The refusal to believe was stronger than adrenaline, and I kicked Lydian back, breathing heavily.
“Soren is—” I barely got the sentence out before Lydian lunged at me again, the force of his body rolling us forward in the dirt. Like before, he came up on top of me.
“Don’t you get it?” he snarled, his canines as long as dog fangs and dripping blood. “He’s dead, you idiot! And soon the stag will be too, and I’ll have fixed everything. You could’ve lived too, you stupid little girl. Escaped fate. You could’ve lived and none of this would be your problem. You could’ve defied fate and lived. You stupid, stupid little girl.”
Soren was dead. Soren was dead. Those words rang in my ears, repeating like an endless mantra. Soren is dead. Soren is dead. Soren is dead. But it wasn’t possible; I’d know. I would know.
Lydian grinned at the panic on my face. Numbness spread through my body, and I went limp underneath him. For a long second there was nothing but despair, pain, and the hollowness in my chest. Then the rage kicked in, and I lashed out, my fist flying straight into Lydian’s nose. There was another sickening crunch as black blood poured from the break. Soren was dead. Okay. I would mourn him, but now was not the time. Now was the time to make sure that Lydian would never wield the power of the stag, and if I failed, now was the time to ensure he would never take me alive.
The mountains would fall into the sea before I let him.
Lydian clutched his nose, and I wriggled out from under him back toward the stag. But no sooner had I escaped than he grabbed me again and yanked me back, pinning me with his knees.
“Don’t you get it, girl?” he snarled, his crazed green eyes cloudy. “It’s over. He’s gone. That repulsive brat will never ru—”
He stopped abruptly, eyes widened in surprise as he looked down at his chest. There was a gurgle, then a stomach-churning rip as Lydian fell away. His mouth was open as he gasped for breath, blood pouring from the hole in his chest.
Soren stood above me, Lydian’s still-beating heart gripped in his hand. He dropped it and then fell to his knees. I smelled the injuries on him, the burns, too many to name. His waist-length hair was all but burnt away, now only brushing up against his shoulders. His clothes were ruined, ripped, full of blackened blood that oozed from a million small cuts, a thousand sores, and a hundred deep gashes.
Lydian looked down to the hole in his chest and then up at me. His mouth opened, and he grabbed my leg. A chill crept through my body at the words that entered my head uninvited. What happens when the serpent stops eating his tail? In his last second, his eyes grew clear. What happens? he mouthed, and then grew still.
“You always talked too much.” Soren collapsed, fighting for his breath. The sky was alight now with streaks of dawn and the fire burned low to the ground. From behind me someone shouted our names, but I didn’t listen. All I could think about was the stag lying on the border, dying by Lydian’s blow—Lydian, who was now dead. The voice came again, the bright blinding light, and I forced myself to ignore Soren and crawl toward the dying stag. It didn’t matter that Lydian was dead; he’d gotten the stag on the border. The mantle of the Erlking couldn’t pass on, not even to Soren—now the rightful ruler. The stag would die his final death, and with it so would any chance of a normal world.
It flashed before my eyes. Summers where black snow littered the ground, winters where the ice was red and hot to touch. Humans born with horns and svartelves with the skin still attached to their backs, goblins perishing with nothing left to contain their power. The water from the sea rose into the sky, the mountains crumbled to the ground, and the dying cries of wolves, and folk, and men echoed across the land like the songs of the damned. A ship made of human nails broke from its mooring, and a snake ate his tail on and on in an endless cycle. What happens when the serpent stops eating his tail? The taunting voice of Lydian haunted me even in his death, infusing me with one last mad riddle that he thought only I would know.
I dragged myself over to the stag and his eyes met mine. They were young and ancient and everything in between. His voice called to me, deep and comforting inside my head, and without hesitation, I covered his body with my own as a blinding silver light flooded the border of the world.
22
WHITE STAG
WHEN I OPENED my eyes, I was no longer in the fire-scorched land where the battle had taken place. Instead, the ground was covered in a light dusting of snow, and the cold air was crisp and clear. The sweetness of it filled my aching lungs. My clothes were ruined and my weapons long gone, but there was no coldness or panic as I stood in the clearing, wide open for anyone to see.
Stalks of grass sprang up despite the snow and the trees were thick and alive, holding up the snow with strong armlike branches. From somewhere behind me there was birdsong, and from somewhere in front of me a stream bubbled.
I walked through the snow until I saw him. The stag stood without a hint of the wounds Lydian had given him. I raced forward. He was alive; the world would be all right. Soren would be all right. He was alive. I stopped running when I met his large, somber eyes.
He looked down at the snowy grass and I followed his gaze, amazed that I was looking down at myself and the burnt field below. Soren was breathing heavily, fighting his wounds while the power of the Permafrost began to regenerate his body. Seppo knelt over my limp body, shaking it desperately and screaming. I couldn’t hear the words, but pain was written over his face. I ached to reach out and let him know I was okay, but there was nothing I could do as he screamed and cried. Soren, who was gathering his strength, finally managed to drag himself over to the stag and me. He joined in the shaking and pled for me to wake.
Warm breath blew against my cheek as the stag came beside me. You have come far, young one. Thank you.
“I don’t understand,” I said, my hands brushing the place on his flank where the wounds were supposed to be. The giant animal didn’t flinch, but gazed levelly at me. “You’re okay. You’re not hurt. Why aren’t you waking up? Don’t you realize without you, everything will fall apart? I saw it.”
He blinked at me slowly, eyelashes full of falling snow. You will see.
A rush of images flashed inside my head. In an empty hollow surrounded by trees, a tawny doe grunted as she gave birth to a male fawn whiter than the snow. She nuzzled him as he wailed, the coldness of the world hitting his thin, soft skin for the first time, until he stood on shaky legs. He followed after his mother until they were out of the hollow and in the newly created world.
Then the years sped up, the fawn now a young buck with fuzz on his antlers. His fur was brighter than the sun, and with each step life sprang from his hooves, climbing out into the earth. His leaping rhythm was the heartbeat of the earth.
Time passed and more creatures came from the hollow, right from the spot where the stag was born. Humans with their feeble bodies and intelligent brains, normal animals with their fur and claws, and the folk: lindworms and giants, svartelves and goblins. All climbed out of the hollow. They were good and bad and everything in between. The normal animals, the humans, they all went south of the place where the stag was born, while the folk, the gods, and every other monster went north. As they trekked, one by one, the land to the south grew warm and teemed with life while the northern land froze with deadly beauty. The line between the north and the south grew and grew until they became two separate worlds, distinct from each other, but only a step apart.
The young stag raced across the Permafrost, the ground turning to ice wherever his hooves touched as goblins chased after him; he died and was reborn again and again, the cycle continuing without end. Until now.
I looked at the animal. His breath turned to frost in the snowy air. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
The stag huffed and closed his dark eyes before sinking to his knees. I went down with him. “Listen, you can’t die! You just can’t. Not now, not yet!”
The border between the worlds was where I was
born. The ancient voice spoke again. It is where I must die. My body is fading away. We know this; this is how it began and how it will end.
The gleam of Donnar’s black, pitying eyes and the shine of the silver moss came back to me, and I found myself repeating the svartelf’s words. “For thousands upon thousands of years, you have sat beside your throne, firmly rooted in the earth. After thousands upon thousands of years, the roots are devoured and torn away. A thousand wars have been fought for you, a thousand deaths offered to you. Each time you have been ripped away from the earth, and each time you regrow stronger than before. One day, your roots will spread across the worlds, and when they do, they will be all there is to anchor it in place.”
The stag lifted his head to gaze into my eyes. Can you accept that burden?
I blinked as slowly, slowly, what he was asking me to do sank in. I do not envy you, child, Donnar had said as I left him. Maybe it wasn’t just the rambling of an insane creature who never saw the light.
The eight seeds sat hard in my pocket as I closed my eyes, trying to think, trying to block out the swirls of memories creating a whirlpool inside me. Not my memories. Memories of being captured and killed and risen again, memories of long years beside the Goblin King, the bond that grew between the two creatures, almost like the love one would have for a family member, the pain as the Erlking’s power was drained away and died. The search for someone worthy as a thousand worth nothing chased him through the bracken.
He is worthy, the stag said. As are you. Do you think just anyone born between worlds could do this?
My hands were shaking, and I didn’t try to stop them. “How am I worthy of … of this? How could I possibly…?”
You are balance and chaos. You are light and dark. It churns inside you, forcing you to choose, yet you never do. You will walk between the worlds throughout your life and know innately which being deserves your respect, your mantle.
“I won’t be … subjugated.” I spat the word out. “Not to anyone. Not even to Soren.”
The stag made a sound similar to a snort. You think I am the one who is subjugated? You think I lack the power? I have all the power. The Erlking draws from me, not the other way around. And when I deem him unworthy of what I possess, I leave him with nothing but his own death. I am more powerful than anything.
I swallowed. It made sense, the way the power was exchanged. I knew that, but I hadn’t thought of it in the way the stag described. Still, become the stag? To Soren and … whoever else long after Soren was dead and gone? To live forever and ever until I found my death at the border and something or someone came to take my place? And if they never did, to continue to live and watch and run. To judge the beings who believe they are gods by the standards of men; to prove to them that before you they are as weak as newborn fawns.
“Is it worth it?” I asked. It was a silly question. The balance of the world, the subtle control over all living things—my life was nothing compared to that.
Before, in the Erlking’s palace, the stag was just a symbol of subjugation. That was so long ago it could’ve been another lifetime. No, it wasn’t demeaning, but it was frightening. Even now in the calmness of the snowy hollow, I was close to hyperventilating, shivering with the choice before me. The power to choose the rulers of the most feared species in the Permafrost; the power to decide who and what deserved the strength that seeped from every inch of my being; the power to make a king and also take away his crown.
There was a strange feeling in my chest, as if my heart was frozen and only now beginning to thaw. I was meant to do this, wasn’t I?
I didn’t expect the stag to respond to my thoughts. Only you can know that, young one. The future is frightening, I know. The choice is the hardest of all. But it is a choice—who rules and who lives and who dies, who hunts and who mends and who heals. It is your power to choose.
“Then why did you let Lydian kill you?” I shouted, voice echoing into the empty sky. “Why let such a monster drive his blade into your chest?”
He was worthy in a different way. But he is dead, as am I—and if you had not come, the mantle of my power would remain so. But you have come, and that is what was written. The world that bowed to me is the before, as you are the after. And the remaining life on the border grows stronger with your every breath; his power is hard to deny.
I smiled a little. Soren’s power was hard to deny and so, I found, was mine. If I’d given him the strength he needed to be the Erlking, I could continue to do it. And when his time came, in thousands of years, I would be able to deal with that too, and I knew he would accept his death as I accepted a new life. This was the way the Hunt worked—the weak were weeded from the strong, as the old died to make way for the new. Like a fire burning away a field and the land growing back twice as strong. I remembered the sunken eyes of the last Erlking; when his throat finally was slit, somehow I knew those eyes closed peacefully.
This was what I was meant to be. Not a human, not a goblin. A being who straddled both worlds, who chose the best and worst from them and decided which she would follow. I was meant to run in the wind and fight in the fire. I was meant to be as calm as water and as cool as earth. I was chaos and darkness and balance and light. I was not human, not goblin, not halfling, not a mixed creature meant to die in a mercy kill.
From the time that my body had slid out onto the earth, I’d been a survivor. Now I would choose from the pools of the strong who the survivors would be; not out of vengeance or spite, but because I was the only one who could see past the outside of a monster and see a person who cared, the only one who could see through the harmless face of a human to the murderous beast within.
I had to do this; if not for the world, if not for me, then because there was no one else who could.
“Tell me what I have to do.”
The stag rested his head in my lap and let out a long sigh. He breathed out silver light that rose high into the sky and mixed with the stars until it was a swirl of the black night and the white starlight; then the two swirls of mist engulfed me in their embrace, so much like another creature’s power would.
Blinding agony hit me full force until slowly a mixture of coldness and warmth spread through my body in a delicate balance. The power I’d absorbed in the fights before mingled with the dark and the light, coloring it with its touch until the stag’s spirit was all the colors of the rainbow.
The stag rose from where he lay at my feet and dipped his head toward me. Then he walked out of the hollow, and as he did, his figure shrank from an adult stag, to a young buck, until he was a fawn that disappeared on the horizon.
* * *
THE WORLD RUSHED back to me in a flood of sound and color. The first thing I noticed was the weight that pressed down around my collarbone, reminding me of the collar I’d worn a hundred years ago. The second thing was the lack of pain and the smell of goblin blood in the air. The third thing was I was lying where the stag had been, the pressure on my neck a torc of white antler bones.
I stood, slowly, ignoring the hands that reached out to help me. I couldn’t tell who they were or even focus on them. The world was an explosion of new colors and sounds and smells. The bright lights that filtered through the treetops reflected off leaves in golden and brown and silver waves; the stark grayness of the Permafrost gave way to a million different shades of greens and blues and purples. In my ears, pounding like blood, were the heartbeats of every living being. I closed my eyes, focusing on one in particular. It beat stronger than the rest, as noticeable as if he’d said my name out loud.
Soren stared at me, clutching his wounds. They would heal, I knew, as the power from the lindworm and young lordling and Helka fought within me. I let it seep out slowly, wrap him in its warm light, and I watched amazed as the power healed the broken, bloody flesh.
Soren stepped toward me and knelt by my feet. His strength was my strength, his pain was my pain, and I could feel his muscles quivering with a strange type of joy, his mind racing in
a way that I had always been so sure a goblin’s never would. With curiosity and questions and emotions ready to spill out to anyone who heard.
I could feel everything about him.
Soren looked at me, his lilac eyes shining, and I knew, yes, he felt the same with me.
From the distance, covered with the blood of enemies, Seppo came out of the trees. The spirits of the dead goblins rose behind him to kneel beside their king. To kneel for me. In the distance wolves howled and three furry faces peered from the ashes, bowing their heads. My vision rose beyond the trees and into the sky where I watched the Hunt slow and stop as if the goblins knew instinctively that their leader was found and the stag was reborn.
For a long second, all we did was look at each other and take in our ruined clothes, burnt hair, and ash-smeared skin. I couldn’t help but laugh as pieces of Soren’s tunic fluttered away into the breeze. At that, he cocked his head to the side and smiled his ridiculous smile.
“You know, your hair has white specks in it. You’re like a little fawn. It’s actually adorable.” He struggled to keep his face straight.
“I am your stag.” I kept a straight face, but the seriousness of my words was lost with my blush. “Or well, female, human-bodied alternative. Somehow I feel the title is a lot more honorary than literal now.”
From somewhere in the crowd of dead goblins, there was a snicker. Obviously, they found it just as ironic as I did. Maybe whoever was laughing also knew how to use sarcasm.
“You’ve come a long way, Janneka,” he said, a small smile on his face. Looking down on himself, he added, “I guess I have too.”
The ancient wisdom of the stag flowed through me, the past and future and fate, yet surprisingly I was calmer than I’d ever been. “We have even further to go.” Then I smiled. “And I look forward to it.”
* * *
White Stag Page 28