You know what’s central when you’re searching a triangle of earth that has one point in France, another off the coast of Greece somewhere, and the third in Egypt? Somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Which is where I’m at, rocking on a boat watching over Loki. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like a little tiny boat. Nope, it is a full-fledged yacht. I ain’t asking where they got it from and I’m not gonna turn it down. I had them place him in the shade and I’m currently laying in the sun.

I know what you’re thinking, but honestly I’m hiding my eyes behind the sunglasses and fighting the urge to sob. Every other thought is of my family, Mr. Conall, and my friends. Some small part of me wants to say they got what they deserved, those people who shunned and shamed me, but the rest cries for my mother and father, Mr. Conall’s, who I loved dearly, and even Ms. Moira’s, who barely tolerated my presence, faces in that basket, frozen in terror, is burned into my brain, and I weep for them. The tears slide out from the bottom of the dark glasses. Every time I feel like I get myself under control, I think of my family of friends in the Quarter. I’m positive they were dead long before the flooding.

God, I’m so damn mad. Pissed at the whole situation. The death and destruction and the loss of Loki. Hell, how about the loss of three fourths of the world’s population and most of the land. I’m pissed that Gaia refuses to answer. I have to wonder if this was her plan all along. Let them all kill each other and kill most of us, and suddenly there’s no more pollution or loss of species. Although I don’t know if that’s true. Millions of animals probably died too.

I want to rage at someone, but there’s no one to rage at and so I sit unable to do a thing, just waiting. I’ve never been good at waiting. Now would be a good time to have a vision, but of course I’m not.

“Come on. Just one vision. Just let me see Atlantis,” I shout to the heavens, to anyone who might be left listening. Nothing. I released the breath I was holding. I feel stupid for the amount of hope I had in that moment. I wonder if my power is gone now that she’s gone, and Gaia might’ve taken hers back. “What if I promise we’ll leave? Like the others were to go to the other realm or another planet? What if I try to convince the others to do the same? Would you help me then?” Silence.

Would I do that? Would I be willing to leave everything to get him back? I know the answer before I finish the question. There’s nothing left for us here, not for any of us, so yes I would do that. The timer starts to beep and I swing my legs over the side of the lounge chair, pushing up. I hesitate for a second before I move to the side. I watch as his eyes flick from side to side under his lids. They better get here soon. The thought had barely left my mind when they all appeared.

“How is he?” Aislin asks.

“The same, but his eyes were moving quite a bit a moment ago.” I sit on the edge of his chair and placed his hand in mine. I feel both Nestor’s and her power ramp up as they draw on the others and once again push him deep under. “How long is it safe to do this? How long can he go without food and no water?” I lock eyes with Morrigan.

“We have a while yet. And I suppose we could do an IV of some sort. Our bodies are just like yours.” She looks at Khonsu and Hecate for confirmation, and after a second, they nod.

“So nothing yet?” Everyone shakes their head. “Out of curiosity, how many of you here plan to withdraw like the others?”

Asger and Ylva raise their hands, which surprises me, but I’m not sure why, considering how close he was to Yggdrasil. “Us.” Nestor’s parents’ reply draws a startled look from him. Emma looks at Jason and then at Aislin, whose face falls.

“With Hades and Persephone both gone, we are discussing who should take over the underworld. There are many still trapped there and those in the Elysian fields.” Tears pool in my friends’ eyes, both hate the idea.

“I only asked because I had tried to bargain with Gaia. I offered to make sure Loki and I left if she would help. I won’t lie, I also offered to try to convince you all to leave also. I had the idea that maybe that was what she wanted all along.” I can see from their faces that some are not shocked by my line of thought.

“I will gladly go to Valhalla and stay there, never to return to this realm, if she will help my father.” Raven glances at Sean and Michael, both nodding in agreement.

I can tell Kai would gladly take Aislin to the Vanishing Isle and stay there. The only one I’m not sure about is Nestor, and of course where he goes, Mimi will follow. Speaking of, I have not seen her in days. “Where is Mimi?”

“She is in the Rocky Mountains. We were able to get many of the first people high into them. She has stayed to help them survive.” I nod, understanding his reluctance. “I can hear the people that are left calling constantly, because they are, for lack of a better word, travelers now with no homes.” It is his explanation for why he will not stay away.

“Don’t worry. I don’t think it would’ve made a difference anyway. She never answered.” I lay down beside the man that I love, resting my head on his chest and listening to his heartbeat. Closing my eyes, I pretend he is merely sleeping.

Exhaustion over takes me as the others talk quietly, marking places off the map. Blinking slowly as I try to raise my arm, I find it is asleep, dead as a doornail. It’s dark, late night, and the stars shine brightly like diamonds. I wonder if the sky is already clearing? His warmth is at my back, and I realize someone, Michael or Sean, I’m sure, had pushed another lounger next to the one I had shared with Loki. Good thing since half of my body is currently on it. Sliding slowly over, I try not to disturb him before remembering I can’t.

I climb to my feet as pins and needles shoot through my arm. Shaking it, I try to stop them. Looking around, I see no one and listening closely, I hear the sound of the water slapping against the hull of the boat. I glance at him once more before I start inside, my bladder close to bursting. As I enter the main room, I see my name scrawled on a piece of paper. Michael’s masculine handwriting draws me like a beacon.

‘Sister,

We let you sleep. I stayed through the first cycle and when they returned to treat Loki again, I left to search for your salvation. We’ve been back once more. You needed the rest and now you need to eat. Raven found all the ingredients for your favorite, and it’s in the fridge. Heat it up and eat. Check your watch. We should be back soon. Hopefully with news.

Meow.’

The last makes me laugh, which was his point. I start toward the refrigerator but stop when my bladder reminds me it’s been at least twelve hours since I’ve peed. Right, bathroom first.

I brush my teeth while I’m in there and then make a beeline for the food as my stomach rumbles like a grizzly. My mouth waters while I wait for the microwave to ding. I have no idea how Raven found andouille sausage but I’m going to kiss her when I see her. Finally, I pull the bowl, steaming and hot, out, burning the tips of my fingers before I can set it on the counter. I pull open drawers looking for a towel to hold it with and then grab a spoon. Aislin or Emma must’ve made the gumbo, because it’s perfect.

Carrying it and a cold beer, I return to Loki, stifling a sigh when I see there’s no change. Yes, the fact that he still “sleeping” is good, but I always have that moment of hope to see his gray eyes watching me closely. I leaned against the rail, scooping rice and sausage into my mouth, watching him and the sea behind him.

I finish the food quickly, scraping at the bowl to get every last bit. I wonder if we do leave here, will food made by magic be the same? I doubt it. Or maybe this was made by magic, who knows? Sitting my bowl down, I raise the bottle to my lips and tilt my head back, drinking deeply. My head still tipped back when they all appear. I immediately noticed the panic on certain faces.

“What?”

“Why did you move the boat?” Nestor demands. Narrowing my eyes, I look at them all.

“You’re kidding me right? I did not move the boat. I don’t know how to move the boat.” Technically, that’s probably not true. I grew up on boats. “I only woke up twenty minutes or so ago. Long enough to pee, heat up the food, read the note, and eat. I just set the bowl down.”

“The anchor was set, so you should have been in the same spot. It’s been in the same spot since we put you there, and now you’re almost four thousand miles away.” I frowned, confused and worried.

“How did you find me, us?” I ask.

Kai answers, “Aislin felt you, and we followed that feeling until it got stronger.” As he answered, Ylva and Asger appear.

Looking around, I try to make out anything in the darkness. How did we get here? Who brought us here? I shake my head, not knowing the answers. Asger speaks next. “We searched for miles. There’s no danger here.” He looks at me, eyes narrowed while he chews on his bottom lip. He has an idea and crossing to me, he leans down, and I find myself breathing in his scent. It reminds me of a fall fire. “You did ask her for help,” his low voice rumbles quietly into my ear. My eyes widened as I look into his face.

“Do you think?” He shrugs at my question. “Sean, where are we on the map?” I turned slowly from the first Guardian to my friend. He walks to the map and leans over it, and I wait in silence while he figures it out. When he begins to straighten, I move to the side and lean down to look where he’s pointing. My mouth falls open when I see where he’s pointing -- almost four thousand miles, taking me from the Mediterranean to right off the coast of France. I start to talk, but the alarms begin to go off, which means it’s just been four hours since they left me. I let them do what they have to.

“You do realize there’s no way I could’ve gotten us four thousand miles? I don’t have magic like that.”

“That’s not exactly true.” I spin around and look at Raven. “You do remember manifesting guns and forcing Sean and Michael both to change?” I open and close my mouth but I can’t deny what she said although I really don’t think I did this.

“If I did this, I did it in my sleep.” I glanced at Asger. “What if she’s helping us? Like, not showing us exactly but getting us closer. Morrigan, you said there was a place in France.”

She shakes her head. “I searched there but I didn’t find anything. Not even the tiniest trace of power that felt like hers.” Turning back around, I look at the map once more. The city she searched is northeast of where we are now along the coast. The map is not going to help. It doesn’t show us anything from thousands of years ago. I let my forehead drop to the table, the map blurry and unfocused right beneath my eyes. I stay that way until Sean bumps me, then I slowly begin to rise.

And there in tiny writing that suddenly comes into focus, I see a word. A word that makes my heart pound. I straighten and whip around, locking my gaze on Asger. “I need a ride.” He nods and holds out his arms. I’m running and leaping into them before anyone else can speak. He shifts while I’m airborne and I land in a huge claw.

Looking down, I grin at the shocked looks on their faces. “It’s just east of here. You’ll know when you see it. I just hope it’s not underwater.” When we finally see it and land, I turn around in circles looking. He’s shifted and he also looks around. “This is it. This should be underwater.” He nods his head.

“She protected it. Yggdrasil might not have known this would help or maybe she did. Maybe she just hoped it would. Maybe she just thought we’d find another way or Loki would be strong enough. But Gaia, she knew somehow,” Asger insists.

We are still standing in the same spots when the others arrive. Loki materializes, still on the lounger. If this wasn’t such a shitty situation, I would laugh.

“She brought us here and she protected it. The tree is here, and whatever the green thing is, it is here too. We just have to find it.”

Everyone starts to search, even though we don’t really know what we’re looking for. “You have noticed all the trees around here, right?” No one bothers to answer. Raven punches Sean on the shoulder, whispering at him feverishly.

“Hey, I found an information plaque thing,” Emma calls out. “It says this whole area, from here to that city Morrigan talked about, was all controlled by ancient Celts. That’s weird, right? It also says some of them still live in the mountains. They are the Basque, and apparently no one knows where they came from. That’s interesting.”

I think about what she said -- an entire culture of people that are known to have been here and in Scotland and Ireland, but no one knows where they came from. It’s also strange. All the stories of Atlantis say it sank and all the people were lost. Aislin’s still looking at Emma, and I know that face. She has an idea or she’s remembered something. I jog over, stopping when I get to her side. Emma shakes her head, and we both wait silently for her to work it out.

Shifting her weight from foot to foot with a frown on her face, she looks from one end of the long field to the other, her eyes moving slowly. Her steps are slow as she moves to the middle of the stones, which are unlike any that I’ve ever seen, even on the Internet. They are not a circle instead they were four rows two football fields long perfectly straight. They have no top stones. I can’t even imagine what they were for. The field is surrounded by very old trees. They are not huge like the oaks we are used to, but you can tell they have been here for a very, very long time.

I’m just starting to fidget when she slowly turns around and looks at us. “Let’s say, for argument sake, Atlantis wasn’t an island. But when it disappeared, the only way people could explain it being gone was to say it was an island and it sank. What if though instead, it was just the city? What do we know about these ancients? We know they did not want to die out. We know they came here trying to figure out a way to live on. We know also that they interacted with the humans that were here. One, we have stories of Atlantis that we now know who those people were. Two, Yggdrasil told me the whole reason she destroyed the city and all of her people was the effect they were having on us. We also know she chose not to kill herself for fear of Loki’s clan coming here with her people’s power.”

“Okay, I agree with all that, but what does that mean for us now?” I asked her, impatient with the history lesson.

“I have this picture in my mind of what the city would look like. The grandeur. These people thought themselves gods. I’m saying she didn’t sink an island, she sank the land. She buried the city. Why else put herself in a tree? With Gaia’s help, even if the tree was sunk with the city, it would grow, the roots spreading across the earth and the canopy coming up here somewhere.” She once again looks the length of the field and so do I. Looking while applying her theory.

“So these four lines of stones. Four lines of stones.” I paced back and forth between each line, looking up and down the rows. They are perfectly in line. They thought themselves gods. Stopping between the second and third row, I turned and looked east first and then pivot looking west. “It’s a great hall. A great long fucking hall that they made people walk down until they reach their, what, thrones?” I look over my shoulders at them, and they’re both nodding slowly. “So if you were the last, you had killed everyone else, and you planned to stick around just in case anyone else showed up, where would you wait?”

We all look to the west of the rows and even from the distance we are from it, we can see the trees fan out in half circle. I start running and I hear their pounding steps behind me. Our race draws the attention of the others, who all join our mad dash to the throne. I stop as I break through the last stones. There, right where I would put a throne, is a small tree, so unassuming no one would ever imagine it held an ancient being full of magic.

“That’s her.” I spin, grinning at them. The girls grin back, but the others, not so much.

“That tiny olive tree? You think that was Yggdrasil?” This is the first time Michael’s ever really doubted me, and I just stare at him for a moment.

“It’s not tiny, you Idjit. That’s just the top part, and the rest is however far down she buried the city.” They all look around, and I watch as their imaginations build it in their heads and slowly their lips begin to curve. Now we just have to figure out where the stone is. In the painting, it’s leaning against it but let’s get real, it’s not going to be leaning against. So if you are an ancient being who has one thing that could stop something your people started, where would you keep it? Especially if you just turned yourself into a tree.

Aislin has another thought, and it excites her. “You know how sometimes when they find cypress out the swamp and they start cutting it to make the slabs?” Emma and I nod, the others just listen. “Well sometimes they found stuff inside it. You know, something the tree had grown around.” She leans towards us a little and speaks slowly. “You know, hidden.” Every set of eyes lock on the tree.