I allow her to help me out of the heavy layers of my gown and into a clean nightgown before she brushes the knots out of my hair and bids me goodnight.
Once she’s gone an excited chill runs through me. If Mother was right and there is a real man lying beside me each night I may finally get to see him tonight. I’ve carefully hidden the candle Mother gave to me among the others on my bedside table so all that is left is to lay down and pretend to sleep.
I pull back the heavy bed curtains and crawl into bed like I’ve done every night. Trying to act normal I lie on my side and face away from the door, closing my eyes and trying to relax my breathing. I count each breath to calm my nerves, my mind churning out “what ifs” on a constant loop. What if he realizes I’m not really sleeping? What if I don’t wait long enough? What if I really am sleeping beside a troll? I strike out that last thought, after all, trolls can’t get through the barrier around the palace. That thought alone comforts me as the night ticks by at a depressing pace.
Finally, an untold amount of time later I hear the soft click of the door opening. Footsteps shuffle across the floor and I shut my eyes tighter and pretend to be deep asleep. Someone ducks under the bed curtain to avoid the slight noise of metal scraping against metal the curtains make as they slide across the metal rod holding them up. I hold my breath as the empty side of the bed depresses and the bedding is lifted. A chill hits me and I force myself not to shiver. A warm body presses against me, curling itself around my body. The person sighs contentedly before placing a kiss on my shoulder. I lie still as the man lying beside me strokes my arm, his touch sending warmth through me and I long for this charade to be over so I can finally see him.
After a while, the hand slows and finally stills on my arm. The man’s breath deepens and smooths out, telling me he’s asleep. I wait five minutes, then ten minutes longer for good measure before I make my move.
Slowly I slip out of bed, making sure not to wake my companion by letting his arm fall heavily onto the bed. I straighten into a standing position without turning back around and listen carefully for changes in the man’s breathing. He snores briefly before his breathing returns to its normal rhythm.
I stick my hand out between the bed curtain and the headboard to retrieve the candle my mother gave me. I wrap my hand around it tightly and light it from one of the other candles on the bedside table. Careful not to ignite the bed curtains I hold the candle to my chest and slowly turn around. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
I allow the candlelight to shine on the man in my bed and my heart beats faster in my chest as I finally lay eyes on him. The man in my bed is the most attractive man I’ve ever laid eyes on. His wavy obsidian hair brushes his neck and shoulders and sooty black eyelashes lay against his flawless alabaster skin. A gentle smile is on his lips and I wonder what he’s dreaming about. A jagged scar mars his strong, square chin making him look even more rugged. A loose tunic covers his chest but the split neckline shows a hint of warrior tattoos. This man has obviously seen the sea and foreign soil. He’s fought beside other warriors and raided unknown places. This man is also obviously the little boy – the prince – I dreamed about the night Dyre and I traveled to my family’s new home, all grown up.
An overwhelming sense of love washes over me as I stare upon this man who has lain beside me every night since I arrived at the palace.
I have to kiss him, I think irrationally. I don’t think I’ll survive if I don’t. So I do.
I bend down slowly and press my lips against his. The kiss is one sided until his jaw begins working and his lips become molten against mine. Unlike any kiss I've ever had before the man’s kiss starts a fire low in my belly, a fire that spreads through my whole body with pleasant tingles. It’s been so long since I’ve kissed anyone but kissing this man feels right. It feels like no other kiss before this one mattered and I only want to kiss this man for the rest of my life. As I kiss him more urgently I carelessly drip three hot drops of tallow onto his shirt and he wakes up. I jerk back hastily.
“What have you done?” he cries, his voice as familiar to me as my own. His eyes fly open and I recognize them instantly, but the last time I saw them they were inside the face of a polar bear.
“Dyre?” I whisper his name disbelievingly, “but how? Why?”
“Now you have brought bad luck upon us both, for had you be patient for only this one year, I would have been freed from this curse,” Dyre rages on, ignoring my question. His thick eyebrows draw down in anger or frustration.
“Curse, what curse?” I ask as I place the offending candle onto the bedside table and kneel on the bed beside Dyre.
Dyre sighs, losing some steam. “My stepmother has bewitched me. Her name is Viveka; she was a queen from an unknown land, barely older than me. She arrived from nowhere in a shroud of mystery. It wasn't long after my mother passed that she moved herself from the guest quarters to the marriage bed. She thought she could marry my father for the title and warm the sheets with me once she'd disposed of my father. I loved my father, we didn't always agree but he was a fair ruler to our people and I would never have betrayed him in such a manner.
She poisoned my father and climbed into my bed the night of his funeral. I refused her, but my stepmother is ruthless, she even usurped her own mother to ascend her own throne, but one kingdom was not enough for the daughter of a troll and a witch, she wanted more. When I made it clear once and for all that I would never be with her, she cursed me so that I am a polar bear by day and a man by night. Now I must find true, lasting love so that the curse can be broken or I will be forced to marry her troll-face sister.
I really thought you would be the one to help me break the curse but now all ties are broken between us and I must set off from here to my stepmother’s palace. She lives in a castle the color of blood which stands east of the sun and west of the moon, and there too lives her sister – a hideous princess with a nose three feet long. She is the wife I must have now.”
“No, this cannot be,” I exclaim, horrible tears dripping down my cheeks. “Tell me how to fix it. I love you, Dyre. That must count for something.”
“There’s no helping me now, Hel,” Dyre cups my cheek gently, sounding resigned to his fate. “Part of the curse is that you were never to see me as a man and now you have. I have no choice, I must go.”
“I could go with you,” I suggest, trying to puzzle our way out of this mess. “I could talk to your stepmother; prove to her my feelings for you are real no matter how you look. It’s true; I began to fall in love with you long before this night.”
“It’s no use, my dear, she won’t listen.” Dyre rests his forehead against mine. “I had one chance to make this work between us and now it’s over. You can’t come with me.”
“Tell me the way then,” I steel myself, determined not to let this be the end of us. “I’ll search you out; that surely I may be able to do.”
“Yes, you could do that,” Dyre says slowly. “But there is no way to get to the place. The castle lies far north, east of the sun and west of the moon shrouded in magic. No mortal could find their way there, no matter how persistent. Only those that the Queen wishes to become ensnared are allowed to stumble across its location. The lucky few that manage to escape can't even tell you how to get there. Magic is the only way in.”
“I’ll find a way,” I vow.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth about why I brought you here from the beginning,” Dyre murmurs hopelessly. He toys with something on the tip of his tongue before finally admitting, “There’s something else you should know, Hel.”
“What is it?” I ask, holding my breath.
“The man you loved before me, he did not die the way you think he did,” Dyre says quietly.
“What?” I ask, confused by the sudden change of topic.
“That’s the way I first found out about you,” Dyre admits. I hold my breath as he explains. “A little over a year ago a man showed up on the footbridge ou
tside the palace. Somehow he had gotten past the barrier that keeps us safe from the outside world. I created that barrier myself. I don’t have much magic, but I have enough to do simple things like creating the barrier, lighting our path while traveling in the dark, and extending the curse’s hold on me so that if we were traveling when otherwise the day curse would leave me, transforming me back into my human form I would stop from changing so as to not reveal myself to you. But somehow this human man broke through that unbreakable barrier. He was gravely wounded and he died while trying to seek refuge from whoever had attacked him. His last thoughts were of you, and I saw your image in his eyes the moment that he died. I fell in love with you that exact moment without knowing a thing about you. He’s what brought me to you in the first place.”
I listen quietly to Dyre’s story, absorbing every word. I’m surprised I’m not upset that Dyre kept this information from me, but a deeper part of me understands that he didn’t want to hurt me, he was keeping quiet to protect me. But who would harm Ulrik? He was a poor farmer from my village. A man of little influence who had left home to build a fortune pillaging with the other warriors so that someday when he returned we could start a life together. And why would the other warriors tell me Ulrik had died on Frankian soil?
“Did you ever find out who attacked him?” I ask quietly.
Dyre seems surprised by my question, but he quickly shakes his head. “No. I sent my guards out to search the area in case of an impending attack of the castle but there was no one. It was as if he had been dropped here from the skies above. Perhaps it was all fated.”
“What if this was your stepmother’s doing?” I ask, the thought just popping into my head.
“Why would she?” Dyre asks, “That man’s death brought me you, the best chance of me breaking the curse. Viveka wouldn’t want that. She wants me under her thumb forever.”
“You’re right,” I dismiss the thought. “None of this makes sense.”
“Perhaps it was the gods, pushing us together,” Dyre muses, running a strong calloused hand through my hair. “I just wish it would have turned out better.”
“I’ll fix this, Dyre,” I murmur. “I promise I’ll find my way to you if I have to walk to the ends of the earth to get there.”
Dyre pulls me toward him, kissing me hungrily as if he can memorize the taste of me. I cling to him as his lips press against mine urgently, his tongue seeking entry between my lips. The kiss deepens as Dyre lays me down, caressing my cheek and melding the hard planes of his body to the soft curves of mine trying to become one with me.
“Promise you’ll stay with me tonight,” I beg breathlessly when we break apart. “Don’t leave me, not yet.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dyre promises, “not yet, Hel.”
He tucks me against his side and whispers to me between stolen kisses as the candle burns down.
Chapter Eleven
I wake up the next morning and both Dyre and the palace, along with everything else, are gone. I find myself on a little green patch in the middle of a thick gloomy forest. The only sunlight visible is a thin ray shining down on me through an opening in the tree cover overhead. My nightgown from the palace is gone, replaced by the same patchwork dress I arrived at the palace in. At my side lays the pack full of my belongings from home. Admittedly with all of the clothing provided to me at the palace I haven’t set eyes on anything in this pack in months.
I draw my legs up to my chest and lay my face against my knees as angry tears threaten to break free. You really screwed this up, didn’t you Hel? I chastise myself.
If I hadn’t been so damn curious that I followed Mother’s advice I would never have screwed things up with Dyre. Now that everything is out in the open I can see that Dyre was always there, watching in the wings waiting for me to love him. I was so blind for not seeing it sooner.
How am I going to find a way to a place nobody knows the location of? I wonder hopelessly as I drop my pack into my lap. A few tears manage to escape and tumble down my cheeks as something inside my pack makes a clinking sound like glass. Frowning in confusion, I open my sack and rifle through the few items of clothing and books I brought with me to the palace. At the very bottom of the bag is a package haphazardly wrapped in cloth.
I pull the package out and carefully unwrap it. On the top is a note written in the same hurried script as the book of maps I found in the library was written in.
Hel,
You can borrow my studio anytime. In the meantime, keep this safe for me.
Love, Dyre
Beneath the note is a small blown glass heart tinted pink and red. I hold it gently in my palms, instantly recognizing the artistry of the piece. I’d recognize this piece and every other piece made by the artist anywhere as if each piece holds a piece of his signature. The glass blowing studio belonged to Dyre. He created the chandelier I fell in love with the first day I stumbled into the studio. Just like the book of maps I found in the library belonged to Dyre as well. Wow, Dyre really was meant for me after all.
The discovery of the glass heart in my sack calms me and stirs a new wave of determination in me. I can and will find Dyre. This isn’t over yet. I’ll free him from his curse if it’s the last thing I do.
I dust myself off and straighten to my full height, weaving my way through the dark forest. Bent, gnarled tree limbs stick out everywhere I turn, threatening to grab hold of me if I’m not careful; ducking under some and climbing over other branches I manage to extricate myself from the woods with minimal tearing to my skin or clothes.
The world beyond the forest seems familiar but sadly it takes me a minute for me to realize why. Dyre and I passed through this forest when he first brought me to the palace. It’s an hour or two’s walk from my family’s old home.
I decide to use the unfortunate location I woke up in to my advantage. Knowing my father he didn’t take everything with him when our family moved to their new house. He’d leave a weapon or other supplies behind in case any of us ever had to return to the house. Father likes to be prepared like that.
I brace myself, tightening the laces on my boots and balancing my pack on my shoulder and begin walking.
It’s still early morning as I make my way through a clearing into a small village. The main road from the village will take me where I need to go so I follow it, briefly acknowledging people as I pass. Thankfully they don’t stop me to ask where I’m heading so I pass through quickly.
By the time I reach the front door of my family’s old shack a steady rain beats down on my back. I rush inside; hoping Father left some kindling in the fireplace so I can warm up from the cold rain.
The house is barren inside. I’ve never seen it so empty or devoid of life. I push away feelings of sadness as I cross the room to light a fire in the hearth. Once the fire catches I wander through the empty rooms, running my hand over the dusty wood of the walls and surfaces. Despite the emptiness, everywhere I look I’m reminded of so many memories. Standing beside Mother as she cooked for the family, Father showing Bjorn and Donar how to sharpen their weapons, playing with Arika and Britta when we were children; each memory filling me with the warmth I was missing when I saw my family again just a few days ago. The visit seems so long ago to me now, but memories of this house feel like they happened just moments ago. I remember when I first met Ulrik. I’d spied him in the village; a rare beam of sunlight shone down on him like a spotlight, his golden hair tumbling over his shoulders like liquid gold. He was talking to a couple other warriors and laughing. That’s the thing I remember about him most, he dearly loved to laugh and his humor would light up his handsome features. Father didn’t like him but the next morning Mother took me aside in the kitchen, gripping my chin as she told me, “Don't give up, Hel. When you find true love you fight for it, you never give up.”
And I plan to fight for Dyre. I’ve never felt so certain about anything in my entire life. Even my feelings for Ulrik pale in comparison to what I feel for Dyre.
<
br /> A piece of paper tucked under a loose floorboard catches my attention. I scramble over and tug it out of the crack between the boards. I slowly unfold it, revealing father’s strong handwriting.
Dear Helga,
The seer once told me my youngest daughter would be stronger and braver than all my sons combined, so hear these words as I say I know you will thrive in your new home. May Hugin and Munin watch over you on your journey. If for any reason you find yourself back here and need help take my shield and my ax from my workshop and fight off whatever is destroying your happiness. I love you and I'm proudest of you, my Helga.
Your Father
My eyes mist at Father’s words of encouragement, but I push them away. I realize now he pushed me to leave so I could find my destiny and I don’t plan on letting him down. Waiting for the rain to stop I tuck Father’s letter away in my sack and crawl down to the root cellar using the trapdoor in the kitchen to find the last of last winter’s store of potatoes. Bringing several up from the root cellar I skewer them on thin twigs from the wood basket, too thin to use for the fire but just right to cook the potatoes on.
I cook the potatoes over the open fire. Once they’re cool to the touch I eat with my hands. It’s only then that I realize how ravenous I was. If I’m going to survive this search for Dyre, I’m going to need to take better care of myself.
After I’ve fueled up on the potatoes I decide a wardrobe change is in order. There’s no way I can traipse across the country in a long, flowy dress. I dig through my pack before pulling out more appropriate attire. I strip down in the middle of the room, unashamed of my nakedness in the abandoned house. There isn’t a single neighbor within walking distance to see me. I pull the rough woolen trousers I used to wear when I helped Axel with the barn chores over my legs and hips, fastening them around my waist. I cover my chest and torso with a thin tunic and the animal hide jacket I woke up in. Redressed, I slip stocking feet back into my boots and lace them up.
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