Keeper of the Lost Cities

Fitz, like Sophie, is an elf. Extremely handsome with sparkling aquamarine eyes, Fitz belongs to the powerful Vacker family, whose patriarch, Alden, assigns Fitz the task of finding Sophie among the humans. He can communicate through thoughts, and he and Sophie share conversations between their minds.

Many or most girls at school dream of dating him, and his family and friends keep him busy so that he and Sophie’s early closeness fades, to her disappointment. For much of the story, his absence provides an opportunity for Dex, a competitor for Sophie’s affections. Fitz really likes her, but it’s hard for him to show it. Fitz is Sophie’s first friend in the elf realm, an ongoing ally, and Sophie’s chief, if frustrating, love interest.

Alden Vacker is Fitz’s father. He’s “tall and lean, with the same vibrant teal eyes and dark wavy hair” as his son (5). Also like Fitz, Alden has especially strong telepathic powers. He works for the elf Council but chafes at their reluctance to respond to the growing threats posed by renegade elvin groups. He regards Sophie as a powerful asset in solving the threats against both humans and elves, but he also cares for her as an informal member of his family.

In early English and Scottish, Alden means “old friend,” and his role in Sophie’s life is as a caring advisor. (In children’s literature, Alden has a famous precedent, Mr. Alden, the grandfather of the Boxcar Children, who watches from the sidelines as his grandkids grow up and offers advice and resources to help them. Sophie’s Alden does much the same.) Alden’s position in the story is as a parental figure to Sophie who counsels and protects her.

The Council decides that Sophie must live with a family other than Alden’s, so he chooses Grady and Edaline Ruewen, the well-known managers of a nature preserve. Though once a popular couple that threw famous parties, the Ruewens lost their daughter, Jolie, who died tragically, and the couple, still grieving, stays out of the limelight. Still, they welcome Sophie into their home.

Her perilous life so frightens them with the possibility of losing yet another daughter that they cancel plans to adopt her. By the time they realize their mistake—Sophie is the best thing to happen to them since Jolie’s death—Sophie feels angrily alienated from them and welcomes an invitation to be adopted by the Vackers. It’s not until Sophie realizes how important they are to her that the conflict gets ironed out.

The Ruewen surname suggests sorrow: It contains the word “Rue,” for regret, and the entire name is a homonym for “ruin,” their emotional state after the death of their daughter. Elves rarely die, so the Ruewen’s loss is an unusual tragedy, one not well understood by other elves. Only Sophie, who has lost her own human family, truly understands their grief. Grady and Edaline are the centerpiece of Sophie’s efforts to rebuild a sense of family and belonging. 

With “strawberry blond curly hair and dimples” (173), Dex is a close friend of Sophie, and he also has a major crush on her. His parents, Kesler and Juline Dizznee, are considered a genetic “bad match,” and he’s one of triplets, a birth event considered a sign of inferiority. Dex resents Alden’s family, whom he considers snobs—they belong to the nobility, while his family doesn’t—and he’s loudly and sometimes rudely jealous of Sophie’s interest in Fitz.

Dex is fiercely loyal to Sophie. He helps her with her studies, fixes her iPod so she can keep using it in the elf realm, and risks his life for her when she’s kidnapped. Dex’s own quest is to escape the trap of being merely Sophie’s friend. His main functions in the story are as Sophie’s best friend and as a competitor for her affections.

Keefe is a Level Four student at Foxfire. He’s a rascal who often gets into trouble at school, but he’s smart, friendly, and good natured. A close friend of Fitz, Keefe loves to tease Sophie, but it’s his way of showing interest in her. His help proves critical to rescuing Sophie when she escapes her kidnappers. 

Keefe’s snooty and domineering father, Lord Cassius, appears once in the story, when he behaves in a snide and knowing manner toward Sophie and berates and intimidates Keefe. The reader thus learns that Keefe’s rebellious nature and poor grades are a reaction to his difficult father. Cassius’s name is shared by the Ancient Roman senator who engineered the assassination of Julius Caesar. His appearance makes clear that some powerful people in elvin society don’t like the idea of Sophie or her powers.

Keefe, on the other hand, greatly admires Sophie. As a supporting character, his main purpose is to cheer her up and to show that upper-level boys are attracted to her, to the point where they might vie with their own friends—in Keefe’s case, Fitz—for her attention.

The Black Swan is a secret, renegade group that takes issue with the elf Council’s reluctance to deal with the increasing dangers posed by human society. Named for “a symbol of something that shouldn’t exist but does” (326), the Black Swan at first appears to be evil, but it opposes another underground group that actually commits deadly acts such as setting fires near human cities. The group hid Sophie, a powerful Telepath, among the humans and placed in her mind super-secret information designed to come out at strategic moments. The Black Swan is the force that launches the plot and challenges Sophie; it’s either her chief antagonist or a possible ally against an even darker threat, the group that kidnaps Sophie and wants to destroy humanity.

Alden’s wife, Della, appears suddenly, then disappears and reappears as she walks, the light alternately bouncing off her and going through her. She’s a Vanisher, and Sophie is stunned by her looks: “Della’s beauty was like a force, pulling every eye to her as she tossed her long, chocolate brown hair and pursed her heart-shaped lips” (96). Della adopts Sophie as an informal member of her family. She’s a minor character who provides quiet but solid support for Sophie. 

Biana, Della and Alden’s daughter, is roughly Sophie’s age. She’s very pretty but, at first, shows a snarky attitude toward Sophie. Alden orders Biana to befriend the new girl—this brings Sophie to his house, where he can keep an eye on her—and the two girls hit it off and grow close. Though a minor supporting character, Biana is central to Sophie's challenges as she navigates the complex social world at her school.

Alvar, a grown son of Alden and Della, is a Vanisher like his mother. He visits the Vacker estate twice during the story. He’s openly skeptical of Alden’s belief in the Black Swan conspiracy. A very minor character in the first Keeper book, Vacker becomes important later in the series. 

Councillor Bronte is small “with cropped brown hair and sharp features” (58). He’s an Ancient, much older than the others, though he looks young, since elves don’t age. Bronte distrusts Sophie, an elf with unaccountably strange powers who has been raised by humans, and he regularly votes against her in Council. Sophie must study harder to overcome his threat to evict her from Firefox, and she must sidestep his attempts to have her punished for her various transgressions. Bronte thus serves as one of the story’s antagonists.

The Council consists of 12 elves who make important decisions about their society and sit in judgment when an elf breaks a law. Three Councillors interview Sophie as a candidate for admission to the Foxfire Academy. Councillor Kenric is “built like a football player, with wild red hair and a big, toothy grin”; Oralie “looked like a fairy princess—rosy cheeks and long golden ringlets” (57). They favor Sophie, but the third Councillor, Bronte, is against her. (See “Bronte” elsewhere in this section.)

Several other Councillors receive mention, chief among them Emery, who presides over the Council through his telepathic power. He manages the hearing about Sophie’s extraction of Quintessent light from the forbidden star Elementine, and he oversees her trial for violating the law against visiting the human Forbidden Cities. Emery is sympathetic to Sophie; under his guidance, the Council recognizes the value of her actions and twice lets her off the hook for illegal activities. Emery symbolizes the collected wisdom of both the Council and elvin society—which, despite tensions between social classes, displays a basic sense of decency and fairness.

Three men twice kidnap Sophie. They want the secret information buried in her mind, and they’re willing to torture her to get it. Sophie recognizes one of them as the jogger who tried to grab her from her human home. The ringleader has a “ghostly whisper” (420), treats her with contempt, and expresses pyrokinesis, the banned ability to start fires. 

The kidnappers want to destroy humanity; they oppose the renegade Black Swan group that’s trying merely to save humans from themselves. Sophie’s secrets are vital to either cause; thus, the kidnappers form the central antagonistic force arrayed against Sophie.

Mr Forkle is Sophie’s next-door neighbor in San Diego. A large man with “beady blue eyes,” he’s “old and smelled like feet and was always complaining about something. But he was the one who called 911 when she fell and hit her head” (41), and he protects her from the mysterious blue-eyed jogger who tries to kidnap her. Alden and Sophie figure out that Forkle must be a member of the Black Swan, and he served as her bodyguard during her time with the humans.

His apparent old age and strange smell come from a habit among some elves of eating ruckleberries. He may have put into Sophie’s mind some of the secrets she carries, along with protective abilities and powers. Mr. Forkle’s presence in Sophie’s life as her secret guardian makes him an important ally; he also serves as one of several clues set out by the author, hints that lead Sophie and Alden toward untangling the mysteries of the Black Swan and Sophie’s place in their plans.

The appropriately named Fosters raise Sophie thinking she’s their child when in fact, she was implanted into Mrs. Foster by the elf Prentice. Sophie’s short stature and brown eyes hide her elf heritage, and she’s raised with great love, caring, and affection by the Fosters. Her younger sister, Amy, “had the annoying little sister role mastered” (36), but Sophie loves her anyway.

Sophie must leave her human parents behind when she moves to the elf realm, and it’s not until she bonds affectionately with Grady and Edaline that she begins to recover the painful loss of her human parents’ loving protection. When she learns the Fosters are suffering from the fires that rage around their city, Sophie swings into action, light-leaps to the flames, collects a sample, and brings it back to the elf Council to prove the existence of a serious problem among humans being caused by renegade elves.

Foxfire teachers work under a tutoring system. Each class is a one-on-one encounter between a student and a teacher, called a Mentor.

Chief among Sophie’s Mentors is Tiergan, a master teacher of telepathy. He has “olive skin” and “pale blond hair” (90), along with a deep dislike of Alden and his family. Though himself a member of the nobility, Tiergan disdains their attitudes, and he resents Alden’s part in the torture and exile of Prentice, the person who hid Sophie among the humans. For years, he refuses to teach at Foxfire, but he relents when Sophie joins elvin society and needs his help with her extraordinary telepathic ability. He’s unable to penetrate her mind block, whereas she can read his thoughts with ease. He concludes that she’s the most extraordinary telepath he’s ever worked with. His connection to Sophie symbolizes her importance as an elf with powerful, even world-changing, abilities.

Other Mentors include Sir Conley, who teaches Elementalism, in which Sophie must learn how to control large natural phenomena such as lightning and tornadoes. Sir Astin, “a pale blond elf with a soft, whispery voice” (175), teaches Universe, an astronomy class with detailed lists of star names that Sophie masters instantly because of her photographic memory.

Lady Anwen leads “multispeciesial studies” (202). Lady Dara lectures in history. Lady Alexine coaches physical education, a hands-on subject, something Sophie is bad at. Her other such subject is Alchemy, where she manages, on a weekly basis, to explode or otherwise destroy materials, including the cape of her Mentor, Lady Galvin. Galvin finally flunks her, with reason, and this would cause Sophie to be expelled from Foxfire except that she manifests a new ability, Inflicting, which replaces Alchemy and permits her to continue at the school.

Foxfire’s principal, Dame Alina, is fond of her own image and works in a mirrored office. She gives Sophie several weeks’ detention for cheating on an Alchemy exam. She’s the book’s example of an administrator who’s full of herself but doesn’t realize that other’s aren’t impressed. She also serves as a warning that elves aren’t perfect.