by Tom Hansen
Tears streamed down her face in silence as she sat and watched the night sky turn about them.
Chapter Sixteen
Talia set her expression and squeezed the book in her hand before knocking.
“Come in!”
She opened the door and took in the small domicile.
Her first thought was that the place was far too small for such a large man, but then she remembered he wasn’t the type to hang out inside all day. All he needed was a place to fall asleep.
Borym looked from her face to the book.
She glanced at the same object, her mouth suddenly dry.
“That’s the thing that started it all?” He held out his hand in request.
She hesitated for a moment before deciding there was nothing to hide. He deserved to know everything inside those pages as much as anyone. He’d risked his life to save her, yet again, and he deserved to know why.
Borym opened it and slowly flipped through the pages one by one.
She wrung her hands together before telling her story. “It took me a few times to realize what my power truly was. At first I was confused, and so were the scientists studying me. They tried all sorts of awful tests on me, injecting things into my arm and studying to see its effects, but none of them seemed to work.
“Once I figured out what exactly I was doing, I learned that I could manipulate time in a handful of ways. The easiest was to slow down time. Stopping it altogether takes more energy, but I first started out by speeding up time.”
She smiled to herself as she remembered her first win in a long string of losses in her life. “I could speed up my body such that the serum they used on me would be used up moments after they injected me.”
She shook her head. “Once I learned what my true abilities were, I used it to study all of their texts. I spent months by myself, reading everything I could get to in the laboratory, and they had hundreds of books, mind you. Eventually, I stumbled across a particularly ancient tome that was on loan from the Queen herself, and I made a copy of the pertinent information there.”
Borym nodded along while flipping more pages.
She studied his face for a bit before realization dawned on her. She set a terse smile on her lips. “You can’t read, can you?”
He looked up at her, a blank expression on his face. He shrugged. “Never learned, why?”
Talia huffed and rolled her eyes, holding out her hand for the book. “Never mind.”
He returned the journal and she placed it into her satchel. “When Caldin returned from the Queen’s, partially to retrieve the book for her, he discovered it was getting moved day to day. He was the one who puzzled together my abilities and finally confronted me about it while I was busy scribbling my final notes.”
She grabbed onto the small ties running up the front her dress, curling the ends around her finger before letting them spiral off. “Once I was discovered, I had to escape. I froze time on the entire complex and made a run for it. I’ve been on the run ever since, struggling to stay alive in the cold, scavenging for food where I can get it, stealing if I had to.”
Borym cleared his throat. “And that led you here, to your brother’s death, and the eradication of the rest of the soldiers?”
She nodded, a tumult of emotions swirling around her head. She had come here with something to say and had already gotten off topic. It was all she could do not to burst out in sobs. “And now I’m free.”
He frowned. “Aye, free.”
She took a half step toward him, her heart sinking over what she had told him the day before. “I’m sorry I told you that I was leaving. I honestly thought it was the best thing for everyone, you understand?”
He nodded, finally meeting her gaze. “I understand, lass. I am sorry for sounding so presumptuous when first meeting you. I’d just been alone for so long since my parents died, and when I saw your bright hair all the memories of the Fates’ premonitions came flooding back. You were the first glimmer of brightness in this dreary snowscape.”
Borym turned to look out a small window overlooking the bay.
She followed his gaze. “It’s not as dreary as you make it out to be. Sure, there’s a lot of rock, snow, and water, but it’s a good mixture, and the Razorclaws to the north are breathtaking to behold, particularly when the clouds cling to the peaks. Marsfjord is remote and secluded, largely unaffected by the tyranny of the Frost Queen, but I know there is no place truly safe from the Queen’s reach.”
Borym spoke up, breaking the tension between them. “Why do you tell me all this?”
Talia wasn’t entirely sure her voice would hold, but she needed to come out with it. “Because if I’m going to marry you, I don’t want any more secrets to come between us.”
She took another small step toward him, dropping her bag on the ground. “No hiding anymore. Everything must be open and honest between us.”
She planted her feet firmly and tugged on the ties holding her dress. “Including me.”
Her dress, free from the bindings that kept it on her frame, fell to the floor. She stood naked in front of him, the way they had first met. Only this time she wanted herself to be open to him. She wanted him to take in every inch of her body. This time, she knew exactly what she was doing. She was wholly in control of her life for the first time in years.
Marsfjord was perfect. Secluded, away from the Queen’s gaze, and when soldiers did come knocking, she and Borym could simply hide out in a cave till they left. Short of living in the middle of nowhere, this was the safest place for her.
With him.
Borym’s hungry eyes did exactly what she knew they would. Took all of her in before coming back to her face. He stood.
She sidled up close to him, as close as they had been back in the cave. “If you are going to know me, I want you to know all of me, and I want to know all of you.”
Talia reached up and unbuttoned his shirt, watching with anticipation as it hit the ground beside her dress.
Borym scooped her up in his massive arms, holding her close to him and kissing her deeply.
Sparks ran up and down her body wherever their skin touched. It was mesmerizing and exhilarating all at once.
Talia finally found someone she could trust explicitly.
Coming up for air, Borym stared at her for a long while before turning toward the bed. “What changed your mind?”
He laid her down gently on the bed, then began unbuckling his belt.
Talia’s gaze lingered on his belt for a long while, wishing he wasn’t taking so long to remove it. “Because you and me will make the most beautiful red-headed babies. I can’t stop thinking about a gaggle of little girls running around with wild and crazy red hair. Who knows, they might have magic too, just like their mum.”
Borym laughed and dropped his trousers to the ground, allowing Talia to see all of him again. “Well, you have it mostly right. You mean all boys.”
Ynya Vs the Frost Bear
Chapter One
“Ynya? Ynya!” Talya Oblique huffed with her hands on her hips as she looked out over the frozen tundra. With naught but miles of snow before her, she squinted, hoping to see the flash of bright red hair from her scamp of a daughter.
Wind whistled between the Razorclaws to the north, chilling her to her bones. She shivered. Her husband wasn’t due back for another day at least.
“Now where did that fool of a girl run off to this time?” Frowning, she turned back to her small hut to get warm and tend to her other daughters.
But just as she was about to open the door, she thought she heard the sound of girlish delight echoing over the frozen lake.
“Ynya, we should go back, Mama is going to be worried about us.”
Two years older than Ynya, Synol Oblique was more worried about her mother and the two little ones than she was about her daft sister who never wore winter clothes. “Mama always said we should be in before the sun goes down. I think we should head back now.”
Ynya b
alanced upside-down on one hand, her gangly white legs shaking above her. Her thin summer dress bunched around her neck while she squirmed her scrunched up face in concentration.
Synol rolled her eyes. “And pull your dress down, there are people here.”
Ynya lost control of her handstand and fell to the ground. With a big toothy grin on her slender face, she asked, “What people?”
“I’m a people, I mean, I’m a person.”
“But you don’t count, you’re my sister.”
As Synol spoke, the ice cave echoed her voice down the tube, bouncing it back in odd ways.
Ynya giggled.
“Sister!”
“Sister,” came the reply, “sister, sister, sister.”
Synol groaned. Grabbing off a mitten, she reached for Ynya’s hand, but the little girl was too fast, and dodged away with a high pitched squeal.
“I’m faster than a snow hare!” Her eyes flashed a bright orange hue in the low light and steam rolled off her skin in eddies through the still, age-old air.
Synol closed her eyes and took in a deep breath before letting it out. The chilly underground air burned her lungs. After spending her entire life in the frozen wastelands, she should be used to the cold by now, but she never was.
Her little sister was another matter, she was born for this place.
“Ynya, come please. We really should go back home.”
Ynya skipped backwards, the glow of the torch reflecting in her wide eyes. “You have to catch me first!”
With that, Ynya whirled around, her too-large-for-her-skinny-frame dress billowing out as she took off down the ice tube.
Chapter Two
Ynya stopped and turned, the glimmer of the torch in the distance gave off an eerie red glow from the turn in the tunnel, but none of that light made it down here. After a minute of running, the only sounds were the soft pitter patter of her feet on the icy floor and the occasional drip drip of melting ice.
“I bet she gets lost going down the one tunnel,” she said as her eyes narrowed. She waited for the light to flicker, a tell-tale sign that her sister was following her, but none came.
She crossed her arms. “So now she doesn’t want to play, eh? Well I’m not ready to go back yet.”
“You hear that?” Ynya yelled down the tunnel. “I’m not ready to go yet, so you can either come find me or wait there. I know Mama will be mad if you go back without me!”
With that, Ynya stuck out her tongue, and made a decidedly unladylike sound at her distant sister. She then grabbed a strand of her long red hair, and pinched a small section between the index finger and thumb of both her hands.
She concentrated, furrowing her brow and pushing her heat into that strand of hair through her fingertips. As she did, the section of hair between her fingers glowed, bathing the ice cave in a warm, orange light.
Ynya walked down the corridor.
Chapter Three
Ynya heard the slow methodical breathing of the bear first, and lowered the intensity of her light to compensate. She might be frivolous and fanciful, as the adults said about her, but she wasn’t stupid.
She was deep in the ice now, a long winding tube through the glacier.
Why does the bear live so far down inside here?
She had to have gone at least three span down this tube, and hadn’t passed by a single living thing.
So why does the bear need to live this far into the tube?
Ynya came around the corner and froze. The landscape here was vastly different from the tube she’d been coming down and she suddenly realized why the bear had chosen this spot.
Hers was not the only tube through the ice.
Before her was a massive cavern, so large that her dim light didn’t even make it to the other side. She could sense the vast emptiness before her like she was a bat chirping to find its way through the darkness.
A chill wove down her spine as she took in the space.
All along the outside perimeter, or at least as far as she could see given her low light situation, was a number of other tubes all converging on this huge underground cavern.
She counted at least a dozen, and that was with only half the room visible.
“So you just wait here until some unsuspecting thing comes wandering into your cave and eat them.”
Eat them, it did. The entire floor was littered with the discarded bones of previous meals. Seals and fish from the nearby waters, goats and chickens from the village.
Ynya shuddered again, this time a fierce heat overtaking her vision as she took in some human bones.
The cobbler’s son had gone missing last summer, and she’d remembered the village elders discussing in hushed tones that it might have been Yolphinir, the infamous white bear of the north that occasionally terrorized these parts.
They didn’t know she had been listening or they would have never admitted it to the children. Adults always did that, lied to the kids for reasons she could not figure out.
Then she saw him, asleep in the center of the lair atop the thickest pile of bones she’d ever laid eyes on.
“Yolphinir.”
She regretted how loud she said the name, for at that very instant, the massive white bear snorted, sending dust churning through the air.
Ynya froze, knowing she should let her light go out but unable to do so.
The bear rolled over on its back and stretched its massive legs, each one thrice as thick as Ynya herself. One paw was bigger than the door on their yurt.
Yolphinir yawned, and she watched in rapt amazement at the rows of gleaming white teeth that shined in the orange light of her hair.
Then, faster than she had ever seen something so huge move, the bear was on his feet, grumbling and growling as it shook off his slumber.
He looked at her, a casual glance in her direction and blinked.
Ynya thought about releasing her hair, removing all light, but stories said that Yolphinir was able to see better in low light than daylight – one reason he lived underground all the time and only came out during the darkdays to hunt.
She increased the light from her hair just a bit, slowly, as to not make any sudden movements.
The bear yawned, then hopped down off his pile of bone and began scraping his massive antlers on the ice below, sharpening them to a razor’s edge.
Ynya noticed the flickering torchlight come up behind her, bouncing against the curved walls of the ice tunnel.
No, Synol. You shouldn’t have come down here.
That’s when she heard her sister calling for her.
Chapter Four
“Ynya? Ynya, where are you?”
Synol had waited as long as she could for her sister to come back, but she hadn’t. And Synol knew that she couldn’t go back home without Ynya.
“Stupid girl, she’s always getting herself into situations that I have to get her out of. Worst part is I will be the one who gets in trouble for missing dinner.”
Synol couldn’t wait to get married. Then she could go live at her husband’s house away from here. She was tired of the cold, tired of the long nights and endless snow. She was tired of being a fisherman’s daughter, and she couldn’t wait to get out of this town, this family, this life.
She was going to be a merchant’s wife and live in a house made of wood, not mud. She was going to make something of herself and wear fancy furs made from the rarest animals.
She was going to be somebody and she was going to be happy.
“Ynya!”
She had only been in an ice tunnel like this twice, and none of them had been as extensive as this one. At least there weren’t any diverging paths. She would eventually catch up to her brat of a sister and drag her home.
She’d had enough. “Ynya!” She screamed this time. It hurt her lungs and her throat, but she was getting tired of the constant dripping of water and endless tunnel.
“One more time and I’m leaving!”
She turned a corner and stopped. To the s
ide, huddled around an ice wall was Ynya, a small piece of her hair aglow. Synol hated how she flaunted her magic.
She is so uncouth like that.
Uncouth, that was a good word to describe her sister. Uncouth in every way. She needs to be taught decorum. You didn’t wander around in what is nothing more than small clothes and flash your magic in front of people. Most people didn’t have magic, and rumor was that the new queen of the north was rounding people up that had magic.
“I hope the queen takes you away so you can do magic for her. Maybe she’ll make you dance for her since that’s all you are good for.”
Synol cocked her hip to the side and put a frustrated fist on it. “Are you done? I’m hungry.”
Ynya, normally talkative, was deathly silent. Her large eyes didn’t blink in the low torchlight, but instead focused on Synol with an intensity she’d only seen once in Father when she was too far out on the cracking lake.
A shiver of cold shot through her spine.
Oh no.
Then she heard it, the low rumble of a massive animal as it warned her that she was in its lair.
She’d seen the massive cave, part of her brain had even registered the bones littering the ground, but she had been too busy berating her sister for that part of her brain to tell her what she now knew.
She was in the lair of an ice bear, and it slowly padded toward her.
Chapter Five
“Don’t move, Synol. Don’t move a muscle, and don’t drop the torch. He’s afraid of fire.”
Ynya ran straight across the bear’s path toward her sister. As she passed by the massive bear, she flared her hair to a blinding brilliance, lighting up the massive cave.