by Resa Nelson
Benzel stared hard at the Scalding. “I trust what I hear coming out of her mouth with my own ears. All we got was a message claiming to be from her. I’m here to get the truth.”
They sailed in silence for the rest of the journey.
When the ship landed at a newly-built dock on the island, Benzel scoured the small group of people awaiting its arrival but didn’t see his sister.
“Where’s Uncle Kjartan?” A tall woman stepped forward and stood before the ship as it bobbed in place while the Scalding moored it.
The familiar sound of her voice startled Benzel. “Snip?”
She paced. “And my cousins. Where are they?”
Benzel hurried to climb out of the ship and onto the dock with Grey-Eyes on his heels. With hope in his heart, he stood in front of the woman and said, “Snip? Is that you?”
Grey-Eyes wedged between Benzel’s legs.
The young woman brushed past him and took the Scalding who had piloted the ship to task. “What’s wrong with you? I told you not to come back without my family!” She hesitated and looked back. “Is that a wolf?”
Benzel stared at the young woman in earnest and studied the color of her eyes, the angle on the bridge of her nose, and the slightly crooked pattern of her teeth.
It’s Snip. It has to be her. But she looks so much older!
Benzel interceded and swept her up in his arms. “Snip! It’s me. It’s Benzel.” He held her tight, thankful to find her alive and unharmed.
Grey-Eyes circled them and howled with excitement.
The young woman hung limp in his embrace and kept her arms to herself.
Surprised, Benzel loosened his grip.
She pushed him away.
Grey-Eyes whined and backed away.
A lump tightened in Benzel’s throat. He struggled to speak. “Snip? Isn’t that you?”
The young woman’s eyes lit with fury. “Of course, it’s me!” She jabbed an accusing finger at him. “You’ve been gone so long you can’t recognize me.”
The Scalding edged away from his boat as if seeking safety elsewhere.
Still stunned by his sister’s anger, Benzel said, “I had to. I had no choice.”
Snip spat out an angry laugh. “No choice? Did someone put a sword to your throat?”
“Not exactly,” Benzel muttered. “You don’t understand. There was something I had to do. Something I couldn’t turn my back on.”
“So, you turned your back on me instead.” Tears welled in Snip’s eyes. “Choice is stronger than blood. And you chose to walk away from me.”
She’s right.
The wolf paced between Benzel and Snip, staring at them as if ready to protect Benzel but sensing he shouldn’t. The more anxious their voices became, the more distressed the animal appeared. Finally, Grey-Eyes ran away toward the tower.
Benzel took a lunging step after the wolf, but then let him go. If he had to choose between Grey-Eyes and Snip, Benzel knew he must choose Snip.
Benzel remembered the last day he saw her, when Snip begged him to stay. But he didn’t see what else he could have done.
If I’d stayed in Hidden Glen, I would have shirked the responsibility I had toward the Southlands and the selection of the new dragonslayer. What if I had offended them? What if the Southlands had been so angered that they refused to assign a new dragonslayer to our region? What if the Southlands had removed all dragonslayers from the Northlands?
“I did walk away from you,” Benzel said with new determination. “And I’m sorry for that. But I’m here now.” He stepped close and placed his hands on her shoulders. Benzel lowered his voice so only she could hear. “I’ll take you back home right now. All we have to do is hop on this ship, and I’ll sail us out of here.”
Snip wrenched free from his grip. Her face twisted in astonishment. “Leave? Didn’t you get my message? I asked for help.”
“And I’m offering it.” Benzel gestured to the gleaming gold tower standing a short distance behind her. “This isn’t your home. You don’t belong here. Let’s get away from these people.”
“These people?” Quiet anger filled Snip’s voice.
Benzel whispered. “The Scaldings.”
“I’m one of them. I married a Scalding.”
“You don’t have to stay married. You can end it whenever you like.”
“End it?” Snip took a step back. “Why should I do that? My husband—a Scalding—loves me. He stands by my side.” She crossed her arms. “He’s never abandoned me like you have.”
Benzel felt more desperate by the moment. “Snip. Please!”
Snip lifted her chin in defiance. “You’ve lost my trust.”
Her words landed hard against his stomach like a punch. Speechless, all Benzel could manage was to shake his head in disbelief.
Snip stared across the sea toward the mainland. “They really didn’t come? Just you?”
Benzel’s chest heaved as he fought back a sob.
Snip grunted like the Scalding who had brought Benzel to Tower Island in the small ship. “Then I suppose I’m stuck with you.”
“How can I make things right?” Benzel said.
“Help me. Help the Scaldings.” Snip pointed at the tower behind her, surrounded by a settlement of new houses made of stone and thatched roofs. “This is our home, claimed in the proper way according to Northlander law. Something attacks us at night. It’s murdering people in their beds. It’s creeping through the night, but no one can see it. None of this makes any sense—we’re on an island, and the only people here are Scaldings.”
The strangeness that Snip described captured Benzel’s attention. He wanted to see for himself. “Can you show me?”
* * *
Benzel stood in a small room inside the tower. Rusty brown stains of blood covered the rough stone walls and floor. A sleeping palette made of muslin stuffed with cotton lay shredded on top of a bench by the wall. Dried blood stiffened the remnants, looking more red than brown. A peculiar stench made the back of Benzel’s throat feel sour. “What am I looking at?”
Snip pointed at the shredded palette. “That’s where we found the first one killed.”
Benzel turned to her in surprise. “You saw the body?”
She nodded but kept staring at the cotton remains. “Everyone saw it.”
Who are these Scaldings that they’d expose a young girl to such a terrible sight?
“One of my husband’s uncles claimed this room. He’s a senior member of the Scaldings and one of the leaders.” Snip paused and frowned. “Rather, he was.”
“What does everyone make of this? What do you think happened?”
Snip took a few steps and pointed at three long claw marks on a wall. “Dragon.”
Benzel joined her side and examined the marks. The marks began high above Benzel’s head and ran the length of a man’s height. He reached up and could barely touch the place where the marks ended. “No man did this. Not unless he stood on top of another man’s shoulders.” He spread his fingers wide apart so each mark would fall in the space between them. “And the marks are too far apart to be made by a dragon.”
Snip grumbled. “How would you know?”
“Because I saw one, Snip. Days after I left Hidden Glen, a dragon attacked me and Sinchetto. It killed him.” Benzel hesitated when he realized he’d spoken a half-truth. But he saw no need to confuse the situation by explaining why he’d killed Sinchetto. “That’s why I’ve been gone so long.” Once more, he stretched the truth. “When a dragonslayer is killed and a man witnesses that death, Southlander law requires him to be part of the process that chooses the dragonslayer to replace him. That’s what I’ve been doing.”
Snip’s voice cracked with disbelief. “For years.”
“It’s complicated,” Benzel said. “Factors delayed the process.”
“Factors.” Snip’s tone sounded dry enough to cause a drought.
“Yes. But those factors made it possible for me to learn how to fight against
men and fight against dragons.”
“Oh, so you’re the new dragonslayer?”
“No.” Benzel jabbed his finger at the marks. “But I’ve seen the kind of claw marks that dragons make, and this isn’t like them.”
Snip paused and stared at the marks. “How so?”
Seeing her question as the first sign of hope that she could forgive him, Benzel swelled with confidence. “Dragon paws are the size of both of mine when I hold them out to you, like I’m asking you to put something in my hands.” He illustrated his point. “Now imagine five claws on a paw that size. Think about how close together they’d be.” Keeping his hands next to each other, he held them under the claw marks. “See how wide apart these marks are. They’re too far apart.”
Snip studied the claw marks on the wall. “And there are only three marks, not five.”
Inspired, Benzel walked over to the shredded remains of the cotton sleeping palette and examined it. “Look, Snip. You can see where those same three claws ripped through the bedding. But I see no evidence of five claws here.”
Snip walked around the shreds and gazed at them. “I see none either.” When she looked up at him, the light in her eyes made her look like the sister that still loved him. “What does it mean?”
Her question surprised him. Benzel assumed the answer would be as obvious to Snip as it had been to him.
It’s not a monster killing the Scaldings—it’s the same pack of berserkers that destroyed Heatherbloom and Bubblebrook. Only berserkers attack in such a heinous way. No other mortals are this savage. They must have forged some type of weapon of iron claws so they can leave these marks and make people think it’s a dragon attack.
This unexpected stroke of luck astonished Benzel.
I’ve spent all these years searching for the berserkers. And all I had to do was respond to Snip’s call for help to find them.
“It’s the berserkers,” Benzel said.
Snip crossed her arms. “These marks were made by animals, not people.”
Benzel ignored her comment. He knew what he saw and no one could talk him out of it. “Show me the other rooms where people were killed.”
When they walked from room to room, Benzel saw the same signs of claw marks everywhere he looked. “Did this all happen at once”?
“No. It happens every night.”
“Every night? Since when?”
“Last week.”
Benzel counted the number of rooms they’d seen—six rooms inside the tower. Half of those rooms housed couples. Nine dead. From what Benzel had seen and Snip had told him, he figured the Scalding clan numbered close to 100 members.
Just like berserkers to slip up on people and kill them in their sleep. Berserkers may be people, but they’re not like us. They’re not like anyone else I’ve ever met. They might as well be monsters.
Benzel worried about Grey-Eyes. The wolf could fend for itself, but he hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.
“All happened in here?” Benzel said. “Inside the tower?”
Snip shook her head. “It started here. Now that the dragon—the monster—whatever it is—killed everyone here, it’s attacking the houses outside.”
“Can you show me?”
When Benzel reached the threshold of the tower’s entrance, he heard a groan echoing through the structure. He looked up at the winding stairway but saw no one.
“It comes from there.” Snip pointed at a pile of furniture against a wall that Benzel hadn’t noticed until now.
“The furniture?”
“It’s a barricade. It blocks the door to stairs going below the tower.”
“Why?”
Snip shuddered. “People heard that sound days before the monster attacked. After the first kill—when my husband’s uncle died—some of the young Scaldings decided to go below because they thought it would be easy to corner a dragon and kill it. It took every argument I could think of to convince my own husband from joining them.” She shivered harder. “None of them ever came back. Everyone heard their screams. Some of the older men went down to save them, but they didn’t come back either.”
Berserkers. It must be berserkers. There’s nothing else that can explain everything that’s happened on this island.
Benzel considered explaining what he considered to be obvious to Snip, but the same uncomfortable feeling he’d experienced at his first encounter with a Scalding and his first view of Tower Island nagged at him.
He didn’t know why, but Benzel had a bad feeling that telling the Scaldings about his suspicion that berserkers were the ones committing murder each night would lead to disaster.
He didn’t know how the Scaldings might respond to the berserkers, but his gut told Benzel that it would place Snip in danger and possibly cost her life.
Snip isn’t going to die. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her.
And the best way to protect Snip is to get her out of here.
“Please explain to me,” Benzel said, “why you haven’t left this island.”
“It belongs to the Scaldings,” Snip said. She slumped in defeat. “And my husband is a Scalding. Where he goes, I go. Where his family lives, I live.”
“This is madness. I’ll help you, Snip. But only if you leave and stay on the mainland.”
“What’s this?” said a young man who stood in the open doorway of the tower. With the sunlight at his back, he looked like a shadow.
The defeat fell away from Snip, and she beamed. “Sven! My brother Benzel came to help us. But he wants me to leave.”
Sven stepped forward and spoke directly to Benzel. “I’ve been telling her that since this nightmare started. Best of luck convincing her to go.”
Benzel’s apprehension about the Scaldings softened when he heard Sven’s words.
Finally, someone who seems to have Snip’s safety at heart.
But the Scaldings are a peculiar lot, and there’s no reason to trust any of them until they prove worthy of it. Sven’s words aren’t enough.
Snip piped up with a brightness in her voice that convinced Benzel she wanted to change the subject and distract them from the thought of sending her ashore. “I took Benzel to the rooms here in the tower where the murders happened. He wants to see where the one outside happened.”
“Fine,” Sven said. “Let’s go.” He led the way outside and into a stone house with a thatched roof.
The first thing Benzel noticed when he stepped inside was the softness of dirt and straw beneath his feet. “Stop!” he said. “No one move.”
Startled, Snip and Sven obeyed.
Benzel also stood in place and looked around the single-room home. Like the rooms inside the tower, dried blood covered the walls and the floor. Cotton sleeping palettes were torn apart. “How many died here?”
“A whole family,” Sven said. “The monster killed seven people in here last night.”
Benzel looked at him. “Did you hear their screams? Did you get here in time to see the monster?”
“No one heard anything,” Snip said. “The only reason we found them this morning was because someone realized they hadn’t been seen by anyone.”
“How many people have been in this house since then?”
Snip and Sven exchanged glances. “I don’t know,” Sven said. “A few of the elders came in to remove the bodies. That’s all.”
Benzel took care in where he placed his steps as he walked around the worst of the room’s ruin and examined the floor with a close eye. He then edged beyond it to the back wall and did the same. Benzel pointed at the floor. “I see no sign of the drag marks a tail would leave behind or of any suspicious tracks. These all look mortal to me.”
If I can convince Sven to leave Tower Island, Snip will follow him,
Snip explained to Sven. “He thinks no dragon could have done this. We think it must be some kind of monster no one’s heard of yet.”
“All the more reason for you to leave,” Benzel said. “And not just you, Snip. Everyone.”<
br />
“Including me?” Sven said in surprise.
“Yes. All Scaldings.” Benzel pointed at the destruction surrounding them. “Otherwise this monster will kill all of you.”
Sven shook his head. “No one will agree to that.”
Benzel struggled to reason with him. “You’re Northlanders. You know how to battle against other men. But I can tell you that fighting a beast is very different from fighting a man. The way you attack is different. The way you defend is different. The way you calculate the safe distance from your opponent is different.”
Sven laughed. “What? Are you a dragonslayer now?”
“No. But I’ve trained alongside them. I’ve learned with them and from them.”
Sven mulled over what he heard. Finally, he said, “I believe you might be our best chance of stopping these murders. But I don’t see how you can convince the rest of my family.”
“Then let me determine my own sleeping arrangements.” Benzel stepped outside and looked at the avenue of stone houses leading from the tower, noting he stood by the house with the closest proximity. “There,” he said, pointing at the house farthest away. “I want to stay there tonight with Snip at my side.”
“That’s an empty house,” Snip said. “It’s not where we live.”
“Doesn’t matter. Either we stay there tonight or I’m hauling you back to the mainland.”
“It’s fine with me as long as I can join you,” Sven said. “You think the monster will attack a house close to the tower.”
Benzel nodded. “The murders began in the tower. No one is living inside it now. I wager they’ll continue down this row of houses.”
“I see,” Sven said. “Then my parents and brothers will join us tonight.”
That evening, Benzel kept his dagger close at hand throughout the night. Among a dozen of Sven’s family members, Benzel placed a sleeping palette in the center of the floor and made sure that Snip slept an arm’s length away. He found it impossible to sleep for most of the night.
Benzel awoke with a start the next morning, and it took him off guard. For a few moments, he struggled to remember where he was.
Snip huddled by his side, wide-eyed and shaking. “Did the scream wake you? Sven and his brothers went to check.” She embraced him and whispered in his ear. “I don’t want to be on this island anymore. I want to go home.”