by D. N. Hoxa
We didn’t talk about what that man Agda said for almost two days. In fact, I didn’t speak at all. We slipped around every town on the way to Arkanda. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but I just didn’t have it in me, so I let Sim guide us without question. He could take us straight into Hell for all I cared. Just because I didn’t say it out loud didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking it. It didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about the old man’s words. And the blind woman’s.
At first, I was sure they were related. But then I thought, how could a blind woman travel to Kall faster than us when we’d barely stopped to take a breath?
So how was it possible that they both said the same thing?
Blood. There was blood on me. What the hell did that mean?
Nothing good, that’s for sure. On the plus side, my wounds had all but healed. When I cut open the bandages, I found small leaves of some kind that the Diviners had put on me, and whatever they were, they’d worked wonders. I barely felt any pain, and I was positive I could even fight decently now, if it came to it.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Millie when we stopped on the third night to rest. White rocks were everywhere, and it took us some work to remove some of them so we could hide the fire we needed to cook the squirrels with—another courtesy of Sim. It wasn’t much but it was going to keep us going. “There is no reason why those soldiers would have killed us.”
I rolled my eyes but refrained from commenting. She and Sim had been talking about this since we left Kall. Millie thought that Lion-eyes and his friends were there to save us. Sim tried to tell her that if that had been the case, we’d have heard from them long ago, but she didn’t want to hear it.
I knew a murderer when I saw one, and Lion-eyes was definitely no friend. The question burned me, though. Why would a group of masters’ guards come after us? An ugly voice in my head whispered because of you every time I thought about it, but I ignored it. I’d stayed in Vanah for three years, and nobody had wanted to have anything to do with me. Those two old people who’d screamed blood at the sight of me were just mentally ill—that’s it.
“The truth is, they don’t need a reason,” said Sim as he skinned the second squirrel with the same knife I’d taken out of that Diviner’s forehead. The stones shielded the light of the fire so that we wouldn’t be spotted from afar. The hill wasn’t high and it looked man-made—literally like someone took all the white stones they could find, big and small, and threw them together in a deserted piece of land. As far as Sim knew, this place didn’t even have a name. “They’re masters. They kill and they get away with it.”
“If that was the truth, the people here would have gotten rid of them long ago, don’t you think? They can’t be as bad as you say.”
Sim laughed. I would have, too, on any other night.
“There are quite a lot of things you don’t understand about the ways of our world, Millie. The Masters weren’t chosen by the people. They were chosen by magic,” he explained. “They’re the only ones among us who still possess it—at least some of it.”
“Who gave the magic to them, then? The gods?” Millie mocked.
“Maybe,” said Sim with a shrug.
“Well, your gods suck,” Millie concluded with a sigh. I had to agree on that.
“My gods are dead.” Sim sounded a bit angry all of a sudden. “It’s why we’re here. There are no gods anymore.”
“So what do you believe in? Do you have a religion here? There must be something you believe in,” she said.
I waited for Sim to answer, too, really curious about what he would say, but he kept his mouth shut, at a loss for words. There was no religion in Alfheimr. The people either didn’t believe in anything or they believed in dead gods, like the Diviners of Kall. Millie was right to be shocked about this—I was, too, at first.
“To believe is foolish,” Sim said in a whisper.
“To believe is not foolish.” Millie turned to me. “Right, Morgan?”
I was fifteen when I asked my father about religion and God. I still remember the talk we’d had that morning over the kitchen counter in our apartment, which was right above his training center. It was small but it was comfortable. It was home. God, how I missed it. How I missed him.
“There is one God out there somewhere that most of the world believes in, Morgan,” he’d said, eating his scrambled eggs like he was in a hurry. He always ate like he was in a hurry. I still remembered the smell of them, too. “But religion is your choice. When the time is right, you can read the holy books, whichever ones you want to read, and you can make up your own mind about it.”
To fifteen-year-old me, that had sounded like nonsense—exactly like when I asked him about the meaning of things, and instead of just telling me, he made me pick up the dictionary and read it myself. He claimed that that way I’d never forget it, whereas if he told me, it would slip my mind just as easily.
“Why can’t you just tell me? Why do you go to church?” I’d asked.
“I can’t tell you what to believe in, Morgan. Nobody can.”
“Why not? You can tell me what you believe in, can’t you?”
My father had laughed, but I couldn’t laugh now while I looked at Millie and spoke.
“There is no stronger belief than the one you create yourself. No influences, no manipulations—just you,” I said exactly what my father said to me that day. “But do remember this: whatever you choose to believe, believe it with your whole being. Only then can you truly allow it to make a positive impact in your life as it should.” I shrugged. “That’s what I’ve been told, anyway.”
At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant—not even close. Even now I wasn’t sure if I understood, but if Charles had believed in something with his whole being, maybe so could I. One day.
“Beautifully put,” Millie said with a smile that turned bitter in the next second. “So are we going to talk about it?”
I moved my eyes to the fire because I knew what she meant.
“That man wasn’t blind, Morgan. Is there something you want to tell us?”
Surprised, I looked at her again. Did she mean that I knew what those people had been talking about but was keeping it a secret? Was she out of her mind?
Her eyes were wide and full of suspicion. She’d already made up her mind, it seemed. It didn’t matter what I told her—or myself. She wasn’t going to believe me.
“I think we should put out the fire now that the food is ready.”
“Put out the fire? Are you kidding?” she asked in disbelief.
“Let’s eat,” said Sim and threw a rock over the fire. Darkness swallowed us almost completely, and neither of us said anything else for the rest of the night.
We traveled for three more days and didn’t run into anyone. That didn’t mean that we relaxed—on the contrary. The better I felt physically, the more I worried that something was wrong. Had Lion-eyes really died in Kall, or was he after us and was going to jump in front of us when we least expected it?
That’s why it was important that we always expected it.
The knife I’d taken from the Diviner’s forehead was still with me. It was actually very comfortable in my hand. The rubbery handle made sure it wouldn’t slip out of my hand easily while fighting. The M embossed at the butt of it, with two vines to the side, confirmed that it belonged to the masters. It was their mark. I wondered if it was a sigil. Those were said to hold traces of magic, enough to take you through a screen, but I doubted the masters would give them so freely to all their guards.
Which made me wonder—why did they mark clothes and other things from our world with their sigils and then…what, take them to be resold in second-hand shops? Why on Earth would they do that?
I’d thought about it a million times before, and I still had no answer. But I was convinced that that leather belt I’d bought at the thrift store just a week before I slipped through the screen and found myself in Alfheimr had a master’s sigil somewhere on it, and
that was why I’d been able to pass.
Millie didn’t mention Agda or the blind woman again. Instead, we talked about things that made none of us feel uncomfortable. Mostly Sim told her about Alfheimr, about the gods and the supernatural people of this world, and we sometimes told him stories about Earth, too. He listened with so much focus, you’d think he was physically soaking in our every word. It was no surprise. The people of Alfheimr would kill to go to Earth, to see sunlight for more than a few minutes at a time, to have clean water, and plumbing, and more food than they could ever hope to eat, and technology. To them, it was heaven.
It was heaven to me, too, though I’d taken everything for granted before ending up in this godforsaken place. Going back almost seemed like a dream too good to come true.
We were walking around the town of Balu according to Sim, and we were only a few days away from Arkanda. He seemed to believe that we were eventually going to make it there, and so did Millie. Me? I wasn’t sure what I believed in anymore.
“Nobody’s going to believe me about any of this back home,” said Millie, looking at the desert ahead of us. The sand was dark brown—almost black. It was right next to an empty town we’d just passed, smaller than that of Kall, with thirty-five small, wooden houses that looked like ghosts of their former selves, all of them empty. The town was nameless, as nobody had lived in it for a very long time, according to Sim.
“It might be smart to keep all of it to yourself,” I said in wonder. “It would be a shame to find our way back only to end up in an institution.” That was if I didn’t end up in jail first. I was wanted for Charles’s murder, and I doubted the police had forgotten about me in the time that I’d been away.
“But we have to tell someone! People need to know that this place exists, so that they don’t stumble through a screen by accident,” she said. About that, she was right. If I’d known that this place and the screens existed, I’d have been more careful when I ran into that alley three years ago.
“Why is it that the farther away from Vanah we get, the less of our world we see?” I asked Sim. It was something I’d been wondering about for a while. “I mean, I doubt that there’s a desert with black sand back on Earth.” I’d have heard about it if there was.
“Because there are no screens here,” said Sim. “The closer a place is to screens, the more of your world slips into ours.”
That made no sense, but then again, what did in Alfheimr?
“Who decides where the screens are put?”
Sim shrugged. “Nobody knows. They’ve remained the same since the beginning—none have closed or new ones opened. It’s not something we—or even the masters—can create. They’re just…there.”
“If there are no screens here, how can the dragon god take us back home?” Millie asked.
“He’ll take us to a screen. There are others all over the world,” Sim said, looking at the sand we were walking on. The wind blowing from behind us erased all our tracks in the sand, for which I was thankful. If the masters’ guards were still after us, maybe they’d lose us in the desert, if they weren’t close enough to get here before we made it to the other side. There was nothing on either side that we could see, so it would be pretty easy to spot us.
“How long until the mountain?” said Millie after a long pause. She sounded exhausted. Couldn’t blame her. We all were.
“A few more days. Depends on the terrain,” said Sim.
“And on if somebody finds us,” I reminded them. We’d lost a whole day in Kall.
“Do you think they’re still after us?” Millie turned around and walked backward so she could see the empty town we’d come from.
Shivers washed down my back. My impulse was to say yes. Maybe I should have listened to it then.
“Tell me, Simmy boy, who have you really told where we’re going?” I’d asked him this before, but he said no one. I doubted Millie had spoken to someone, and I knew I hadn’t. Hard to believe Sim when the masters’ guards had come looking for us in Kall.
“No one, beast,” he said, a grin on his face.
“So how did the masters know where to find us?” asked Millie, almost too afraid to speak.
“No, no, that’s not the most important question,” I said, my eyes never leaving Sim’s face. “The most important question is why.”
“If you’re insinuating that I know why they came looking for us, I’m going to have to tell you that you’re dead wrong,” he said, but his smile faltered. Did he really not know?
“Why are you going to Arkanda, Sim?”
The question caught him off guard, but he composed himself quickly. “That’s my business and my business alone.”
“It’s not your business alone when there are people—powerful people—out there looking for us, don’t you think?”
He finally lost his cool. His brows narrowed, and his already pale face became paler. “Believe what you will, beast. It isn’t in my interest to be on the masters’ radar, and that’s all I’m willing to say to you.”
He was right, it wasn’t in his interest, but I’d be a fool to trust in any word he said. Sadly, it made no difference whether I trusted him or not—we were still in this together for better or for worse.
I was still thinking about ways to make him tell me something when we began to see a shape in the distance. My heart almost stopped beating altogether, though it was obvious that whatever that thing was, it wasn’t alive. Without thinking, I began to run toward it. Better to be prepared in case it was a threat. It was hard to run in the sand, but Sim and Millie followed me.
Heart in my throat, I ran like whatever that thing was, it was going to save us.
It wasn’t.
“Goddamn it,” I cursed under my breath when I took in the bus—or what had once been a bus. Now, its tires were gone, the paint had been scraped off by God knows who, and all the windows were broken. The seats inside were missing, too, and so was the steering wheel.
“How the hell did this end up here?” I wondered, looking around us one more time. We could now see what could be a piece of land, but it was still too far away to make it out clearly.
“A screen, probably,” said Sim. “It’s here somewhere.” He looked around like it would make any difference if we actually found the screen somewhere.
We inspected what was left of the bus for a few more minutes, but other than sand, we found nothing in it, so we continued on our way. I couldn’t tell you why finding that broken thing gave me such a bad feeling at the time—but we’re both about to find out.
Nine
The piece of land in the distance was a mountain, or so we first thought.
“Is this it?” asked Millie, excited as a little girl. But I couldn’t say the same about Sim.
“No, it’s not,” he said, eyeing the mountain curiously—almost like he was surprised it was there. There was a fine line right where the desert sand ended and the ground around the mountain began, almost like someone had separated every grain intentionally. I was past trying to make sense of how things worked in Alfheimr, so I didn’t give it too much thought.
“What is this place?” I asked, though by the look on Sim’s face, I already knew he wasn’t going to give me an answer.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “We’re supposed to be in Lorr, but I had the impression it was a town.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s on the other side.”
“Are we going all around it?” asked Millie, looking to the sides of the mountain. “Because I can’t see an end or beginning, and it’s going to get dark soon.”
She was right. The idea of going through another town was unimaginable, but going all around now wasn’t possible. We traveled in the dark, too, when we could, but walking through the desert had worn us out. I really wanted to take my shoes off and dump out all the sand that was making my feet heavy.
“We can find a place to rest for the night here,” I said, looking up the thirty-foot-high mountain with nothing but dirt and tree tru
nks that had long since died and turned black for whatever reason. They almost felt like plastic to the touch.
“Let’s see what’s up there first,” Sim said.
I didn’t want to risk getting caught, but I also didn’t want to light a fire and have people coming for us. Without knowing what was on the other side, there was no way we could find a decent hiding spot, so ignoring the pain in my muscles and the sand in my socks, I followed him up the mountain.
It wasn’t a long walk. I didn’t know what I expected to find on the other side, but I definitely didn’t imagine a perfectly flat surface at the top with many more of those tree trunks turned to plastic. We stayed perfectly still as we looked around to see if there was anybody out there. The place seemed to be empty.
With his finger to his lips to tell us to keep quiet, Sim continued to walk ahead. We followed as silently as we could, which wasn’t hard because the ground was perfectly equal everywhere we stepped. It was like someone had cut off the tip of the mountain with a big ass sword and then had planted some trees there for good measure.
When we finally could see the light on the other side, I felt a little relief. I’d have hated to have to spend the next day walking in that place.
But when we reached the end of the trees, we also seemed to reach the edge of the mountain, and what we saw below took our breath away.
It was a mining site, as big as ones I’d seen on TV back home. The giant hole in the middle was at least a thousand feet deep, andthe sides had been carved into what looked like giant stairs. People, more than I’d ever seen in one place here in Alfheimr, moved from one end to the other in a rush. To our right the mountaintopcontinued all around the site, but to the left, it seemed to crash to the ground slowly, and it led to what had once been a forest that stretched for miles.