by Jess C Scott
Chapter 8:
Anya felt as if a veil had been lifted off her eyes—she felt like she had been set free from the dull routines of everyday life. She recognized what she saw in the faraway distance. It was the ice kingdom she had seen in Nin’s eyes, a short while ago, when he was telling her about how he missed the snow.
The time of day had changed too—the sky had become a midnight shade of purple. Little diamonds of bright stars filled the evening sky, something Anya hadn’t seen in a while. The neon lights and polluted air in cities prevented anyone from having a clear view of the stars. A full moon hung overhead as well. The moon was huge, magnified—full moons in Zouk City never got to be this size. Being here was like standing on the edge of the world.
Anya looked behind. She could now see that they were at the end of a thick forest, the sort you could wander off into for days on end, lost in your own thoughts while walking away from the rest of the world. The leaves on the tree boughs shivered and shook in the breeze, with the sound of little silver bells.
A faint sigh escaped from her parted lips. “Just beautiful,” she said to Nin, taking in the heavenly landscape.
Nin smiled, with a slightly reminiscent look on his face. He turned quietly, taking a few steps forward into the woodland. He had spent much of his youth and growing up years out here.
“Why is it so…different now?” Anya walked alongside him, feeling like a little girl lost in a stunning reverie. It was no different from when she used to wander in fiction. As a young girl, she’d spend hours diving into books. Stories were always the best escape from a world of harshness, cruelty, injustice, and mundane realities.
“Magic still reigns supreme here.” Nin took a breath, enjoying the fresh scent of the untainted forest. Anya saw with her own eyes that what he said was true—he seemed to be playing with the elements. He had his palm outstretched in front of him, and Anya saw little wisps of the icy air take on blue-and-violet swirls and different forms, as he moved his hand. Anya noticed that his eyes were a brighter shade of violet here, in Helli’sandur, than before. His eyes were enlivened—clear windows into the depths of his soul.
“Not in Zouk City…I suppose?” Anya wrapped the cloak tighter around her—she was still cold. Winter wasn’t her favorite season.
Nin gave a short laugh. “Zouk is no place for magic—magic is suffocated by technology, machines, and humans that…have no soul.”
Anya thought about herself—she hoped she had a soul.
“The train works with magic,” she pointed out. Nin had said so himself.
Nin leaned against one of the trees, tilting his chin down towards his chest. “Underground’s a different story. We found that out by chance.”
Anya saw a few shadows moving, quick yet silent, under the light of the moon. “Humans can’t get here, hmm.” She said it more like a statement than question.
“These are…isolated regions. Hidden pockets in the corners of the world.”
Nin seated himself on a rocky surface, looking out at the ice palace in the distance. He seemed lost in thought.
Anya could see that this place meant a lot to Nin. “You must like it here,” she finally said, trying to find the right words. Of course he likes it, she immediately thought to herself. He’s Prince Ithilnin of Helli’sandur! This place will always be home.
Then again, Le Marr, on the other side of town, was technically Anya’s ‘home,’ where she’d spent most of her childhood. She felt more attached to Zouk City. If only because there was a plethora more of prominent places to raid from. She thought of Leticia and herself combining forces with the elves. They’d be able to wreak quite a bit of havoc.
“Would you want to live forever?” Anya suddenly asked, remembering what Nin had said earlier. With their magical abilities and intelligence, she was quite certain the elves would be able to extend the length of their physical lives.
“I’ll take it as it is,” Nin replied simply. “There’s an Elven legend about Na’urtha, for the purest of souls. So they’re technically not dead, even though they can expire physically.”
Anya nodded. “A little like…Avalon, and King Arthur?” The final resting place of the legendary king of Great Britain.
“A little bit.”
Nin was serene, tranquil, as he mused on Anya’s words. “I’ve always liked this spot,” he said quietly. He thought of the stone church where he had met Anya and Leticia, for a moment. He felt at peace there as well. “I used to come out all the time here, just to…think. Gather my thoughts on things.”
He came here when he didn’t want to be seen by anyone. The times he felt misunderstood weren’t infrequent. After a while, he’d learned to keep most of his deeper thoughts to himself. There’d be less explaining and reiteration to do, that way.
Anya sat down beside Nin, trying not to crush or wrinkle the superlatively smooth cloak.
“Why did you leave?” Then Anya remembered some of the things he had said. “Right, the marriage, the wedding.” That must have been one grand event his family had been planning for. Anya knew of some couples who had called off their weddings, because the preparations had gotten out of hand. The brides suffered meltdowns; the grooms got cold feet and just took off.
“It wasn’t just that.” Nin clasped his hands in front of him, resting them on one propped up knee. It seemed like just a day ago that he had taken off from Helli’sandur, to seek something new. “I felt…unfulfilled…” He looked intently at the ice palace. “I wanted more out of life…I wanted to be something…be the best one can be…”
“Even if that meant being a thief?” Anya said half in jest, and then wondered if she had insulted him. If she did, she didn’t mean to. After all it made perfect sense to her. She too, had been tired of the status quo and the continual enforcement by The Establishment.
Nin gave a half-smirk. There were two sides to him: a free-spirited, adventurous side, which didn’t care what anyone thought, and a philosophical, dreamy side, which he usually kept fiercely guarded.
“My life as a prince was meaningless. The indulgent dinners…glorified hunting trips…the gold, glory, and luxuries…I wanted to see what lay beyond the icy walls.” Nin recalled the years he’d spend as a vagabond recluse.
Anya listened to the sound of Nin’s soft breathing, as she waited for him to tell her more about himself.
“You know, a long time ago, humans and elves co-existed, side by side.”
Anya gazed at him. He was many years older by Elven standards, but the same age as she and Leticia, by their standards. “That must have been, many years ago,” she said.
“Yes.” How sweet the sound of her words by the moonlight, like the voice of an angel…more words from an Elven poem Nin tried to stamp out of his mind.
A snow hare ran up to Nin, twitching its nose at one of Nin’s leather boots, like it was saying hello. Nin stroked the fur on its back, before the hare bounded off back into the woods. “Then humans started to rely too heavily on science…magic was inferior, they said. It was something the Elven world refused to accept. The humans wanted it their way, and were willing to shed blood for it.” Nin shifted his gaze to Anya, for a moment. “Blood on both sides. So the elves chose to be marginalized, banished even…to live in the outer regions, where they could be invisible and undisturbed. It’d be as if we never existed.”
Anya noted how “they” had shifted to “we” by the end of Nin’s semi-soliloquy, which showed the strong ties he still had to his ancestry.
Anya processed all that he just said. “Actually,” she said unhurriedly, “why bother with us humans? We’re selfish, and destructive.”
It was a subject Nin spent a significant amount of his thoughts and time on.
“Half of all species of life on earth are extinct,” he began. “Scientists and leaders have been arguing about global warming for the past one hundred years, as temperatures continually rise worldwide. Plant species never discovered are destroyed everyday a new part of a prote
cted rainforest is cleared by corporations with extraterritorial rights. People knew what wild mushrooms were, long ago—these days it’s just another drug. Do you know that 2.5 billion people eat too much and 2.5 billion don’t have enough to eat?” He stuck his tongue in one of his cheeks. “Humans are the species most responsible for violating the planet.”
The high elves had wanted to dispose of the human race several times already—but they never could, because the two species were counterparts of each other. Each needed the other to survive, whether or not either was bothered to acknowledge one another’s existence.
Anya found she couldn’t disagree. “In that case, why concern yourself with humans at all?” she asked again, in a way directed more personally at Nin, this time. She was discouraged with most of the human species herself, apart from the few people she could call real friends or family.
Nin swung his neck back slightly, looking at the moon. “‘You do your thing, and we do ours’…that was the Elven view, when they broke off all human contact. Remember one of the pieces of the poem, the one titled lir?”
Elven for ‘life,’ Anya recalled.
“In your wanderings and dealings,” Nin recited by heart, poetically, “neglect not, the other side of life.”
Anya felt something pass over her, or through her—something magical, powerful—a glimpse of something bigger, that was worth fighting for.
“I felt the Elven view didn’t go in line, with that part of the poem.” Nin’s subdued tone was resolute. He wondered if he should elaborate more—if it didn’t bore Anya, of course. He could also leave it for another day, perhaps over a future late-night tea session.
The night sky had taken on a shimmer while Anya and Nin were talking, which made the surroundings all the more enchanting. Anya ruminated on Nin’s opinion, on the poem titled lir. He was a dreamer, an idealist, in that sense. He believed in something greater, something better, than what had been established. He’d even sacrifice himself, to save all of his kind, just like the maiden in the Bloodstar legend.
“Diamond dust.” Nin held a hand out, collecting the little bits of ice that fell. “This isn’t exactly snow—the air is so cold, that water falls as ice. Pretty, hmm?”
Anya wanted to agree. Instead, she was rubbing her hands together. Her teeth were almost beginning to chatter. She glanced down at her fingernails, which looked several shades bluer than before.
“Getting cold?” Nin asked kindly. He went forward, lifting up the hood over Anya’s head. “Better?”
Anya pulled the cloak down over her ears—it was warmer that way. “Should’ve done that earlier,” she commented with a slight giggle. “I forgot it was there.”
She was shivering slightly. Nin pulled her in closer, in an embrace. “Warmer now?”
Nin held her hands in his, massaging them. “You’re absolutely freezing. The cold doesn’t get to me too much, if I’m out for a short while.”
Twenty or so human minutes was more than a short while, by Anya’s standards, under the present circumstances.
Anya tugged on one of Nin’s shirt sleeves. “You don’t need a magic cloak?”
Nin tucked his hair back behind his ears. Anya realized, not for the first time, that he had all the fine features of a classic elf. “Elves can withstand extreme temperatures. Our blood temperature adjusts, accordingly.”
He stood up, checking his wrist device. “We should go. They’ll be waiting for us.”
He walked off to one of the nearby trees, and brought out a pocketknife. He sliced two vines, then reached under a big leaf, where icicle drops had crystallized. He carefully broke two of the drops off.
“What’re you doing?” Anya stood near him, hands in her cloak’s pockets, pressing against her thighs for more warmth.
Nin held the two icicles up to the sky, a moonbeam shining through and onto the ice crystals. Anya saw some of the diamond dust pieces settle within the icicles.
“Helklimbe, giliath, ilmen,” Nin muttered over the two icicles in his palm, before attaching the cords of vine to them.
“For you and Leticia.” He handed the icicles, which had taken the form of smoothened pendants, to Anya. “Icicles with the stars of the night sky.”
Aya looked at him with a face of pure gratitude. How sweet he is. “Thank you very much,” she said, putting it on, despite the frostiness that started to bite at her fingertips again. But just thinking of his touch made some of the cold dissipate.
Taking a last look at Helli’sandur, Nin retrieved a small key he had in his N-Gage, and opened a door in the tree they had entered by.
Anya went down the stairs, looking out for the blue portal. She was expecting to find the portal and train carriage there, waiting for them, just as they had left it. If Nin wanted to, he could leave her stranded at Helli’sandur for as long as he intended, his little captive.
Anya stopped dead in her tracks, when she couldn’t see the portal or train. She clutched at the cloak around her neck, scrunching up the fabric with a nervous hand.
“Where’s the train?” she whispered. She’d left the deep pink goggles behind, and squinted in the dark, trying to make out where it had mysteriously vanished to.
“Don’t worry,”—Anya turned towards Nin’s voice—“everything’s just as we left it.”
Nin waved his hand out in front of them, and the blue portal and train came into view.
“Safer when it’s ‘undetectable’,” Nin said to Anya, as he stood beside her. “It’s what we call Shadow Hiding—a spell to hide an object or person.”
“So you could hide me?” Anya asked, impressed.
Nin nodded. “Though I’d still be able to hear you, or pick up on your unique…scent.”
He stepped into the train carriage, standing before the control panel.
“Still cold?” Nin asked with a roguishly charming wink that would warm the coldest heart.
“Nope.” Anya removed the cloak, once she stepped into the carriage. She felt a wave of nervous tension go over her body. He could trap me right here, in their hi-tech train magic system thing…and I wouldn’t even know it! The elves blended art and science—magic and logic—forces Anya could not fight against, not by herself.
Nin looked at the cloak for a moment, before folding and replacing it in the overhead compartment. “Mine works fine for me.”
“I liked your hug better than the coat,” Anya said in good humor. “You’re warmer than the coat.”
Nin laughed, then put his arms around Anya, as he gave her a playful hug. “Like…this?”
“Yeah,” Anya smiled, leaning against his chest. “Just like that.” She just realized how good he smelled—clean, fresh, and mysteriously alluring, like the night air of Helli’sandur. She wrapped her hands loosely around him, resting them where she could feel the slight inward curve of the small of his back.
Something changed in his hug—he brought her in a little closer—and it wasn’t so playful, this time. He wasn’t really thinking about what he was doing. He was just going with the flow. It was good to be spontaneous, once in a while.
Anya hesitated, as they stood together. She thought she could hear the sound of her heart beating against Nin’s. She stared at his shirt, and his smooth skin.
“You’re so…” Anya tried to find the right words, but none would come.
Then he kissed her. It was a tentative, curious, lighthearted kiss. She was caught off guard, and stood still, a glazed look over her eyes.
“Stolen kiss,” Nin whispered into her hair. There was a mild, sinking feeling in his heart, which he didn’t quite know the cause of. It was because a part of him—the sardonic part of him—already felt as if the moment was over. Love was a game, and so was this.
He unlocked his arms from behind Anya, and took a short step back. He wore a shy smile, or a smug grin—Anya couldn’t tell.
So, Anya thought, this is Nin. The one with a “cold heart.”
Anya closed half of the short distance between the
m. “Returned kiss,” she replied, and stood on tiptoe, planting a soft kiss on his even softer lips.
His dusky violet eyes searched hers, seeking her truest and deepest desires.
She had her hands under his shirt, and she rested her hands on his lower back muscle. She felt like she was about to go freefalling. Lift me up, said her touch on his bare skin. Let me go…
Then they were locked in an embrace again, like lovers, except they weren’t, and kissing each other…slowly at first, feeling their bones melt, one by one…then like their very hearts and lives depended on it. They warmed each other with searing, tender touches. They reveled in the heady rush, which was more invigorating than everything Anya had gone through so far—discovering The Velvet Underground, meeting an Elven band of thieves, being aware elves existed at all, being recruited for a break-in to the prestigious Gilbreth Institute, riding on an underground train system hidden from humans, listening to all Nin had to say at his special place in Helli’sandur.
To Anya, Nin’s kisses and the touch of his fingertips were more invigorating than all of that combined.
Each kiss was a divine imprint on her lips, etched upon her memory—burning through her soul with the fire of a thousand suns.
Chapter 9:
Anya and Nin were still in each other’s arms when the portal brought them back to The Velvet Underground. Anya thought she’d closed her eyes to a cadence of blinding light.
“Nin,” Anya heard the train’s voice coming on, “you two won’t be alone much longer.”
But they ignored the voice, caught up in the surreal world of real touches, proper hugs, feeling so alive being so close to another living body—passion was something so scarce that it was something overwhelming for both of them.
They finally let go when they heard Tavia’s shrill voice down the passageway, calling out, “They’re back!”
“Are we late?” Nin checked his N-Gage. It was five minutes before midnight. Anya’s eyes widened when she saw the ‘B’ tattoo had taken on a bright glow on Nin’s lower neck. He grabbed his black leather coat he’d brought along with him into the train, quickly buttoned the top part of the coat, and smoothed his hair down, just before any of the others could step in.