White Stag

by Kara Barbieri

  It didn’t matter anymore. Being human, being goblin-blooded, being a traitor to my kind, or whatever was spouted by those who didn’t understand me. All that mattered was my happiness, and right now, in this moment, I was happier than I’d ever been.

  “Do you still want to take a bath?” he whispered, as he nicked my ear with his canines.

  “Maybe a bit later,” I said. “When we’re dirtier.”

  He smiled wickedly. “I vastly underestimate you sometimes, did you know that?” His hand skimmed around my hip, moving up the small of my back until he was stroking my spine. This time I heard him move and felt the heat of his body against mine. He had to be close, very close.

  “If I wasn’t vastly underestimated by more deadly beings, then I would be dead already,” I said.

  “Spoken like a true hunter.” His touch disappeared, and I ached to pull him closer until it reappeared lower on my body. A strange sound escaped my throat.

  Soren paused. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  I did. He was so close, our bodies almost touched. My head reached up to his chest, right where his heart should’ve been. I thought I heard something in there too. “Do you have a heartbeat?” I asked.

  “If I do,” he said, “I don’t hear it. Not like a human’s. But I’m a living creature, so I suppose so.”

  There. Proof that this monster had a heart.

  The wicked, catlike grin returned to his face as he tipped my head up, lips pressing against mine. A shiver rocked me to my core until it was melted away by a slow-burning fire.

  He softly bit my lip and ran his tongue across it. His mouth trailed down to my throat, to the side of my neck, and when he pulled away, I found my free hand twining into his hair, pulling him close again. He chuckled and kept kissing, going as far down as he could. His lips skimmed against the scar tissue on my chest, treating it as tenderly as he would perfect, flawless skin. One of his hands cupped my remaining breast, his thumb caressing it softly.

  We backed up until we were on my makeshift bed with the furs pulled tightly against our bodies.

  I was breathless. I was on fire. I was floating and falling at the same time. I was everything, but I wasn’t afraid.

  His lips pressed under the skin of my ear, and I heard him whisper, “Is this okay?” His hips shifted to press hard against mine, and I could feel the eagerness in his own body.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked breathily. “You can always say no. I’ll understand.”

  I took his hand from my breast and brought it to my lips, kissing his knuckles. “What happened to me, happened. It still wakes me up at night. I still feel the fear. But you aren’t Lydian, and I trust you. Yes, I’m sure.”

  He moved so he could look me in the eyes, the furs parting so the cold air could come in.

  “I’m going to get cold.” I buried my face in his shoulder as the air stung my exposed skin.

  “I’ll keep you warm,” Soren promised.

  And he did.

  * * *

  LATER, LYING ON the furs and still tangled up in his body, I smiled. My body ached, but it was a good ache. A glow filled me, some type of lazy euphoria that made me sleepy and content. “That was nice.”

  He’d buried himself in my hair and from there he chuckled. “That is the understatement of the century. If I’m going to die, at least now I can die with my life’s purpose fulfilled.” His lips pressed against the back of my neck. “You’re sure you’re not hurting anywhere?”

  “I’m fine. And I didn’t know your life’s purpose was to be with me.”

  His body shook from laughter. “I thought it was obvious.”

  “So what were you doing those six hundred-odd years I wasn’t alive?” I joked. “Twiddling your thumbs with boredom, waiting until you could sleep with a goblin-blooded human girl?”

  “What else is there to do?” He was still laughing.

  I sighed contently. Here was one goblin whose cackle-like laugh I didn’t mind. “You’re getting quite good at the sarcasm, you know.”

  “I picked it up quick. A century has to be a record,” he said. “Which is good considering I’d be totally confused where you and Seppo were concerned otherwise.”

  I groaned at the name. All I wanted to do at the moment was snuggle deep down into the furs, into Soren’s body, and close my eyes and sleep. I hadn’t felt this relaxed in years. There was soreness in my shoulders that I’d never recognized before, like I’d been tensing for a century without realizing it. There was the rumbling sound in Soren’s chest that he made when he was content, like a cat’s purr but rougher and wilder. But this moment would end too soon. “When is he coming back?”

  Soren made a noise in the back of his throat. “Do you think it’d be too much to ask for one of Skadi’s wolves to eat him? We’re never going to hear the end of it when he gets back.”

  “We don’t need to tell him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The little bastard will know,” Soren said. “And then I might have to kill him.”

  “If he doesn’t shut up about it, I’ll help.”

  I sighed, breathing in deeply the smell of pine needles and woodsmoke that always clung to him. Would that we could stay here forever.

  “It’s not enough time, is it?” he asked.

  “No.” I sighed, back to strategy. “Are you planning on confronting Lydian or chasing the stag and hoping you catch it first?”

  Soren looked away from me. “The latter would be nice, but I probably should expect the former. Either way, I’ll make sure—I’ll make sure you’re safe. No matter what I have to do.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no matter’?”

  But he cut off my question with another kiss, positioning his body so he leaned over me, the pale strands of his hair tickling my chest. “You’re beautiful,” he said, his eyes glowing with warmth. “Beautiful.”

  “I’m glad someone thinks so.”

  Soren took my chin in his hands, forcing me to look him in the eyes. They burned with a silver fire in the setting sun of the cave and kept me from looking away. If it were possible, I’d think he was looking right down into my soul.

  “You are the most infuriating, pigheaded, stubbornly determined person I know, did you know that?”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Strange, I thought you were describing yourself.”

  “A perfect match, then,” Soren said.

  There was a long silence before I spoke again.

  “What did he do to you?” I asked. “Lydian, I mean.”

  Soren looked away from me. “It’s not what he did to me, but to others.”

  “Care to explain?”

  Soren was silent for a beat, then turned back to me. His eyes locked on mine before lazily looking down at my body, seeing something I never would. “He’s my father’s older brother,” he started. “But he was never … right in the head. No one really talked about it when I was little or even now, but apparently one day he went out for a solo hunt as a youth and came back changed. He would mutter things under his breath and prophesize the doom that was about to fall over the land. He’d see people and think they were monsters. Sometimes he’d claw at his face until it bled.”

  He took a deep breath. “So, obviously, my grandfather wasn’t about to let him inherit anything. You know most goblins inherit by killing their former lord or lady, but that’s not always the case. My grandfather simply disinherited him. He didn’t even kill him, which is what most would’ve done to ensure no revenge was taken against the clan. My father married my mother and she became pregnant with me.” After a long silence, he continued, “From the way my father tells it, Lydian came to visit one day. He and my father were on decent terms despite the circumstances. He saw my mother, heavily pregnant, and started rambling about the end of the world. That she would birth a demon.”

  I shuddered. “He really is mad. If he weren’t so awful, I might eve
n feel sorry for him.”

  Soren closed his eyes. “According to my father, Lydian tracked down a draugr. However mad he was, Lydian was always a good hunter. Some draugrs keep their sentient minds; this one did. While my mother was in her garden, tending to the flowers, the draugr slayed her.” He let out a deep breath. “Tanya was her sister. She managed to save me, but not my mother. And by then Lydian was gone.”

  “How did she manage to do that?” I asked, curiosity piqued. “You get burned just braiding my hair.”

  Soren shrugged. “I’m honestly not sure. I never asked my father. He was never the same after her death. I think he resented me.”

  “Lydian killed her then,” I said, “but used the draugr to do it. None of that is your fault.”

  “I still dislike draugrs, but yes, she died by Lydian’s orders,” he confirmed. “And one day, I will kill him in turn.”

  I closed my eyes, willing the coldness from my bones. Even wrapped in furs with Soren’s body against mine, I couldn’t chase the chill that came from his story away. I always tried to plant a garden when I first came here. Was it the same?

  “I wonder,” Soren mused, “if that’s why he’s so obsessed with you.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Hmm?”

  “He rambles about you too.”

  “It never makes any sense.”

  “Perhaps to him it does.”

  “Then it’s his own damn fault.”

  Soren stroked my hair. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  I closed my eyes again, letting Soren pull me back to the comfort of his body. “I think I’m going to have bad dreams.” Stupid. You sound like a child. But I also was a child in a way, here among creatures that were centuries older than I was, despite their youthful looks. If we survived this, I would look like that too, no matter the time that passed. If Soren was human, I would’ve pegged him in his early twenties, not nearly into his eight hundreds.

  “Bad dreams are better than no dreams,” he said, twining a lock of my hair around his finger. “At least they tell you what you’re afraid of knowing.”

  My eyelids were getting heavy. I was warm and comfortable lying here with Soren while the cold wind whistled outside the cave’s entrance. The numbness in my bad hand was ebbing away, leaving behind the fiery agony that I remembered. Instinctively, I reached for it, only to have Soren grab my wrists.

  “Don’t pick at it,” he said, examining the red and blackened skin of my right hand. The smell coming off it was gone, as well as the sores and oozing clear liquid, but the skin was still inflamed and scaly where the iron had touched it. “You’re healing better than you would if you were truly a goblin. You’ll be able to use it fine, soon. There’ll be scars, though. The scaly patches of skin sometimes don’t go away. I don’t know how they’ll affect you, since you’re technically human.”

  “Scaly patches of blackened skin I can live with. As long as I can still grip a bow.”

  Soren released my hands, and with great self-control, I managed not to pick at my wounds. I closed my eyes again, letting his scent wash over me.

  “You know,” he said softly, “I remember when you first came here and kept trying to plant a garden. It was in the place where my mother died. My father left it in ruins, and I always thought it was tainted by death.”

  “I never managed to grow anything.”

  “When we’re finished with this, maybe you will.” He kissed my forehead and started to hum under his breath until I feel asleep.

  18

  BURNT LANDS

  LIKE ALL GOOD things, my relatively peaceful time with Soren ended. I stood at the mouth of the cave, a hand shielding my eyes against the glint of sun off the snow. The clothes Skadi had gifted me fit perfectly: a hooded tunic lined inside with rabbit fur, leather armor that covered my chest and shoulders, trousers made of bear skin, and a cloak of wolfskin around my shoulders. At first, the wolfskin cloak struck me as odd—Skadi’s family were wolves—but that was the natural cycle, Breki explained. When the pack died, they went on to continue to serve their goddess. Besides, he mentioned, the wolf I was wearing hadn’t been well-liked anyway.

  Soren was beside me, pushing jerky in my hands. “You need to eat. Your hand will heal faster.”

  Despite the charred skin and the pain that never truly went away, my bad hand had healed well enough for me to grip a bow. Nerves made it nearly impossible to eat, but I choked down a few pieces of jerky anyway. The moon hung almost invisible in the sky like a cat’s claw.

  “Seppo.” Soren looked back into the cave. “Are you almost ready?”

  “Ah—in a moment!” There was a scuttle of claws across the cave floor, and Seppo came out, Hreppir on his heels. Both of them looked slightly haggard, Seppo sporting a black eye and scratching his arms raw. The younger wolf was nibbling on his shoulder as if he too had an incurable itch.

  The black eye was my fault. When Seppo came back from his time trying to rid the wolf pack of fleas, he noticed Soren and me as we’d been before I fell asleep. His laughter and declaration that he knew it would happen was enough to wake me up and make me charge him—completely naked—and give him a few bruises. In the end, Soren made me stop. But it took a while.

  “How long do you think it’ll take to get out of the mountains?” I asked the dark wolf beside me. Breki’s shoulders were a bit higher than mine, so he bent down to look in my eyes. “And to find the path of the stag?” There had been a feeling spreading through me ever since last night, my own insatiable itch that nothing mattered more than finding the stag before Lydian. Nothing. In the swirls of snow, the shape of the animal formed and spun before bounding away. In the wind, a voice was beckoning me forward. We needed to find the stag. We needed to do it soon.

  The wolf snorted. We’ll be there before the new moon.

  Soren glanced at them from the side of his eye. “Are you sure you didn’t pick up any fleas?”

  Seppo hissed as he dug his nails into his shoulder and continued scratching. “Skadi said that fleas don’t bother goblins.”

  Soren blinked slowly and took a deep breath. “Of course she did. Well, just stay away from us until you sort yourself out, you understand?”

  Seppo harrumphed and pointedly turned his back on Soren, rubbing Hreppir between the ears.

  Beside me, Breki knelt so I could mount him. It was like riding a horse, if that horse were ten times more agile and swift, with a thousand times the ferocity and predatory grace. I gripped his thick, gray-black fur; it was warm in my freezing hands. I’d gotten a pair of leather gloves from Skadi too, like Soren and Seppo had, after my old ones were misplaced on some mountainside during the battle with the draugr. Even if my old fingerless gloves had been threadbare, they were better when it came to using a bow. I was already in bad shape due to my hand; I didn’t need anything else holding me back, so I forewent the new gloves.

  Breki took the lead, and Soren and Seppo climbed onto their wolves. It was the first time I’d been in the lead of anything. As a human child, I trailed my sisters; as an adolescent, I tracked the men of my village; as a captive, I was dragged behind Lydian’s horse; and as a thrall and companion, I was always one pace behind Soren wherever we might be; and now, fully accepting my power and place in the world, I was in front, leading the charge.

  The wind picked up again, and I pulled my hood up to shield my face from the worst of it, concealing my braids underneath. The snow drifted from the sky, flakes dancing in the wind. Then out of the air came a stag—the stag—made of the swirling snow and winter air. Its dark eyes peered into mine, beckoning me forward. Then without a sound, it disappeared into the wind.

  “Did anyone see that?” I asked.

  “See what?” Soren said. “I don’t see anything but these damn mountains, and I want to stop seeing them as soon as possible.” He threw a smile at me to take the sting out of his words.

  From behind him, Seppo shook his head. “Nothing but snow and wind.”

  I swallowed. Mayb
e I was just seeing the goal I desired; there was magic in the mountains, after all. Or my eyes could have been playing tricks on me, the gleam of sunlight on the falling snow playing games with my sight. It didn’t matter. We had an actual stag to find.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and Breki shot down the mountain, his two pack mates bounding behind him.

  This time, I forced myself to keep my eyes open as the world raced beside me. The wind stung my eyes as we plunged down the mountain; the wolves leapt from crevice to crevice, crack to crack with the grace of dancers. The landscape turned to a blur of blues, purples, and grays as we rushed forward. Every so often, one of the wolves let out a howl of pleasure. They must’ve loved to run as much as I enjoyed riding them.

  A foreign presence nudged at the boundaries of my mind. Open your mind to me, Breki said. Let me show you how it feels to be free. I closed my eyes, allowing him to enter and share. Unlike when I was bound with Panic, my mind fought to reject the animal sharing my mind. Relax. I did.

  The gray world exploded into color. The cliffs above were dark blue and green, purple on the borders. Skadi’s mountain home shimmered with a dusting of glimmering light. The wind whispered secrets in my ear; it tugged at my skin, my fur, my hair as if inviting me to play. Below my feet the rocks were hard and slippery, but I knew every step of these mountains. I knew every crack and every crevice, every divot and every outcrop. I ruled the mountains.

  The smell of ice and cold and sun and prey was tantalizing on my tongue. The frozen ground was littered with the scents of countless animals: small mice and artic foxes, voles and snow cats. They all lived here, but this was our domain.

  Each time we leapt, muscles stretching out to lengthen our stride, our heart sped up and adrenaline shot through our veins, and we breathed out in exhilaration as we landed safely on the next rock.

  Thunder pounded underneath our feet, the heart of the Permafrost thrumming with strong, even beats. Inside my own body, my heart sung as blood called to blood. Here, now, racing through the forest, I was more connected to the world than ever.