The daylight struck Fenn’s eyes. After days spent in the low light of the tomb, her vision danced with spots. She scanned the area in front of the tomb. Crows pecked at the skulls of the corpses, but none of them were fresh.
“Fenn?” a low voice hissed from the trees. A moment later, Ecberth emerged from the foliage. He wore no armor, but instead had sewn leaves and sticks to his tunic. His face was smeared with greenish mud. Behind him stood a group of warriors, all dressed the same.
Relief coursed through Fenn. Her knees trembled and threatened to buckle. She had not seen Bryne’s body, and yet Ecberth was still here, alive.
“Why are you dressed like that? Where is your armor?” She asked.
Ecberth sighed. “We had hoped to lure the dragon out and catch it here. I had stationed half of our men on the other side of the tomb, and we had our arrows ready. But when we loosed, our arms didn’t even pierce the beast’s hide. We have only one choice. We’ll have to track it and kill it when it transforms back into its human form. But it flew from here, and we have no tracks to follow.”
Fenn thought of all the maps in the burial chamber, of the empty valley beyond the mountains they had found and planned to explore. She could picture the map so clearly in her mind. Bryne had told her that in the beast’s form she had no control. She might not be able to think clearly enough to find it. But Fenn had seen that flicker of emotion pass through the dragon’s eyes, and she believed that Bryne would go to the spot they had found and wait for her.
“You said you talked to it,” Ecberth said. “Do you have any idea where it might go next?”
“No,” Fenn lied.
Ecberth’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure? You seemed quite…taken with it? Bewitched by it.”
Fenn squinted out over the sacred field, toward the sea on the horizon. “She told me that when she was in the dragon’s form, she had no control. The human part of her mind vanished.”
This was part of the truth, and perhaps Ecberth heard that in her voice, because he nodded and clapped her on the shoulder.
“Bring a horse,” he shouted to one of the warriors behind him. “Take her home.”
* * *
Fenn insisted on riding in the saddle, with her companion sitting on the horse’s rump behind her. He was one of Cedric’s friends, a gangly, red-haired youth named Aethelwan who, like her brother, had no skills in battle. She had been surprised when he volunteered in the Mead Hall, but his family still prayed to the old gods, and perhaps Aethelwan believed it was his only chance to impress Cempa.
She steered the horse down the path that led to the mountains and home. The mare trotted along placidly with her ears pricked forward. The horse knew that home would bring grain and comfort, a reprieve from the dragon smoke that hovered in the air around the tombs.
Aethelwan’s grip around her waist was slack. Every so often, she could feel him jerk as he nodded into sleep. Fenn waited until she felt him sway, and then spun the mare in a tight circle. The boy fell in a heap at the horse’s hooves.
He staggered to his feet. His face burned like a pyre, and he stammered, “Oh, um, I must have been sleeping…”
He tried to hop back onto the mare, but Fenn kept the horse moving in a circle around him.
“You know your way home, right?” she asked. She twisted in the saddle to point to the stream that bordered the path. “Just follow this for two days. It will you take you a village north of Lindeshelm, and you’ll know your way from there.”
“What?”
Fenn kicked the mare and sent her flying into a gallop.
“Fenn! Wait!” Aethelwan shouted, running up the path after them. “I’m sorry I didn’t make Cedric take you before! Wait!”
She urged the mare on until the horse was slick with sweat and breathing hard. The track behind them was covered in hoofprints, and, even if Aethelwan tried to follow her, it would take him an hour on foot to realize she had not followed the path.
She steered the horse into the stream that bordered the track, then dismounted and patted the mare’s sweaty neck. The cold water of the stream bubbled against her ankles. She slapped the mare’s rump, and the horse trotted for home.
Fenn conjured a picture of Bryne’s map in her imagination. She followed the stream until it widened and deepened into the Tilnoth, the river that cut the island in two. She stripped off her boots and fed them to the ripples. Then she climbed up the bank, onto the soft riverbed. The grass tickled her bare toes, but she moved as light as a deer, leaving no prints behind.
She shaded her eyes against the sun and stared up at the mountain ahead. On the other side of its peak, she would find Bryne and her next adventure. She smiled and began to climb.
About Julia Ember: Julia Ember currently lives in Seattle with her wife and their city menagerie of pets with literary names. She is the author of The Seafarer’s Kiss and The Navigator’s Touch (Duet Books). The duology was heavily influenced by Julia’s postgraduate work in Medieval Literature at the University of St Andrews. The Seafarer’s Kiss was named a “Best Queer Book of 2017” by Book Riot and was a finalist in the Speculative Fiction category of the Bisexual Book Awards. Her upcoming novel, Ruinsong, will be published by Macmillan Kids (FSG) in Fall 2020. Julia also writes scripts for games and is the author of several published novellas and short stories.
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Summer Love edited by Annie Harper
Summer Love is the first collection of short stories published by Duet, the young adult imprint from Interlude Press. These short stories are about the emergence of young love—of bonfires and beaches, of the magical in-between time when young lives step from one world to another, and about finding the courage to be who you really are, to follow your heart and live an authentic life.
ISBN (print) 978-1-941530-36-8 | (eBook) 978-1-941530-44-3
The Summer of Everything by Julian Winters
Comic book geek Wesley Hudson excels at two things: slacking off at his job and pining after his best friend, Nico. Advice from his friends, ‘90s alt-rock songs, and online dating articles aren’t helping much with his secret crush, and when his dream job at the local used bookstore is threatened, he comes face-to-face with the one thing he’s been avoiding—adulthood.
ISBN (print) 978-1-945053-91-7 | (eBook) 978-1-945053-92-4
The Camino Club by Kevin Craig
After getting in trouble with the law, six wayward teens are given an ultimatum: serve time in juvenile detention for their crimes, or walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Spain over the summer holidays with a pair of court-appointed counselor guides. When it becomes clear the long walk isn’t really all that much of an option, they set out on a journey that will either make or break who they are and who they are to become.
ISBN (print) 978-1-945053-97-9 | (eBook) 978-1-945053-72-6
Short Stuff Page 16