The Search for the Eoz Potion

17. Aileen Pratt

After Josef left her and went back to the others, Hailey pulled from her pocket the map he had given her back at the tree house. She was disheartened by what Josef said about the potion, but that feeling inspired her to figure out the mystery of its location on her own. She sat studying the map, intent on figuring out where the Eoz Potion might be. From Capital City, she estimated where they were. They had come so far from the portal according to the map, but it seemed like it had all happened so fast. At the far southwest corner of the map she saw The Welcoming Forest and the portal. The Capital City seemed so far away from there, like it would have taken days of walking. Then she remembered that a good portion of the journey had been traveled by air and she wished she could find one of the griffins to help them now. They had dispersed deep into the garden, however, when the prison collapsed. Judging from where the Octahedrill Fields were located on the map, she figured they were somewhere to the northeast of the city headed toward the Yllop River which ran across the entire northern border of the Garden.

Looking at the map, Hailey tried to figure out anything she could about where the potion might be located. It could have been anywhere in the Garden, and the thought overwhelmed her. She noticed two parts of the map that seemed to have very little detail, unexplored regions of the Garden perhaps. Both were on the other side of the river. One was back toward the forest, and one was in the direction they were now heading. It was labeled as the Quicksand Field, and it was just on the other side of the Yllop River. She thought for sure this could not be where the potion was hidden. It looked too dangerous, but more importantly, she didn't think the Prince would have been able to hide a potion in the middle of a field of quicksand without falling through himself.

The other section was labeled No Man's Land on the map. It was at the complete other end of Yllop, and it looked to Hailey as though it would be the perfect hiding spot for the Eoz Potion. It was cut off from everything by the river, it was an unexplored territory, and judging by the map at least, it was completely empty. In her self assurance, she did not realize that all the same things could be said about the Quicksand Field, but the more she studied the map, the more she became convinced that the potion was hidden in No Man's Land, that the SG had led them all the way to the wrong part of Yllop, and that freeing Tellis was a distraction as it had taken them to the center of the Garden, far from where she now believed the potion was hidden.

As she looked at the map, Claire came over to check on her.

"Hailey," she said sympathetically, "I know this is all so hard to understand, and I'm impatient too. But we have to trust them. They know this land. We don't."

"Look at this map," Hailey said, not paying any attention to her. "The potion has got to be here."

Hailey pointed to the section called No Man's Land. She explained her whole thought process of why that had to be the place where the potion was hidden, and despite Claire's skeptical look, she became more and more convinced that she was right as they talked it through. She gave Claire the offer to come with her. This was not about leaving her. In fact, she wanted Claire to come with her, she just did not trust the SG. Claire insisted, though, that it was too dangerous to go off on their own, that she felt Josef, Zack, and Tellis were their only hope for finding the potion. They went back and forth for a while before they heard a sound in the bushes around them.

It sounded like a person, and it made Hailey think of her conversation with Josef about his dad, how he could be out in the Garden somewhere after the fall of the prison. She looked over at him and saw a look of anticipation on his face as he carefully moved toward the source of the sound. His face changed when he saw who it was. The person who emerged from the bushes was a young woman, clearly not his father. So there was a certain sense of disappointment, but it was combined with an excitement of a different kind. This was not the person he was hoping it would be, but fate may have delivered him something even better.