by D. N. Hoxa
“I can’t…I can’t…” Millie was panting, barely able to stand on her feet, but Sim, at least, looked rested enough to run another mile.
“Help me,” I said to him, and we both grabbed Millie by the arms. “There’s water somewhere close b—”
The words got stuck in my throat when something whooshed past my left ear and slammed against a tree.
No, it didn’t slam. It buried in it, halfway through, and it was an arrow—the longest, thickest arrow I’d ever seen.
My knees shook as I turned my head. This time, I wished to only see trees and shadows. Instead, I saw silhouettes of big men, five of them, coming for us like they were the animals legend tells them to be.
“Run!” I shouted at the top of my voice, as if that was somehow going to make us go faster. It didn’t. Millie could barely hold herself up and Sim wasn’t helping much with her weight, but we were moving. The arrows were coming faster than we could blink. All my life I’d been taught how to fight face-to-face with people twice my size, stronger, faster than me. My father insisted that neither mattered, as long as you were smarter than the person you were fighting against. It was all a game, a test to see who could use their head better under pressure.
But what could I do now that I wasn’t face-to-face with my opponents, that I couldn’t see them, couldn’t hurt them, but they could hurt me from a distance?
The answer laughed in my face in the form of an arrow cutting through my right leg. It went right between Millie and me but cut off a good chunk of my flesh before it buried itself in the tree ahead. The pain was instant, climbing on me like fire on a curtain, turning my vision black for a second. I lost control of my body and let go of Millie while the burning intensified. Falling suddenly seemed so easy—the right thing to do. Just so I could get some rest. Just for a little while.
“Morgan!” Millie shouted from somewhere ahead, forcing me to blink the darkness away, so I could see where she was.
Her arm was still around Sim’s shoulders, and she was trying to turn back while he dragged her forward. Good for him. If I couldn’t make it, maybe I could stall the shifters, and Sim and Millie could escape.
But the sound of water was so, so close now. I could smell its cleanness, its freshness, calling to me like it knew my name. I knew that if I stopped, even for a little while, I would lose. It wasn’t like I was running, more like slamming against one tree and another, too afraid to look down at my leg, but I was still moving, and if I turned around to look at the shifters, it would be a done deal.
My father would tell me I could do it. I could reach the water. Small goals, reachable goals—that’s how you walk the road to success. One step at a time. It didn’t matter if they caught us when we reached the river or not. It didn’t matter if we survived this. What mattered was to get to the water. One step at a time.
When I slammed against a tree, dragging my right leg behind me, and saw the wide river flowing furiously right in front of me, I could have cried from joy. I could do it, I really could. I just needed to hop three more steps and let go. It was easy enough.
“Jump,” I said breathlessly to Sim and Millie, who’d stopped by the edge and were looking at the other side full of trees and shadows. But trees and shadows were safer than Timoke shifters. We were going to make it if we climbed the other side. I just knew it.
They couldn’t hear me through the sound of the river, but they must have seen how close the shifters were because Sim grabbed Millie by the hand, and he pulled her into the water without hesitation.
It was the moment of truth. I let go of the tree I was holding onto, and hopping on my left leg, I made it to the edge. Before I could let go with the sound of the river purifying my thoughts, something stung my right arm, right below my armpit. Letting go then was easy. My body shut down, refusing to hold me against the incredible pain that invaded my every cell.
Only when the ice-cold water enveloped me did my consciousness return, and my brain signaled me of the fact that I was swallowing water, not air. The panic chased away the pain, making my limbs numb, and when I tried to move my arms, I realized there was something in my right one. An arrow, though smaller than the ones I’d seen before, was stuck in my flesh halfway through. Taking it out was out of the question, but so was moving my arm. Focusing on my left side, I fought against the current, the most powerful opponent I’d ever had the misfortune of meeting, until my back hit something hard.
On the bright side, my head was above water, and air was once again struggling to get through my throat while I coughed like a mad woman. My left arm found something cold and wet but not slippery, and I held onto it like it was my lifeline.
“Morgan!” someone called. “Morgan!”
I couldn’t see anything but the water and the grey sky for a long second. My body felt like it had been through a meat grinder, and pieces of me were still floating in the river, desperate to get back together. The Timoke shifters were still a fresh memory in my head, so when I finally figured out how to blink again, the first thing I did was look for them. I saw them, unfortunately for me, clear as day at the edge of the river, looking down at me with all the hatred of nine worlds in their eyes.
But they didn’t jump.
Why?
They could see that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was holding onto a rock twice the size of my body, and the current was making it impossible to move. Or maybe that was the pain immobilizing me—I couldn’t tell for sure. But they weren’t coming after us.
Maybe they were scared of water. That was the first thought that crossed my mind. They were afraid to get wet. If so, I was…what, saved? For God’s sake, I couldn’t move!
And that wasn’t the end of it.
What could potentially be the real reason why the Timoke shifters weren’t in the river simply materialized in front of me. A scream left my lips before I could control myself, and I almost let go of the rock that was keeping me in place.
The creature’s head broke the surface of the water, and he didn’t even blink his eyes. I could only guess that it was a he. His skin was white, almost translucent, and I could clearly make out the web of veins under it. His eyes were huge and the color of water, blue in some places, black in others, and his mouth was full of small, pointy teeth. His hair was grey, almost silver, and it stuck to his face and shoulders like second skin. He smiled at me as if to show me how easily he could rip me apart, and then several other white heads full of silver hair broke the surface and watched me, some smiling, some not.
“Hello, voyager,” the one in front of me said, making my stomach turn. “Would you like to learn a skill?” His voice was smooth and relaxing, almost like the flowing water.
“No, thank you,” I said breathlessly and tried to remember the name of the creatures. I knew I had heard a story somewhere about them. People who lived under water but were far from mermaids. They liked music and…Fossegrim! Yes, that was right. Sennan had told me how a bunch of them had taught him how to play the fiddle a long time ago, and if I remembered correctly, he said they were harmless. By God, I hoped he hadn’t lied.
“Morgan, over here!” someone called, and I recognized Millie’s voice.
At the sound of it, the Fossegrim in front of me laughed, but it felt like only the echo reached me, and then just as quickly as he’d appeared, he slipped under the water without even a splash, and all his friends disappeared with him.
Relief breathed life back into me, and when I finally looked up at the other side of the river, I finally realized that the Fossegrims weren’t the reason why the shifters weren’t jumping in the water.
They weren’t afraid of it. They were definitely not afraid of me.
They’d stopped because of the men and women who’d appeared across from them on the other side of the river, right behind Millie and Sam, who were shaking, wet to their core, but very much alive. Another wave of relief, and I almost lost control of my body and let go of the rock. We were okay. We were saved. Whoever these people
were, they were going to help us.
“They are ours,” someone called, his voice echoing through my head. It was Horace. “They are our prey.”
Prey. Though my body was cold as ice, that word from his lips still brought goose bumps up my arms.
“This is our territory,” said someone, a man standing behind Millie with a spear twice her height gripped tightly in his hand. “You have no right over the river.”
“We keep what we hunt!” Horace growled, and his men cheered behind him. My consciousness was beginning to slip away from my grasp little by little.
“What you hunt and catch,” said the man with the spear. “You know the rules, shifter. You know what happens if you trespass Kall territory.”
What? I wanted to ask. What would happen? Because if it involved the death of those shifters, then I really wanted them to try to jump in the river.
Horace could have killed with his eyes in any other world, but luckily, not in this one. He looked at the man with the spear like he wanted to be covered in his blood, but three seconds later, he took a single step back and found my eyes again. My breath caught in my throat as I read his lips: This is not over, human.
But it was. As far as I was concerned, it was over. Of course, I couldn’t say so even if I wanted, so I let it go. I couldn’t even flip him off, but oh, well.
Millie and Sim were okay and I was about to fall into darkness, but at least I could no longer feel pain. My body was completely numb. The second Horace and his shifters disappeared from my view, I allowed myself to close my eyes as the cold water splashed against my face like it was moving to a beat I couldn’t hear.
“Hold on, Morgan! Just hold on,” called Millie, and I was holding onto that rock with everything I had. But my everything wasn’t enough. I felt something touching my right arm and the pain from the arrow buried in it didn’t even register. My mind gave up on me, and all I saw was darkness. This time, I welcomed it and let go.
Six
The bed I was lying on wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was a thousand times better than cold ground. It took me only a few seconds after I opened my eyes to remember how I’d gotten there—or rather, how I’d lost consciousness. The Timoke shifters. The guy with the spear on the other side of the river. Millie and Sim.
Had they made it? Had we all?
Hard to figure it out, especially when the view in front of me was still blurry. I sat up, panic boiling my blood, and tried to move my body. My right arm and leg were on fire. The pain made me grit my teeth because it came so unexpectedly the second I began to move. The good news was the arrow that had been buried in my arm was gone, and my wounds were wrapped in old, dirty rags. Better than nothing, I guessed. I wanted them off, but I was too afraid of what I might find underneath, so I didn’t dare touch them. Besides, if I didn’t move, the pain faded into a distant throbbing. Too bad I had to move to sit up.
Swallowing the scream that wanted to be let out, I put my feet on the ground and attempted to stand. The room swam and spun, and my stomach did the same, but by some miracle, I didn’t fall down. My instincts wanted me to lie back, curl up and never again move until the end of days, but I resisted because my intuition insisted that something was wrong.
My clothes and hair were still damp, which meant I hadn’t been out for too long. I was in a wooden room only a few feet wide, with two beds opposite one another, a door by the beds’ feet, and a window across from it. The window was closed with pieces of wood, but daylight still peaked through.
My bag together with my weapons was on the floor by the bed’s leg, and once I grabbed everything, I hopped on my good leg all the way to the door. When I didn’t faint from the pain, I smiled. My skin was covered in sweat. Yes, the pain was terrible, but the need to know what had happened was greater, so I pulled the door open.
It was still daylight outside like I suspected. The house I was in was small with three entrance doors I suspected led to other rooms same as the one I’d woken up in. The mud right outside the threshold was a surprise. It almost looked like it had rained all day. Ahead, about ten feet away, were more wooden houses, bigger in size, and behind them, I could see a cobblestone street. Hopping all the way there was going to be a disaster, but there was no time to waste.
I almost gave up with every step I took, but then I began to notice the carvings on the wood of the houses. They were everywhere but they were in Norse, and I couldn’t tell what they said. When I finally made it to the cobblestone street, it only got stranger. Every few steps, there were pieces of stone by the street, and all of them were carved with a paragraph. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what they said. The people walking the street were few and didn’t pay me any attention. They looked ordinary enough that I couldn’t figure out what kind they were. Their clothes were plain, shirts and trousers, leather boots—clothes most of the people in Vanah wore on a daily basis. But it didn’t look like they were shifters, and that was good enough for me. Without any idea where to go, I turned left and began to hop my way to a large piece of stone smack in the middle of the street just thirty feet away.
The closer I got, the stranger the carved pieces of stone seemed, and that helped me forget about the pain—until I realized that the large stone wasn’t just that. It was a statue—a statue of Odin. I’d seen pictures of what the people portrayed him to be so it was an easy guess. He had long hair that fell below his shoulders in stringy waves, a long beard that touched his chest, and his right eye was covered with a patch. His staff was in his hand and his dress-like attire covered all of him. It was a poorly made statue at best, but at least the carving below Odin’s feet was in English. Odin The Terrible, it said. One of the god’s many names.
For lack of a better idea, I was going to continue hopping right, but someone called my name. I recognized Millie’s voice instantly. The urgency in her voice turned my blood cold instantly. I spun around to see where she was, my heart skipping a long beat. When I finally saw her face, I realized she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t smiling, either. I urged myself to calm down and resisted the urge to start hopping toward her—she and others were coming toward me.
Sim was beside her, but they weren’t alone. I recognized the guy with the spear immediately, mainly because he still had the spear in his hand while he walked toward me with two of his friends. They were big but not as big as the Timoke shifters, and these guys were dressed much better. That was no consolation—just an observation. I still had my weapons with me, but I could barely move my body, so that wasn’t going to do me any good.
When she finally was close enough, Millie slipped from around the guy with the spear and came to me, her hands on my shoulders. “Morgan, you’re okay. Thank God you're okay,” she breathed.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, analyzing her face. She looked good—no wounds and no blood anywhere I could see. Her clothes were damp and her blonde hair was still wet, too.
“I’m fine. What about you? Do they hurt?” She reached out her hand to touch my right arm, but I slapped it away.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, my eyes on Sim and the spear guy. He and his friends were assessing me just like I was them, and unfortunately for me, they didn’t look all that threatened by the looks of me. I could understand that, but my ego didn’t.
“Glad to see you made it,” said Sim with a nod. To my surprise, I realized I was glad he’d made it, too, which was stupid. I had no business giving a shit about Sim, but here we were.
“Where are we? Who are these people?” I asked, meeting the sky blue eyes of the guy with the spear. He was a good head taller than me and more than twice as wide, which I guess should have scared me. His skin looked like he hadn’t had a bath in weeks, but his brown hair was perfectly clean. The thin line of his lips was turned downward, and he held onto his spear tightly, as if he wanted me to see his extremely thick fingers and his nails filled with dirt.
“I don’t know,” Millie whispered and turned to the others, her eyes full of fear. Def
initely not a good sign. “They wouldn’t tell us anything.”
“My name is Reddar. You are in Odin’s town of Kall,” the man said then, his voice so deep I had trouble making out his words clearly. Then, he nodded his head deeply to the statue behind me. “You’re safe from the Timokeans here.”
The shifters. The damned shifters who’d made sure I wouldn’t be able to fight properly for God knows how long.
“Thank you,” I said, the words harder to speak out loud than they should have been. I wasn’t used to thank yous—not in Alfheimr.
“You’re well enough to walk, right, Morgan?” Millie said with a fake smile directed at Reddar.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, but they could all see that I wasn’t. I could barely stand. I understood what she meant, though. We needed to get out of that place real quick. These people might have saved us from the shifters, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt us. I was willing to bet they were Diviners judging by the statue of Odin behind me. These people used to harness magic by worshipping Odin. I always thought they were worse than Arcs. So I cleared my throat “If it’s all right with you, we’d like to keep going. We’ve got a long way ahead of us,” I said to Reddar because he was obviously the guy in charge. Both Sim and Millie turned to watch him, too, as if they’d been waiting to see his reaction.
“Keep going? No, that’s not right,” he said, raising his chin. His knuckles turned whiter. Millie’s fear rubbed onto me.
“There’s not much we can offer you here, as you can see,” I said through gritted teeth, willing myself not to raise my voice. I didn’t want this guy pissed off. His friends were as big as he was, and there was no way we’d be able to run from them. “We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”
“We do thank you for your hospitality, and we wish we could stay,” said Sim, his smile faltering. He was afraid, too.
“Nonsense,” said Reddar. “You are our guests. Very special guests, right?” He turned to his friends, who nodded their agreement in unison.