Welcome to Gaia! ::

Above the lone traveler, picking his way through thorned bushes that snatched at his sleeves and great black roots that muddled his feet, the sky purpled with dusk. Encircled by heavy trunks, the forest had been dark for some time, the looming branches and tight thickets of leaves obscuring what was left of daylight. The man halted, hand planted against a trunk, and as he stood, surveying the murky confusion of shapes and shades, he felt sweat slip off his chin, dampening his shirt and the ground below. Being autumn, the weather was cool, yet the climb hard; his exertion had doubled after a slipped foothold earlier in the day, which had toppled him down a small hillside. Since then, his journey had been an upward trudge, struggling against the incline, the gnarled underbrush, and his fatigue. Though he had found nothing wrong with it, his right leg ached from the fall, every step jolting the pain in it.

He inhaled deeply, rallying himself to concentration. There was no point staggering around woods like this in twilight; it would be better to make camp as soon as possible. Especially here: though he had done no harm, the forest seemed against him.

Durant had suffered through forests far more malicious than this one, never mind hell-stricken deserts which howled and battered at any living thing. Still, he could read warnings of a place’s distaste for him: during the course of the day he had glimpsed few animals and managed to catch not one. When a place protected its kind, he could not find fault in it – did he not protect his own people from predators? And so during his walk he had murmured a few psalms celebratory of nature, both to appease and flatter the local spirits. Whether this worked, he had yet to tell, but he could feel something tracking him as he wandered, so perhaps he would know soon enough.

For now, Durant grabbed the front of his shirt and used it to wipe his face; the fabric was stale already and cold from dried sweat. Then he patted the tree trunk, muttering thanks for allowing him to rest, and moved onward in growing blindness. He had prayed for the land to level out – or at the very least, to catch sound of a stream and camp nearby fresh water. However, neither appeared to him, so he pushed twig-tangled strands of hair from his face and plunged forward, squinting through the brush.

His standards were now lowered to any sort of shelter: a large tree would do, one against which to rest his back. As he searched, measuring first this tree and then another, mostly by touch, he felt the sensation of being followed heighten. He slowed, pretending to consider a certain tree in depth, and let his weary eyes close.

The attention taken from his vision seeped into his other senses. The forest’s deep, primeval scent, like hundreds of years of warm palms sifting through dirt, caressed him, and the evening breeze trickled across his face like a careful, cool cloth, tending to him with soft breaths. But there – what he was searching for. At the very moment the chain around his wrist tightened, he heard a quiet scattering of leaves. It could have been the wind, but wasn’t.

With no warning, he swung around to face it. The movement startled the beast, which pranced back a step, making the space between them just long enough for a man to lie down in. The creature appeared almost to glow in the heavy night: he was a slender but fine horse of startling white. His hide’s colour was the visual embodiment of hope; at a single glance, Durant felt his heart lightened, lifted.

The chain around his wrist dragged him back down to sensibility. Obviously the beast was a beastie – a childish term Durant had used since youth to describe the myriad of mythical and inexplicable beings he had fought and hunted over the years. This one, with its coat of melting snow and friendly but shy approach, he judged to be a kelpie or something of the kind.

If Viking kelpies were anything like their cousins, however, that meant water was nearby. And Lord knew he could use that.

“Hello there, darling,” Durant greeted warmly, raising his empty hands to soothe the beast before taking a step forward. “Aren’t you a lovely find?”

As he had hoped, the kelpie horse shuffled a step back, all coyness and cold allure. Durant, playing the easy role of the exhausted and bedazzled wanderer, followed the beastie’s lead, murmuring more compliments and encouragements. Every time he drew closer, the horse whickered at him invitingly, but shied away. Together the pair drew through the blackened trees, and either the kelpie’s moon-brilliance lit his way or the beastie had connived with the forest to let Durant pass; either way, his feet neither caught nor stumbled as he followed after it.

The trick, of course, was timing. Durant did not feel like being drowned by a beastie today, despite all appearance otherwise. Therefore he divided his attention most keenly between sight of the horse and the sounds of the forest; as soon as water could be heard, he need follow the murderous thing no more.

But unexpectedly, the kelpie halted and let Durant approach close and closer without drawing away. This was no good: if it meant to lure him onto its back and drag him beneath the water by force, he would have no part in it. Already too close for comfort, Durant purred to the beastie, “Very good, good boy. Now hold still a moment longer while I get some rope…”

He withdrew a small amount of binding as the horse looked on warily. The length in his hands looked too small and fine to be proper rope: indeed it was more like braided cord for a woman’s gown. At that strange sight, the kelpie backed away, suspicion roused, and snorted at Durant. He decided to push his luck a little longer and stepped forward to follow.

“You don’t want to play anymore, my handsome friend?” Quickly, he arranged the binding in a lasso and knotted it. “You should have kept to your first game and led me to the water.”

His words halted the kelpie, which look at him with new appraisal: some anger hardened its gaze, but more than anything it expressed surprise and curiosity at this brazen man. The horse took another few steps back, deliberately positioning itself to face Durant head on.

That wasn’t good. (Being trampled by a horse never was, but kelpie-horses especially.) Durant took his own steps away and stuffed the rope in his pack, immediately using this freed hand to draw the sign of the cross over his body. Starting his voice low, he began an invocation, the words falling into the rhythm of a chant as he continued; the lines of the prayer set against each other like bricks in an arch, building upward by balance and skill rather than mortar:

Lord, hear my prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief.
Do not bring your servant into judgment,
for no one living is righteous before you.
The enemy pursues me,
he crushes me to the ground;
he makes me dwell in the darkness
like those long dead.
So my spirit grows faint within me;
my heart within me is dismayed.
I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you;
I thirst for you like a parched land.

For your name’s sake, Lord, preserve my life;
in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.
In your unfailing love, silence my enemies;
destroy all my foes,
for I am your servant.

At first this seemed to have no effect; the horse tossed its head and readied to charge. But as the verse repeated, Durant’s voice grew, a strange echo coming from nowhere to burrow beneath his sound and lend it strength. The echo held old power, like the slow, unmoved gaze of a tree which has stood for centuries, and the nøkk could feel the threat behind its display of might. Preferring to avoid outright engagements, Storm turned, tail tucked, and trotted away.

Durant watched the beastie’s retreat with immeasurable relief; he did not think it possible for him to have physically handled the horse in his weakened state. The kelpie darted through the trees like a spark of lightning that flickered and changed shape in its own light; the horse shrank and shivered before winking out of the man’s sight entirely.

---

After ditching the strange mortal, Storm went at once to the hulder. He had taken on a smaller form, slight even for a pony – out of carefulness, not fear, of course – and this appearance alerted Rita to some rare occurrence. She was reclined when the nøkk approached, having just finished bathing before bed.

“Why are you in a fuss?” she asked with mild amusement, not expecting any story worth her while.

Breathless, he blurted out, “There’s a man in the forest.”

Rita looked at him flatly. “No. A man, really?”

“Yes!” He missed the sarcasm completely in his excitement; somewhere between the mortal and the hulder, this tale had taken on an epic quality in his mind. “A very strange man – he isn’t one of yours, and he speaks like a foreigner, but I’m never good with placing accents.”

“Storm.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Why is this important?”

“He knew what I was,” the nøkk said with fervor, dropping down next to her in the small bed she had made of pine needles. “I think he meant to capture me, or at least use me for something… He knew what I was, yet followed regardless.”

That fact caused some stir in the hulder’s mind. Locals often knew what they were, from story or experience, and so respectfully avoided them. For a foreigner to know was strange but not unheard of – no, it was the final addition which unnerved her. Capture? That sounded like a hunter. She then gave her attention to Storm as he retold the event, not only the final encounter with the strange rope that seeped exotic magic, but the whole day in which Storm had followed the man, watching his hunts fail, hearing his flattering songs.

“And you would have killed him anyway?” Rita asked with a small frown. “Even though he respected the forest?”

“Respect,” the nøkk grunted. “You just have a weakness for anything that sings.”

Despite the taunt, Rita perked up. “He sang something?”

Storm smirked. “More or less. He’s been chanting things all day. That’s how I found him, actually – I could feel something turning in the air, like a sudden gust of warm wind, but it turned out to be his chants.” He leaned forward, eyes wide. “And I haven’t told you the best part. After trying to capture me, he became frightened and decided to drive me off. He used one of those chants to do it.”

“What do you mean?” She couldn’t keep slight disappointment from her voice. Though she was glad that Storm hadn’t killed him and drawn more of the local’s wrath, she saw no reason to flee from mere words. “How can that cause you to – ”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said with a shrug. “He called on the same god as the locals do, but this one… It answered him.”

She snorted outright at that. “Don’t be ridiculous: there’s no god, Storm, you know that. He was an old Roman invention meant to intimidate barbarians – that’s why they still dress him up in a toga.”

“Either way,” he contended, “that man has power, and he likes to claim it as divine.”

With thoughts darting through her mind like little minnows in a stream, Rita made a quiet sound and reclined herself once again. She murmured, “So is that all?” and the nøkk smiled down at her.

“No.”

“…so what else?”

Quite smug, Storm purred, “He’s lost. Utterly. The woods will keep him until he starves.”

“Men get lost very easily,” she concurred with a small yawn.

“Rita.”

“Hm?”

“Don’t you remember our last deal?” the nøkk pressed. “With the children?”

Oh, right. Hardly a month ago, a tiny brother and sister had managed to lose themselves in her territory, and Storm had been on the brink of dragging them under when Rita had intervened. Upset and a little frantic, she had hastily agreed to owe him a favor for the children’s lives.

“What does that have to do with him?”

“I’m curious about him,” Storm said eagerly. “I want you to talk to him.”

Immediately, she pulled a face. “You know I don’t like men, never mind starting a conversation with one.”

“We made a pact.”

With a dramatic sigh, Rita rolled over to go to sleep and grunted, “Fine. But first, I’m watching him for a day.” She slept that night with a very happy Storm nestled against her back.

---

At sunrise, Storm led her to the place he had last parted ways with the mortal. The various birds and twitchy-nosed rabbits, awake even earlier than the hulder, easily pointed them the right direction, so that they came upon the man soon enough. He had indeed resorted to a tree as his simple campsite; he slept sitting up, propped against it, with his pack in his lap.

Even sat down, Rita could tell that the man was frightfully tall, his stretched-out legs dangling far from his body. Though broad-shouldered, he looked lean from both hard work and hunger, and she could tell evidence of the man’s tribulations also in his long earth-brown hair which was currently host to every variety of twig, leaf, tangle, and knot. He looked a mess, skin smeared with dirt and sweat, and she had no greater desire at the moment than to let Storm drag him into the lake, if only to clean him off. The state of his hair alone made her self-consciously draw a hand to her own locks, combing through them absentmindedly.

“So what do you think?” Storm whispered, careful to tuck himself out of sight should the mortal wake.

“I’m wondering why you have such an attachment to a man you tried to kill.” In fact, she was more interested in looking around his campsite until she found what she had expected – definitely a hunter. In a square around his sleeping body was pegged a piece of string, low to the ground, to which she assumed bells were tied.

“I hadn’t meant to drown him until he turned around and caught me staring,” the nøkk replied ambivalently. “I would have been content to follow him.”

Rita made a quiet sound, leaning against a nearby tree with arms folded and tail flitting. “How long did you follow him before he noticed you?”

“Uh…” The horse tossed his head, trying to recall. “Three or four hours?”

“Benefit of the doubt: four hours.”

Whickering in amusement, he asked, “And if you beat me? What do you win?”

“What do you think I want?” she retorted with a glance at her companion. He whickered again, and gave her a playful nudge with his head.

“Fine. If you win, I’ll lead him out of the forest. No conversation required on your part.”

“Done.”

---

Durant woke later than he would have liked. By the time his eyes opened, the light through the leaves was blinding bright and yellow as butter. Squinting, he first checked over his pack and himself: nothing seemed to be amiss, other than a severely stiff right leg with a bruise on that hip, dark blue-purple and the size of his hand. Charming. Once he had risen and stretched his weary body out, he took up the string perimeter he had laid as defense last night.

His next task was to orient himself in order to find a way out of this cursed valley – and the only idea that came to mind was climbing a tree. Absolutely charming. He’d be lucky if a dryad didn’t pop up halfway through the climb and shove him to his death.

More than daunted by this task, Durant first had a nibble of two-week-stale bread from his pack, washed down by a few berries. He hadn’t found any water for several days and his packed supply was beginning to run low – that unnerved him far more than the lack of food. Either way, breakfast was over.

In preparation for tree-climbing, he tied his pack to a branch at shoulder height to dissuade any little scavengers. Then he selected the tree with the best-looking footholds and heaved himself up, clambering through the branches and rattling the leaves with enough noise to drive off any animals that might have come sniffing over.

Except, of course, for the hulder who snuck a peek out from behind her hiding place and watched Durant make his ascent. She had sent Storm away, despite many complaints, because she didn’t want to be jeopardized on account of the nøkk’s pranks. Doubtless he would have tried already to steal the man’s pack. But she waited, secure in her shadows, as the man dropped back to the ground and retrieved his pack before setting off, none the wiser for the hulder following him.

Or so she assumed. In fact, Durant’s bracelet had been tugging at him nearly since he woke. At first he had feared a vengeful reappearance of the kelpie (or friends), but nothing revealed itself. While hidden in the high branches of the tree, he said a prayer and checked the constricting chain. The little trinkets and baubles on it clinked against each other, shivering under his gaze, until one separated from the pack. It was a ruddy bronze bell, like a cow might have around its throat.

And he had no idea what that meant.

Music – a siren? In a forest, however haunted and unfriendly, he doubted it. But a bell seemed harmless enough, so he journeyed onward, keeping his ears open for the stalker he must have. Time passed and daylight sharpened, letting him shed his coat and drape it over a shoulder. Though thirsting, he judged it still worthwhile to appease the forest. He started up another psalm of praise and beauty, but his chain pinched tight the skin at his wrist. Pausing mid-line, he caught an unmistakable scuffle behind him.

Interesting. Swallowing what spit he had left, Durant switched to a proper tune:


Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine.
Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I'll not ask for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sip,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much hon'ring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon did'st only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me,
Since when it grows and smells, I swear
Not of itself, but thee.
His parched voice was faint and easily muffled by the overbearing foliage, yet he sang on, half-forgetting the beastie at his back. Music eased any drudgery, and here quickened his step. As he drew to the end of the song, however, he remembered the reason for starting it. Emboldened by the music, Durant turned at the last line and repeated it, calling, “Not of itself, but you–”

Only to be met by silent forest, not a body in sight.

“I can hear you following me,” he said, scanning the trees for movement. “I won’t hurt you.” Probably. “Please, come out. Let me see you.”

His entreaty had no effect, and Durant wondered if perhaps the cowbell on his chain held a hint toward the beastie’s intelligence as well as form. If it didn’t understand human speech…

“I won’t hurt you. But following me won’t be very interesting.” He shrugged his pack, explaining, “I’m almost out of water. No more singing – not at least until I find a stream.”

He didn’t know if it was the subtle bribe or the inspiration of pity, but his words moved something. From behind a great trunk came a woman’s voice, wondrously clear and young: “Then why didn’t you stop at the streams you passed?”

He cracked a smile, spreading his hands in a shrug. “I saw none, milady. Will you guide me to one?”

Rita’s instinct snarled no, but she knew Storm’s words to be true: the mortal was utterly lost. The forest had turned him past the same rock three times already without his notice. If she did nothing, he would keep wandered here until death. And she wanted him gone much sooner than that.

Having already lost the bet, Rita felt no shame in stepping out from her hiding spot. The mortal’s eyes widened slightly at her appearance, but his gaze swept over her bare body without bashfulness. When he looked back at her face, she asked, “Are you a hunter?”

Cautious lest she be a protective dryad, he said, “To survive, good lady, I hunt beasts.”

“And that’s all?”

Lying to intelligent (and particularly to female) beasties rarely ended well. With a little nervousness in his smile, Durant admitted, “I hunt monsters as well, when villagers call me to their aid.”

“Monsters.” Her look was immediately reproachful.

“Beasties, milady. Things that go bump and steal your children in the night.”

She held his gaze for a few moments before, unexpectedly, his eyes dropped to the ground. Still undecided about this man’s merits, Rita combed a hand unconsciously through her hair as she studied him.

“You stumbled into my territory on your own. You need to leave it the same way.”

“Actually,” Durant corrected with a smile more than a little cheeky, “I fell, not stumbled. But yes, that was my intention. However, if you would be so generous as to lead the way out…”

“Why would I waste my time with that?”

Good question.

“I’ll sing to you?” he offered with the expectation of rejection. When the woman’s expression darkened, he tried even more halfheartedly, “I’ll make you tea?”

“What?”

“Tea…”

“…no.” Her tail flicked in irritation, and she had to ask the mortal, “Do you even know what I am?”

Durant took a moment to look her over once more – the achingly feminine curves of her naked body, her pale peerless skin, and that cascade of marvelously fiery hair that he so desired to clench between his fingers…

“You,” he decided, “are exceedingly beautiful.”

“And you’re a fool.”

She turned heel and slipped behind a tree, startling him with a wide glimpse of her hollowed back. Quick to recover, Durant hurried after her, calling, “A joke, sweet lady – please – ” He licked away an ensnaring bush and darted around the tree. “Only a joke.”

Several trunks ahead of him, she paused to repeat, “Then what am I?”

“You…” A cowbell for a cow’s tail, he realized, a little swish of said tail catching his attention. “I don’t know your true name, forgive me. But I have met cousins of your kind, mostly by the sea…”

“Did you offer them tea as well?” she scoffed.

Straight-faced, Durant said, “Of course not. They live in the ocean – they have enough to drink.”

Silence took the forest, and Durant had to wait, stomach sinking, as the beastie stared him down. He hoped something obscurely horrific wasn’t about to happen, like the woman’s jaw unhinging like a snake’s and fiery cow hooves flying out of her mouth to stomp him in the face. Instead, to his greatest relief, she opened her mouth to laugh.

And laugh and laugh, the woman leaning against a tree to support her giggles. Unsure but still delighted with the reaction, Durant answered her amusement with a wide smile. He relaxed against his own tree, assured now that she wouldn’t scamper away. After her small fit of laughter came under control, she waved a hand for Durant to follow and started down a path.

She led him without further remark to a little brook of water as cold and clear as her voice. Murmuring thanks, he crouched down at once to take a drink and then fill his flasks. He could feel her gaze on his back, the beastie watching from a safe distance.

“So tell me, fine lady,” he said, without looking up from the stream, “since I am in such ignorance, what is your proper name?”

“Rita.”

He grinned to himself. “And I Durant, at your service.” Well-played, woman.

“At my tea-making service.”

“You seem caught on that, milady.”

“It’s the first time anyone has offered it,” she said, confused that she even needed to explain this oddity. “Of the many things I have been offered…”

He gave a warm laugh. “I would have started more conventionally, but – ”

“Oh?”

“With myself, of course.”

“Mm.”

“But, as your sound suggests, I look as appetizing as the wrong end of a mule right now.” He gathered water in his hands and used it to scrub at his face, some of the grime caking off.

“You do look disgusting,” she was happy to remind him.

“Yes,” he snorted, “thank you, milady.” After a few more attempts at cleaning, Durant added, “But would you like some?”

“Of you?” No.

“Tea.”

“You’re serious.”

“And thirsty. I’m making it for myself either way.”

Rita couldn’t deny the curiosity creeping into her voice. “But you don’t have anything with which to make it…”

“You of little faith,” Durant chided. He sat down at the brook’s edge and pulled from his pack a dented and dingy metal cup, along with a root wrapped in fabric. The latter he laid out on a water-smoothed rock and, retrieving a small knife, he cut it down to small pieces. A few of these he dropped in the cup and then filled it with water before returning it to the rock.

The knife had kept her away until now, as she edged closer. “What plant is that?”

“I don’t remember its name.” He glanced up from his work to smile at her. “Apparently I have poor luck with those. But it’s local – I’ve heard it called golden root mostly. The healers here swear by it for rejuvenation.” And for fertility, but he didn’t want to sound too forward.

“How are you going to boil the water?”

“I am not going to boil the water. You may want to stay away for this. It can be…unsettling.” Hardly did the warning pass his lips before Durant closed his eyes and set his hands flat on the small stone, fingers encircling the cup. His mouth formed words, first silently, then out loud – an incantation Rita recognized as similar to what Storm had described.

And incredibly, the stone began to glow. The man’s face remained serene and unlined, only his lips at work, as the rock heated. The unseen fire passed from rock to metal, bringing the water to a boil over the course of several minutes. Once it had reached that point, Durant settled back with a content sigh, eyes open.

“And there you are, my curious lady.”

“Magic.”

“If you insist, milady.” His patient smile made Rita think that he had explained this many times before. “Some have called it holy magic, but in truth, it is the work solely of the Lord. I only channel His power.”

Close enough now to see the steam hissing off the cup’s water, Rita frowned at the pretentious man. “You’re a witch. No matter what you call it or who you pretend to call it from – ”

“Pardon me,” he cut in coarsely, with the first sign of displeasure she had seen from him. “A witch is the farthest from what I am.”

“You do magic, and therefore – ”

“So are you now a selkie? Or a siren?”

She hesitated before confessing, “I know neither of those.”

“They’re as alike to you as I am a…” He seemed to have trouble even repeating the slur. “A witch.”

Men were so prideful, she thought with a scornful frown. Obviously she had wounded this little one’s ego. But Durant, gallant and gracious even to beasties, recovered from the insult and informed her that the tea would take a short time.

“The roots need to soak all the way through,” he explained, “so if you’d like to take a seat as we wait…”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Of course.”

She didn’t understand the reason for Durant’s little grin and introduced a new topic instead: “Where did you come from?”

“Dagslett, most recently. They had a bad crop of trolls terrorizing the livestock.”

“And so you killed them.”

Durant licked his lips, then looked the hulder full in the face. “Yes.” Neither voice nor expression wavered. “I did. And I saved most of a town from starvation in doing so.”

“What if the trolls had been starving? And that’s why they went after the animals?”

“Milady,” he sighed. “I have hunted many creatures. Some have been brutal, bloodthirsty monsters, and others simply took the wrong path. It is my task to protect those who I can, not to sort out those I slay. I have all judgments to God.”

“As if a human-invented god would care about trolls’ deaths any more than you do.”

“The Lord cares for all His creations,” Durant recited calmly. “Even those less favoured on Earth.”

“I should have let Storm drown you.”

“So you’re in league with the kelpie?”

“The what?”

“The horse…”

“The nøkk.”

Rita expected him to resist the foreign with the infinitely pigheaded stubbornness typical of man, but to her surprise, Durant nodded and said, “Excuse me. The nøkk.”

“But returning to the point,” Rita persisted. “A cup of tea does not excuse my guilt in helping a miserable thing like you leave my forest alive.”

“Cruel words for a man who has treated you with nothing but respect.”

“Fitting words for any man.” And that was the end of it. He may have surprised her with song and wit, but she held no fondness towards this hunter. Had he harmed Storm in any way…

“As you like. Then tell me,” Durant said, “what a miserable and lowly creature like myself could offer you. Ask any favour, and if I am able, I will do it.”

The man sounded earnest and Rita saw no reason why he wouldn’t be: the human’s fate still lay in her hands. But what could she want with a hunter of beasts?

“How do you hunt creatures like me?” she asked, though already loathing the answer. “Or these cousins of mine you mentioned.”

“With arrow or blade or trap. It depends.” He shrugged. “I’ve never actually hunted a temptress – they tend to be content in their own territory, and not bother with villagers or livestock. Any man who ides by her hand is a fool, not a victim.”

Rita ignored the latter part of his speech, mind fixating on his mention of territory. Territory, indeed, which Tora wished to steal. Despite their disagreements, Rita didn’t feel quite ready to send a human to assassinate her own sister, but perhaps a lesser measure would suffice.

“I want one of your tools as payment.” At the man’s baffled expression, she expounded on her situation with Tora and the necessity of guarding her land. He nodded to himself, gaze wandering over his pack in contemplation.

“Tea first,” he stated, laying his hands on the stone once more to dissolve the heat. Once the cup had cooled, he offered it to her. “There’s root still left, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to drink around those.”

Very wary, she took a small step forward to nab the cup and then retreated, her prize clutched close. While she sampled the drink, Durant looked through his pack for a suitable bribe. After some deliberation, he withdrew a long string beaded with tiny golden bells; these did not make a single clink as he removed them. He pooled the string on the rock as an offering, then looked to the hulder. “How is the tea?”

Excellent, actually. “Good.” With some hesitation, she added, “Thank you.”

“I’m in your debt, milady,” Durant said, waving the gratitude away. “And to correct that, I offer this.”

“You set that up last night.” She remembered sighting the perimeter around his chosen tree.

Surprised, Durant nodded. “Around myself for protection. These bells are crafted from metal blessed by Oriental monks living far off in the mysteries of the East. The monks take vows of silence and protection, and these both pass into the sacred bells. Only the owner may hear their chiming, yet always, from any distance, will the sound be clear.” He watched Rita for approval of the gift. “You can use them to mark and guard your territory.”

“How do I know they work?”

“Because they’re well-used,” Durant grinned at her. “These have saved my life almost monthly.”

“So you’ll die without them?”

The man couldn’t quite tell if she sounded concerned or eager, but he broadened his grin either way. “I’ll think of something.” She could have sworn that Durant snuck in a wink. “My thanks for your concern.”

“Not at all,” Rita assured him dryly.

Having finished more than half of the small drink, she made her careful way back toward the man, offering out the cup. This he exchanged for the pile of bells, and as soon as the metal touched her hand, she could hear a soft but sweet tinkling. They appeared to work, and that was enough to satisfy her; she wanted the mortal out, now.

“I’ll call Storm here and have him guide you out of the forest,” she told him. “Stay by the river.”

Before the hulder turned away completely, Durant called to her, “Certain you have no other favour to ask of me?”

“What more would I need?”

“Beings like yourself often take companions…”

“Offering your body again?” she asked with a raised brow. “Perhaps after a few months of regular baths.”

With the man’s laughter echoing in the trees behind her, Rita hastily took her leave, glad to be rid of the stranger. Still, everything had gone better than expected: she had a new defense against Tora, a few hours’ entertainment, and another mortal flushed out of her forest.

And if Storm slipped up and accidentally drowned him anyway, her day would be all the better.

Burning cage

written by x__Litrouke

i.

They came upon her like snowfall, soft and unheeded.
In the morning her bower lay flat with the landscape, the remnant of her stay smoothed clean by the wind.

They left no tracks.
In the morning she simply was not.

ii.

The cage burned not her body but pride, and so she swallowed, swallowed, swallowed, inhaling the rage, letting it scald only through her eyes.
She would not speak and they did not care, nor did the others.

iii.

Some she knew from encounter or rumour,
some her mother had warned her of,
some she could not bear to watch in their misery,
some spoke to her, goading or crying or wondering,
some gave their names and others their kind: irene selkie phoenix amahet loupgarou marie djinn centycore roland jiangshi :she said nothing.

The river of questions dried up.

iv.

The cage burned her.
She hated the mortal eyes, men fawning, women in scornful slits.

One day the cages were taken and moved; it was black then for a long time and when the light returned, the sky and land were changed.

v.

How would she find her forest

vi.

How would she go home

vii.

She spoke.
Primeval curses, snarling,

viii.

but there was a boy among them whom she would not curse, a golden boy with skin the colour of worn bark and tousled hair like wet black earth after a flood, and he came to her cage with callused dirty fingers reaching through the bars, murmuring warm words she could not understand.

His eyes were a foreign green, as if his creator had only the dimmest memory of grass and leaf in his mind. They were not natural, but so bright.

ix.

The third week he came, she did not curse or snarl.

He crouched by the cage and spoke with unhurried, generous warmth, streaked with sun and dirt, and she reached forward wanting

x.

not him but the dirt on his hands;


The cage burned.

The rain was lightening. The constant pitter patter over the grass had been steady since the beginning of spring, but Rita found it refreshing after the constant winter snow fall. She lay outside, enjoying the newfound warmth with her long red braid resting on the grass. Storm lay beside her at the bank of the water under a wide brimmed oak tree, looking lustfully at the water. Rita knew what he was probably imagining. He had been cooped up with her all winter, and his nokk nature was beginning to come out again.

“If you have to drown someone, try not to do it in my lake. They throw up sometime, and their necks get snapped and I don’t need bile and blood in my bathing water.”

Storm gave a horse-ish snort. “If you insist.”

“I do.” Storm nudged her with his nose and stood up, his mane waving slightly in the breeze. She raised an eyebrow. “If you think that I’m getting up to run with you, you’re mistaken.”

“What? That particular patch of grass is just too comfy to pass up?”

“Ha!” She smiled and closed her eyes peacefully. “Something like that.”

“Fine. Sit here, all dry and lazy. I’m going to go out and frolic.”

Her eyes opened again, and she laughed. “Frolic? Since when do you frolic?”

“I don’t, but, it seems appropriate right now.”

Rita rolled her eyes and closed them again, inhaling deeply. “Suit yourself. Now leave me alone.”

Storm trotted away, shaking his head as the rain hit his smooth shoulders and back. The water felt cool and fresh, and the forest looked greener than ever- lush, almost. There was nothing better than the land Rita had, in his opinion, nowhere better in the world. The trick wasn’t enjoying it though, the trick was keeping it. Rita had proved herself more than capable of that though, and Storm wasn’t exactly the worrying type.

He was however, a little surprised. No, not surprised. Not alarmed either, but somewhere in between, once he got to the top of the hill and looked around. There was smoke. Smoke might mean a forest fire, caused by some stupid human, or the natural dryness of the timber. Considering it was raining though... that only really meant one thing.

Storm cantered back to Rita, who didn’t bother to open her eyes at his presence. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“There are humans.”

“Yes, there are. Far, far away. They wouldn’t dare come here.”

“I think they just did. There’s smoke.”

Rita sat up. “What? Where?”

“I’ll show you.”

Storm headed off towards the hill and Rita raced behind him, her long braid flying behind her. She arrived at the vantage point and spotted the smoke immediately. It was rising thinly, in separated little wisps, moving methodically among the trees. Definitely humans.

“They might be just passing through...”

Storm shook his head. “Passing through the ‘wood of lost souls’? They’re either foreigners-“

“Which hasn’t happened since Rollo came to power.”

“Or they want something.”

Rita grasped Storm’s mane and hoisted herself easily onto his back. “Let’s go find out which.”

The ride towards the smoke didn’t take long, though the grass was slippery and at the rate that Storm was going, there were a few near misses at sliding into large oaks or into deep puddles. Once they got close enough to hear voices, however, they slowed. Rita slipped off and blended in with the trees, getting slowly closer and closer until she could see the intruders.

Vikings. Of course. The round, iron shields and heavy furs made them unmistakable- and who else would dare to disturb her? They had to know that this forest was not a place for humans. The hulders were legendary in these parts. No man, and very few beasts, dared to cross her boundary lines. She held her breath and looked for a leader among the mass of stinky, heavily bearded men with torches to light the way and keep them warm in the damp.

“How many do you think there are?” Storm whispered. Rita held a hand to shush him.

“It’s impossible to tell yet.”

There was one man, in the middle of the crowd, who was dressed better than the rest. He was surrounded by two boys carrying torches, the fire fed with enough blubber and cooking oils to keep the rain from snuffing it out. The sword he wore across his back had a hilt of gold and the men surrounding him carried an extra load- his load. Only the leader would be rich enough to have bearers. Rita closed in as near as she dared, not wanting to betray her presence, but wanting to find out at least who they were.

The men weren’t hard to overhear, with their deep voices booming loudly in jest. “How much longer until we set up camp? I’m starving!” Asked one of the younger soldiers.

“Eat while you walk. You should have learned how to do that before we started.” Laughed another, jabbing him in the ribs.

“It’s a long way yet before we’ll rest. We have things to do. We don’t get paid to sit and feast.” Said the leader, authoritively. He wasn’t wet behind the ears, that was for sure. He was seasoned in war and plunder.

“I didn’t think we were paid to walk either.”

The leader turned around. “One thing you’re not paid to do is speak, Adolph. Marching gets us to where we need to be to get paid, so stop your whining!”

Rita smirked. “A son.”

It wasn’t hard to recognize the similar tone of voice and facial features of the boy and his father. Never mind the fact that no soldier who wanted to live would ever speak to a superior in that way. The boy took a step back though, obviously mildly shamed in front of his peers. No one wanted to be seen as the one man who bitched about the road the entire way.

Rita followed them for about a mile more. It was obvious they were less than alert, and off duty, since none of them even glanced in her direction more than once. Soldiers on guard would notice the faint movement in the brush- but then again, Rita was as light footed as a deer when she wanted to be. She had spent enough of her time cheating and playing dirty to know how to remain in the shadows.

It seemed that they were taking a direct path through her territory- she didn’t know where to, but they seemed like they were going to be traveling for awhile longer. They were stupid to pass through but their stupidity would probably catch up with them later in whatever war they were intent on getting to. Rita left them to their own devices. They annoyed her, and of course the urge was there to put some misfortune in the middle of their path, but it was better to do those things at night when there was better cover, and they were more likely to think that they were being haunted. It was far more fun that way.

Storm, of course, was less happy about the decision to just let them go for the moment. He was just itching to do some mischief.

“One. Just one! A little one, they won’t even miss him!”

“We’ll come back later tonight. But you are not drowning even a little one! We talked about this.”

“Fine. But you’d better have a good plan for tonight.”

Rita raised an eyebrow, unimpressed by his (albeit only hinted at, and totally harmless) threat. “Or what, you’ll eat my favourite squirrel? I’ll get you your fun, just be patient.”

Dusk was quick to come, luckily for Storm. Rita had spent the day by the water, bathing once the sun came out again, and taking long walks across her territories. Things had been peaceful for several whole weeks now, which was rare. Rita felt like she was almost going to get lazy if things continued the way they had been. At least the army coming in from the north was a surprise. Rita couldn’t particularly care less where they were going or what they were doing, as long as it had nothing to do with her. Ever since Rollo came into power, and his armies and mercenaries had taken over and were challenging King Charles of... wherever King Charles was king, there had been more than enough war for everyone. Rita was only mildly affected by this. Nobody wanted her land, since all the legends of her and her family had taken root. She was cloistered securely in this part of the woodlands and that was all that she wanted. Life was simple, and non threatening. Perhaps for Storm that wasn’t enough excitement, but for Rita, she didn’t feel any need to go seeking adventure. Adventure all too often came to her, so it would only be a matter of time, more likely than not. She could just picture Tora in her corner of the earth, already thinking of ways to get back what she thought was rightfully hers. Just because she was oldest, that didn’t mean that she would always get the best of the lot. Apparently that was taking some time for her to accept.

“Can we do it yet?” Storm whined, eager for action.

Rita rolled her eyes. “Soon! Nightfall. Why are you so impatient? It grates on my nerves.”

He snorted and stomped the ground with his hoofs. “I’m a nokk, I’m thirsty.”

“Then drink. The stream is a few feet away from you.”

“You know what I mean. A different kind of thirsty.”

Ignoring him, she stared out over the hills, watching the sun set slowly. It was vibrantly red tonight. Supposedly that meant that blood would be spilt in the morning. At least, that was what her mother said. But then again, people were often wrong about that sort of thing.

“Rita...”

“What?” She snapped, looking over her shoulder at him.

“Smoke again.”

“They’re setting up camp for the night. So what?”

“Unless they’re setting up ten thousand bonfires, I don’t think they’re just making camp.”

Rita stood and looked up. The smoke was not in pretty little streams of gray anymore. It was black and it filled the sky as it drifted downwind, towards them, a thick black cloud of death.

“What have they done?” She muttered to herself, cursing under her breath as she started towards the blaze. An idiot had probably made his fire too close to the woods and set the whole thing up. They would pay for this.

“The wood should still be wet after the steady rainfall all morning. How is it lighting up so quickly?”

“It’s a forest, there’s dry leaves and dead logs everywhere. It’s not hard to send everything up in flames.” Rita shook her head, not in the mood for stupid questions at the moment. “We’ve got to move fast, build up a barrier to stop the fire spreading. Come on!”

Rita started running at top speed, her feet practically flying over the grass. There was no way they’d get enough water to the fire in time to save what was going to be left of her wood supply, but a rock barrier would work almost as well- it would stall the blaze, at least. That was all the time she’d need to get a better plan in place.

Running swiftly in between the trees, the last thing on her mind was being seen by the humans. Secrecy was usually the best policy, but there were more important things to worry about at this point. At least, that’s what she thought until they began to near the source of the flames.

The smoke was thick through the woods. There had been all manner of creatures fleeing it. Rita’s eyes had begun to water, and she covered her nose and mouth with her hand in an attempt to stop the smoke from inflaming her lungs. The crackling of the fire was getting louder and louder as they got closer, but the voices were getting louder too.

At first, Rita could only catch muffled snippets of what was going on. Shouts of, “Over here!” or “Don’t trap yourself!” could be heard. It was evidence of them trying to help put out what they’d started... or so she thought until she got close enough to hear the full sentences.

She could barely make out the figures of the soldiers through the blanket of smoke, but that was lucky for them. She would have done horrible things to them otherwise.

“No! Don’t wave it around like that, go for the leaves, and then light the trunk. It’ll burn better that way!”

“These branches are ready to fall! This is enough, we should go!”

“Not yet! We’ve got to make sure this burns long! Just a few more.”

The fire was moving too quickly in their direction for Rita to stop it. Storm had already left minutes ago. It wasn’t his job to die for her place, whether it was his home or not. She branched out to the side, hoping to stop it there.

She couldn’t believe what they were doing. Why would they burn the forest? There was nothing here. There were no enemy camps, no villages to plunder. Either they were incredibly stupid, or they were on a mission of some kind to destroy this forest for either what they thought was under it, or what they hoped wasn’t in it. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to think that people were tired of being threatened by monsters that drowned their children and killed their livestock. This territory was hers alone, but in the surrounding areas there were countless menaces. Perhaps they’d had enough.

Not that any of that mattered at this point. Trying to figure out their reasoning was useless. She couldn’t do anything about their fear, or their intelligence. Whatever they thought they were burning, it was hers, and she wasn’t going to let this fire get out of control while she could still breathe.

She ran like lightening, her braid trailing behind her, her bare skin being scratched and pulled at by the branches that were so thickly intertwined. Eventually, she managed to get in front of it enough to do something. She started gathering stones, small ones at first. Rita had more strength than it appeared, however, and soon there was a small barrier between the trees. There was a small clearing, so hopefully the fire wouldn’t jump the hundred yards it needed to continue. If only she had the ability to dig a trench, or carry enough water. The moment she was finished with that, she ran again, building another barrier and another. The fire was quickly catching up to the first barrier, but she wanted to make sure that at the very least that side of the woodlands was safe. It was a desire to protect borne not of concern for the safety of others, but just by her own possessiveness. Only she would destroy it if she so chose, no one else.

There was only so much she could do to battle the forces of nature, however. She nearly collapsed in exhaustion once she had gotten to a safe distance. She could still see the plumes of smoke wafting into the air. Through bleary eyes she watched as the smoke thinned and dissipated, slowly burning itself out in the stillness of the night. She fell asleep in a clearing, her body bruised and torn, knowing revenge would come tomorrow, cold and swift and sweet as a drink from a stream on a hot summer’s day.

Rita was woken by Storm’s soft, velvety nose pressing against her, nudging her awake. She stirred only slowly. The grass was wet with dew and the day was gray and cold. Spring was fickle that way here. One day it was beautiful, cheery summer, the next, grim and grey winter. It seemed appropriate for her mood though. Rita coughed and looked up at Storm, who held a strange expression on his face- even for a horse.

“The whole eastern half-“

“I assumed as much.”

She dusted herself off and stood, surveying the damage. It hadn’t broken the second barrier that she’d set up but much of it looked completely demolished.

“I shouldn’t have let them get this far.”

“You’re right. You shouldn’t.” Storm said, unsympathetically. “I hope they burned.”

“If there are any casualties, they’ll be minimal. They intended to start this fire, it didn’t creep up on them. It was no mistake.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet and it doesn’t really matter. I’m not even entirely sure who they are, I only assumed. Next time I’ll be more careful. If this isn’t a lesson learned I don’t know what is. But they’ll pay. Nobody destroys my land like this and walks off to the next village without another thought.”

“Are you alright?”

“Hmm? Yes. Why do you care?”

“Because if we’re going to catch up to them, we’d better run and you’d better be able to handle it. They’ll have marched away by now.”

“There’s too many of them for them to have gotten very far.” She mounted him swiftly, despite the fact she had barely woken up and was quite sore from the previous day’s mild injuries.

“It shouldn’t be hard to track them, either.” Storm headed off at canter towards the campsite that they had been going to prank last night. That would be the first step to finding out where they’d gone.

The brush they passed on their way had been stripped to nothing but charcoal and ashes. They had done a good job. Whoever they were, they knew what they were doing when it came to that. Why, Rita had no clear idea, but it would soon be remedied. If she had her way, they would all burn just like her trees. People would talk about it for decades, how a thousand or more men walked into the enchanted woods and how the smell of burning flesh could be detected even in the most remote, winterly camps for days. That was all they deserved. Rita was furious.

To the pair’s great surprise though, they’d only moved a mile upwind, to stay out of the path of the fire. They hadn’t attempted to hide their tracks at all, evidently not fearing reproach from anyone. The soldiers seemed to be just waking, huddled around small fires for breakfast, eating cuts of meat and bread with their drinking horns in hand. Rita fairly seethed. How dare they just sit there on her land, eating from it and acting like they’d done no wrong!

They snuck in closer, their bodies mere whispers between what was left of the trees. They couldn’t get as close as they had been able to the day before because of what the fire had destroyed, but, the soldiers weren’t talking any more softly so it wasn’t hard to hear what they were talking about.

“My eyes are still watering, Mathilde is going to think I’m weak, now.” Grunted one.

“Well don’t sit so close to the fire! It was your fault that you stood so downwind last night.” Replied another, taking a large bite out of whatever dead animal he held in his hand.

“How was I supposed to know that there would be a shift that quickly?”

“There was no shift, you’re just too slow to get out of the way.”

“Watch your mouth! I could still beat you if I wanted to.”

“You’re just too lazy to get up off the log to do it!” The others around the campfire laughed, and the man glared at them from under his bushy eyebrows, scowling.

“I don’t see why we even had to do it, at any rate.”

“You’re not questioning Biorn, are you? You don’t get paid if you do that.”

“It just seems silly to come all this way to burn down a forest! No one lives here, who would care?”

“Does it matter?”

“Don’t you think there’s been some kind of mistake?”

“We’re promised 50 coins a piece, he wouldn’t make a mistake on something like that.”

“How much do you wager Biorn is getting?”

“Enough to keep his wife happy, I hope!” They all laughed.

Rita moved away from the clueless crowd, whispering to Storm, “They must be mercenaries. But who would pay them that much money to destroy this place?”

“Not even Tora is that rich.”

“Linda?”

“No. She wouldn’t want to bother me here, that was the whole reason of giving me this territory in the first place, so we’d stay out of each other’s ways.”

“Maybe she wants it back.”

“Badly enough to send an army to burn it down? This doesn’t make sense.” Rita shook her head lightly in thought. Her territory didn’t stand between any kingdoms or borders, as far as she knew. Who would ever pay this much to destroy her?

She stepped back into what remained of the forest, watching the men in their camps from a distance. Now was the time to strike back, in case the burning hadn’t been their only mission here. Rita looked up at the sky, as the blue was being obscured by dark clouds that were sure to pour refreshing rain onto the scalded landscape. Rita looked at Storm.

She didn’t need to say anything, it was clearly written in her eyes that payback was about to be wrought. Storm nodded slowly. “What do you need?”

It wasn’t long before the storm was raging above them in full force. Lightning was flashing low and wide, a threat to the remaining patches of trees that the fire hadn’t touched the night previous. Thor was evidently roaring at some indecency, the thunder boomed tirelessly like the first clash of battle. The heart of the storm was growing closer and closer without fail. It was perfect for her.

Rita felt uncomfortable, soaking wet and chilled to the bone. To top it all off, she was wearing clothes, which she absolutely loathed. Draped around her was one of the two dresses she owned for the rare occasions when she had to be fully clothed. It was torn up, ragged yet somehow beautiful. She needed it for effect. Her hair was tangled and loose. She had a fierce wildness about her, which was exactly what she wanted.

“Storm, are you ready?”

“Of course. Did you find a staff?”

She nodded, picking up a long switch from the grass. It was raining too much to burn them like they burned her, but she could at least do some damage. She wanted to terrify them, appear like a fearsome goddess out of the woods to punish them. She would have preferred Storm to be a grand steed rather than a pony, but if this was the best she had, it would probably still work. Almost anything could be a grand steed in the dark and the lightning. They had to get going before that advantage was lost.

She mounted him again, the dress fabric restricting her movement in the most annoying of ways. It would be worth it though, for the end result. “Let’s hurry, before the storm lightens.”

At first, all that was seen of them was a shadow, standing at the edge of a part of utterly destroyed forest just outside the clearing of the camp. The wind blew her hair and the dress around, whipping it back into her face at times, but Rita’s face was still cold and determined.

She waited, wanting to hear someone spot them, wonder what it was, but everyone was huddled inside their tents and it was too hard to hear over the torrents of rain pounding down on them at any rate. She urged Storm ahead and he broke off at a gallop, unconcerned about avoiding anything in his path. Rita whipped out her staff, and within moments she’d made impact with the first tent. The lightening gave off a terrifying silhouette and she could hear men reaching for metal, their shields and swords for protection.

“Blóð og sálir!” She shouted, her call for blood and souls hardly rising above the noise of the storm. The heart of it was getting closer with each passing minute and thunder rolled like a heavenly rock slide was happening above them. Storm galloped on, with Rita whacking and hitting everything in her path. It wasn’t long before the soldiers were coming out of their tents, terrified by the monster that was suddenly seeking vengeance upon them.

Rita was an unstoppable force, cracking helmet less skulls when they got too close to her whirling weapon. Who knew something as simple as a stick could be such a danger to these supposed hardened warriors of the north? Men were too easy to strike fear into, it was like drowning a toddler.
The camp was large and long, and Rita’s path of destruction was wide, but she could feel Storm slowing down beneath her. She jerked his mane in the direction of a patch of still standing trees and he slowed to a trot until they were safely out of sight. The whole camp was in a panic behind them, screaming about ghosts and all manner of other things. Rita was satisfied. She hadn’t caused quite as much damage as she would have liked, but it was more about torturing them with the thought that something supernatural was lurking behind them in the dark corners of their tents. There was only so much terror a man could stand before he fled and it wouldn’t take much longer to make sure they never dared to so much cut up another tree again- never mind burn a whole forest.

She dismounted and shed her dress, eager to be out of it. Now, they would have to seek shelter quickly. This part of the camp was almost in the thick of this horrible spring storm. She had never seen anything so intense. It was strange, especially after the rain of yesterday, but that didn’t matter. They just had to get back to her home, so they wouldn’t be struck by lightning or falling branches from the strong winds. Rita started off at a quick walk. Her home was not far, but they would have to cross lots of burnt, open patches to get to it which could be dangerous. She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

Storm, exhausted, but his nerves rattled by the intensity of the weather, took off to find his own hiding place and Rita was glad to have the time alone. She started to jog lightly, making her way quickly through the trees and bushes, graceful as a deer even over the slippery puddles and hidden roots. Phase one of her plan was complete. She could have a restful sleep tonight, knowing that the soldiers were going to pay for their mistake.

Once the storm had cleared in a few hours, Rita couldn’t help but be curious. She wanted to see how the army had gotten along, she wanted to see them suffer. Most of all, she wanted to see them start to pack up and leave as quickly as possible- before nightfall, if that was possible. To find all that out though, she wanted to go straight to the source. She had to find Biorn.

It wasn’t hard to spot where the leader’s tent was located. It was bigger, by far, than any of the other tents in the vicinity. It had people crowded around it, and it was obviously in good repair. This band of mercenaries were well paid ones, clearly, and he was the best off of them all. The only problem was, getting to him. His tent was in the center of most of the other tents and there was very little cover. There was also no way that she was going to put on that horrid dress again in an attempt to camouflage herself and pretend that she was one of them. She’d have to simply be daring rather than cunning, which was usually her strength.

Creeping slowly out of the tree cover, she managed to find cover around most of the tents, creeping from one tent to the next. There were several she had to dart into, but thankfully, those were vacant. Eventually she made her way to a tent just behind his, hiding behind a stack of cloth bags full of what seemed to be food. The whole tent stunk of animals and charred meat, but that was the last thing on her mind right now. She just wanted to hear Biorn say a few magical words, so she could be sure that her lands were safe again.

“It was real, we all saw it with our own eyes! You can see the hoof prints and all the damage it caused. It wasn’t just that storm. It was something in the storm!” One man protested inside the tent. She couldn’t see them but she could see shadows gesturing and hear their voices clearly enough. The whole camp was eerily silent, and emptier than before. So far, the signs were indicating that everything was going in her favour.

“There have been many reports, mostly saying the same thing. I know that you all saw something, there’s no doubt. But that doesn’t mean we should leave.”

“But Thor-“

“Forget Thor! Whatever it was, it’s gone now. It may not come again.”

“We’re all cursed now, you know. Cursed. Nothing will go right again while we remain here.” Gestured another, skinny figure. The burlier figure shook his head and turned.

“We were also warned that this would happen. We were warned to beware of tricks.”

“We? No, you were warned. We don’t know anything!”

The burly figure struck the other, sending him down to the floor for his clear insubordination. “I warned all of you that this was not a war, that this was a task. The woman who gave me this task had very specific instructions but a worthwhile pay to back it up. She told us all to be wary, to not fall for any deception and whether that was real or not I am staying until this is finished.”

“Half the men, sir, are over comforting their wives and children. They are ready to desert.”

“They will not desert. We will finish this, monster goddess of lightning or not.”

Rita was confused. Children? What were they talking about? There were no... Just then, as if on cue, she heard a shrill shriek. She moved quietly through the trees, following the sounds. It wasn’t long before she found, a half mile due west of the camp, that there was an entire campsite that she had missed noticing entirely. This one wasn’t full of soldiers though, it was wives and concubines and children, running around and playing, acting like this was their home. Rita was horrified. What were a bunch of mercenaries doing toting around their wives and children into war zones? Shouldn’t they stay at home in their villages? Though, there had been so much plundering of the countryside by foreign armies that it wasn’t improbable that many of these men had already lost everything they owned. The children and wives had to live somewhere, why not travel with their husbands? They had nowhere better to go.

However, that didn’t mean that Rita was okay with having them there. She wasn’t about to host a village of homeless, land bound Vikings. That was just dangerous for the both of them. She wasn’t a charity and their welfare wasn’t her problem. She wasn’t about to provide shelter for them but, with children, that changed a lot. She had a soft spot for them. She hated the men, and the women weren’t much better for staying by them and helping them, but it wasn’t really any of the children’s fault. They had no choice, and Rita didn’t think it was fair they suffer too much for their parent’s mistakes. She had to make sure the Vikings and their camp left now, as if getting rid of the Vikings wasn’t bad enough to start with.

Rita walked away, deep in thought, wondering about the woman that Biorn had been talking about. The woman had warned him of tricks, suggesting that whoever it was knew that Rita was not one to play fairly. It was good that she had demoralized the ranks, but Biorn was obviously not going to let anyone loose of their own free will. He was not the type to take desertion lightly.

The only one she could think of capable of this, was Tora. However Tora had acquired enough money to pay all of these soldiers a decent wage she didn’t know. Normally those of her kind didn’t have anything to do with humans, or their currency. Her brother was an obvious exception but, Rita was quickly discovering that Tora was going to stop at nothing, not even if it meant having to deal with humans on a daily basis. It was like an obsession.

It was beginning to feel like the whole world was piling atop of Rita’s shoulders. What to do about Biorn’s stubbornness, what else were they planning? What should she do about the children? Should she forget the body altogether and go after the head, Tora? She had very few options left and there wasn’t much time to act on them.

By that night though, she had settled on a strategy. She didn’t like it, but she knew it was the only way. She wanted to settle this now, not drag the agony out for a few months. It was time to fight a whole war in one battle, and while Rita was normally confident about the tricks up her sleeve, she knew that she had never faced an opponent quite like this before.

She went to the riverbed, close to the camp, waiting amongst the rocks. She’d put a flower in her hair and the cold water felt good on her skin. This was how she was supposed to do it. Her kind was not one of war, it was one of seduction and murder. Normally she didn’t bother with this kind of thing, but it was the best card she had up her sleeve at the moment. She didn’t have the force to rid her lands of this army by brute strength, but she was fairly sure that she could outwit them. It would just take a little patience and a little skill, that was all.

Biorn plodded through the forest soon enough. He had shed the military finery that she had seen during his march here. He looked slimmer without it, but he was still a strong man. He was in his mid-forties, perhaps, and fat, but muscular looking still. It would be hard to find someone quite his size to take him down in the field of battle and with an army like his there was no doubt that he was among the most skilled.

He walked up to the stream, not noticing her at first and bent down to splash some water on his face and fill up his drinking horn. She waited a moment, wanting to pick the perfect time. She only had a few more moments before he would have to notice her and she needed to keep her element of surprise, but not rush. She needed to seem completely in control, too.

“Is this how my sister approached you?” She asked, her voice sultry and soft, different to how she’d normally talk. She was pulling out all the stops this time.

Biorn looked up calmly and looked over at her. She could feel his eyes all over her naked body and the feeling made her skin crawl, but she didn’t move to cover herself. This was part of her strategy.

“What is she offering you in exchange for this? More money than you dreamed of, to simply burn down a forest?” She laughed.

“She’s offering us what we’re worth, for a job that involves much more than burning a few trees, frijion?” He asked coolly, using a condescending term of endearment that made her want to drown him.

“Oh really? And what does that job also involve?”

“Driving out everything, legendary or real, that might be here. Including you. Perhaps especially you.”
Rita scoffed. “She’ll give you nothing for it. She has a habit of that.”

“Nobody refuses to pay my army. My men don’t like hearing those kinds of things and one lone woman wouldn’t make a promise with that kind of gravity if she couldn’t keep at least a part of her bargain.”

“What happens then, if you can’t hold up your part of the bargain?”

His face hardened. “What would stop us?”

“Fear. It seems to have stalled you already.”

He smiled ruefully. “You are the goddess of thunder on the white horse.”

“It doesn’t matter what you tell them, you know. They will always have that image imprinted on their minds, and until they find proof that I am not what they thought... I propose a wager.”

“I don’t think you have anything to offer me.”

She tossed her hair back and let it hang in the water. Biorn couldn’t help but stare, as she knew he would. She was flawed in some ways, but most men would have a hard time turning her away.

“Are you sure?”

Biorn laughed. He obviously wasn’t afraid of her, despite the fact that he probably knew what she was. He was underestimating her, since Tora had been so unexpectedly kind to him. He would be made to regret that.

“Not even that is worth what she is paying us- and she will pay us. We have ways of making sure of that.”

She smiled and stood up, walking slowly and seductively towards him. “I’m sure you do. You could at least hear my proposition first before you decline.”

“Why would I listen to you? You’re a girl, and evidently not a very bright one if you think I’m going to listen to the enemy’s advice.”

She smiled and stepped even closer, pressing her body up against his disgusting wool and fur coverings. “Not a very bright one indeed.”

---

The negotiations hadn’t gone as planned and Rita was in a sour mood. Biorn had been more trouble than she had thought. Men were usually so easy to manipulate but he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. Still, he had sent a messenger to Tora. She hadn’t wanted him to, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for her to come here and see the end to all this. She had wanted to just make a deal for him to leave on his own but that appeared to be against the Viking code or something. Since when did these pirates get so honourable?

She knew she had to prepare for something big. Biorn had sent scouts out, he’d admitted that to her, and it would only be a matter of time until they’d find her home. She could always build another one, and she could continue to terrorize them until his ranks were nothing more than a bunch of cowardly babes, but how much damage would they do before then? It would at least take two more attacks to make them seriously afraid. They were scared now, but obviously her attacks didn’t have the instant effect she’d desired... She was frustrated and annoyed, and angry most of all, at Tora. Where she had gotten the money to buy this army, she still couldn’t figure out, but Rita knew she wouldn’t bother with silly human affairs unless it could help her get revenge on her sister. Rita was smarter, but Tora had the force, even in one on one combat. This was not going to be easy to overcome.

Tora would not be long in coming. She had to be somewhere nearby, she was too much of a control freak. Storm lay beside her nervously in the valley where she was waiting for the battle to begin, but his nervousness wasn’t out of concern for his mistress. Territory was Rita’s problem, not his, but he knew that his friendship with her would get him executed if things went wrong. His overwhelming curiosity to see how Rita was going to go about beating close to eight hundred men by herself, though, was what kept him there.

“What are you just waiting here for? Shouldn’t we be making some sort of plan?”

“I’ve made my move already. Now, it’s her turn. This isn’t between Biorn and I, it’s just between sisters.”

“The queen of the dirty play is asking Tora to play fair?”

Rita snorted. “No. Not fair. But if she wants to kill me, she should do her own handiwork. I want this to go down between the two of us. Maybe then she’ll learn her lesson.”

“How can you be so sure you’ll win? I thought that seducing Biorn didn’t go how you wanted.”

“It didn’t and I’m not sure at all. I have no idea who will win, but making a stand will only hurt her.”

“You’re bluffing your way out of this?” Storm asked. It was so unlike Rita to not have a back up plan. This wasn’t her fighting style at all. He was baffled, but he didn’t want to question her further. He could hear the soldiers coming down to the valley and he ran for cover in the trees. He would gladly fight, but not gladly die. It seemed the latter was sure to happen if he stayed anywhere near her. Perhaps she had truly lost her mind? All this protecting of her home might have made her snap completely. It wasn’t all that improbable when you thought about it.

Tora came down the hill and into the valley clearing with a smile on her face. Wearing rich robes, she looked like the queen she would never be. Rita rose to meet her.

“You can’t win. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Tora laughed. “What could you possibly have to top this?”

“If this is the best you can think up, that’s rather sad. Where did you even come up with this anyway?”

“People have been fighting over territory that’s mine for months. Things have been so unstable lately, and so many new armies are forming... It’s not hard to hire a few poor peasants to steal the loot from an army in the dead of night. The profits are amazing, Rita. You should try it sometime. War mongering is the new thing these days and so far, it hasn’t failed yet.”

“Let this be a first, then.”

“You’re not afraid of eight hundred men sent to kill you?”

“If you kill me, you’ve only sabotaged your own lands now.”

“Trees grow again. Life goes on. Yours, won’t however.”

“Let’s end this here.” Rita snarled.

“Don’t you want to go fetch some back up?”She asked condescendingly. It was obvious that she knew she had the upper hand and she wasn’t about to let Rita forget it for a moment.

“I have my back up.”

Tora laughed. “If you think you can take on this many men all on your own, you’re wrong.”

Rita took a step back. “Biorn! Have you decided?”

“I’ve decided.” Biorn waved his men into attack position, the ranks bristling with spears and the metal glinting in the sun. Rita held her breath. “I’ve decided that I don’t like liars, and you are one cunning b***h.”

Biorn prodded Tora with his spear. She turned around. “What are you doing?!”

“You get armies to plunder other armies, just transferring the wealth until you were able to plunder armies big enough to pay us off. The only problem with your strategy, frijion, is that the army you sent to plunder the money you were going to pay us with, just lost in the territories. You tried to take on Rollo’s army, and that is a fatal mistake.”

Her eyes went wide and Rita smiled. Negotiations hadn’t gone the way that she’d planned, and she didn’t know what Biorn was going to end up deciding, but in the end, the man was smart. He had done his own digging and found that she was right, that Tora would never pay him. That was the way to a man’s loyalty, not through the promise of money, but through the revealing of betrayal.

Rita waved at Tora. “I might not be able to fight your armies myself, no matter how much I tried, but I also figured out that neither could you.”

She slowly walked back into the forest, Tora’s shouting behind her. Tora would wriggle her way out of this, there was no doubt about it. That woman had the tongue of a snake, but Rita was better. It didn’t matter that some of her plans had failed originally. Rita wasn’t infallible, but, the end result was what she’d wanted. Even better, almost, since she’d gotten to see the look on Tora’s face. . She didn’t care what Biorn would do to her, she knew Tora would be back at some point- she never took defeat well. She would always be back until she died. The only thing that really mattered now, was that she’d won and her land was hers again. She could go back to lazing under trees near the stream, enjoying the fresh spring rain. Storm joined her by her side, stomping the ground excitedly.

“How long do you think this will last?” She asked.

“It never lasts long.”

“Then we’d better relish today, hadn’t we?”

He nodded, as they turned around to watch Tora race across the hill side, with an army at her back. They were going to enjoy remembering the sight of that for many years to come.

The next time the cages went black, Rita was trying to sleep. The carnies who hefted the cages babbled and grunted around her, and between the noise and the jostling, Rita could not cling to sleep; she woke to unnatural darkness, her eyes blinking and dilating unhelpfully. They set her down more carefully than usual, the heavy fabric over her cage ruffling.

This was strange: the routine was to drop the box and leave for a day. Rita could estimate the time by how dry her mouth became and the difficulty of swallowing her own thinned spit. They received no water or food during traveling, and while some of the others seemed not to require it, Rita certainly did.

This time, however... She wondered if the brutes who heaved her cage had made an error. As she listened, their voices did not disappear, but instead gathered around one side of the cage. She drew into the corner farthest from it, tail flicking. This move came none too soon: the fabric ripped away and sudden light flooded the cage, blinding the hulder as she snarled back against the bars.

Before her eyes could adjust, another cage slammed against her own. She caught a glimpse of blurry shapes as the adjacent bars slid upward, allowing passage between the two cages. Then the carnies threw the obscuring fabric back over the metal, leaving her in pitch black with another creature.

As she blinked rapidly to restore her vision, the black abyss eased into grey. She could make out a flickering light source deep within the other cage, as far from the opening as herself. The longer she studied it, the more it seemed bluish in shade, and the flickering appeared to be restless movement rather than a problem of illumination.

With a start, she realized the light was a tail. Nothing like her own, no -- it didn't resemble that of any animal or creature she had seen. It came closest to a shark's fin, broad and flat, but instead of ending in a straight line, its edges curved to form an elongated crescent moon. Maybe it looked more like a pincer, she thought, squinting hard at it.

With her attention so focused on the tail, Rita nearly missed the dim outline of the other's body until it had reached the opening between their cages. She snarled low in her throat, coiling to defend herself from the opponent she could hardly see --- but then the creature made a bright, sibilant sound like an ember dropped in snow.

"Ah, there you are! I can't see a blessed thing in these cages..." Its tail swept forward suddenly, prodding into her side of the metal like a hand groping for spectacles at the back of a drawer. The faint luminance traveled with it, outlining Rita's feet and trailing tresses in a soft, blurred blue. "You're the silent one. Oh, fantastic." Its tone radiated disappointment. "Everything I could desire in a traveling companion."

"Stay in your own cage," Rita ordered, voice feeling alien and rasping after its long disuse.

"Aha! By Zarathustra's slippers, she does speak!" The creature floated forward in delight, but paused when the hulder started up another warning growl. "Yes, hello. I'm not going to hurt you, lady, so don't get your vines in a knot."

"Stay. In your own. Cage."

The other hesitated, pondering this order with a wandering tail. "Don't you want to know my name, at the very least?"

"No."

The creature surrendered with a sigh and banished itself back to its corner.

--

Within the hour, it became apparent that the carnies meant to kill Rita.

Or provide a worse alternative than death, which should be impossible, her having spent the last however long trapped in a cage too small for her to stand in. And yet, these mortals managed to devise still more horrible tortures for her. Shortly after she had beaten the other back into its corner, the carnies ripped the covering off her cage and banged at her bars with pipes and shovels. The shrieking, ringing clamor tore through her cage, driving her down into a ball, palms shoved flat to her ears.

Someone -- or two someone's, she hardly cared to discern -- shouted over the piercing noise, and it fell slowly away. The silence left her as dizzied as the noise. For a few seconds, she couldn't hear the new, gentle sound that supplicated her. As her senses calmed, and Rita slowly raised her head, eyes slitted in the harsh light, she made out a boy staring through her bars.

The sun moved in his eyes as through dew on a grassblade, and Rita was ashamed to hear the helpless sound that caught in her throat at the sight of him. He smiled at her, the motion small and apologetic. She didn't return it.

The boy licked his lips and murmured something. His gestures conveyed that he wished for her to squeeze into the other's cage, leaving her own. She glanced that way and had the opportunity to at least examine the other creature in good light. From his tail upward, his body darkened in colour, so most of him was a slick navy like pebbles underwater. He reminded her of a very fat dog with short, coarse hair, or maybe simply a furred pillar of tightly-packed meat. Yet he stood upright on flat paws like a rabbit's hind-legs and the rest of him seemed more ursine or badgerlike in nature.

Rita did not like him any more in the light than she had in the dark, and she had absolutely no interest in sharing a cage.

"He's asking for you to come over here," the creature translated, and Rita growled acknowledgment at him. "Please don't have them cause that racket again. Oh – ” Its attention moved to the humans outside, Rita's soon following. "That doesn't look happy." One of the humans toted a long wooden stick with a noose attached to the end, obviously meant for sticking through the bars to rope uncooperative monsters.

The boy stood up at the noose's approach, frowning and jabbering with various gestures, but he was elbowed aside by larger men. Rita slunk to the far side of her cage, gaze fixed on their contraption, and waited. Soon enough, the man prodded it into her cage, and she almost smiled at the stupidity.

They had to extend the stick fully inside to reach her, at which point her hands flicked to snatch the wood and she yanked it sideways, snapping the pole between the metal bars. Her captive was left with only a splintered stake, while she had a spear.

The men scattered back, anxious shouts pinging between them. She moved to the center of her cage and crouched there, scouting the men, weapon in hand. Rita noticed with some frustration that the boy had retaken his place at the bars, unafraid.

"Lady," the other said behind her, and she pivoted sharply on her heel, as ready to spear it as any man. "Be calm. But I'm afraid I need that stick of yours -- they have me under spell to protect them."

"Then come take it."

The creature blinked and again made the sizzling sound, which she took to be laughter. One of its paws flipped outward and the paw's shape squirmed, flesh writhing like a caught fish. The repulsive transformation left the creature with a human-looking hand, which it snapped.

At once, her spear vanished from her hands.

That earned the other a snarling curse, Rita lunging toward the other in fury. It squeaked back, tail flicking defensively in front, warding her off.

"I'm bound, I'm bound," it insisted. "That wasn't my choice! They have me bound by magic."

Either way, the event worked out well enough for the mortals: Rita's lunge had brought her past the cage divide, allowing the men to drop the bars. The metal plummeted down, catching at her back and heels as she jumped forward to evade. There was a chorus of smug cheers, and then they doused the creatures in darkness once more.

His tail flicked on, the blue ambience wavering between them. "I know you're angry, but -- "

"What do you mean bound?" she demanded in a low tone.

"Well." Its hand shuddered and shrank back into a paw shape. "Are you familiar with djinn?"

"No. Are you one?"

"Yes," it answered with inappropriate delight. "And what are you, lady?"

"Rita."

"Indeed. So your kind take permanent names?" It sizzled in amusement. "Quaint." Another burning growl from Rita nudged the other's explanation along. "Right, you can call me Bartholomieu, if you wish. There are no spoken names among djinn, so it doesn't matter. We djinn are cousins of imps---"

"You're a demon?"

"Malicious spirit of a higher realm. To be exact."

Rita surveyed it with disapproval. You look like an overfed mutt, she wanted to say, but instead pointed out, "If you're from a higher realm than mortals, how have they bound you?"

"Ahh, yes." Bartholomieu shuffled from foot to foot, paws wiggling in imitation of beard-stroking. "The short of it is that some swamp-brained toad decided he wanted to toy with mortals by telling them how to summon one of us down there. Give it a hundred years and now they've gone mad with it -- I was saying good morning to my wife one minute, and next I know, I'm lying in a salt circle."

"And then what?" she asked with a frown, finding herself believing the djinn's story despite her dislike for it. Him? He had a wife, after all...

"The typical summoning grants the mortal a djinn's company and obedience for the course of three wishes." He sighed, tail flicking in annoyance. "Of course, these blaggards only gave me two of the three. They'll put off the last for as long as they can, to keep me on display."

Rita glanced over the djinn again, mind already working these rules to her advantage. The schemes were interrupted by a trickle of displeasure from her stomach, a burgeoning nausea that she didn't understand. After a day without food, her body clenched and rebelled like this, but it had only been hours since her last meal.

"...something wrong, lady?"

"Rita," she corrected without looking over. Touching a hand to her stomach, she took a slow, deep breath to contain the spreading discomfort. Maybe the food the carnies had provided them was spoiled. "Why are you in a cage?"

The curt return to interrogation caught the djinn off-guard and his tail flickered in confusion. "I... The same reason you are?"

"They captured me. I wasn't summoned."

"Oh." His odd little head bobbed up and down in time with his tail. "Because they know as well as you do that I don't want to be here. And if I was free to raise havoc, they'd be forced into a third wish much sooner."

Havoc. That sounded promising. Before she could make good on the opportunity, her stomach lurched again and Rita swallowed, closing her eyes. She blew out another even breath, all too aware of the djinn's curious stare. "I see."

"Are you in pain?"

"Tell me about the wishes," she ordered, and Bartholomieu had the good sense to obey. While she battled nausea, he described the constraints on djinn in the lower realm. Despite djinn's incomprehensible power, it had been decided long ago to limit their abilities by wishes. Their magic acted only to grant a wish, though they could warp the wisher's desire in any imaginable way.

Bartholomieu's summoner had been too exact for the djinn to ruin him: the first wish forbid that any of the creatures escape from the carnival, and the second that any of the creatures should harm their captors. The djinn obviously wanted to go on and mention something more, but the hulder's sweaty skin and tight breathing distracted him.

"You're ill," he declared, no question in his tone.

With much effort, she managed between gritted teeth, "I think we're on water."

"Water?" The djinn echoed in surprise. He pressed his ear against the side of the cage to try to catch a hint of waves through the dense metal. "Perhaps so. They might be transporting us to a new land." His attention returned to Rita, taking a few moments to piece together her statement and current condition. (Though djinn boasted of their cleverness by second nature, Bartholomieu was not the best choice among them to prove such claims.) "Oh! Are you seasick?"

She peeked her eyes open only enough to glare.

The djinn hissed in delight, paws and tail flapping about in celebration of his discovery. "Seasick, seasick! Oh Loki's great litter, I never would have guessed. Do you wish for it to be fixed?"

Gut instinct said yes, of course, but Rita clung to sensible caution long enough to reevaluate his words. "...wish."

"Yes -- oh. I didn't mention." His tone shed its frivolity, revealing a snake's curled smile of satisfaction beneath the husk. "It isn't exclusively the summoner's wishes that I can grant. "But remember," his tail flicked a warning, "you only have three opportunities."

As if I have a choice on this, Rita thought with a scowl. She couldn't decide how to use the other two wishes while her stomach shuddered and shoved up at her throat like this, choking any useful ideas.

"Yes. Fine."

"You wish for me to heal your seasickness?"

"Yes. Permanently," Rita added in haste. "And not by harming me."

The djinn sizzled. "No need to guard yourself. You haven't done me any wrong." Were the hulder's eyes open, she would witness his paw once again mutating into a hand --- then came the click of his snapping fingers and a sudden emptiness in her body.

Frozen, Rita dared not even breathe, for fear he had removed an organ by accident. Yet as the seconds trickled by, her blood continued to flow, lungs to inflate, and she straightened up from the crouch.

"Better?" He sounded as gleeful as a child bringing his mother hand-picked flowers.

"...I think so." Rita touched her stomach again, assuring herself that it remained intact.

"Good, good." The djinn preened, obviously pleased with his own prowess. He retained the wish-granting human hand, and that stroked the short fur on his head like a master complimenting its pet.

The sight made Rita wish she could feel nauseous again. "Your hand."

"Yes." The hand wiggled its fingers at her in greeting. "Mm, you're right. Maybe I should change it back." In the space of a breath, it had shrunk down again to a paw, and the hulder grimaced. "You don't like my magic trick? So sorry, lady, but I'm keeping that one. Another thing I forgot to mention -- " There seemed to be too many of those. " -- that's the one exclusion to the limit on magic. We can use it outside wishes if we're changing our own appearance."

"So that," she nodded at his bizarre form, "isn't natural."

Bartholomieu snorted. "Does it look natural? Beautiful blue of Vishnu, of course this isn't my true form."

"Can you not reveal it to mortals?" For many creatures, such a revelation entrapped or otherwise ruined them. True names and true forms carried weight; Rita counted herself fortunate not to be among those who relied on clothing to conceal her tail and hollow back.

"Oh no." He shrugged. "I could. But I realized that the more enticing I appear, the longer customers will stare. And the longer customers stare, the longer the men will try to keep me."

Clever. Rita approved with a small nod. "How long have you been here so far?" She wasn't sure any of the creatures could keep track of time, as she certainly hadn't.

"Mm... Mortal time?" At her nod, the djinn waddled from side to side in thought, then offered, "A year?"

Rita's skin went cold. "A year." She felt her stomach knot and try to cry out in sickness again, the sensation quelled at once by magic. But the djinn's trick couldn't touch the sickness when it spread up through her heart and mind, poisoning with despair. A year. She could not live in a cage for a year, away from her forest and sunlight. She needed dirt under her toes and snow brushed through her hair; she needed her territory, which she knew well that Tora had already stolen.

The last thought rankled her enough for wrath to shove its way past despair. Picturing her sister's smirk, the way the smugness tucked into her eyes like a blanket around a child --- Rita felt her pulse race, jaw clenching tight. She wouldn't let the hubris of these men hold her for a year, like this self-contented djinn and the hope-sunk debris that made up the others.

"You're a fool."

The djinn stared at her. His tail froze, and in the dark cage, swinging over ocean waves, the only movement was the slow fade of cold blue light. Without another word, he flickered out and the black consumed them both.

---

They fed the creatures during this sea journey, and by the number of meals, Rita calculated a three-day trip, perhaps three and a half. Having been asleep when they left, she could not recall the time of day during their departure, but when they at last dumped the cages onto new land and flung away the tarps, the sun blazed, searing into their cages like the greedy eyes of a customer.

Past the first day, Rita did not speak. Bartholomieu seemed to realize this, yet he persevered in ignoring it, filling the silence with mild prattle and banal anecdotes that occurred during his time in captivity. He rarely directed any questions toward her, preferring to puzzle himself with rhetorical inquiries and lose interest halfway through his attempt at solution.

All in all, the sailing passed better than it should have, given the hulder's foul mood and the djinn's incessant mouth.

Despite the magic preventing her seasickness, Rita welcomed the return to land. While the carnies were concerned with unloading other cages, she wriggled a slender hand through the bars and managed to stroke the sand. The weather had warmed, either by the natural turning of seasons or due to their new location.

As the men finished unloading their cargo, a few came around with fresh water for the creatures. Rita prided herself on anticipating the boy's appearance, and even more so for restraining her excitement. She did allow herself to stay close to the bars, ignoring the midday heat already building in them, and she met his immediate smile with a calm gaze.

Three steps from the cage, the boy tripped and sloshed half the cup's water into the sand, recovering with a laugh that hardly bothered to sound embarrassed. He trotted over and crouched down, chirping something at her. Then the boy tucked the little metal cup through the bars --- certainly better treatment than the others received. There was a thin box at the bottom of each cage to slide plates and bowls through, and the men delivered most of the food this way, though sometimes skipping the plates and tossing the slop in directly.

Rita took the cup carefully, cradling her hands around it. With only half a cup of cool liquid left, she knew she should restrain herself and drink it in small sips, but the task proved difficult. She craved the rivers and snow of home, and this metal-trapped spit of water offered little consolation.

Belatedly she remembered Bartholomieu, and looked up from her cup. The djinn, however, was paying her no attention; he peered through the bars at the ship they had come from and the last of the unpacking.

"Do you need water?"

"Oh." He looked delighted with the idea. "No, not at all. I'm not really here, in this realm, so I don't need its provisions..." The djinn trailed off as he realized that Rita had downed the rest of the water before the creature's explanation even started. "It looks enjoyable, though."

"Do you ever stop talking?"

"..." Bartholomieu blinked. "But you asked me a question. And so I answered it."

Rita took a deep breath to keep from lunging through the cage and slamming his bizarre head against the bars, and thankfully, the boy outside the cage started burbling again. Her gaze returned to him, which brightened his smile and encouraged him to lean closer. She could tell he meant his tone to be comforting, but the boy obviously tended toward excitement and popping words more than this calmness, and his voice fought against staying level and low.

In the close proximity, she studied him once more. Even in beaming sunlight, his hair held to its darkest shade. One side of it was actually wet this time: a splash of seawater from another stumble or trip, she wagered. The hard light made Rita reconsider his age. Though he obviously was not one of the men, she couldn't consider him as young a child as she preferred; his voice dipped low enough that he must be well into adolescence.

Her focus wavered when she realized that the boy had gone quiet -- a very unusual happening. For a moment, she watched him watch her, and then his passive smile bloomed into a full one and he chirped a question at her. Along with that came a gesture, pointing at the empty cup.

Rita nodded and offered it back through the bars. The boy took it and rose to his feet, but then remembered something and leaned down to talk with Bartholomieu. Switching effortlessly into the boy's language, the djinn chatted back at him in absentminded delight. Rita knew she shouldn't have been surprised that the djinn could understand him, as it made sense when she considered it, but the shift still caught her off guard.

When the boy straightened up properly and left their cage, waving goodbye, Rita turned to the djinn. "You can speak every tongue."

"Mostly, yes. Some are harder to hear than others, you know."

She did not know and did not care to. "Anything else you've forgotten to tell me about yourself?"

A little flustered, Bartholomieu snipped, "Hera's garters, there's no need for hostility."

"Do you swear by every god?"

"Every one that will lend me its name." The djinn shrugged. "Most of them are thrilled to be called on, considering this monotheistic craze."

Rita again narrowly resisted violence, opting instead to slink back into a shadowed corner of the cage, away from the harsh light. The djinn bothered her no more, content to watch the carnies and cages like a cat sitting at a windowsill, tail flicking away. Rita was little surprised when, shortly, the tarps were thrown back over them for more travel; they hadn't been unloaded in or near a town to lure customers from.

But the water (and though she didn't mention it to herself, also the sight of the boy) had revived her somewhat, and so during this journey, Rita schemed. She had the djinn repeat the two wishes he was already bound by and from there interrogated him on every possible loophole. Over and over, Bartholomieu had to reject her plans: every idea of hers yearned toward escape, and he simply could not grant that.

"What if I wished for the men to be attacked by another group of mortals?" she asked quietly, voice worn out from the hours of ineffective brainstorming. Rita had taken to laying out on the cage floor, limbs sprawled as far as the metal allowed her. The open cage prevented this luxury during the day, as Rita tried to make herself as small and unappealing to customers' eyes as possible.

Bartholomieu had taken up a far corner, his tail lit again, the fuzzy blue reflecting off metal and illuminating her feet. She seemed to have worn even him out with incessant, pointless questions, and his tail now lay flat along the floor.

It gave a feeble flick at her newest inquiry, and he sighed, "No. That's still harm, coming originally from you, to them."

"What if I wished for one of the /men/ to wish illness on -- "

"No, no. Same idea."

She made a little growl of frustration. "Don't you have any suggestions?"

"If I knew a way out," the djinn said tartly, "I would have used it already."

"What if we tricked one of the men into making a stupid wish? You said you could twist them as you wanted."

"And twist it into what, lady?" He took in a deep breath and delivered his next words in a single spiel: "The original second wish was for no harm to come from the creatures toward them and me being a creature I am bound by own magic to cause them no harm even if they wished for it or if I was able to connive it out of a wish." He drew in another breath, body puffing up with the new air. "And so."

Growl from her end of the cage.

"Quite."

---

Another unloading passed and neither Rita nor her cagemate gave it much notice. Leaned against the bars, Rita waited for their rations of food and water, fingers picking idly at her hair. Occasionally, they threw water through the bars to bathe the creatures, but her hair remained dirtied and dulled. Combing through it depressed her more than soothed, so she had mostly abandoned the old habit.

A man came by her cage with a thin plate, divided into half for water and food. He pushed it through the slat without a glance and moved on. When Rita didn't move toward it, the djinn's nosiness required him to ask if she felt ill again.

"No."

He wafted closer. "Then what are you waiting for?"

Rita hesitated before replying. "Usually someone else delivers the water."

With a frown, Bart asked, "Does it matter?" The hulder's silence answered that for him. "I see. I hadn't realized you'd picked a favourite among the men: I was under the impression you despised them all equally."

"He's not a man." Rita scowled at the djinn, irritated to even be having this conversation. "The dark-haired boy. With the green eyes." Bartholomieu must remember --- he and the boy spoke not too long ago.

"Oh! Yes, yes, the scruffy little scamp." Bart sizzled, tail waggling. "He's taken quite a liking to you, hasn't he?"

"What has he said to you? Did he say why?"

"Say why?" The djinn smiled at her in confusion. "Lady, he doesn't need a reason."

Rita mulled over that remark for a few moments before nodding. That seemed to fit with the boy's carelessly exuberant personality: she doubted if the mortal had any more cunning in him than the djinn did intelligence.

"There's something strange about him," Rita said. "He is a human, and yet... Nature favors him like he was one of her own creation."

"Are men not children of nature?"

"No. Or if they are, they're b*****d children who cut open their own mother and drink her blood."

Bartholomieu drew back slightly, but her bolt of anger passed, thoughts returning to the boy.

"Though he isn't that way." She could glimpse a forest in his eyes and smell warm soil in his skin. "He's natural, like a child or beast."

"But you know he's neither of those."

Rita's gaze met the djinn's, and she demanded, “Then what is he?"

"From the looks of it," Bartholomieu shrugged, "I'd say a hero."

---

Days of customers came and went, and Rita found herself becoming slowly grateful for her new cagemate. His dysfunctional appearance repulsed most adults, but the same absurdity captivated children. They preferred his goofy body and flickering tail over the more terrifying denizens of the carnival, and so Rita could pass hours watching giggling children chase his tail across the length of the bars. The girls screeched when he lit it up before collapsing into nervous laughter and joining the boys in ever more wonder and curiosity.

She liked the djinn no better, but neither had her dislike for him increased. If not progress, it was still a good thing.

One night, the boy finally appeared at her cage. His left eye was sunken into a great purpled bruise, the skin swollen around it to the point of near blindness. Another yellowing bruise ran down his jaw, and his mouth too bore marks of violence. Rita sat up at his approach, flowing to the bars without hesitation.

He dropped heavily onto the ground in front of her, making an effort to smile. In response to her narrowed eyes, he waved a dismissive hand, cooing something through the bars that she assumed meant he was fine. Rita did not doubt that he was --- she was less concerned about his well-being and more seething to maim those who had done it.

"Ask him why this happened," Rita ordered the djinn, who gave her a flat look.

"Why don't you?"

Through gritted teeth, she said, "Because I can't."

"Oh. Right, yes." He sighed, glancing between her and the boy. "Well, would you like to?"

"Obviously."

"Do you wish to?"

There she paused. A second wish gone, with nothing to show for it. Or hardly anything, at least. Yet the boy's persistent kindness deserved some kind of acknowledgement...

Rita looked to the boy and asked, "Doesn't he wish to speak with me?"

Bartholomieu's turn now to pause, before his face split with a wicked grin. "Very well played, dear lady. I'll ask him."

Ignoring the petname for now, she nodded and sat back to let their conversation commence. She had to assume that this boy still had three wishes to spare --- and even if not, the one kidnapped and locked in a cage deserved wishes more than he. Though perhaps the carnies forced him into service much the same way as they corralled the creatures; his temperament didn't seem suited to doing this by choice.

The snap of Bartholomieu's fingers brought her attention back to the beaten boy. In the silence that followed, he swallowed nervously at Rita and said, words pulsing like a heartbeat, "Did it work?"

Her stomach flooded with a strange feeling, like hearing an old song bound with even older memories. "Yes."

The boy's immediate grin cracked open his lips, blood pricking up between dried skin. A laugh scampered after the expression, the boy looking as awestricken as the children squealing over Bartholomieu's tricks.

"That's amazing -- that's -- thank you!" He beamed at the djinn, then turned back to Rita, the whole of him glowing in excitement. "I don't even know what to say, this is incredible --- hello, I guess, and hi."

It was actually impossible not to grant a small smile in return. "Hello."

Another laugh bubbled up, and he blurted, "My name's Albus, it's great to meet you," with breathless speed, as if the enchantment might wear off any minute.

"Rita."

"Rita." He breathed in the name like the scent of fresh bread. "Great, I mean, a pleasure. It's really good to meet you."

"What happened to your face?"

"Oh." That muted his delight. "Drinn had too much ale, and I got in the way."

"I thought you had been punished..."

He cocked his head to the side. "For what?"

"Being kind."

"Oh." He reddened, but shook his head. "No, they don't care that I come see you, long as I get everything else done. Sorry I haven't been here --- had to take care of those chores, so I wouldn't get in trouble."

She nodded, wordlessly forgiving him with the simple gesture.

"But are you alright? Do you need anything?" He peered into the cage, hoping to find something to improve.

There was nothing he could do that he had not already, but Rita felt loathe to crush his excitement. Instead, she asked, "Why are you so kind to me?"

He blinked. "I'm kind to everyone."

Rita could hear a soft sizzle from the djinn behind her, no doubt because this answer mimicked so well Bartholomieu's own explanation. She asked next if he had joined this carnival by free will, and the boy's face rippled with a quiet frown.

"Not really," he admitted. "They travel a lot, as you know, and I wanted passage from my home to another place, but I didn't have any sailing experience and I was too poor for the fare." The frown remained, making it the longest she had seen his face without some ghost of joy. "So I signed onto this for free passage, but... The deal was a little crooked. My contract should be up soon, though."

"How soon?"

He apparently detected concern in her voice, because he leaned in and laid a solemn hand over hers, both of them encircling the bar.

"Not that soon," he swore to her. "At least half a year."

Though old instinct urged her to recoil from human touch, the sensation of any warmth, any life, felt divine compared to her metal prison. She had not realized her empty, aching hunger for such contact until it happened. She acted against her better sense in turning her hand to grip the boy's fingers.

His smile now was slow and careful, like a reflection ready to shatter in the paused waters of a pond.

"I won't leave you," Albus said, squeezing her fingers. "Okay?"

She gave no reply.

----

Albus came every other night and spoke at length with her. He explained some of the carnival's other creatures as well as the identities of various men in control of the operation. When that turned Rita too cold and bitter, he sidetracked into a discussion about himself --- his home country, family, upbringing. He chattered more even than the djinn, but Rita found it tolerable for the earnestness and exuberance he lent to any topic.

Slowly, Rita opened up in turn: she told of Bartholomieu's wishes and the current conundrum of how to manipulate them for her freedom. Infrequently she made mentions of home and family, but preferred not to speak of it often.

The djinn chimed in when it pleased him, sharing many tales filled with whim and bawdiness. Rita trained herself to bear the blather by filtering it through Albus' presence. She went willingly deaf when Bartholomieu opened his mouth, preferring to meditate on the nature that swept through the boy. His eyes could flicker like the dappled dance of sunlight cast by spring leaves, and always he managed to keep dirt creased in his knuckles and elbows, as if he slept with it as bed and blanket.

To Rita's endless confusion -- though a pleasant confusion -- he never attempted more than to touch her hand in reassurance. No remarks, no lingering gazes, no desire. She knew he did enjoy girls from his reactions to the djinn's tasteless stories, and yet saw no evidence of it toward herself.

One night he came to them warning of another move, and indeed the cages were packed up the next day. Before departure, he smuggled extra food and water into the cage, apologetic for not being able to do more. On this journey, Rita vowed to discover the trick to her freedom; heartened by the company and physical contact, she felt more level-headed and strong-hearted than she had since the kidnapping.

Despite these advantages, the plotting came to naught. When they tore the fabric away from her cage, she remained devoid of plan, but not hope.

---

That night, Albus came sprinting to their cage, nearly tripping himself again in haste --- his single-minded excitement often blinded him to petty details like solid footing and limb coordination. He skidded to his knees in front of the cage and gasped, "I think I have something."

Still beleaguered from the long stretch of darkness, Rita didn't understand at first. "For what?"

"I have an idea -- for the, um," his voice slid into a whisper, "the escape."

She and Bartholomieu drew close to the bars, Rita fighting to stay skeptical and not lose her good sense to the boy's infective thrill.

"Barth," Albus directed, "tell me the first wish again. Word for word."

"He wished to forbid any of the creatures from escaping the carnival."

"But what counts as the carnival?"

The djinn tilted his head, answering slowly, "The carnival is the carnival..."

"But I mean, the wish doesn't say 'cage', because sometimes they have to move you around and switch places."

"It doesn't change anything," Rita frowned. "Even if I were let out of this, Bartholomieu's magic would prevent me from true freedom." What did the boy have in mind -- unlocking all the cages and having the creatures maul an audience? ...that might work, actually.

"The carnival isn't just cages, though," Albus persisted. "I'm in the carnival too. I'm part of it."

Silence dawned on the group as the boy's revelation took root. Slowly, Rita turned to the djinn for his verdict, still not allowing herself to trust in the fragile plan; her throat ached with tension, heart plodding one hesitant beat after another.

Bartholomieu sat perfectly still, tail unmoving and expression absent. Finally, he conceded, "The men are part of the carnival."

"So if she came with me," Albus jabbered, gripping the bars in eagerness, "she would be with the carnival still. She wouldn't escape."

The drumming of Rita's heart burst into a frenzied rhythm, her pulse electrified. He was right. He had to be right. She could not breathe, and almost missed Bartholomieu's reply, soft and stunned: "Anubis' nose. I think you've done it."

---

Despite -- or due to -- the mind-numbing thrill that shot through the trio, Rita insisted that they not immediately go through with the plan. Albus complained, filled with the impatience of naive youth, but she stood firm on this point. They needed at least one day to work through the plan to catch any gaps in the miracle. As it grew darker and quieter in camp, Bartholomieu conceded to Rita's opinion and shooed the boy away.

"It's not so much that I think we need to wait," he confided in the hulder after Albus had scrambled off, "but I wouldn't want anyone to come looking for him at the very moment you two escape."

Rita wanted to say that was precisely why she suggested waiting, but declined. She had no energy to waste arguing with this halfwit; all concentration went to the plan. Very soon, she realized something they had glossed over --- both she and Albus would have wishes left after this.

"My second wish, if the boy's idea works..." She glanced over at her cagemate, checking that he wasn't already asleep. "Could you make it so that he and I returned to my home forest? At once?"

A bright sizzle. "Lady. I am a djinn."

She scowled. "Is that a yes?"

"A categorical yes."

Then that would be her second. She had already forced Albus' hand on his first and second wishes, so she couldn't lay any claim to his last one. Hers, however... Rita meant to flick through options deep into the night, but the darkness overcame her, pressing her eyelids down and mind shut.

When she reopened her eyes, blinking away stealthy sleep, Albus sat outside her cage. The bars had changed since she laid down. Instead of jagged spikes of rusted metal, they now were wood, though a strange kind. Its bark grew in shingles, like a rooftop, the heavy blocks bulging out at random intervals around the shaft. Moss had draped itself from bar to bar in imitation of a spiderweb, and prickled twigs snarled out of the mess, warning her away.

But through the blur of black-mottled moss, she could see the boy. She sat up and touched her hand to the bar, ignoring the pinch of a thorn digging into her skin.

Albus' back was to her, and so she said his name.

The silence snapped like a twig and suddenly heaved to life, vines whipping and snatching at her arms, the thorn against her thumb plunging through to the wrist. A scream tore from her throat, in the shape of his name, and finally he turned.

His eyes had gone: left only were sockets, blood pooled in them like raindrops on a leaf.

---

The next morning was the only time Rita opened her eyes and felt relief at the sight of metal. She said nothing to the djinn; either he hadn't heard any indication of her nightmare, or he was wise enough not to ask.

She would have bet her entire territory on the latter.

Instead, his cheerful voice bubbled up a morning greeting of, "Did you think up any obstacles, Rita?"

She wished he wouldn't chirp her name like that, especially this early. "Not exactly obstacles." Before he could pry, she snapped, "Later. When he's here."

"Very well..." Bartholomieu slunk obediently back to his corner, tail ticking along the bars as he went.

Time passed sluggishly. Everything interrupted her concentration: yakking tourists, screaming babies, children sticking their hands through the bars and trying to grab both his and her tails --- and not least of all, her own sickeningly desperate enthusiasm. She knew her mind had reached a feverish pitch when, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she sighted Tore strolling amongst the men.

She supposed it could have been him, were they not so far from home. What a miserable circumstance, for her brother's repulsive shape to allow him the chance to save her. No, it was best that no one hear of this, ever. Tora, especially -- how she would howl and scorn...

Without meaning to, Rita passed the rest of the day in memories of home. Even thoughts of Tora's mockery afforded her more pleasure than squinting into the bleared sun and trying to make out its creeping progress. But at last it did fall, and Albus appeared soon to replace the lost light. Rita didn't understand from where his eyes stole their brightness, but they certainly didn't care whether the sun stood or slept.

"So can we do it tonight?" he asked, breathlessly hushed.

Rita gave him a nod. "I think so. But -- quiet, boy -- there is one matter first."

"Sorry."

"Hush. It's the wishes. After we leave here, we can't use them, so we need to take advantage of all three now." When both males made sounds of agreement, Rita continued, "Both our first wishes have already been used, and your second will be to free me."

"Oh, speaking of," Albus interrupted. "I, uh...kind of need to be freed too."

"What?"

"My contract." He shrugged. "It's not up. I don't think there's the same kind of magic on it like there is on you, but really, I don't know. I haven't ever tried to leave."

While Albus burbled on about other humans and their various attempts at escape, Rita's gaze dropped away. She ignored too the djinn's interjections of advice. None was necessary; she knew the solution already, and hated herself for it.

This was weak of her.

"That's not an issue."

But he needed it.

"I can free you. With my second wish."

The boy's eyes widened, clear green pondwater, soaked with unseen life. He breathed out slowly, and with his inhale came a smile. "Thank you."

"Now, my third wish," Rita hurried onward. "It will be for Bartholomieu to send both of us to my home forest, immediately."

"You can do that?" Albus asked in astonishment, and the djinn sighed, tail flopping against his cheek like a tired hand.

"Why do you both seem so surprised..."

"The next question," Rita interrupted, "is your last wish."

"Right." After a pause, the boy glancing expectantly from creature to creature, he said, "Oh. Do I get to decide this one?"

The djinn grinned, tail flickering sparks of blue in his amusement. "Dear child, yes. She's already stolen your first two."

"I stole nothing; he offered them." Rita turned on the boy before Bartholomieu could keep nagging and repeated, "Yes. This one is entirely yours. If I can make a suggestion..." As he looked entirely bewildered at the thought of an entire wish to himself. "Wish for a reward."

"A reward of what?"

"Gold, jewelry, metal, what mortals desire. A reward a hero would win." And here she doubted Bartholomieu's judgment, because any true hero would have already staked out a clear reward. So far, he had asked nothing, nor made hint toward it. "You'll have to buy clothes and food for yourself once we're gone from here."

Chewing on his lip, his forehead creased in thought, Albus nodded at her. "Yeah, you're right. Barth --- can I go ahead and make this one first?"

"Perhaps we should wait to settle the entire matter," the djinn said, making it perhaps the third intelligent sentence he had uttered in Rita's presence.

Impatience twisted the boy's mouth, and he picked at the ground, flicking dirt toward the offending cage. "What else is there?"

"Something very important," said Rita. "Once we're gone from here, I'm still bound to you by his magic. You can't stay with me your entire life." Or at least, I refuse to keep you there.

But to her surprise, Albus smiled and shook his head. "Don't worry, I figured that part out." At the question arising in her face, he said, "You won't like it, but I know it'll work. We don't need to bother with it right now --- I want to just go," he pleaded, eyes soft with a child's neediness.

"Very well. Bartholomieu---” As she turned to the djinn, Rita realized something neither she nor Albus had mentioned in the least. "Bartholomieu. You aren't coming with us."

"No, lady." His smile floated happy as a boat on his strange blue face. "I'm staying here."

"Why?"

"Well," he cocked his head to the side, smile unlooping down his face far longer than seemed possible. "It's a matter of matter."

"...excuse me?"

"Matter. Composition. Existence." His head rolled back upright and the smile coiled with it, like something on a string. "What we are and must do, as befits our being. The matter of our matter."

"Barth..." Albus frowned, playing up the childishness of his ignorance. "I don't... Can't you just say why you're staying?"

"I'm useful here," the djinn pronounced. "I am as useful and proper here as she is in her own forest."

"You think you belong here?" Albus tried.

"Not in the grand sense." Laughing, Bartholomieu flicked his tail at the boy, bidding him forget his confusion. "I must stay here and she must go, and there's no sadness to be had in any of it. Good?"

"And what about him?" Rita challenged. "Where is he useful?"

"My good lady. Pray tell, where is a hero not useful?"

Without leaving them room to answer, Bartholomieu concluded their discussion, hushing their confusion and urging them to begin the wishes. At his command, Rita started, first freeing the boy from his contract.

"Their memories are shifted; they’ll think you left several months ago," Bartholomieu assured him. "No one will come looking."

Next came Albus' reward. The boy said reasonably that he didn't want more than he could carry, and for the djinn to pack as much value into small items as he could. He wished for three bags each of precious jewels and gold coins, and at a snap, they appeared before him, the sacks small enough for him to grasp the tops of three in each hand.

"And now we get you out," Albus murmured with a smile at Rita. Taking a deep breath, he declared, "As part of the carnival, I wish for Rita to come with me, and stay with me, but far away from here."

"Very good," the djinn said with a father's warm pride. He snapped and added his own amendment to the wish. Magic swarmed forth, thick enough to be palpable if not visible, and swallowed the bars. The metal ceased without a sound and Rita darted through the gap.

The earth warmed her feet, air cloaking her finer than any gown. She felt her mind reawaken, as if a curtain had been over it all this time, and only now had someone thrown the fabric away and exposed her to glaring, true light.

And when her eyes cleared, pupils wide and wild with injected freedom, she saw before her the boy there. Still smiling. Firmness lay beneath his expression, constant as the ground at her feet, and as natural.

He said, "You're beautiful."

"Wait until you see my home."

She shared his smile and then his hand, earning a little jump of surprise from the boy. They turned together toward the djinn, lounged in his dim, broken cage.

"And your final wish, lady?"

"I wish for Albus and I to be home." The word tightened her throat, and she had to take a deep breath. "My home forest."

In the last moment of the carnival, Rita watched Bartholomieu’s human hand form and the eerily smooth fingers come together. She locked gazes with the djinn and saw a flicker of something colourless, undefined and vastly clear, like an endless field of glass beneath no sky.

Then darkness shrieked at her eyes, shredding her vision. She felt the boy's hand clutch at hers and reacted in kind. Her breath came hard and fast, and the next distinguishable sensation was not until she felt a hot tingling across her forehead.

She winced her eyes open against the blaze of light, and it took several minutes before shapes formed in the brightness. Something stirred at her side, brushing her fingers, and she reached for it without meaning to.

The boy breathed out, "Are we home?"

We?

She turned her head to find him. Albus' dark hair was a sanctuary in the bold new light, and as her eyes slowly adjusted, other colours faded in around him: the earth in its rumpled browns, punctuated by stems and burgeoning leaves; his skin, fairer now compared to the dirt itself but still heated with gold; and her own hand, pale and frailer than she remembered.

And at last the forest herself filtered through. The verdant life flourished around Rita, magnificent as she left it, the leaves and vines flushed deeply with the same fearless, lit green as his eyes.

Storm couldn't say he was pleased with Rita's reaction to his form, but so be it. He had paid a pretty penny to gain this disguise and wasn't going to let Rita's revulsion ruin his fun. Thus inspired, Storm made his exit, both from the hulder and her territory, though picking his way across the land in the shape of man proved more formidable than doing so on four legs. It pleased him to note that his clothes never dirtied, however, courtesy of the witch's fine workmanship.

Outside Rita's forest, he knew there to be a close village, but he had had been there recently --- and not for any purpose he'd like to repeat. So he shied away from that town, instead boldly thrusting his journey out into the unknown. He devoured a woodsman or two along the way, but their meat was wiry and old, dried by many years of hard labor. He longed for something more luscious, preferably a woman, even more preferably a maiden, and as luck had it, one morning he found just that.

The pretty thing had her back to him as she crouched, basket tucked under one arm as she gathered berries with the other. A classic scene -- so quaint that Storm purred to himself with delight at his good fortune. She wasn't quite so plump as he might like but looked taller than most girls (and he was terribly hungry), so that would have to do.

He approached quietly, to test her awareness, and when she didn't turn 'round at his footsteps, he rested against a nearby tree, content to observe for now. The girl wore her hair long, as he liked, though pulled away from her face in a loose braid, wisps straying from it and trailing over her neck and shoulders. Her clothes seemed nothing exceptional: a nice peasant girl, nothing else. Delightful.

After checking the shrub a last time for any missed berries, she rose to her feet, mindful to tug her skirt down as she moved. Readjusting the basket, she pushed some hair behind her ear and turned --- right toward Storm's smiling form.

Gasping, she startled back but recovered almost immediately with a nervous laugh. "Sorry, I didn't hear you come over..." Her amiable tone faded into quiet as she actually took in the stranger, from his hacked-away hair to his abyss-deep eyes to the enviable finery he wore.

"No need for you to apologize," he answered warmly, tickled to hear his human voice ringing his ears. "I'm sorry for startling you."

The maiden shrugged, gaze still skimming him to make sense of the appearance. "Are you...a traveler?"

"Something like that." He drew forward a step and she danced back without seeming to realize it, keeping a proper distance between them. "Do you live near here?"

"I do."

"Would you happen to have a warm meal to spare? I have been journeying for some time now." He presented with the girl with what he presumed was a most charming smile, though from her baffled half-smile in return, he couldn't be sure.

"Where are your things?"

"My things?" Another step forward, as if to hear her better.

"Yes, your traveling things. Don't you have a pack?"

Storm paused, mouth twisting up in a guilty grin. The girl had some wit in her, then -- all the better! "I seem to have lost it."

"You seem to have lost it," she echoed with another short laugh. This one rang more of disbelief than anxiety, and she shifted the basket to hang in front of her, granting what little protection it might. "Have you lost your horse as well?"

"What horse would that be, kjære?" If the witch had forgotten to enchant some part of this form and his hooves showed through, he would be galloping right back to that old bat and having some very strict words with the toad.

"Your clothes seem very nice." Again her eyes checked up and down his figure, and she repeated, "Very nice. And too clean to have walked on your own."

"Perhaps I'm a graceful traveler," Storm bullshitted gleefully, trying not to laugh as he stole another step closer.

"And perhaps I should go home." She marched back several steps and, when Storm made to follow, said, "I wouldn't do that."

"You wouldn't harm a stranger, would you?"

"I don't think so," the girl continued, backing away, "but my mother will."

Now, Storm had lived long enough among hulder women to garner a proper respect for any female, especially one whose power was called on with such firm conviction as the girl's. "...your mother."

"Actually," said the girl, pausing for a moment to peer at his strange thick eyes, "maybe you should follow me. I think she'd enjoy you."

Aha. Ha. What?

"Do you have a name or would giving that unravel your disguise?"

With a frown, Storm said stiffly, "Trym."

"Atti," she answered with a little bow of her head. "Will you come along, then?"

"If you don't mind a few more questions." Doing his best to keep the high ground in this strange little game of bluffs and calls, he explained, "I'm not from around these parts, so you'll have to lay it out simply for me."

"Of course you're not from around these parts," Atti said. "No one lives here."

"You think you're a very clever girl, don't you?"

"Something like that," she chirped back at him, stepping around a tree to what looked like a decently-worn path.

"And I'm assuming," Storm followed, sensing a turn in the girl's mood, "your mother is the one who taught you to be so clever?" She seemed more excited than wary now, having found an advantage to play. Confident, even, and everyone knows where hubris lands you.

Right in his stomach.

"Maybe. I think I inherited it, at least."

"As well as her lovely looks."

There she laughed, a hand self-consciously going up to retuck her hair. "Now I know for certain that you aren't looking for a meal, stranger. A traveler seeking shelter shouldn't lie so brazenly to his host's face."

"Out of everything I've said, you think that's the lie?" Storm smiled genuinely at the ridiculousness of that. "Maybe your lack of neighbors has skewed your perception."

"Hmmh," she scoffed at him, turning her back fully to the strange man. Storm thought he could have ended the fun here and lunged forward, snatched her up, so forth and so forth, but the mother comment caught his imagination and tugged, leading him forward as on a leash.

As the girl made her way easily down the familiar path, Storm decided to be blunt and have on with it: "So what does your mother do?"

With a glance over her shoulder, Atti said, "She weaves." He didn't know quite how to interpret the quirked smile she gave him, but if he had to peg it as one word, absolutely would he use 'flirtatious'.

What in the world's madness was even going on here.

--

As it turned out, Storm very well could have killed her at the start of the path. It took almost fifteen minutes to get in sight of a cottage, at which point his dwindling patience with the game had almost run out. At the top of this slope, looking down on what must be her home, Storm noticed something that reignited that former curiosity: he could see little footprints staggered through the dirt and leaves. They weren't human, that he knew, and he suspected some kind of tusser --- curious that they had left so many marks, as if fleeing (or approaching) in a hurry, or perhaps having come through this place many, many times.

"Do you have many visitors?" he asked, wondering if the girl even knew about these creatures. Presumably so, though as far as Storm could judge, she was entirely human.

"No. Not very many at all."

"You aren't married then?"

Atti grinned wide at him and shook her head. "Definitely not. And the last one who came looking for a wife left very soon after he asked." She hummed to herself in amusement at the memory, leading him down the inclined path to the cottage. Nothing appeared strange, other than its isolation and the footprints, but that meant little to nothing. "Oh, that reminds me. Since we don't have many visitors, she might not take to you at first. You'll have to let me explain."

"So long as your introduction is kind," he returned, brightening her smile once more.

They reached the bottom of the slope, Atti not breaking pace as she swept right up to the cottage's door. Pushing it open, she called, "I'm back," and nodded for Storm to draw close. He did so, gaze sliding left and right to check for potential ambushes of woven nooses or warriors armed with distaffs.

"Mum?" Atti entered the cottage, setting her basket down near the door. "Don't be angry... I brought something to show you."

Some/thing/, Storm thought indignantly. How rude. He remained in the doorway, not quite crossing the threshold in case that triggered some territorial nastiness. He knew how women were about those things. From there, he observed some movement in the back of the house and then a woman emerging, very obviously the girl's mother: they shared smooth brown hair and a slender build. She wore her hair longer, knotted through itself to form a low ponytail which trailed down the front of her shoulder. When she emerged, the woman looked tired and obviously interrupted from her work by the girl's appeals. Even so, her face held a cool beauty to it and youth unbefitting how old she should be to have a maiden as daughter.

Magic, Storm knew. Nothing so severe as his corpse-disguise, but some glamour kept her face that smooth and fresh. Interesting.

"What is it?" the woman asked with disinterest, until she caught sight of the ghastly pale figure in the doorway. In a snap, she recoiled and her face snarled into a furiously ugly mess, the beauty magic struggling to mask any of it. "You brought a /man/ here! You brought a man into /my/ house!"

"No, no no, mum, listen -- " Atti hurried toward her, prepared for this explosive reaction. "He isn't human; he isn't a man. He isn't a man, mother, I promise. I would never bring one here, please." She caught one of her mother's hands, stroking it in earnestness. "Look -- he isn't a man."

The pair had to edge forward to see Storm, however, because he had darted back from the door as soon as the woman shouted; he didn't know what sort of magic she commanded, but he wanted none of it laid on his head as a curse.

"See?" Atti said soothingly, her mother's hand still caught in her own. "I don't know what he is, but I thought you might so I led him here."

Her mother's face slowly calmed, the magic dashing across it like a queen's ladies-in-waiting preparing her in the morning. A hideous mistrust remained in her eyes, waiting for a reason to lash out. For now, she relaxed into a tepid tolerance of the stranger and approached the door to see him better.

"He goes by Trym," Atti introduced. She glanced at Storm as if to say, see, everything’s under control, and he flashed her a scornful look in return. "He claimed to be a traveler looking for shelter."

"Don't they all," her mother muttered, examining the stranger from afar. "Did he touch you?"

"Of course not," the girl answered proudly. A moment of silence paused and then she asked, "May he come in?"

"There's witchcraft on him," the woman said, low and mumbled to herself. Her hand unconsciously reached for her hair, threading nervously through that as she studied him.

"Come in," Atti decided, inviting the man with a wave. She brought her mother's hand to her mouth and kissed the back of it reassuringly, then let go. "Will you take food or drink? Or do you eat something else?"

Storm crept toward the door, attention more on mother than daughter. The woman remained motionless except for the nervous stroking through her hair. With another cheerful urging from Atti, he slipped inside, keeping close to the wall opposite her mother.

"She doesn't seem to like me..."

"I told you she wouldn't at first. Will you eat?"

"Not yet, I think," he replied, though he did allow the girl to seat him at a small wooden table. Once the stranger had been taken care of, the girl returned to her mother's side.

"Mum?" It took a second call for Atti to get her attention. "Did we interrupt a ritual?"

Her eyes, unfocused, wandered the room for a few moments before she nodded dully. "Yes."

"You should get back to that. Do you need help with anything?"

"No."

"I'm sorry I upset you." Atti touched her shoulder and murmured something close to her ear, getting a faint nod. "Alright then." Guiding her gently, Atti led her mother to where she had appeared from and then out of sight.

Storm did not know why he skipped that opportunity for escape: possibly because he was intrigued or more likely because this looked terribly fun. Regardless, the girl returned soon, taking a seat across from him. She folded her arms on the table and looked to him for a reaction.

"Well," he started. "I can see what you meant."

"Can you?"

"More or less," he wagered. "She would curse me if something happened to you."

"Terribly." Tilting her head, she asked, "But aren't you already?"

"Cursed? Oh no, no." Storm grinned. "Quite the opposite, in fact." Thinking back on her mother's words, he took another guess: "She is, though."

Surprisingly, Atti admitted to this without shame. "Mhm."

"Something with men..."

"That's right."

"And perhaps madness?"

"Perhaps." Atti's smile faded there, one finger picking at a loose splinter in the table. "I don't think the curse caused it directly, but..." It clearly held her in its sway.

"Not that I don't appreciate this diversion, but why did you bring me here?"

Looking up at him, Atti considered the question for a few moments before shrugging. "I appreciated the diversion as well, I guess. And I'd like to know who you are. What you are. I thought she might tell me, but she was too distracted."

He tapped his fingers on the table and decided on a possibly awful, but simultaneously wonderful, idea: "We'll play a game for it."

"To guess what you are?" She already looked won over.

"Precisely."

"Hmm... It isn't fair to start now, though. I need a few more clues before I can guess."

"Such as?"

A bit too eagerly, Atti rose to her feet and circled the table, coming to Storm's side with hands clasped politely in front of her. "May I touch you?"

Aha. Ha. Ha.
WHAT.

His face must have reflected the full-halt bewilderment of his mind because the girl laughed, bashfully tucking hair behind her ear. "Your skin looks very strange; I think it must be the clue to what you are. So if I touch it..."

Oh, of course, that makes perfect sense --- "I think your head must be even stranger than my skin looks."

She laughed splendidly at that, amused enough to have to lean against the edge of the table for support. When her giggling had mostly subsided, she answered, "You've met my mother. What do you think?" The girl levered herself up onto the table and then slid across so that she sat directly in front of the stranger. His height evened out her new perch, putting her eyes almost on level with his.

Before Storm could toss out a witticism, she asked, "May I?" and raised a hand.

Never one to refuse a nice lady, he said, "Absolutely, yes."

Without hesitation, she touched her thumb to his cheek, stroking down the skin with a startled smile: "Oh, it's cold -- and rubbed smooth, like... Hm." She couldn't decide on a proper comparison to the waxy smoothness and continued exploration instead. Her fingers sketched up his face to his eyes, brushing over the only imperfection in his whitened skin. "What is this?"

"That would give too much away, I think. I'm being generous enough already," Storm murmured in a very warm voice full of encouragement. He hadn't thought about temperature, but he supposed a dead body would be chilly. The sensation of her trailing fingers was curious, almost delayed; he could feel it in a half-asleep way that didn't seem as real as it should. Very curious.

"Fair." Her hand swept up into his hair and Storm gave a surprised little sound at that --- this he could feel vividly, just as if Rita were running hers through his mane. "Is that alright?"

"Yes, fine."

She hummed in acknowledgment, twining hair around her fingers. Obviously desiring to say something, she broke and swore, "Valfrejya, but what /did/ happen to your hair?"

Smirking, Storm reached up and messed with the ragged clumps there. "I didn't have a wife around to cut it," he teased, quite content with the attention being paid him. While fluffing a particular piece, he happened to nudge her hand and, opportunistic as ever, Storm caught that and brought it down to his face. Mimicking the girl's action with her mother, he kissed the back of it before releasing her.

Atti made a little sound at the contact and he checked her expression to interpret it. Her eyes had widened, watching him now like bright amber stones, and Storm could only take that as compliment.

"So what do you think?" he said, low and smooth-voiced.

Pausing, she took a slow breath before answering, "We haven't set up the rules of the game."

"Three guesses is traditional."

Atti nodded, gaze unmoved from his. "If I get it right?"

"Then you know what I am."

"And the punishment for guessing wrong?"

With a grin, Storm found her hand again, kissing and keeping the warm, full-blooded flesh near his mouth. "I'll swallow you whole."

He felt her pulse stumble, then surge through her skin, and Atti licked her lips before forcing a smile. Sweet, stupid girl with her wide eyes and blushing cheeks.

"High stakes," she whispered with a breathless little laugh.

"The only kind worth playing for."

Ducking his gaze, Atti looked down and removed her hand from his, letting both settle in her lap. "It might take me some time to think of these guesses."

"I'm sure I can entertain myself in the meantime," Storm assured with a blatant skim down her body.

"Mind yourself, stranger," she said with a flushed laugh. "My mother's still home."

...so she is. Storm answered her laugh in kind, adding a charming smile that said, of course he remembered that, yes. Yes. Damn, that woman would have his hide: his actual one, not this corpse-suit. Maybe if he could lure her outside again, far enough away that when he killed her, he could disappear without retaliation.

It's possible. Then again, the woman only had one daughter and she seemed very likely the vengeful type.

"But no more questions," Storm warned. "You've had enough clues."

She nodded obediently, feet swinging as she lapsed into thought. Occasionally her eyes would trail over him, studying often the strange black depth of his eyes and discolored shade around them.

"Are they bruised?" she murmured at some point, brow furrowed in concentration.

"No questions."

"Right, sorry." Atti sat back, feet kicking once more as she pondered.

For some reason, her voice in the last two questions caught Storm's ear. So deep in thought, her pitch had shifted, falling lower than before --- and watching her, Storm found something that interfered with the mental drooling he had been enjoying. For a minute, he couldn't put his finger on it: something in her jaw or throat, maybe the shape of her shoulders beneath the dress. Her hand, too, rang of it as he looked down on that. It wasn't any kind of glamour, but a thing far simpler.

And clever enough that he hadn't seen it until this close.

"Atti," he said and her eyes flicked up to his at once. "That last suitor you mentioned. Whatever did happen to him?"

Her face creased in confusion at the change in topic. "Mm... He went away wife-less?"

"As you said. But no one lives here and your mother won't tolerate men. So who would even have the chance to ask?"

"You're here, aren't you?" Atti said, tone turning defensive.

"And inhuman, as we've realized." The girl evidently didn't appreciate where this was going, but Storm carried on: "A little tusse, wasn't it?"

Eyes narrowed, she asked, "How do you know that?"

"I pay attention." Sitting forward and forcing the girl to lean back from the proximity, he said, "There aren't many ways to dissuade a tusse once he's settled on a girl. I understand your mother is a witch of some sort or another, but even then, your cottage should be harassed, half-fallen in, both of you afflicted."

The girl said nothing, watching him with a cold and closed expression. Maybe Storm imagined it now, because he realized the trick, but seeing an expression so close to her mother's only highlighted the difference between them.

"So, my clever one. How did you send a tusse running so fast?"

A few slow breaths passed as Atti weighed options in her mind, strict exterior guarding the frantic brainstorming within. Finally, she stated tersely, "A question for a question."

"Done. Now tell me."

"Do you already know?" she challenged, voice as shut-down as her expression.

"I suspect so." In his other form, he probably could have caught the scent of it from the beginning. A good thing to know -- how easily this human shape could be deceived. "What is your real name?"

"Atti," she repeated stubbornly. At his flat look, she caved and muttered, "The name's used for both genders."

"A-ha." At last, Storm moved away, giving her --- or him, rather --- some breathing room. "You're even stranger than I guessed."

Expression descending into a scowl, Atti slipped off the table and away, only to have his wrist caught by the man.

Dropping pretenses altogether, Atti ordered, "Let go of me," in a voice unmistakably belonging to a young man. The surprise of the sound almost loosened Storm's hand, but he caught himself in time.

"Is the game off?" Storm asked, rising to his feet to look down on the boy.

"What, are you still interested?" he retorted, sounding oddly disgusted with the idea. "Like you said, that tusse went sprinting right away when I proved I couldn't marry him."

"I don't want to marry you."

With a sigh, the boy said, "And what do you want? I thought you were humouring me for --- " ---well. Sex.

"You already asked that question." Stroking his wrist, Storm pulled the boy unwillingly closer and said, "I told you: I wanted a meal."

Eyes widening, and clearly not from desire this time, Atti jerked back, trying to yank his hand from the other's grasp. But the skin seemed melded, unable to separate, and the boy made a little chirp of fear, feet skittering to gain leverage. Storm shushed him, sliding his other hand to cover his mouth. Atti shook his head frantically, refusing to let the creature get another firm hold.

"This is unfortunate," he grunted at the boy. "If I had known from the start you were like this, I might not have bothered. A maiden sounded so delectable..."

Thrashing to get free as Storm dragged him toward the door, Atti managed a few muffled half-shouts. He had managed to heave the struggling human over the threshold when the very event Storm had been dreading occurred: the witch appeared behind them.

Everything halted, Storm watching the witch watching her child. In the pause, Atti spat away the man's hand and said in a snarl halfway between fear and anger, "He's trying to /eat/ me," as if this were more of a moral affront than a threat.

The woman measured the scene and then pronounced, "You stupid boy." She added something else that fuzzed around Storm's ears like the obscuring rush of a waterfall and, apologetic, her son responded the same way. Closer to Storm, he could hear Atti's words more clearly: nothing he understood, but sort of an exhaled note that curved upward into sibilance.

Damn, if they were casting curses -- he hastily dragged the boy in front of himself, marking clear his bargaining tool.

"Now, why don't we all evaluate this situation before someone makes a rash decision," Storm sleazed with a genial smile at the woman. "I can release your daughter -- son, whatever it is -- and you can release me, and no one has to use any magic or death at all. Doesn't that sound nice?"

"Sounds fantastic," Atti agreed hastily, yanking at his caught hand again. "So let me go."

"Quiet," Storm snapped in a mutter. "I'm speaking to her."

"Mum -- "

"There is another way," the woman said cleanly. She appeared more awake than before, eyes vibrantly focused on the abduction taking place. With even strides, she moved across the room, the gazes of both males following with equal anxiety, and approached a loom with a distaff leaned against it. She took her seat there, hands slipping into the unfinished weaving.

The boy let out a breath of relief and Storm realized this could mean nothing good for him. He added quickly, "My word is good, I swear ---your son is as good as free if you --- " but her fingers picked and turned and worked out a knot in the threads. At once, Storm felt his skin retract from the boy's and, feeling it too, Atti darted away from him.

Rubbing his contaminated wrist, the boy hurried back into the cottage. His mother had yet to look up, instead skimming along a thread to find another useful spot. Atti's gaze skipped between the two, then he said urgently, "Tell me and you're saved."

"A nøkk," Storm spat out faster than he realized humans could speak.

Immediately, Atti rushed to his mother's side and again stole one of her hands, kissing the back of it and whispering feverishly into her ear. The woman's head came up, attention moving from loom to boy, and she listened for a moment.

Then she gave a tight nod and Atti's face fell into an exhausted smile. Turning toward the door, he started to say, "You're free---" only to realize the man had already disappeared.

She floated on the verge between life and death. For how long, she did not know. Occasionally the flickering of a fickle little light would dash before her eyes, to then quickly disappear. Re-appear. Disappear. It went on like this for a while. She rose in the darkness, her slender hand grasping towards the light, reaching for it. When she thought she got it, she opened her hand to find nothing but darkness. Then it re-appeared.
“Hello?” Rita called out.
“H-hello ?”
The darkness remained dark and silent. Then all of a sudden she saw a tree. Its trunk seemed old, mushrooms had gathered in between its roots and moss had covered large areas in soft jade patches. She stroked her hand over the surface to suddenly see fireflies emerging out of nowhere. In this dark silent, their light seemed to burn in Rita’s eyes, so she squinted, trying to figure out what was happening.
“Hello?!”
The fireflies suddenly scattered, leaving her alone in the dark again. She tried to walk backwards towards the tree, but tripped over her own feet, falling to the dark surface. But she didn’t hit the floor. She kept falling and tumbled in the air like a bird too young to fly.
Suddenly she smacked down, gasped for air as her lungs seemed to collapse under the crash and coughed. The air was almost too heavy to breathe. She fainted.


She woke again in the dark and felt a sticky substance under her body. It smelt like iron. It tasted like ash. The substance suddenly became solid and pulverized into dust. Then the flickering of lights again. She tried to see, so got up and walked towards it. As she neared the glow, it began to burn brighter and brighter and brighter. Ever brighter. Then she smelt it clearly, her limbs becoming stiff with deadly mortal fear. This was not a pleasant kindling flame. Her eyes became big as she saw the horror; an ember giant was raging through a forest, scorching the earth, devouring the trees and now it saw her. As they stood eye to eye, the giant’s obsidian eyes glinting with pure greed, she tried to scream. However, to no avail. Her throat seemed to have been frozen, her lips stitched together, her tongue ripped out.
“Move!” She told her legs while despairing.
“Move! Oh please, move!” Her eyes went back to the giant who was approaching. The scent of burnt animals became noxiously distinct.
She jerked her left arm loose from the paralysis and smacked herself in the face. The hit seemed to lift her frozen state, and she stumbled backwards. The ember-molded tyrant was now in front of her, she could feel the corrupted heat burning on her face, burning on her back as she started to crawl in panic. She looked over her shoulder. He was approaching. She stumbled upon her legs and started running for her life. Her back seemed to be on fire. The pain was agonizing, but she was not burning. She raced over a dark path, lit by her chaser. Hunted down like an animal, running like one. The wild instinct took over. No more thoughts. No more… Suddenly she tripped and landed on her hands and knees in front of the great old tree she had seen before. Looking back, the ember giant now stood right behind her. She turned over, a last gesture of bravery, and stared it straight in the eyes. Then she crawled backwards, only to find her hands grasping in empty air. She fell again and knew that this time there might be no bottom…


She awoke again. Her lower body in a river, her shoulders and head in the wet mud. Birds were singing. She knew this place. Dazed she tried to get up, but felt a piercing pain. In her hollow back was an arrow. It seemed to have been on fire, but apparently her mysterious appearance in the river had doused its flames. Her head began beating as if someone was throwing stones on a hollow trunk. She scream in agony and dragged herself further into the mud, out of the river. Rita lay like this for several hours, the agonizing pain crucifying her to that very place. When the birds quit their chant, she knew she had to move. That which had shot her down might still be looking for her. She feebly got onto her legs, her beautiful face smeared with mud, the eyes dimly lit. She swayed as she walked and began a feverish run through the forest. Her entire body was aching and felt as if on fire, her head seemed to burst. She continued like this for several hours, until she collapsed to the ground and all became dark again.
“Ah, dearie. Finally waking up?”
Rita opened her eyes to find an old wrinkly woman staring at her. The woman had covered her naked body with a rough cloth. Rita felt uncomfortable as the cloth itched… It itched … Then she realized that the throbbing pain in her head had eased. Her body no longer felt as if it were on fire. Weakly, she tried to get up.
“No, no, no, no, dearie.” The old lady pushed her by her chest back down on the hay bed. “It’d do you no good to move in that condition.” She grinned, showing 4 bad teeth, scattered across her mouth. “Rest, dearie. Rest!” She nodded. “But first, you should drink this herbal tea. It’ll do you good, dearie!”
The old woman held a bowl in front of Rita’s mouth. The putrid smell penetrated her nostrils and her stomach turned.
“What is- ?” Rita wanted to ask, but the woman was quicker. “Best to not know, dearie. But drink! Drink! It’ll make you feel better, dearie.”
Rita drank, laid back, closed her eyes and slept.


She awoke again and didn’t know how long she had slept.
The old woman was knitting in a corner and smiled at her with the 4 teeth. Rita observed the cabin she was in. It was a hut, built in between the branches of what must be a very old tree. The floor was swept with clean sand, simple ornaments hung on the walls. Rita appeared to sleep on the only bed, the old woman was sitting on the only chair. A table stood near a small window, 2 small cabinet closets were filled with bread, herbs and vials. Several fish and plants hung drying on the ceiling.
“Finally awake, dearie?” The old woman cackled.
Rita nodded “I have you to thank for that, Mrs ?”
“Morgana” The wrinkled lady grinned.
Suddenly Rita knew where she was; the house of the witch. She normally bore no ill intent and made potions for the villagers. She also knew that the woman was not as harmless as she’d want to make everyone believe. She stared into the almost toothless grin and knew she had to offer the witch something as a token of gratitude. Who knew what else might happen.
“I…” began Rita.
“I know.” Morgana nodded, her eyes focused on her knitwear. “You want to offer me something, dearie. But don’t you worry about that!” She looked Rita straight into the eyes: “ I’ve already taken what I wanted, dearie.”
Rita suddenly noticed a part of her red hair was cut short. A small price for her, a great asset for the witch’s potion arsenal.

Personally, Storm thought they should get rid of the brat the second it showed up. He had told Rita, too -- just in case his ears laid flat against his skull and his refusal to leave the lake hadn't made his disgust clear -- and had only been mildly surprised when she ignored his complaints.

"He's just a kid," she had argued, frowning in a way that implied such irritation towards a child was a severe breach of etiquette, and then turned her attention back to the creature nestled in her arms. It had tilted its head at the nøkk over her shoulder, blinked twice, scratched its cheek and then belched loudly.

Rita had cooed and praised it for being such a good boy ! in a way that couldn't have been genuine, and Storm had scowled even harder, before turning away and pointedly shoving his rump in their direction as revenge. How come she never thought his gas was cute ? It was just unfair.

Not that he cared what she thought of his bodily functions, but double standards were universally unacceptable, and he was surprised she hadn't learned that yet.

--

It was a monster, Storm decided the next morning, before he had even pulled himself back to reality. He slowly woke, still in the lake with ripples lapping all over his coat and up his nose, and proceeded to choke and splash about in a way that was nothing less than masculinely masculine. When he was done trying to drown himself he snorted again, shook all over, and glared at the lake bed for something to direct his half-asleep fury towards.

The trollunge stared back at him, face blank and expressionless as it sat cross legged in the stones. Storm held its gaze, determined not to back down -- and definitely not from this thing. He was a man. He was a water demon. For all intents and purposes, he was practically a force of nature. There was no way, not ever, he was going to be intimidated by something so insignificant as a troll.

The trollunge smiled, then, without focusing its gaze on Storm. Not in a benevolent way, either -- the nøkk was, completely and utterly, certain that it was fantasizing about chewing on his heart, bloody and still beating and torn from his chest; and despite all earlier affirmations of how not worried he was, the fact sent a chill up his spine.

Not that Rita listened to him then, either. She hadn't even bothered rolling her eyes.

"He's just curious," she told him in a way that implied he was reading far too much into the situation, and all those furtive glances over his shoulder and all that nervous stamping of his feet wasn't helping his case any. Less interested in his complaints than the first time, she turned away.

--

That night, watching the devil spawn inhaling the food in front of him -- which in fact had been for all three of them, either because Rita felt vaguely guilty about snobbing him (unlikely) or because she had simply cooked more than necessary (more likely) -- Storm pointed out, again, they should get rid of it. Straight away. Now. Before there was no food left in the entire forest.

Rita had growled and crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes. Her tail flicked behind her and he knew he should just drop the subject before she unleashed her fury on him, but for some reason that knowledge failed to stop his mouth moving when she demanded, full of self righteous rage --

"What am I meant to do with him ? Just kick him out ? Is that what you want, Storm ?"

"That won't help," he had retorted, petulent and sulking. He knew it was the wrong thing to say, and he just kept on saying it anyway. "He won't leave now, no matter what you do. You shouldn't have fed it."

"Shut up," she had ordered, and the trollunge had added a loud belch to the conversation as it finished consuming anything edible within a ten foot radius. It yawned. and --right there, in a pile of leaves and some dirty dishes -- it curled up and proceeded to go to sleep. Rita dismissed his warning by stomping away, and that was the end of the conversation.

Neither of them ate that night. Storm was the only one that saw the problem with that.

He pretended he didn't care that she wasn't listening to him. She would find out the truth soon enough, oh yes, and when she came crawling back begging for his superior advice and worldly knowledge and useful assistance, he would tell her no because that's the best she deserved. He had given her enough warnings, he was not going to dig her out of the hole she had dug for herself just because she wanted something small and cute to look after. He had always been willing to be whatever she wanted him to be, and this was her problem now.

Oh yes, that's exactly how he felt.

--

Later, just as the sun went down, the trollunge had started crying. Quietly at first, then louder, until its wails echoed off things that shouldn't produce echoes, and Storm was surrounded by an endless vortex of choking sobs. He imagined he could hear Rita trying to soothe it, but that was ridiculous and he wouldn't be able to hear it over the din when they were so far away, and she probably wasn't even trying anyway. He was imagining it, obviously. He scowled, turned around twice in the shallow water, and lay down, pressing his ears back against his skull.

The universe decided it hadn't quite messed with him enough. The first raindrop landed on his rump. The second on his snout. The third, defying all concepts of gravity, landed inside his left ear, and it all went downhill from there.

He fought it, for a while, because he didn't really like giving up on anything or admitting defeat to anyone, even if it was the weather. His defiance got him nothing except wet, cold, and frustrated -- with water in places that he didn't realize it could get, even in a deluge -- and, for the first time, he didn't even care about eating.

The nøkk decided, once and for all, as he screamed into the night and glared back at the shore (which remained devoid of visible life and uninterested in his feelings) he had better places to be and better things to do. He didn't have to stay, after all. He stayed because he wanted to, and now he didn't, and Rita had never wanted him there in the first place, so it's not like he had any obligation to anyone.

Yeah, it was all so clear now.

He didn't bother saying goodbye, and no one bothered to watch him leave. All in all, he considered it the best decision he had made in a long time.

--------

A week later, Storm sulked back to the lake, limping. He held his head high and his mouth set into a hard line -- he didn't want to talk about it and no one was going to make him. Each step was slow and deliberate, and from every pore oozed the declaration that he was back because he felt like deigning the inhabitants of the territory with his godly presence. And godly it was, the girls of the village certainly worshipped him willingly enough.

It wasn't because he didn't want to be anywhere else, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was where he belonged. That would be exceedingly stupid, since the only other semi-intelligent lifeform didn't even want him around. She was probably still entirely preoccupied with the demon spawn and wouldn't have even noticed his absence, let alone care enough to ask why he had left or what he happened to make him return.

Storm decided this didn't depress him. This pleased him. He didn't have to justify himself -- he knew that, and now he was sure Rita understood and they were both on the same page, life would be a lot easier.

To his surprise -- not that he showed it, stumbling over that step was only because he had jerked his weight to one side to avoid crushing the bird, who had done nothing to encur his wrath -- she was sitting on the log near the lakes edge. Alone. With no irritating little brat in sight. At first he thought she was just staring over the water, deep in thought, until his incredibly keen eyesight picked up on the way she swayed back and forth slightly, as if in a light breeze.

The fact she was asleep was infinitely more interesting than his indignation or even where the trollunge had gone and got to. If the universe had any sense of justice, it would have drowned itself by now.

Either way, there were two obvious ways to deal with the situation laid out before him. A good friend would have left her be -- snuck away quietly into the forest and entertained themselves while she slept; even a decent friend would have followed that course of action, especially when it became obvious (as he drew closer, completely silent and definitely not with a smug grin on his face) that she was absolutely exhausted..

He also noted the forest was eerily silent. No birds, no sounds of life at all. Was this relevant ? Probably not. Little details were never important.

In short, Storm was not really the best friend a huldra could have, and only reinforced this often suspected fact as he neared, stepping very carefully up to her side. He didn't bother checking around to make sure there was nothing around to give away his position because he would have heard it coming, and her eyes were still closed and her breathing hadn't changed in the least, so he took a deep breath, leaned down until his snout was right by her, and --

"If you scream in my ear," Rita muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. "You will regret it."

He had no doubt she was serious, and in his something-that-was-not-surprise let out a hot puff of air into her hair with a noise that could have been a yelp to the untrained and ignorant. He debated for a second whether that was going to encur her wrath anyway and the pros and cons of going ahead with his plan ... but the moment had passed and he would just be a jerk to do it now, with no obvious benefits to pulling such a stunt, so he just huffed (making sure to displace as much of her hair as possible) and took a step back.

Rita opened her eyes and yawned, turning her head to stare at him sluggishly. There were dark bags under her eyes that seemed odd and displaced on the rest of her face, and he was sure those wrinkles hadn't been there when he had left. He wondered if she had slept at all, decided he didn't care, and remembered just how annoyed he was with her.

Time to give her the cold shoulder.

"Where's your spawn ?" he demanded petulently, not pretending to be anything but bitter, and prancing away. Not a single pebble or blade of grass was displaced under his weight, which only served to prove even further how much more superior he was to a trollunge that snapped branches and crushed leaves and kicked up clods of dirt every time it so much as looked in any direction. He heard Rita sigh, although not in defeat or shame, but more in resignation.

The nøkk was not pleased by this reaction. She should be ashamed. She should care. What kind of game was she even trying to play ?

"Where did you go ?" she asked, instead of answering, and he huffed. No way was he forgiving her that easily. Not even if she did have magical mind-reading powers.

"Does it matter ? You weren't waiting for me or anything, were you."

Rita made a vague noise somewhere in the back of her throat, and looked back over the lake. She didn't apologize. The nøkk made an answering noise -- with slightly more irritation behind it than hers, naturally -- and stomped over to the lake, kicking pebbles around willy-nilly and having absolutely no respect from things being in their proper position. He was going to just ignore her, then, until she did apologize. Yeah, that would show her for sure.

Whether she watched him splashing about in the lake or just didn't look away from his general direction would forever remain a mystery but, finally breaking the silence, Rita looked over her shoulder at the eerily silent forest. It hadn't occured to her to miss them until Storm was back. She took a breath -- so deeply and dramatically that not even Storm could ignore the sound.

"Storm ?"

He grunted, haughtily, making it clear she wasn't even worth his words, and continued splashing, fancy-free and without a care in the world.

"I need your help," she ground out, just when he was sure she wasn't going to say anything else and he had pushed too far, sounding like every word was broken glass against her throat. He stared in disbelief as she glared down at the ground, working her jaw for a few seconds like she was going to take back the request, her nails digging into the log she was sitting on. Not even the wood tried to resist her will in that moment.

A good friend would have accepted it. But, as Storm had previously decided, he was not a good friend.

He just flicked his ears and didn't turn around, snorting and chomping a few times at the waterbugs flittering around his head.

"It won't leave," the huldra finally managed to elaborate, practically in a whisper and actually choking on the last word. Storm couldn't help himself and spun around, amused to no end.

"Whaaaaaaat was that ?"

"I'm not repeating it," she snarled, and shot to her feet. The nøkk snickered and took a step forward, relishing that she was begging him for help.

"I would never ask that of you," he assured her, in a tone that implied he was going to ask something else, though. Rita stared at him, weighed her options, and very slowly sat back down on the log. The expression on her face declared louder than anything she could have actually said that she wasn't sure this was the right decision, and it wouldn't take much to send her running.

Storm grinned. He had no intention of pushing this. Not now he had her right where he wanted.

--

It wasn't hard to get Storm to do what she wanted, Rita acknowledged. As long as it seemed like it was causing her pain, he would do whatever she asked him to.

A good friend wouldn't have used that to her own advantage.

But a good friend wouldn't have left her alone, either.

She considered them even.