The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves

by Richard Heredia

  Her saucer-like eyes brimmed with tears as she watched the younger creature come forward, making no noise, leaving behind not a single leaf stirred or twig snapped. She couldn’t help it. She let her heart fill again, pregnant with a wine of astonishment. She gazed at the other - prideful, relieved and bittersweet - all at the same time.

  My daughter is beautiful!

  The smaller bear-dog streaked up the trail, head lowered as she ran with all she could muster. Her own excitement was plainly visible to her mother, who smiled a very human-like smile at the other’s approach. Ten feet away the younger creature stopped and sniffed the air, her own grin nearly as wide.

  “It has a long time, mother,” she said, her voice like a river of gravel, deep and rich.

  “Too long, my darling daughter,” echoed the larger. Her voice was deeper, almost below the register of human hearing. If there’d been humans around to hear.

  That was all it took. Mother and daughter rushed each other, came together and touched their chests against the other, their heads resting upon the other’s shoulder and back, locked fiercely in a canine embrace. They stood, leaned slightly against one another, hearing the beating of their great hearts, the steady repetition of their breathing. They remained that way, for a time, reacquainting themselves to their “selves”, reforming the intimate physical bonds they’d established the moment one had birthed the other. The mental ones had never severed. They were as strong as they’d been the day they were separated, over five years ago.

  Then, it was time!

  There would be no lingering reunion between the two of them.

  She stepped back from her daughter, who nodded in silent agreement.

  The Fist must form…

  …that was when the great bear-dog, reared back her massive head and howled into the dawn of their first day together in the Melded World.

  ~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼ }>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

  ~ 38 ~

  Bound

  Day One, Thursday, What Felt Like Only an Hour Later, but was Actually Much Longer…

  It was dark and cold. He was laying on something hard, unyielding. Somewhere, in front of him, there was a flicker of light. Though he couldn’t gauge the distance, it drew his attention all the same. He tried to open his eyes, to see more clearly, but his head exploded with pain. He squeezed them shut against it and chose to stay still, do nothing, until the hurt diminished, allowing him to think clearer.

  He knew he was still dressed in his winter coat and still wore his fingerless gloves with the skulls on the backs. The only part of him that was chilled were his fingertips. He turned to face away from the unsteady light, trying to open his eyes for a second time, hoping the darkness would be kinder to him. There was some pain, but it was manageable. So, he laid there unmoving, letting his eyes adjust to his new surroundings.

  After a minute or two, he could make out two small, slumped figures piled atop one another, stacked like wooden logs alongside someone’s house. Another minute passed before he realized what he was looking at – his sisters, Elena and Mikalah - both of them were still unconscious. In the waning light, he was relieved he could make out they both were breathing and seemed no worse for the wear. Well, at least we’re together, he though, hoping that circumstance wouldn’t change in the near future.

  All of them were bound. Thick ropes were tied about their hands and feet, but their captors had tied them to allow for a degree of movement. Testing his bonds, he knew he’d be able to change position if the need arose. He could probably shuffle, but he couldn’t run, or at least not very fast. He’d most likely end up on his ass, if he tried.

  Anthony glanced around some more, taking note of the rough stone walls and ceiling. It dawned on him, they were in some sort of cave or mine shaft, which accounted for the hard floor. He slowly picked up his head from the floor to see what lie beyond his sisters. He found only darkness.

  He waited a few moments longer. Once again, he attempted to look in the opposite direction where the lighting was better, trying to ascertain the severity of their predicament. He was still partially blind. Everything was blurred at a distance, but the pain had receded to a dull ache behind his eyes. He could just barely make out a few figures clustered around the opening of the tunnel-like structure they were within. Beyond the opening was the bright light of morning. Anthony sucked in his breath in surprise. They’d been in their respective stupors for much longer than he’d anticipated. His body was telling him it was still night, but now that he’d seen the rays of the sun, he knew otherwise. They’d been sleeping for at least twelve hours!

  He stared back at the figures silhouetted against the day’s early light. He could see one was seated, while the rest stood, all of them talking in a guttural version of English he could barely understand. It sounded worse than the cockneyed accents he’d heard on a popular British movie he’d watched a few weeks prior.

  “…the rest of the Fists are mustering, my Lord Fenris, and are off to the south, headed this way. All of the scouts have returned except the six we sent to the north, but they should be back shortly. All of the returned scouts have reported all the same, there is nothing to report. There is no human movement or habitation of any kind in the immediate area.”

  Anthony could now discern, though his vision was still weakened, the figures standing were all Swüreg warriors. That meant, the seated figure had to be Fenris. He was the figure perched atop a boulder of some size, jutting from the living rock itself.

  His gauntleted hands resting on his knees, he appeared in complete control, his arrogance bled into the air around him. “Good, Band Sergeant, I want this precious cargo taken to the site where the encampment is to be built as planned. I want it done to perfection. We cannot afford to make any mistakes, the Lord of the Light is cunning and a brilliant strategist at the least. He has surely left something here to foil our plot. I can feel it, there is more to this combined place than we initially anticipated. The balance of the natural order demands it.

  “Besides, he has always done so in the past. He will do so now. Remember, we have absolute knowledge of only four of the twelve Guardians of the World of Man. It is vital we collect the rest of them quickly, before they garner an inkling of where they are and why. We need them put under guard and kept them as ignorant as possible.

  “Therefore, be swift in your actions, but not too quick you overlook some small detail that could doom us all.” Fenris pounded his metal encased fists emphatically against his knees as he spoke with his slippery lisp.

  Anthony let the information sink in and stayed his thoughts. It was suddenly no longer important he had lost his sense of time. Twelve of them! Guardians?!? he exclaimed to himself. The Lord of the Light? Who was Fenris talking about? Why did they have to remain ignorant? What was that all about? What was he talking about?

  Where the hell were they? What the hell was going on?

  “As you command, my Lord Fenris,” the Swüreg spoke and moved off as Fenris waved him and the others away.

  Anthony stayed on the floor unmoving, watching, letting his vision return. Already, he could see they weren’t in a mineshaft at all. Rather, they were in a cave, naturally hollowed through the ragged rock. He assumed it was of some significant size, because he hadn’t been able to see the back of it when he’d looked earlier. It must go back too far for the light to reach its deepest environs.

  He and his sisters were lying on the floor of the cave, the floor having been smoothed somehow over the years, so only small irregularities remained upon its relatively level surface. There were no natural features upon it anymore.

  He glanced at the prone bodies of his sisters once more and was glad to see, they were beginning to stir. Their tiny arms and legs moved slowly in the wavering light. He reached out slowly to them. His hand came to rest upon one ankle, then the other. He squeezed slightly. It was an old “hide and seek” signal they’d used many, many times before. A silent message saying: “Be quiet, don’t move.”

&n
bsp; As each of his sisters became evermore aware, they’d begun to struggle against their own infirmities. The moment they felt Anthony’s telling clutch, they quieted and moved slowly into more comfortable positions without making any sound. Ever so slightly, they re-positioned themselves and came to face the same direction Anthony was looking. As quietly as he could, he motioned to them, quietly reassuring them, all was as well as it was going to be. For the moment, all they needed to do was make no sound… and watch.

  “Tony, it hurts to look in the light,” whispered Elena, stating the obvious in her tiniest voice.

  “Just give it some time, Ellie, and it will go away,” began Anthony, his voice a quivering wisp of air. His ears strained, listening if any of the others had heard their voices. “Stay where you are and just be still.”

  A few feet away, he felt Mikalah relax as if his words had the exact effect on her. She’d always been the better listener. The trait was proving its’ worth at this very moment. Mikalah knew how to wait and bide her time.

  As if to let him know she was on the same page, Mikalah’s small hand clasped his pinky finger in a quick, desperate clutch and then let go. Anthony knew she wasn’t about to let their enemies know she was conscious and functional. He knew her head probably hurt like hell from the clout Fenris had given her the night before, and still, she had the gumption to stay quiet and not complain.

  As he lay there in the semi-dark of the cave, he smiled. For the first time in his life, he was truly proud to be the brother of these brave, resilient little women. He knew then, as certain as he had ever known the sky was blue and the sea was green, these little girls would always be by his side, fighting. He wouldn’t let the moment pass this time, as he had so many times in the past.

  “Be brave, ladies,” he whispered, trying to force some degree of confidence into his tone, which was difficult. It was hard to convey anything with feeling while having to speak as low as he could manage and still be able to communicate. “I will find us a way out of this bullshit mess, I promise. I will.”

  “Ok.”, “Ok.” They replied, a fraction of a second apart, both of their voices trembling with fear, but not with hysteria. They were under control.

  Anthony was grateful.

  He turned back toward the entrance of the cave, moving only his head as slow as possible. His vision was near normal now. He could see a few yards beyond the stone portal, but not much further than that. It was snowing outside, earnestly, a steady downpour, large and flaky, so constant he was certain he couldn’t have seen much further through it with full visual acuity at his disposal. Other than the snow, he could only make a few vague tree-like objects and not much else. It was all too bright and reflective. His eyes couldn’t penetrate beyond.

  It’s a whiteout beyond the entrance to the cave. I can’t see a damned thing!

  He continued to lay prone, his sisters curled up against his back, facing in the same direction, but hiding their faces, concentrating on their breathing instead. Six or seven minutes passed when Anthony saw the same Swüreg warrior, or maybe it was another. They were hard to tell apart. He approached Fenris and stated in a clipped, military sounding voice. “Inghëldir comes from the west with the fourth child, my Lord. The Isighünd, Jätung, guards their rear, though nothing follows from behind. They have made their way here in secret as you have commanded.”

  Anthony’s brow furled. The fourth child, what did they mean by that? Who was this fourth child?

  “Very well,” replied Fenris, not moving a muscle, still seated upon the rocky formation.

  Anthony was surprised to see the man-wolf was staring back at them from some forty feet distant. His eyes were dancing over them as they lay on the ground at the middle of the cave. He titled his head in a very canine-like fashion and sniffed the air above his head. The Swüreg was about to make his leave, but Fenris stopped him, announcing, “It appears as though our guests are stirring from their various ailments…”

  The Swüreg warrior turned stiffly to look back at Anthony and his sisters, frowning in thought. “Well, my Lord, that is most prudent, since we will soon quit this place for the future site of the Encampment. Don’t you think?”

  “Most prudent, Band Sergeant, most prudent indeed,” the man-wolf trailed off into silence for a moment, then turned back toward the gray-skinned creature somewhat quickly. “Where is that disgusting Prēost, Vallüm. He should be here to control his pet Nixy.” Fenris seemed very annoyed of a sudden and fidgeted slightly on the misshapen rock atop which he sat.

  “He awaits her arrival outside the cave, my Lord, with her meal in hand, so there will be no… How shall we put it…? Unfortunate delays to our plans.”

  Anthony watched a hard smile spread across the Swüreg’s face as he finished his final sentence. Fenris, on the other hand, merely growled in accent. He abruptly stood, crossed he leather-armored arms in front of himself and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  His heart beginning to thud in his chest, Anthony saw a shadow began to emerge through the snowfall and the glare. At first, it was a slightly darker spot amongst all the white, but it grew larger and then larger, and yet larger still. As the shadow grew distinct, Anthony could see it wasn’t just one creature. It was three to be exact – one was massive and could only be the Isighünd he had seen earlier in the week; another was small, tinier than either Elena or Mikalah. That had to be Nixy. His head rose from the ground involuntarily, anger replaced the fear in his chest, but it squelched suddenly when he recognized the third figure. Utter shock had struck all other emotion from his mind. He found himself looking at the sodden, haggard form of his childhood friend, Andrew Ibarra, nearly iced over with cold, shivering uncontrollably from his lack of warm clothing.

  Fenris took one look at Andrew, who cowered back in revulsion at the site of the man-wolf. His muzzled face hardened with rage, scaring the boy even more. “I thought my orders to keep these children unhurt and unspoiled were well understood by all involved in this operation?” It was a question, though spoken through clenched teeth and didn’t sound like one. Fenris’ eyes blazed with fury as he glanced at those around him. Each one flinched under the power of his stare. Even Jätung whimpered quietly when the Storm Lord’s Hand peered into his eyes. Yet, it was the Prēost, Vallüm, who spoke and broke the tense mood at the mouth of the cave.

  “My Lord, my Lord,” he implored with a soft touch of his gnarled hands upon Fenris sleeve, who shrugged it off as if the small wizened man was rank with disease. “Inghëldir had few choices last night and was forced to hole up in the temporary structure atop what used to be the Street of Milbur. She’d done this out of fear the boy’s father might raise alarm at the disappearance of his son. There was no time to gather sufficient coverings for the boy against this wonderful cold, my Lord.”

  “I saw the boy’s father incapacitated by the force of Jätung’s blow to the front door of his dwelling,” growled Fenris through a very wolf-like snarl. To Anthony, it looked as though the man-wolf was just barely controlling his anger.

  “He was, My Lord, for a time, but when the Rending was completed, the man did not phase as he should have, but awoke instead upon the ground here in the Melded World, to find his home gone as well as his son. He began to search and shout almost immediately. Since you ordered no one was to be slain last night, Inghëldir thought it better to wait until morning and the onset of the snow, in hopes the boy’s father would wander off and perish in the storm. I agreed with her. She stayed in her domicile until sunrise, making her way here with the utmost haste, as soon as it was possible to travel stealthily.” He finished with a wicked smile, exposing razor sharp, yellow-molted teeth.

  “You agreed…?” Anthony was sure Fenris was very near to striking the small, old man.

  “Yes, I did…, my Lord,” the smile on Vallüm’s face didn’t falter an inch.

  Fenris’ gaze went back to the small, petite girl in her ever-present white dress and the blue lace ribbon she wore f
or a belt. Inghëldir stood there with her face downcast, appearing meek and tiny, ready to receive any punishment Fenris might’ve doled out. “Very well,” Fenris muttered, after a while. The fury in his frame released, but his tone remained the same, deadly. There was nothing stolid about it. “Get the boy something to keep him warm,” was the man-wolf’s first order. Then, “Vallüm, get out of my sight and feed your Nixy before she causes any more trouble. Jätung, you stay here and guard the entrance to this cave.” The beast answered with a muffled, rumbling grunt from deep in its throat. “The rest of you, outside, we have plans to make and I do not want these brats of the World of Man to know of them. NOW MOVE!”

  Anthony stared on, as they were all abruptly a flurry of movement. Before long, Andrew had a warm pelt of some animal draped over his shoulders. All the others left, while Jätung lay down across the entire expanse of the threshold of the cave. He had his huge head resting upon his forelegs, his head facing their direction although he kept his eyes closed, as if sleeping. Anthony was certain he wasn’t asleep, but wanted to give the impression that he was.

  Andrew trudged his way toward Anthony and his sisters. At his approach, all three of the Herrera children sat up facing him. Elena motioned for him to sit and between the four of them. They formed a small circle of friends, their knees brushing one another as they sat there, cross-legged, looking into one another’s faces. It wasn’t too long after, a grateful smile began to spread across Andrew’s face.

  “Y-You g-g-guys have n-no i-i-i-idea, how g-g-glad I am t-to see y-y-y-you.”