***
Daylight felt warm on my skin after the… night? Week? Month? I’d been cold. I turned over on my side and snuggled into the growing warmth next to me, wrapping my arms and legs through it contentedly.
I inhaled the scent of oatmeal cookies.
Ah, Jens. My guardian garden gnome I hadn’t actually known all that long. Now, despite the arguing, I was growing attached to him in a way I was not quite ready to examine. I missed sleeping next to him, even though we’d only done that once.
I nuzzled his neck with my nose and planted a kiss on a sensitive spot I knew would make him tingle. Before we could get into another fight, I wanted to enjoy the peace of his protection.
“Uh, Lucy? What are you doing?”
“I missed you, Jens.” I murmured sleepily.
“Did you, now?”
His teasing voice was a sweet sound to the nothing I’d been processing for this elongated period of time. It sounded far away, but still somehow near, like I was hearing him through water. As my senses began coming back to me, I realized that his voice was coming from somewhere behind me.
My eyes flew open, and I found that the warmth I was kissing was not Jens, but Jamie.
I should’ve known. Jens smelled like a warm sugar cookie, not an oatmeal raisin.
I fumbled backwards on the bed in confusion. I tried to jerk myself up, but my muscles were out of practice. I groaned when my neck cracked without my permission. “What the… Where am I?” Before I could get an answer, I started coughing. My throat felt tight and parched from disuse.
An arm banded around my back and inched me slowly upwards. A hand was put to my dry lips and I was instructed to drink. I wrapped my lips around the heel of someone’s hand and drank more than was possible. After I had my fill, I dipped my face in the little pool to bring life and lucidity further toward my senses. “W-What happened?”
I opened my eyes and saw Charles Mace, my newly discovered brother in front of me. His hand was wet from feeding the water to me using his many magics I still did not understand. His long fingers brushed the blonde hair from my face with tenderness that made me relax and Jens tense simultaneously.
“You laplanded with Jamie,” Mace explained, his face etched with relief. “You’ve both been out for three days.”
“What?”
The only voice I wanted to hear in that moment whispered in my ear, “Shh. You don’t need to worry about anything right now. Just chill and let yourself wake up.”
I was leaned up against his chest, and the comfort of that was indescribable. My eyes began to focus again, and I saw that we were in some sort of thatched-roof hut with a mud floor. Mid-afternoon light crept in through the half-open doorway. Other than the straw bed and a large steel basin bathtub, there was nothing else in the hut. “Are we in… Where is this? Haiti?” I guessed, moving my fingers around to build up my circulation.
Jens shook his head and inched me up further so I could breathe better. “Nope. Still in Undraland. We’re in Nightdwarf territory. Most of their civilization is underground. They lent us this aboveground house until you and Jamie get better.”
“Jamie?” I glanced down next to me and saw Jamie’s motionless form. He had a bit of color back and was breathing steadily now, thank goodness. I buried my forehead in my palm to cover my shame. “Oh! I thought he was you! I kissed his neck. Now it’s all awkward. Could we not tell him I did that?”
Jens chuckled, shaking my torso gently with the motion. “You don’t have to worry. Your Tomten prince’s still out. I know you dream about me constantly.”
“Oh, shut up.” I rolled my shoulders and finally had the wherewithal to sit up on my own. I looked down at my bare legs and grimaced. I was not dressed in my clothes, but in a bag-like itchy dress that fell to my shins. “Why am I always waking up in a dress?”
Jens grinned, rubbing circles in my back. “Don’t worry. I had Tor clean you up and dress you while you were out. I know how smitten you are with Jamie, what with you kissing his neck and all, so we gave you matching outfits.”
Sure enough, Jamie was wearing the exact same thing. I mean, exact same, only the fit was not as baggy on his larger build, and the dress barely fell to the knee on him.
“I sincerely hope you’re joking,” I grumbled.
“You know I am. Britt took care of you two and washed your clothes for you.”
Jamie’s dress was cut open at the chest, showcasing several bandages wrapped around his torso. Then it started coming back to me.
The bear.
No, not bear. A Werebear. Pesta’s own creation of sending harvested evil souls back out into the world to do her bidding. She was tracking me, sending out souls to kill me, while the bodies those souls came from were checked out and pretty much lobotomized in her Land of Be. “Where you can just Be” was the slogan. The retired Undrans had their little lifetime siesta, meanwhile she broke her word by weaponizing the forfeited souls. She had been allowed to use only bears to experience the world she had been banned from. Now she migrated to using other animals – a fact the many magical kingdoms of this surreal world were as yet unable to accept. She had murdered my parents and taken my dad’s bones to start a portal for humans, opening up another race to use for her own devices. She wanted me for the rake she guessed was passed down and still in my possession. She also wanted my bones to finish the human portal, so a new race would be open for her perusal. The rake was the only weapon that could be used to destroy her portals. That was our mission.
I rubbed my temples as the information overload sizzled in my brain. “Tor got through to the portal and destroyed it?”
“We never even got close,” Jens replied, chagrinned. “Our injuries were because we were running invisible through a battlefield. It was too well-guarded.”
“Did any of the Daydwarves see you?”
Jens shook his head. “I don’t think so. We were welcomed here with open arms, so no. To them we’re your entourage, accompanying the ‘human female’ Queen Lucy around to the different regions.”
Mace spoke up. “They’re throwing a big party tonight to honor you.”
“Huh? Um, okay. That’s awfully nice.”
“Might be good if you could walk by then,” Mace hinted. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been hit with a ton of bricks. What happened to me? Did I get some weird leprechaun flu?”
Jens snorted. “Leprechauns. You and that imagination.” Then he shifted awkwardly behind me. “How did you guys escape the Were?”
“Henry Mancini!” I exclaimed, whipping my head around to the door. “Where’s my dog?”
“Foss has your wolf,” Mace answered. “Did you know it’s not a dog? Might not be the safest choice for a pet. Your Tom should know better.”
“Shut up, Mace,” Jens growled.
“Henry Mancini would never hurt me. He’s okay though?”
Jens nodded. “What happened to the Were, Loos?”
Moisture welled up in my eyes before I could stop it. I pictured my hand clutching Jamie’s machete, terrified at the notion of using it, but knowing it would be worse if I didn’t. “He hurt Jamie, so I… stabbed the bear in the belly. Twice, I think, with Jamie’s knife.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at the men; I was so ashamed. “The second time I didn’t drive it d-deep enough, so Jamie helped me finish him off.” At this, I broke down into quiet sobs. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to kill anybody!”
Jens patted my back and nodded gravely at Mace.
My brother kissed the top of my head and drew me to his chest, away from Jens. “There, there. It’s what you were supposed to do. You’re lucky you both survived.”
“He hit Henry Mancini!” I wailed. “He attacked my dog and Jamie! Peaceful resistance wasn’t working!”
Jens got up abruptly and left the hut with no explanation, plunging me into guilt-ridden despair over killing a living being. Charles wrapped his arms tighter around me as I sobbed like a baby. “You
can’t peacefully resist a normal bear, much less a Were. Lucy, it’s okay. You’re safe.”
“It’s not okay! Killing is wrong! Martin Luther King would have found a way!”
I spent the next fifteen minutes crying on Mace’s shoulder while he tried unsuccessfully to understand my grief.
When Jens returned, it was with a hard expression that I wanted to cower from as he towered over me. “Give us a minute, Mace,” he ordered. There was no mistaking the sharpness in his command.
Charles released me, wiping the lines of tears from my cheeks before rising from the bed. “You’ll be alright, kära.”
Jens stiffened at this and stared Charles down as he exited the hut. When it was just the two of us and Jamie’s unconscious body, he crossed his arms over his chest and puffed his breast out authoritatively. “I don’t like him,” he ruled.
I wiped the last tear away and scoffed. “You have a hard time getting along with people? I don’t believe it.” I shook my head and brought my knees to my chest on the bed so I could rest my head on them. “You don’t have to like him. You’re completely free to make things as difficult as you need to.”
“You know that’s not what this is about. He called you kära!”
“Do you hear yourself? So what? Foss calls me rat. Kära is a far sight better than Tor calling me human female all the time. Queen Lucy. Lady Kincaid. So what? Because Charles is nice to me, now he must be the devil? Be more obvious, why don’t you.” My hand rested on Jamie’s shoulder, and I lowered my voice so as not to wake him.
“Obvious? Talk about what’s right in front of your face. Kära is like ‘hey baby’ here. It’s a lovey term of endearment for lovers in love, with the love stuff.” Jens’s cheeks were turning pink. He looked like just pushing out the word love was strangling him.
I shook my head. “Don’t do this.”
“What? Look out for you?”
My hands flew out and animated my frustration. “Don’t make things difficult like this. Charles is my brother now. I actually have a chance at making a family for myself again. Don’t be a baby and fill my head with semantics to try and drive a wedge between us. I don’t need protection from my own blood!”
Jens was so aggravated that his pitch rose to get his point across with more passion. “He does the hug and lurk!”
“The what?”
“You know!” He mimed a hug with his shoulders hunched inward. “When he hugs you, he doesn’t let go when a normal person would. He hugs, and then he lurks. The hug and lurk. Come on! It’s plain as day that he’s in love with you.”
“Well, maybe you should yell at me about it!” I shouted back. “I can’t believe you’re doing this! I finally get… and then you… and I don’t care what you say! There’s nothing wrong with Charles or the way he looks at me.”
“Ah-ha!” Jens yelled, pointer finger raised in triumph. “I never said anything about the way he looks at you. You did notice something off about him. You just won’t admit it because then I would be right! And we can’t have that, can we?”
I threw my head back in exasperation. “Oh! You are so arrogant! The world doesn’t revolve around whether or not you’re right, Jens. Charles is perfectly fine. I’m lucky I get a chance to have a family again! And frankly, you don’t get a say in this. Your job is to protect me, not swagger around like a jealous fool. Newsflash, you’re not my boyfriend!”
He struggled with which angry words to spit out at me, his face shifting from pink to red.
I didn’t want to hear it. I stood and stomped past him with my nose in the air.
“Lucy, wait! I’m not done talking to you.”
“Oh, yes you are!” I marched out into the fresh sunlight, but I couldn’t fully enjoy it because of stupid Jens. I didn’t know where I was going with no shoes on, but one thing was certain, that hut was too crowded for the both of us.
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Undraland Page 33