Endre: Brothers Of The Dark Places

by Miranda Bailey

  “I’m very sorry, Endre.” Taka came out of the great room and into the kitchen where I’d found the two arguing teens. “Hata and Ingrid, apologize at once.”

  Both teens looked down at their toes as their king spoke, though I noticed the boy’s, Hata’s, lips pursed tightly as he did so, and I waved away the apology. “It’s nothing. I suppose you all need to eat, don’t you? Have you brought anything with you?”

  I waited for Taka to answer, and inspected him more closely. I hadn’t seen him in at least two hundred years, but little had changed. He didn’t look that different from me, though his hair was blacker, where my light brownish color was tipped in gold. We both had the same strong faces and Nordic features, but Taka’s eyes were the color of the ocean, changing from gray to blue, while mine was the color of lush grass fed a constant diet of water.

  “We’ve brought what we could. If you will allow it, more will come, and bring just as much with them. We can have our engineers come in and set up a camp within hours. We won’t be here long, maybe only a few weeks as the rest of the engineers work to rebuild what has been destroyed.” Taka looked aloof, distant, and I knew that was my own doing, but there was little I could do about it now except give him the aid he asked for.

  “Of course, brother, please, sit, and tell me more about what has happened.” I waved him to a chair as I went about my larder, finding cheese, bread, and a couple of bottles of beer I’d found in a market in the Far East. I thought I’d had them all but was glad to have found them there.

  I placed the simple food in front of my brother and sat down with him. He took the beer but left the food, I noticed, and began to speak.

  “It started yesterday, the earth started to shake, and protective shield over us started to crack. Luckily, our engineers are good at what they do, and they managed to keep the shield up, but there are cracks that need to be repaired. Most of our structures were damaged, we have people still...” he paused, as though he felt great pain and had to regroup before he carried on, “trapped in some of the buildings. Even for magicals, this is devastating.”

  “No dead?” I asked, hoping for the best.

  “Not that I know of. I’ve not had any reports of that yet.” Taka looked away to hide the pain in his eyes. He sighed before he turned back to me, his face clear once more, his jawline a ridge of concrete. “Thank you, brother, for taking us in.”

  “What else would I do, Taka? You are my brother, after all. They are all our people out there.” I indicated the people in my great room, and undoubtedly more were filling up the land outside of my house as well. I could hear the sound of wheels turning and metal clanging out there already.

  “Wruin has taken some of the people, but he can’t take them all, obviously. We all have such limited space.” Taka looked away again, he knew hearing my brother’s name would not make me happy.

  Wruin, the reason I’d left my world behind, the reason I’d left my real kingdom, the sunken land along the coastline of Greenland, behind thousands of years ago. It didn’t sting so much to think about him now, but I still could not say his name without bitterness.

  “It’s nice to know Wruin is helping out as well.” It was all I could say, my flat tone all the emotion I could muster. Wruin had killed that within me long ago.

  “I should let you check your woman. What is wrong with her? Can our healers help?”

  “She was caught in a storm, on a small yacht that capsized. I got her out in time. She just needs...to rest.” I stood, appreciating Taka’s consideration. “If you need anything, I’ll be in there. Have the other beer if you like. I’ll come and check in with you later.”

  “Thank you, again, brother. Just having a place to sleep that isn’t shaking will be enough for my people and I. We can provide the rest ourselves.” He clasped at my forearm, an old tradition that I hadn’t practiced in a long time. I’d left the Viking world, the Nordic world, behind when Wruin destroyed my life.

  I gave Taka a shake of my head and left abruptly, I had nothing else to say.

  Inside me, deep inside where only Thyra might eventually me able to get into, there burned in me two warring emotions; happiness that Thyra was here, and pain because Taka had come bearing heartache and memories of why I’d left the world behind. I wanted to take Thyra up in my arms once more and fly away. This was my home and I would not run from my home ever again. Not for anyone. Not even Wruin.

  2

  Thyra

  A loud clanging woke me up, driving the drill piercing my brain even deeper, until I felt nauseous. Was that a blacksmith banging on metal? It was a sound I’d only ever heard once before, at a living history museum in Virginia, but that once was enough to make the noise unforgettable. I must be dreaming, I realized, there was no way there could be a blacksmith on my boat. Only the boat wasn’t moving.

  I sat up, a move that earned me even more pain and heaving stomach as soon as my head was vertical. I put my hand to my mouth and somehow managed to hold back the urge to be sick, but still had to keep my eyes clamped shut as pain coursed through me. My other hand began searching for the cause of the pain and I soon found a very large, hard knot at the back of my head.

  “Holy hell! What happened?” The act of speaking just made my head hurt more and I growled low in my throat about the pain from a soft bed that I knew wasn’t mine even before I opened my eyes. There was no swaying, gentle rolling, or movement of any kind from the bed that should have been little more than a sheet covered cushion but was somehow a soft mattress I never wanted to leave. The world was still, stationary. Something was wrong.

  I cracked one eye open, afraid of a piercing ray of light from one of the boat’s portholes, but found darkness lit only by flames too far away to make a difference. Fire, that’s not a good sign, especially not on a boat. I wasn’t so convinced I was on my boat, though. I scrambled from the tall bed and down to the floor, the wood gave me the final clue that this was not my boat. I was on land.

  When you’ve lived on a small yacht for any length of time you know that even the slightest movement will make the boat sway and your body comes to naturally adjust to that, to even anticipate that movement and when it doesn’t happen you notice it. When the world didn’t shift around I knew I was either on a huge vessel, or on land. I don’t think many ships have wood floors and fires nowadays, so I had to choose the latter option, right?

  I heard a whimper of confusion and fear escape my throat before I could squelch it and grimaced. I am not a wimp, I’m not a crybaby, the last few years of my life had crushed any weakness within me, but in that moment I was terrified. I tried to see into the darkness the fire did little to illuminate, but couldn’t make anything out. There was no window in the room, no lamp that my seeking hands could find; there wasn’t even a lantern for crying out loud.

  I felt another whimper threatening to escape and stood up straight instead. I’ve divorced my husband and dealt with his stalker-games, I’ve sailed across the Atlantic alone; I’ve faced down a storm that would make grown man wet their pants...oh, the storm. Bits and pieces of memories started to play in my head, and I felt my knees go weak as the memory of the world turning upside down returned.

  Had I died? Is that what this was? My hands sought out the wall on the side of the bed I was standing on as I tried to make sense of my current reality. Maybe I had died, I wasn’t a religious person, not by any measure, but maybe this was the afterlife I’d come to doubt existed. I looked around, my eyes searching out the darkness.

  This can’t be heaven, there were no clouds or angels playing harps. I didn’t see clumps of reunited family members in white robes doing...whatever people were supposed to do in heaven. Surely heaven wouldn’t be this dark either?

  I swayed towards the fire, the only source of light in the room. Maybe this was...the other place? I gulped as I looked down into the flames, my head throbbing fiercely at the brightness of the flames. I closed my aching eyes and turned away from the warmth.

  I
headed back to the bed. Despite the fire, I didn’t think this was hell either. Maybe I hadn’t been a total saint in my lifetime, but I couldn’t smell brimstone and sulfur, there was no devil poking me in the ass with a stick, and I couldn’t see a lake of fire where damned souls screamed out their eternal agony. Nope, I should be dead, and perhaps I was, but this place I now inhabited was not my culture’s concept of the afterlife.

  Cold air streamed in from somewhere, a piercingly cold draft, and I clasped my arms over my chest just as I found the bed again. Had I somehow managed to survive the deadly freezing water and washed up on land somewhere? That’s when I realized I was naked and grabbed at the blanket on the bed. Nope, there was no way this was heaven, not if you wake up naked with no idea of where you were.

  Memories of a movie flashed in my head, but I knew I wasn’t a college kid so maybe there wouldn’t be raving murderers of any kind outside hoping to murder me for betraying our kind. Hopefully.

  I moved away from the bed, my hands held out to find the walls as my feet shuffled slowly away from the fire. If I could find a wall, perhaps I could find a door.

  Voices joined the clanging sound I could hear, and I knew I must be on land. The only question now was where was I? I found a wall at last and started to move along it, until I felt the surface change and knew I must have found a door. I found a handle and twisted it, a relieved sigh escaped me as I pushed the door open.

  Chaos, total, utter chaos met me when I opened the door. People, men, women, and children, bustled by and talked amongst themselves as I stood there, the blanket from the bed clasped around my shoulders. I could only stand there, my mouth hanging open, as the most beautiful people I’d ever seen went about their lives before me.

  Dark haired and light, the tall people all had the fine features of the Nordic people, not the Hispanic or indigenous beauty of the people of South America that I had expected. For a moment I reconsidered whether I was dead or not. The people all wore leather and furs in styles I’d only ever seen in movies or pictures, never in real life. Not outside of costumes anyway. Time travel? Had I hit a weird Bermuda Triangle of shifty time in that storm?

  I’d heard odd tales on my travels so the idea was as logical as the sight I saw before me, I thought as I scoffed at myself quietly. Where the hell am I?

  “Ah, Thyra, you’re awake.” A very tall, very beautiful man came out of the crowd to join me. “Here, let’s go back inside where it’s quiet.”

  I gaped at him and it was only my shock that had my feet moving as he took my elbow and guided me back into the dark of the room I’d only just escaped from. “You’re...”

  “Yes, I’m Endre, come now, get back in bed.” He guided me gently to the bed, helping me to climb back up the tall frame and onto the mattress that welcomed me softly.

  “You’re...” I could only stare at him, taking in the reality of him. He really was...

  “Endre, yes. And you’re Thyra. Are you thirsty?” He didn’t look at me, only rearranged the blanket around me before he moved to take up a fur of some animal I couldn’t identify and placed it around my body.

  “No, you’re...” But he interrupted me again.

  “Hungry at all? I can fetch you something, gladly.” He went to the door and shouted for something in a language I couldn’t understand.

  My headache returned with a fierce piercing pain and I moaned in agony as I turned on my side. The world began to spin and all I could do was hang on with my fingers clutched into the strange but incredibly soft fur.

  “I told you that you needed to rest. Now you’ve made yourself ill again.” He soothed a hand down my head, softly, gently, and somehow the pain started to ease.

  “Oh, that’s nice.” I murmured as the pain went away altogether and exhaustion took over. “Thank you, Dream Man.”

  3

  Endre

  I helped refugees carry loads of supplies through a portal from their world to mine for hours as Thyra slept. A large round thing that appeared to be little more than silver metal surrounded in a haze of green fog with a purple center allowed the passage of people and goods without the worry of trying to transport over a great distance. Some would see it as magic created by the elven engineers; I knew it was purely science. Ancient science, but still science.

  I went to check on her just as the families started their evening meals, each one had already expressed their happiness to me about finding somewhere safe to sleep for the night. I’d hated the noise created by all of the activity, I’d cringed at the invasion of my privacy, but most of all, I’d resented the time they’d kept me away from Thyra. Still, I could not turn them away and it was not their fault I’d rejected the world a long time ago.

  I prepared my own meal and set a tray for two. I knocked at the door, but heard no response, so I carried the tray in and put it on a low table at the side of the bed. Thyra still slept, no doubt exhaustion, exposure, and shock held her in a powerful grip. She needed to wake, even for a short time, to drink some water, at least.

  I stood over her for a moment, watching her sleep in the dim light from the fire. Her eyes were closed, her dark eyelashes rested on cheeks that were pale, even with the tan. When I’d inspected her for injuries earlier I’d found the knot on her head, but the skin had not been broken. She might have a concussion, but otherwise she wasn’t injured. She needed rest, feeding, and hydration more than anything. After all, the shock she’d already had was nothing compared to the one she was about to get.

  It wasn’t every day someone from the outside world was brought into the world of magic. What the outside world considered magic, anyway. I knew now that a lot of it was science, and well, the rest was a kind of magic, I suppose. To me, being a dragon wasn’t magical, it just was. It is what I was. Being able to shift into different shapes was also my ability, a twist of my own magical capabilities that not everyone had. Not even Wruin.

  I clenched my fist against the name and woke Thyra in the process. She looked up at me, her eyes blinking away the sleep, trusting and calm. There was even a flash of a smile on her lips as she looked up at me.

  “You’re the man of my dreams.” She whispered with a dry voice, and I handed her a glass of water to moisten her throat. “Thank you, I needed that.”

  I watched her as she became aware of reality once again and sat up. Would she scream, would she run? I waited, my breath held, until she turned her head back to me. “Why are there no windows in this room?”

  A simple question, and easily answered, but that answer could send her shrieking.

  “The house is designed to keep out the cold, Thyra.” I deflected and tried to put off the inevitable. Eventually she’d find out where she was. I wanted only a moment more to try and find a way to explain without sending her into a panic.

  “Oh, that makes sense.” She seemed at ease, but I noticed her hands were plucking at the fur covering her. There was tension there then. “How are you real? What happened to me?”

  She finally looked up at me, those doe-like eyes wide and confused. I sat back in the chair I was in and breathed deep. Here we go.

  “What do you remember?” I asked, just to get a timeline prepared.

  “The mast cracked.” She said after a moment of thought. “I went below. The world tilted. Did she drop the keel?”

  “I didn’t see it on the boat when I pulled you free, no.” I shook my head in the negative.

  “Wow. Two of my worst fears in one night. How did you get me off the boat?” She seemed calm, calmer than she should have been really. Had she done some damage to her brain.

  I had to wonder as she stared at me, her calmness washing over me. I could smell a faint scent of orange blossoms, a smell I knew it was impossible to have here. I’d noticed it only when I was near to Thyra, it must be some manifestation of our connection. She sighed heavily and moved as she waited for an answer I still wasn’t ready to give, even if she was unnaturally calm.

  “Well?” She finally asked, and I could
see she wanted to nudge me into a n answer.

  “I, uh...” This wasn’t going to be easy. How to explain to her that I was a shifter, a dragon, sometimes other things. How to explain that she was my mate, the only one I’d ever truly have of that nature, a true mate, a soul mate?

  “If it makes it an easier, I know there’s some oddness going on here. I’ve dreamed about you for years now. I feel like I know you, and that I’m safe. I can’t explain any of it, and maybe I’ll take off screaming for help when you finally do get around to spitting it out, but right now, I know there’s more here than meets the eye.” She gave me a confident smile, a smile that said she was ready for anything.

  I don’t believe her.

  I inhaled deep, slow, letting my lungs fill. That drew her attention and she looked at my chest, her eyes admired the broad expanse, before coming back up to my face, just a tad wider than they had been before. Interest. Good.

  “I suppose this is an odd situation. I’ve never been in quite the same situation. I don’t know where to start.” I held my hands out helplessly.

  “Start with how you got me off the boat. How we survived that storm.” Logical and methodical, that I could handle.

  “I picked you up and flew you off the boat.” I didn’t say anything more.

  I watched as she digested that tidbit.

  “Right. Flew. In a helicopter?” She looked bemused, and I knew she was as smart as I thought she must be. A helicopter couldn’t have been out in that weather.

  “No. Not a helicopter.” I kept to the short answers as I delayed the inevitable. She might be calm, logical, and intelligent, but my truth would defy her reality.

  “Then what?” She began to show signs of impatience, she shifted in the bed, pushed her braided hair out of her face where strands had come loose, and breathed deep.