by Kody Boye
“I can’t help who I fell in love with,” Odin said, steeling himself as Ournul leaned so close he thought their faces would collide.
“You might not be able to, but I sure as hell can.”
“I can leave.”
“Leave?” Ournul barked, spreading his arms as he once more began his desperate pace around his desk. “Leave? Are you absolutely mad, boy? You’ve been gone for almost a year now—what more could you possibly have to stew over?”
“I lost my father, my weapon’s master, one of my best friends. You can’t say I have nothing to mourn.”
“People die, Odin, especially in times of war. You can’t expect everyone to live.”
“I sure as hell don’t expect the people I love to die around me!” he cried, forcing himself to keep his hands behind him. “You can’t tell me what I’ve been feeling isn’t real!”
“Of course it’s real, Odin. Everyone feels grief at least once in their life. The difference between a real man and a fake one is that the real man moves on after he mourns the person he lost, not allow himself to fall into a pit and never crawl out of it.”
“You didn’t lose your father to the war.”
“I lost my father just as well as you did!” the king roared, slamming his fist onto the desk. Papers flew, a well of ink toppled to the floor, spilling its blood across the stone, and a writing quill soared through the air until it collided with the opposite wall, striking upon the wallpaper a grisly image of anger as it first slid, then dropped entirely. “Don’t you dare insinuate that I’ve never suffered as you have.”
“You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to,” Odin said, beginning to take a few steps back, but stopping when he realized that there were three armed and capable guards behind him.
“You’re mine to control, boy. Don’t you ever think you have your own free will.”
“You’ve changed, sir.”
“It seems the both of us have—especially you.”
Odin narrowed his eyes.
The king clamped his jaw shut and began to grind his teeth.
What, Odin wondered, could he say to such an accusation?
I’m fucking mad, he thought, almost laughing, but managing to restrain the urge if only because some part said that were he to laugh, he would most likely be thrown in jail. I’m fucking mad and you can’t even see it with your own two eyes.
“I want you to leave,” Ournul said, plopping down into his chair and hiding his eyes with his hands. “I don’t want to see you on the castle grounds until I summon you again. You’re dismissed—officially, until I see fit otherwise.”
“You want me to leave?” Odin asked. “Fine. I will.”
“If you even dare set foot off the city grounds, I will find you.”
“Send men after me, sir. They’ll never catch up.”
“Do you want to go to jail, Odin?”
“I’d rather rot in jail than be controlled by you.”
The king cast one final, ultimate look upon him.
In that stare, upon which the whole world seemed to be bared, Odin felt a knife slicing into his chest and ending all that existed of his material life.
When two guards took Odin by the arms and began to lead him out the door, he allowed them to usher him without a fight.
Already a plan began to brew in his mind.
When night fell—when, for all purposes, everyone and everything within not only the castle grounds, but the city and village would sleep—he would take from the stable the very horse he and Virgin had rode in on and make his way to the insidious island known only by Sharktooth. There, he would take the book into his arms, summon the Ferryman with but his will alone, and cross over to the one place that would allow him freedom from all of life’s burdens.
“How did that go?” Virgin asked, gesturing Odin inside as he opened the door.
“Horrible,” Odin said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s not your fault. I knew this was going to go badly anyway.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That I was his to control and that I had no bearing on whatever he had to say.”
“He is fractured from the war that has besieged his kingdom. His small-mindedness doesn’t help him any either.”
Stomping his boots on the floor-mat before the door, Odin reached down, undid the laces, then freed his feet before casting his golden jacket onto the loveseat, where it settled like a butterfly before depressing entirely.
“Did you get into an argument with him?” Virgin asked in the moments of silence that followed.
“Of course I did,” Odin laughed, not even bothering to turn and face his companion. “What did you think it would be? Tea and biscuits, joy and laughter?”
“I expected it to be much more civil than you’re making it out to be.”
“He said he would arrest me if I even set foot off these grounds.”
“But you still plan on leaving?”
Fearing safety and caution above all else, Odin stepped forward, set a single finger to Virgin’s fine lips, then surveyed the room, not in the least willing to reveal his plans less Katarina or Nova be nearby.
“I plan on leaving,” Odin said, “tonight, at the latest.”
“What will I tell your friends?” Virgin frowned.
“You won’t tell them anything. You’ll act like you have no idea where I’m going.”
“That doesn’t give me peace of mind.”
“Surely a thief knows how to lie?”
“Well, yes, but—“
“But what?”
Virgin said nothing. Instead, he sighed, bowed his head, then reached up to press his hands against both sides of Odin’s head, placing his thumbs on his cheekbones and his fingers through his hair.
“Something tells me you’re going to do this even if I don’t ask you to,” the Halfling said, bowing their heads together until Odin could feel Virgin’s breath across his face.
“I have to,” Odin replied. “I need to.”
“I’ll support your decision either way.”
Odin sighed and closed his eyes.
Before his vision he imagined a marshland so thick and inaccessible it was said that any man who entered would be lost.
While he didn’t necessarily believe such things, he could at least be content with the knowledge that things would work out, if only he allowed them to.
“Odin,” Virgin said.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Good luck.”
Odin bowed his head, closed his eyes, and tried not to cry.
Even the man he loved could not say he felt the same.
Chapter 10
Night came swiftly and with false promises. After eating, and after arranging himself into bed with the intent of not sleeping, but clearing his mind before he disembarked, Odin closed his eyes and began to think of all the things that could go wrong—then, slowly, began to wait for the hours to tick by.
It would seem that in moments of great persecution that time slows—that, when forced to wait for something in order to commit another action, the world is frozen, as if it were sand merely shifting through an hourglass but not ever really progressing at all.
One moment eclipsed into another.
Two hearts beat as one.
Breath passed in and out of his and Virgin’s chest.
Time moved slowly.
Outside, clouds shifted, then shrouded the moon behind their façades.
Expecting the worse and, ultimately, nothing more to happen within the next few moments, Odin began to count each and every breath that passed in and out of his chest.
One, he began. Two. Three.
He counted to what seemed like the hundreds—the thousands, possibly even the tens of thousands. While doing this, he began to consider the likelihood that Virgin, as gifted as he was in the art of acting, might not have ever been asleep at all.
It doesn’t matter, he thought. He knows what I
have to do.
Situated in the corner, pre-packed and ready to go, was the bag which held the book, a few changes of clothes, and the map which would lead him to the Haunted Marshlands and beyond.
While he had yet to pack a saddle, he had no doubt that within the next few hours, he would have to make haste in order to evade any prying eyes that may still be up.
Unless I want to knock them out with stones.
Upon second thought, he realized that the idea would lend more harm than good, as attacking the king’s men would only further serve against his crimes against his kingdom.
Behind him, Virgin shifted, then set an arm across his waist.
“Are you awake?” he asked.
“There’s no way I could sleep with you leaving,” the older Halfling said.
Rolling over, Odin reached forward, set his hand on his companion’s face, then smiled as the stubble trailed beneath his fingertips, much like dry weeds along the plains when one walked through waist-high grass.
“I’ll be back eventually,” he said, pressing forward so he could wrap both his arms around his companion. “I won’t be gone too long—no more than two weeks tops.”
“It takes three days to get from here to there.”
“And it takes three more to get from there to Dwaydor,” Odin replied. “But I’m cutting along the marshlands, staying off the road and making my way directly to where the island lays.”
“Do you know the song?”
“What song?”
“To summon the Ferryman?”
Odin frowned. “No,” he said. “There’s a song?”
“You have to sing it to summon the Ferryman.”
“Is it magic?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
“What is it?”
“Let me think for a moment.”
In waiting, and knowing that things would soon change, Odin found himself all the more nervous at the idea that should he be given a song, and should he have to recant it, he might possibly tamper the wording and thereby exonerate himself from getting to the island.
You can do it, he thought. Remember.
“Ferryman, Ferryman,” Virgin began, his voice clear as crystal and soft beneath the ever-distant whistle of the wind. “Hear my plea: I come to thee in the dead of night, Whispering things of horror and fright. Allow me to your island’s cross, I offer a penny, the chilled and frost.”
“The chilled and frost?” Odin frowned.
“It will only allow you to pass if you have a piece of silver.”
“I remember.”
“You do have a piece, don’t you?”
“I do,” Odin said.
As if in response, Virgin rolled over, crawled out of bed, then made his way to the dresser, where he pulled from a drawer his sack of coins and shifted through it until he returned with but one silver piece, which Odin took and slid into his pocket without more than a word in response.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“Don’t thank me,” Virgin replied.
“I should go.”
“Are you ready to?”
“I doubt I’ll ever be ready for this.”
“I know you’ll do just fine, Odin. Just remember… if things don’t go as planned—“
“I know,” Odin said. “Don’t take it personal.”
“Exactly.”
After rising from bed, he retrieved his back, locked his cloak about his shoulders, then offered Virgin one last kiss.
“Goodbye,” he said.
Virgin nodded.
When Odin walked out the open door, he felt in his heart a great sense of longing for the one person he loved more than anything else in the world.
They’d been together for almost a year.
How much longer would this feeling persist?
Under cover of darkness he made his way to the stables and began to assemble the saddle atop his horse. His movements quick, his breaths short and drawn, he secured the clasps beneath the stallion’s stomach and arranged what few supplies he had within his pack—first the tent, which he would likely be using within the coming days, then the few amenities he had managed to lift from the Eternity family’s kitchen, mainly pieces of jerky and what few vegetables he felt they could part with. He would have to hunt within the coming days for his food, but that did little to deter him as he realized that soon, his father, gone to the grave, would be back in his life.
“Shh,” he whispered, gently coaxing the horse from the stable before securing it as quietly as he could. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
He should have considered the innate possibility that the horse, as skittish as it was, might not do well traveling in what could most be the precursory of a blizzard. For that he considered himself ignorant, foolhardy and all the less prepared, but at least in the fog the whitened night offered the guards would be less likely to see him or his pure-black stallion.
Once far enough away to where he considered himself a safe distance from the stable, he kicked his foot into the stirrup, launched himself onto the horse’s back, then pulled his hood over his head, shivering in the biting cold that pressed down upon him from all directions.
There we go, he thought, gently kicking the horse’s ribs. Now we’re home-free.
He could only hope. They were still within eye and, possibly, earshot of the gate. It would be a long time until they disappeared upon the horizon.
Along the way, and toward where the road would eventually lead to the Felnon providence, Odin briefly considered the idea of turning back—not only to sate his king and maintain his dignity, but to return to bed and Virgin’s arms.
“He knows you have to go,” he mumbled. “He knows what you’re going to do.”
At the very least, he had his companion’s support. That was enough for him.
After pushing his head up as far as he could and straightening his posture to the point where it felt agonizing, Odin tightened his hold on the reins and coaxed the horse forward, into a more desperate trot.
Behind him, the world was silent, completely unaware of the man and his horse who fled the scene of what would soon be a horrible crime.
No one will die, he thought. No one will be injured.
While there would be people maimed in the fallout—mainly Nova and his family, Carmen and, most undoubtedly, Virgin—there physical harm would befall them, which made him all the more secure in the fact that he would soon have what he so desperately wanted.
After reaching down to make sure the book was still there, he lifted his hand and guided it through his hair—toward where, at the front of his scalp, his father’s purple lock had been bonded to him.
This is for you, he thought. For me. For us.
The wind blew on.
This would only be the start of a very, very long night.
He persevered through the snow and cold for as long as he could. Hood drawn so far down his face so much that he could barely see, gloves soaked to the core and legs aching from his continuous pursuit, he channeled magical energy throughout his body and into his clothing in an attempt to allow himself even the slightest respite, but no matter how hard he tried or how desperate he was, he seemed unable to maintain some level of sanity.
I’m going to freeze to death, he thought.
Had this been what Nova had felt like in his desperate attempt to reach Ornala some five years ago—cold, isolated, feeling as though at any moment he would break down and simply collapse into some prehistoric fit? His lungs blazed, despite the fact that it was so cold, and his throat grated, chapped and warm, as if he hadn’t drank any water for the past few days. Why he felt this way he couldn’t possibly be sure, but were he to guess, they were early but slowly-creeping symptoms of the Chill.
“I’m not getting the Chill,” he whispered, grimacing, his chapped lips breaking. “Shit.”
Blood spilled down his chin.
Beneath him, his horse trembled, fidgeting every so often as if Odin’s hold on t
he reins was enough to drive it mad.
“It’s all right, boy,” he said, reaching up to channel healing light into the flesh. “Don’t worry. We’ll stop soon.”
When ‘soon’ was he couldn’t be sure. He’d wanted to continue through the storm, if not outlast it entirely, but it seemed that would not happen. He considered stopping for that reason alone, but no matter how many times he tried to go back to that idea, his mind kept rejecting it, as if it were a bad seed planted in a field sewn with delectable treats.
Sighing, he bowed his head, took a deep breath, then licked his lips.
Though his body desperately wanted him to stop and rest for the night, he kept telling himself that he would keep going, if only because he needed to make as much distance from Ornala as possible.
Reaching into the deepest, darkest parts of him, he pulled from the Ether the Will of magic and channeled it through both him and his mount.
The horse whinnied and cast his head back.
Odin smiled.
Maybe he could keep this up long enough to where he would not have to worry about running them ragged.
He stopped in the twilight hours of the morning and prepared beneath a thicket of trees a campsite shrouded by bushes that would shield them from wandering eyes.
Beneath the tent, and within the bedroll he had so faithfully carried with him for the past five years, Odin dozed in fitful bursts and dreamed of a father whom had died on the field of battle, a wound to his lung killing him from the inside out.
No, he thought, trembling, curling into tight a ball as possible. No… no…
The blood poured down, the words were whispered, the air was hot and the atmosphere cold—there was upon the distance the sounds of battle and within the air the birds that came to sew the world, to laugh and dance at the men who had fallen to the world. There were monsters on the horizon, of brutes and menaces that could not be slain with swords or arrows, and there were within the hearts of men the terror of the world, for there was no thing as great as war that could deny them. And in his arms, so wracked with blood, was the Elf which had made him whole—the one whom on one long, lonely night, had imparted his infant self to a man named Ectris—and in his arms this Elf was dying, his chest a flower and his lips the fuse. Remember me, his pale lips whispered. Remember me.