by Kody Boye
Maybe, just maybe, if he thought about it long and hard—with a mind devoid of emotion and a conscience full with clarity—the riddle would unravel itself, like a ball of yarn professed to a kitten who wanted nothing more to unroll it to its heart content.
Odin closed his eyes.
He took several long, deep breaths.
The door opened.
His nerves shot on end.
When he opened his eyes and pushed himself into a sitting position, he saw Virgin standing in the doorway, bearing what appeared to be a pan of pastries freshly-made and still brimming with sauce.
“I figured you were hungry,” the older Halfling said. “So I made something. For all of us.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Odin said, locking his hands around his knees after pulling them to his chest. “Can I ask you something, Virgin?”
“Might as well.”
“Have you ever been any good at riddles?”
“Not particularly. Why?”
“It bears the Tooth of Strength and Plenty,” Odin said, “Broke apart in Disregard.”
“Divided in Three and Whence it came,” Virgin replied. “The Ferryman upon Its boat.”
“You know it?” he asked, absolutely dumbstruck that his companion could recite the passage verbatim.
“It’s on old wive’s tale.”
“About what?”
“The Ferryman, of course.”
“I… don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what?”
“Maybe it’s just because I don’t know the old legends, but who’s—“
“The Ferryman?” Virgin smiled. He waited for Odin to make any further response before settling down at the end of the bed, patting the space beside him so Odin could draw seat himself at his side. “It’s a rather obscure legend, if you’d like to know the truth.”
“What is it about?”
“The Ferryman is a creature that is said to inhabit bodies of water that are thin enough to be crossed by canoe, but large enough to be considered terrible to swim. Supposedly, as the legend is told, it’s a creature who separates the realms of Life and Death and allows whomever is seeking it to cross through its waters—that is, if they so manage to pay the toll.”
“The toll?”
“The Ferryman only accepts silver, if you believe what the Elven myths say.”
“Is it real?”
“I don’t know. Either way, I don’t have any desire to meet it.”
The Ferryman, Odin thought, spreading his body lengthwise along the bed and taking in the scent of what could only possibly be cinnamon buns. Where you could be, oh silver-loving thing of death?
“Have you consulted a map?” Virgin happened to ask.
“I looked at the one they had in the book, but I haven’t looked at an updated one.”
“You know it’s beyond a body of water.”
“Yes.”
“And you know it can’t be beyond anything more than a river. That much is for sure.”
“All right.”
“Your best guess would be to try and figure out where any isolated landmass would be.”
“Do you really think that would work?”
“I do.”
Odin rolled onto his stomach and stared at the wall opposite him.
“Our friends are waiting,” Virgin said, pressing a hand to Odin’s shoulder blade and massaging the muscles beneath his touch. “You’re so tense.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“We’ve had this conversation before, Odin.”
“I know, but still… I’ve cheated you.”
“You haven’t. Besides—were I upset, I would have been the first to tell you, especially considering our situation.”
“I know.”
Odin rolled back onto his back, pushed himself forward, then laced his arm around Virgin’s waist.
After leaning into his companion’s side, Odin’s attention strayed once more to the window.
In the distance, he could faintly see a giant dog skirting around the edge of the yards—mounted by, who appeared to be, Carmen, who held within her hands what had to have unarguably been snowballs.
“If only I felt up to playing with them,” Odin sighed.
“Don’t worry,” Virgin replied. “Come on—let’s go eat dessert with our friends.”
Odin chose to oblige.
Dinner was prepared by Katarina and Virgin and served later that night, after the sun had fallen and Carmen had returned nearly soaking-wet with her massive, snow-covered dog in tow. They ate, as it always seemed, silently, and by the time dinner ended, Odin did little more than trot up the stairs and to his and Virgin’s room, where his eyes immediately fell upon the sack resting in the corner of the room that contained the book that so solely ruled his life.
You know it can’t be beyond anything more than a river. That much is for sure.
Were that knowledge true, then surely consulting a map would allow him to find the location of the Source.
Rather than pour himself over the book’s passages and drive himself insane, Odin paced about the room going through his and Virgin’s personal artifacts, intent on finding the one thing that had led them beyond the scope of the Great Divide and along the Western Shore.
It has to be somewhere, he thought, biting his lips as what seemed like pages upon pages of political paperwork pooled across his hands. You know you brought it with you.
That map had been taken from Ornala itself in his, Carmen’s and Nova’s quest to Dwaydor during the first assault of the city. He had not—in any way, shape or form—managed to lose it, so for him to have misplaced it within a house and, sadly, a mass of drawers seemed completely unbeknown to his conscience.
Knowing that Virgin would soon return, Odin pulled the drawer out of the cabinet and began his desperate attempt to find the map—first sorting, then discarding, then all-out tossing pages of parchment into the air.
Where the hell did this come from?
Either way, he had no time to consider what he was throwing.
Finally, after ages of trying, it came under his fingers and whispered of places long lost and hidden from humanity.
“There,” he whispered.
The map—hand-drawn, scrawled in black ink, complete with an index of tables at the side of the parchment where the map ended at the Hornblaris Mountains.
After securing the map and combing through the papers on the floor, he returned the drawer to his cabinet, took a deep breath, then seated himself at the writing desk, all the while dreading what he might find.
Relax, he thought. Take slow, deep breaths.
He did this fearing that were he to pour his heart, soul and intellect into this map that he may possibly fail—that regardless of his intelligence, despite the overt Ferryman indication and the fact that there were few rivers within the Three Kingdoms, he might be unable to find such a secret location.
When Odin opened his eyes, he saw before him the world to the north and what it could possibly offer.
Life, the gilded thing whispered, for one who was lost.
“To war,” Odin nodded, weighing the corners down with four paperweights he pulled from the corner of the desk.
His eyes instinctively fell to the land of the east—where, above Bohren, and directly across the Ornalan Bay, a series of small, wiry rivers made their way like stubble on a poor man’s face toward the hills they could so desperately not reach. He knew instinctively that these small bodies of water could not be what he was looking for, as each led to no separate section of land. For that, he rolled his finger to the west, where his digit met the river that cut through the Liar’s Forest and then branched out into a Y—where Ke’Tarka lay in easy sight before the expanse of grasslands that eventually led to Sylina.
It can’t be there, he thought, tapping the indicator where the River City lay. There’s no landmass that could hold anything.
Besides that, humankind had touched everything th
at lay to the north, south, east and west of the Forked Rivers, so that left him nothing in comparison to other places.
What about…
His eyes, growing more and more weary, landed on the river opposite Felnon, then to the eventual marshland that covered the western shoreline.
“Wait a minute,” Odin whispered.
Immediately, his eyes fell to a land formation that, over time, had split away from the Three Kingdoms.
It bears the Tooth of Strength and Plenty.
“Broke apart in disregard.”
Divided in Three and Whence it came.
“The Ferryman… upon Its boat.”
Odin’s heart stopped beating.
Time ceased to exist.
It… can’t… be, he thought, struggling to maintain hold on his reality as the center of his vision eclipsed into one dark tunnel.
Mad, possibly, and driven insane by the reality that this could be the place he was looking for, Odin turned the map over and began to run through the series of hand-scrawled text behind it—first the cities, then the rivers, then the islands that lay beyond the Western and Salem Seas and finally to the body of waters beyond. He thought for one terrible moment that he would not find the name of the place that he so desperately searched for, but when his eyes fell on a single string of text that lay near the bottom corner of the page, color filled his mind and his heart began to hammer once more.
Written, neatly, in perhaps the most frantic handwriting Odin had ever seen, were the words Sharktooth Island.
“It bears the Tooth of Strength and Plenty,” Odin whispered. “Broke apart in Disregarded.”
And divided in three this very place was, as over the ages the land that had once been connected to the Three Kingdoms had split into an island that resembled something of a tooth and bore, on all three sides, different bodies of water—first the Haunted Marshlands and the river that separated it, then the Elnan River, followed by the Western Sea that completed the formation that set it apart from the mainland.
“This is it,” Odin whispered, almost unable to believe that he had discovered the very thing the book had told him. “This is… this is…”
The door opened.
Odin nearly jumped out of his seat.
Nova stood in the threshold, arms braced along the doorjamb and eyes intent on the process playing out before him. “You all right?” the older man asked.
“I’m fine,” Odin replied, careful to roll the map back into place as carefully as possible. “Why?”
“You’ve been… quiet… today.”
Quiet? Odin thought, securing the twine around the parchment before making his way back to the dresser.
“Sorry?” Odin asked.
“I expected to hear more from you tonight… considering, well, you only got back and all.”
“I’m sorry, Nova. I’ve just been… tired, I guess.”
“You sure you’re all right?” the red-headed man asked. He began to step into the room, but seemed to consider his actions, as he stopped before he could enter.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m worried about you, kid. Your boyfriend is too.”
Virgin? he frowned. What could he—
Before the train of thought could continue, Virgin stepped up behind Nova and out of the shadows, revealing himself in the pale white light cast from the candle in the corner of the room. “You were speaking about me?” the Halfling asked.
“Oh. Sorry,” Nova said, stepping aside so Virgin could enter the room. “I was just telling Odin how we’re worried about him.”
“We are,” Virgin agreed.
“Maybe you should come out and talk with us, Odin—you know, get your head out of the bad place you’re in.”
“I’m fine,” Odin smiled. “If it’s all right, I’d like to go to bed early tonight.”
“All right,” Nova said, voice wary and all the more concerned. “Whatever you want, bud. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Odin said, nodding as Nova closed the door. He waited, listening to the sound of his friend’s footsteps until he could hear them no more, before turning to face his companion. “I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Solved the riddle. It’s Sharktooth Island.”
“An island?” Virgin frowned. “I don’t understand—“
“It’s a section of land that isn’t very well known because it rests beyond a marshland that’s known for being home to… well… Wraiths,” Odin said, crossing his arms over his chest and seating himself at the end of the bed.
“I assume you plan on leaving now that you’ve figured out where you’re supposed to go.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“Look.” Virgin fell to his knees before the bed and braced his hands on Odin’s knees. “Throughout the entire time we’ve known each other, I’ve stuck by your side through the good and the bad, the horrible and the unthinkable, the just and the unjust, but this… this, Odin… it’s your burden to bear, not mine. I’ve come with you this far. I’m not going any further.”
“You mean to just abandon me after we’ve been through so much?”
“I don’t know what effects the book with have on you. God—I don’t know what they’d have on me, a dumb half-Elf who was denied the gift of magic from birth. There’s no telling what might happen once you open that book and give your blood and hair. You could die. You could raise every single dead thing in the marsh. You could… and by God, I hope this doesn’t happen to you… succumb to insanity, just like the Elves who used the book and its magic before you did.”
“I’m different than them,” Odin said.
“How?”
“I’m a third Drow.”
Virgin had nothing to say.
“Look,” Odin continued, pressing his hands upon Virgin’s shoulders and leaning forward, deadly close to where their brows touched and their noses were just a breath’s-width from touching. “I’m not asking you to read from the book. I’m not even asking you to be anywhere near me when I do what I intend to do. What I’m asking is—“
What are you asking?
“—for you to just come with me and take me halfway. You don’t have to cross the river. You don’t even have to stay if you don’t want to. All I want is the knowledge that I’m not alone in this.”
“I hate to say it, Odin, but you are alone in this.”
Virgin stood. Turning, he began to make his way to the door. Shortly thereafter, he stopped.
What are you waiting for? Odin thought, balling his hands into fists. Just leave now if you’re going to.
He needed no further concern over whether or not he would be travelling this road alone—if he, of all people, really were to do what he’d set out to and raise from the dead the father which he never truly had. Virgin had come this far—had said, for all intents, that he had done so out of the need for companionship—but he would go no further, for he believed that were he to stray toward death, he might succumb to a fate far worse than the eternal knowledge that he had committed a horrible crime.
Odin closed his eyes. What felt like tears began to burn their surfaces.
The door opened, then closed.
Odin fell onto the bed.
Curling into a ball, trying his best to maintain hold on his emotions when it seemed the world was caving in on him, Odin finally gave in and began to cry.
So this is how it was.
The final leg of his journey would be spent alone.
“Odin,” Virgin said, pressing his hand against Odin’s shoulder and gently rocking his body. “Wake up.”
“What is it?” Odin asked, rolling over to face his companion.
“There’s a page here for you. Says the king wants an audience as soon as possible.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure. That’s all I was told.”
Still in a daze of confusion, Odin bowed his head back onto the pillow,.
Great, he thought. Just great.
“You’re never going to find out until you get up,” he mumbled.
“Sorry?” Virgin asked.
With a simple shake of his head, Odin threw his legs over the side of the mattress, stretched his arm over his head, then began to disrobe. Shortly thereafter, he strode across the room, then pulled the clothes he attended the ball in from their place in the drawer before pulling them on.
“Why are you going in ball wear?” Virgin frowned.
“Because I don’t have any other clean clothes,” he replied. “Besides—I figure this will at least make me look presentable, and give Ournul notice that I am, in fact, someone important, and whose opinion should be noted.”
“Don’t get into a fight with him, Odin.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“You can get thrown in jail, you know?”
“I’m well-aware of that, Virgin.”
“Just be careful, please.”
“I will.”
Before he could make his way toward the door, Odin had a sudden inclination to lean forward, press a kiss to Virgin’s lips, then embrace him with one arm, pressing the entirety of his weight into his companion’s body.
“Thank you for looking out for me,” he whispered, bowing his head into the older Halfling’s chest.
“Everything will be fine, Odin. Just don’t worry yourself over it. The king will understand your feelings on this.”
He could only hope.
“Your behavior the other night was absolutely ridiculous,” Ournul said, rounding the desk to approach Odin with a hand in the air and a finger extended. “Never in my near-twenty years of service have I ever had someone speak to me in that tone, much less the man who’s supposed to be my champion.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, sir,” Odin said, bracing himself for whatever was to come by locking his hands at the small of his back and steadying his posture.
“Oh really?” the king asked. “And what makes you think that?”
“I’m my own man as well as you are.”
“First you leave the country—in the midst of war, no doubt—doing God knows what where and with whom, only to return with another man, after the delegations have long since been over and the kingdom has been restored to its former glory. Could you have slapped me in the face any more than you already have, boy?”