resting on the back of her chair. He grabbed it for her, noting its sudden heaviness. 
    Was it packed with new clothes ? he wondered to himself, tempted to sort through it after she slept but knowing what trouble it might cause if she found out. 
    “What did you pick up in Mage City?” he joked instead, lying it next to her as she cradled it protectively. “A bag of crystals? A pile of priceless gems?”
    She mumbled something beneath her breath but, before he’d closed her bedroom door, was already breathing heavily with the weight of sleep pressed upon her. Hilliard joined his wife at the breakfast nook, grateful his daughter was home but alarmed by her tall tales.
    “She’s never been one to tell stories like that,” he said to his wife, gripping a cup of lukewarm tea with both hands.
    “Maybe it’s just the exhaustion talking,” Majorca reasoned, cleaning up the table except for the mug she noticed he wasn’t drinking out of. “Lack of sleep will do that to people.”
    He shrugged, kissed her,