Next to me, Betha sighed in her sleep, and as I watched, her skin paled, icy blue lines running beneath her skin. Along her forehead, snow crystallized, the flakes growing and connecting—a crown for a new bride.
“What the fuck?”
I could finally understand the human now, though I wouldn’t have needed magic to translate both her anger and frustration. Her eyes met mine while her hands pressed against her heart. I knew it ached. It would until she accepted what it was trying to tell her.
“Betha,” I said, proud of the strength in my tone. “Meet your husbands.”
Her eyes cut to my sons, her gaze softening for just a second before her eyebrows drew together and she looked back at me in confusion. “Wait. What?”
1
Betha
Two Days Earlier
The wheel fell off my suitcase, so I hefted it across the potholed tarmac. It was the perfect ending to the perfect trip.
Three weeks I’d spent in the northernmost corner of Canada, snowmobiling around the Arctic Circle, snapping photos of diminishing glaciers and ancient ice shelves while reporting the effect it had on the native people living there.
What was supposed to be a week-long assignment had stretched into three, leaving my grumpy, anxious editor, Jebediah Walter, ringing me continuously on my satellite phone about wasting money and time. But the routes between villages were no longer connected by ice, as they had been for generations.
Which meant longer travel and less direct routes.
Why this surprised Jeb was beyond me.
Read the assignment, asshole! The erosion of the environment was the reason I was here.
The plane that would take me around the bottom of the Arctic Circle back to the east coast, where my job and Jeb waited for me, sat at the corner of the shitty runway. There was no bus to ferry me from the radar tower to the plane. I carried my own gear.
Snow fell in big, fluffy flakes and piled up in slushy mounds around my feet.
Another challenge to navigate.
It built up a lot faster than I expected, rivaling any other snowstorm I’d experienced in Boston.
Worry had me gnawing at my chapped lips. The whole situation was bullshit. There was no reason why I should have to rush back.
Still, my stomach was in knots as I replayed the conversation where Jeb’d ripped me a new one for having been away from the newspaper and in the field too long.
As if the thought of him was enough to make him call, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Despite having the same ringtone and vibration setting as every other number in my phone, I swore to God it vibrated twice as angrily when it was my editor. Without a free hand, I ignored it. His persistence wasn’t concern about my welfare, but a freak-out at the extra five thousand dollars this flight was costing him.
The closer I got to the plane, the more I bit into my lip. No way was this puddle jumper worth the money Jeb paid for my ride home.
“Betha Allen?” The pilot toddled toward me for all the world looking like a fat MacGyver, mullet included.
“That’s me.” I was sure my smile came out a grimace, but my affirmation was enough for him to turn his back and point to an open hatch.
“Stow your things in there. Your boss ain’t paying me enough to lift luggage.”
Beady-eyed bastard. I shifted my camera and dropped the suitcase on the ground.
The camera would stay with me.
I wasn’t stowing it in the belly of something that looked like it was kept together with Elmer’s glue and tin foil. Using my knee to prop the hatch, I shoved the luggage inside. “Does it need to be tied down or anything?”
My case pushed into something, and a rattling sound, like tools clanging against each other, echoed metallically off the interior.
The pilot, who apparently would remain nameless for the whole of what was probably going to be an awkward journey, grunted. I took it as a no, since he shut the hatch, and twisted the knob to lock it.
My phone vibrated again. Across the continent, I sent a mental middle finger to Jeb. When I got back to Boston, I was going to clock the asshole in the face for making me get on this thing. He wanted a story about global warming, and I gave him a goddamned great story about global warming.
This was how he responded? By making me hop onto a flying death trap for thousands of miles?
My stomach twisted, and I shoved my hand against it. I was a photojournalist for Christ’s sake. I’d been in worse situations than this. Why, then, did the snowflakes strike me as fluffy portents of doom and not late winter magic?
“Get in,” the pilot reiterated, hefting himself into his own seat.
Guess I’m on my own.
With an awkward hop, I got into the passenger’s seat. I twisted my body, shutting the door while keeping an arm around my camera bag. It wasn’t pretty, but somehow, I managed to shut the rickety door and buckle myself in. My camera was my baby, and I held it close like a safety blanket or stuffed animal.
After one narrow-eyed glare from the pilot—mental middle finger to you as well, sir—I was on my way.
The engine roared, reminding me of a remote control car. I ignored the headphones hanging above me and focused on white-knuckling my camera. On my lap sat the only thing I truly cared about. This camera represented everything I wanted from life—adventure, opportunity, a legacy.
This story, the one I’d already sent with accompanying photos to Jeb, was worth the game of chicken I was currently playing with death.
The families affected by global warming, the change in their lifestyle and culture, and the threat of everything they loved disappearing had coalesced into what might’ve been the single best piece of writing I’d ever done.
I stared out the window, watching the scenery change from gray-brown expanses of ice to patches of snow-covered rock. We flew over the Canadian Rockies, my ears popping and pressure building. The weeks of sleeplessness and travel seemed to overwhelm me all at once, and I rested my head on my hand, closing my eyes. The next thing I knew, we were landing.
“Refuel and then we’re going back up. I got a schedule to keep, and your boss ain’t payin’ me enough to—”
Ignoring him, I jumped out of the plane. “I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
He grunted in response, and I hurried to the small metal Quonset, hoping for a little bit of heat to thaw my numb toes.
Inside stood a vending machine.
After using the bathroom, which was only slightly warmer than the temperature outside, I shoved a few dollars into the slots and stuffed my pockets with candy bars.
I was buckled and ready for the pilot when he returned. He eyed my Snickers bar, taking a moment to peruse me from top to bottom before grunting again and buckling himself in.
I was used to looks like the one he gave me. Tall and broad-shouldered, I often outweighed and towered over men.
For most of my adolescence, I’d been an athlete.
My mother, a dainty Irishwoman who’d come to America after meeting my dad in a Dublin pub, said I took after the Vikings who’d raided the Irish coast. “Blame the bastards who raped and pillaged our shores,” my mother had replied when I’d bemoaned my being taller than the boys in school. “And your father’s mother, the witch. She could wrestle cattle that one. Did I ever tell you how she ate the top of our wedding cake?”
My mother. Always bringing the conversation back to the important things.
Swept away in my memories, I hadn’t registered the takeoff. Now, with the sky deepening from blue to black, I had only gravity, the roar of the engine, and turbulence to think about. Like a roller coaster, the plane dipped and bumped along. I closed my eyes, hoping my ability to sleep through racket, along with my exhaustion, would kick in. Unfortunately, the caffeine did its job. I was wired, and my stomach rebelled against the sugar and carbonation I’d forced down my throat.
The pilot spoke into the radio, but the wind and engine were so loud I could only make out the
rise and fall of his voice, not the individual words. The lights illuminating the dashboard were dim, and I could have been alone in the plane.
Wrapping my arms around my camera bag, I tried to think about my article and the argument I’d make for Jeb to run it front and center. Global warming wasn’t a new story, but I knew I’d told it in a unique way, a way that would resonate with people.
I’d be going to the mattresses for this piece. In my head, I argued with Jeb, countering his arguments with one-liners to leave him slayed, shaking and kneeling at my feet. By the time I was done with my verbal evisceration, Jeb would be begging me to not only continue to write for him, but to take on a more prominent position.
Lead writer in world news. That sounded good.
My imaginary fight with Jeb was exciting enough to distract me from the turbulence. I even dug in the side of my camera bag for my notebook and pencil, wanting to write down lines that were especially biting. The man didn’t stand a chance.
The plane dropped, and I lost the grip on my pencil. “Damn.” The plane dipped again, harder and faster than the first time.
The breath huffed out of me, and my back slammed into the seat. It wasn’t like a roller coaster anymore. There was no side-to-side motion, no drop or bump. It was as if the plane was held in a child’s hand, and bored with his toy, he let it fall to the floor. It went straight down. The air no longer pushed against the plane, creating lift. Now there was only gravity, and it was pressing down on us. Hard.
The pilot’s voice took on an urgent tone, but with the wind and engine, I was still unable to make out his words. A blast of noise reverberated through the plane like a sonic boom, and the engine coughed, sputtered, and stopped. The silence was as loud as the noise, and I wished immediately I could go back to not hearing the pilot.
Because he was praying.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone pray as I rode along beside them, but it was the first time I’d been suspended over the earth when it happened, rapidly falling toward the planet. My stomach dropped. The descent was so fast my organs shifted inside me.
I forgot about my job and my story, except for a brief second—I mean, it was a really good story—and focused on my family. I imagined sending my mother a message across space. I love you. And my father, and my older brother. Calm suffused me, or maybe it was oxygen deprivation. Whatever it was, it shoved the fear aside and left me a little high.
The nose of the plane dipped, then behind me there was a loud swoosh, like every bit of junk in the plane hurtled toward me. A second later, it slammed into the back of my seat and I flew forward, my forehead hitting the dashboard in front of me. I lifted my hands to clear the warm trickle of blood that ran into my eyes.
Something seemed to grab the wing of the plane, and it twisted hard to the left, spinning out of control. I shut my eyes, holding fast to the seat belt and my camera bag. I was going to be crushed, impaled. The windshield exploded inward, and something whipped across my face, blinding me. I threw my hands up as I lost all sense of space. I was upside down, flipped over, upright, flipped again. My head rocked from side to side like a rag doll. The pilot screamed, another sound to add to the cacophony.
Another hit, a burning pain in my side, and suddenly everything stopped. The plane groaned, as if the metal seams wanted to rip apart. The pilot was silent. My harsh breathing the only sound. There was a blast of cold air, and I turned my head.
Funny, it was air that knocked me out. My head spun, and I shut my eyes tightly, aware of my body shutting down. Overloaded, the spinning in my brain reached a crescendo before everything went silent and dark.
2
Betha
My head pounded like I’d been on the biggest bender of my life. Bleary eyed, I held out a hand to block the light threatening to blind me and stopped as jagged stabbing pains erupted along my back and arms.
Why can’t I open my eyes? Forcing myself to move my hands again, I wiped at my face, feeling a thin crust on my eyelids. Scrubbing at it until it flaked away, I was finally able to open my eyes and look around.
And shut my eyes again.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “I’m alive.” I did a body check. Toes? Wiggled. Fingers? Wiggled. Arms? Ouch. Legs? I tried to move my legs.
Legs?
The front of the plane had accordioned inward, trapping my legs between the seat and the engine, which was still smoking. A gust of wind was blowing the smoke in my face. I coughed, choking as it filled my lungs. I turned my head to the side, but there was no escaping it.
You didn’t survive a plane crash to die from smoke. I was a strong girl, and I’d been an athlete. I could run through pain and hold my breath for the length of a pool. I could get my legs free if the alternative was death. Bracing my hands against the dashboard, I pushed like I was planking and screamed.
Oh God, Oh God. That hurts like a motherfucker.
I sucked in a breath and choked again. Somehow, I got my arms braced and pushed. There was no give. I was the baloney in a steel bread sandwich. There was no moving, no matter how much I willed it.
Not ready to give up, I pushed one more time. I bit my lip hard. The pain tore through me, and as much as I tried not to, the scream was ripped from my body.
Teeth chattering now, maybe from shock, maybe from the cold blasting through the plane, I wrapped my arms around myself. The door was curved inward, so I focused my attention there. Smoke was filling the cabin, dissipating when the wind blew, but quick to return when it died down.
I needed air.
Turning to the door, I sought the handle to push it open and stopped, shocked.
At the window, wide blue eyes met mine. Those eyes, the most beautiful I’d ever seen, held mine and narrowed. Stunned, I watched the man outside the plane. He turned, yelling something in a language I didn’t know over his shoulder, and then another man joined him.
Had the pilot managed to land us at the airport?
The man who joined him looked so much like the first, they had to be brothers, or else my vision was doubled. Which was a possibility. No wait, they had different coats, brown and gray. Head trauma averted, hopefully.
They seemed to be considering the door while I watched them with all the intelligence of a goldfish.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
He said something, probably, you look like shit. And I nodded. It didn’t matter what the words were, the tone was so calm, so comforting I could feel warmth moving from my toes to the top of my head. Those calm words suddenly came a lot more hurried, and that warmth was starting to get uncomfortable. The second man joined the first, distracting me from the heat.
Oh my God. These guys make me feel tiny. Broad shoulders filled my vision as the second man pushed against the dashboard.
“It won’t work,” I began, before the pressure holding me in place released and I fell forward. Right as I was about to hit the dash, though, the first man caught me, extracting me from the plane and setting me on the ground.
“I’m okay,” I told him when he scanned my body. I lifted my head, staring down to confirm I was, in fact, okay and had all my important bits. Feet. Legs. Torso. Hands. Arms. All there.
Feeling as if my head weighed a million pounds, I let it fall back and studied the man who studied me. He sat back on his heels and skimmed his hands from the top of my head to my neck. His fingers were rough and calloused, and they rasped against my skin in a way that had me shivering. When I did, his eyes flashed to mine, and he gave me a tight-lipped smile.
His eyes were almond-shaped, and his cheekbones were so high, his features seemed carved. Black hair was tied back at the nape of his neck. When the second man joined the first at my side, I saw they were identical, except for a small round scar the second man had over his eyebrow. With one on either side of me, they blotted out the sky, but honestly? There was nothing I’d rather look at than these two.
Over their heads I could make out dark-green pine b
oughs and blue sky with white smoke curling toward the tops of the trees. “I can get up,” I said again. When I would have pushed myself up, the first man stopped me with a gentle touch on my shoulder.
The second one growled at the first. A low warning sound which made me jump.
“Can you help me?” I asked, and both turned their attention on me. It was quite something, having the full attention of both of these blue-eyed behemoths. I lifted a hand, touching my chest. “Help?”
The two exchanged a glance, and the second man nodded, answering me. His voice was gravelly, raspier than the first’s. It sent a frisson of awareness through me. Both men put their arms beneath me, lifting me off the ground. My arms wound around their shoulders. I swore I could feel their skin through the layers of their clothes—a heat that went through them to me and warmed me as if I’d been standing in front of flames.
As my feet touched the ground, I glanced around frantically for my camera bag. It lay next to the indentation I’d made in the snow. When I bent to pick it up, the blood rushed from my head and I stumbled.
Second didn’t like that. He hooked an arm under my legs, dragged the camera bag into my lap, and muttered at me.
I protested, “I can walk. Just give me a second.”
“Stubborn girl,” he seemed to say.
3
Betha
Second hot guy's arms tightened around me when I pushed against his chest. “Seriously, I can walk.”
He didn't like that, and neither did the first, who stopped his brother. I assumed they were brothers. I mean… they were mirror images.
With a hand on his arm, First Guy began to speak rapidly, with Second adding an irritated rejoinder.
Since whatever language they spoke was incomprehensible to me, I imagined their conversation went something like this:
I'm picking up the chick.
Married. Wait! What? Page 19