The Changelings Series, Book 1 by Christina Soontornvat Page A

wide face. “There you go, Izzy! You’ll feel better as soon as you get some gumroot in your belly. Being hungry is enough to make anyone upset. Go have a seat, and I’ll look around for some tipplewort. The two go together perfectly.”
    Izzy sat on a flat rock near the edge of the stream while Lug waded to the other side, searching the banks. He soon came back with his hands full of bundles of tender green shoots. They sat side by side, taking alternating bites of the gumroot and the juicy tipplewort, which fizzed in Izzy’s mouth like ginger ale.
    â€œGo easy on that stuff, now,” said Lug. “It can make you a little loopy if you eat too much of it at once.”
    Without the empty feeling in her stomach, Izzy did start to feel better. She looked up at her strange new companion. Her mind burned with a thousand questions for him. Where were they? How far was Avhalon? Did he know anything that could help her find Hen? But she worried those questions would make him ask questions of his own, and she wasn’t sure how to answer them. Her gut told her that she could trust Lug. After all, he’d helped her get away from the Unglers, who didn’t sound like anyone she’d want to meet.
    â€œLug, how do the Unglers set their traps if they can’t see?” she asked.
    Lug waggled his fingers over her face. “They’ve got horrid, clever hands. Almost like they have eyes on each fingertip. And when they’ve caught something”—he tapped his nose—“they can smell it a mile away.”
    Izzy shuddered at the description. “Have you ever been caught by them before?”
    â€œGoodness, no! If I had, I’d be—” Lug caught himself and turned to look at her. “Say, you must not be from the Edgewood if you don’t know about the Unglers.” His eyes scanned her clothes and backpack. “You some sort of vagabond peddler?”
    Izzy patted her hair to make sure her ears were still concealed. “I’m just…you know…traveling through.”
    â€œWhere to?”
    â€œTo…the city.” Izzy held her breath, hoping she sounded believable.
    â€œOh, to Avhalon? Splendid!”
    She exhaled with relief. “Have you been there?”
    â€œUsed to live there,” he said proudly. “Best days of my life were spent in Avhalon. Would love to be journeying there myself.” He looked up wistfully at the trees. “You must be going to the Apple Festival.”
    Izzy tried to remember what Marian had said about Avhalon. She couldn’t recall anything about a festival, but it sounded like a good enough reason to be on her way to a fairy city. “I’m going to…to meet my sister there.”
    â€œWhat lucky girls! This is the first festival they’ve had in years. But you shouldn’t be on the City Road, you know. It’s full of dangers. Not just the Unglers—bandits, bogies, all sorts of nasty things.”
    Izzy frowned. Faerie must have changed since Marian left, or she would have warned her about those things. “But someone once told me never to leave the path—I mean, the Road. She acted like if I didn’t stay on it, I’d never find my way out of the woods.”
    â€œOh yes, that’s true as well. Really the best thing is not to go into the Edgewood at all if you can help it.”
    â€œBut don’t you live here?”
    â€œSure.” He pointed upstream. “Just up there a ways.”
    â€œWell, how do you keep from getting lost?”
    â€œOh, that took ages. Still do get lost every now and then, especially in the winter when everything looks the same. But for now, it’s much easier getting around. See this gumroot? It only grows in certain areas of the forest. There’s lots of other plants like that—they only like to grow in certain places. So if I’m ever lost, I just look down, dig around a little, take a nibble of a