White Stag

by Kara Barbieri

  Doubt formed a pit in my stomach. I could barely manage the pain while riding. Even now, my flesh burned like it was melting off the bone. When the time came to shoot an arrow or wield my axe, I would barely be able to stand it.

  I needed to survive. I had to survive.

  Even if I survived the Hunt, even if I escaped, I had nowhere to go. The scene from this morning played through my head again as my heart crashed in my chest. The humans didn’t accept me; I tried to run and I failed. I couldn’t even convince other humans that I was on their side.

  There’s something wrong with you. You’re not natural. I cringed. You don’t want to die. The thought was like a punch knocking the breath out of me. No. I didn’t want to die. There was a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach growing ever stronger. I didn’t want to die—I wanted to live. To run, be free, feel the wind in my hair, the exhilaration of the Hunt, and the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Maybe I didn’t know exactly why I wanted to live or what my place in this world would be, but I knew I needed to live as much as the trees needed sun and the earth needed rain.

  But I don’t want to be goblin. And if I didn’t become goblin—if I didn’t accept the cruel ways of this world—then death would be lurking around every corner. Unless I found a way in between.

  The resolve that was as strong as steel right before the Hunt—that I would escape and forbid myself from growing close to my enemies, becoming them—was cracking. If I let down my guard, the memory of Soren’s hand stroking my shoulder and the warmth of his body lulled me into relaxation. The memories of conversations we’d had made my chest fill with laughter. If I tried to reason with myself, all I could think of was the instinct that kept me alive when the men attacked—if death truly was something I’d prefer to living in the Permafrost, then I would’ve taken it when it was offered to me. Soren’s words about monsters bounced around in my head, stinging like hornets because I knew they were true. Despite what I grew up believing, despite what my father taught me, despite the rigid rules by which I had been raised, telling me anything so unnatural was wrong.

  Frustration brewed inside me like a storm. I couldn’t understand. I needed to be alone. I needed to think.

  Unaware of the war going on inside me, Soren and Elvira were debating whether to go for a swim.

  “The water should help wash off the effects of the smoke,” Soren said. “Better to get it out of our clothes too.”

  Elvira’s lip curled. “I’d rather not get wet.”

  “Scared of a little water? It’s barely even running,” Soren taunted.

  “Scared?” she scoffed. “I’d rather not be naked in a river while others are out there hungry for our blood. We also leave trails, you know. Stopping would be foolish.”

  “No,” Soren said. “What would be foolish is trying to cross the Fire Bog after we ran through it. What would be foolish is letting the smoke and debris from it stay on our body and possibly harm us more. The Permafrost heals, but only just.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Rekke butted in, and immediately began stripping off her clothes. Without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped into the lazy river. “Come on! Don’t be so scared!”

  Soren smirked at Elvira as the older she-goblin grumbled under her breath.

  The sight of Soren as he undressed created heat that spread through my body and lingered like a hard ball in the pit of my belly. “I’m going a bit downstream,” I said, forcing my voice to be steady.

  “Awww,” Rekke said. “Janneke’s shy!”

  Elvira snorted as she leaned against the riverbank, her bare, perfect breasts breaking the surface of the water. Envy choked away any retort I had. I might have hated the she-goblin and her beauty might’ve been an illusion, but it was a damn good illusion.

  I caught a flash of Soren’s pale, naked body out of the corner of my eye. His chest was hard with muscle and scar tissue. I forbade myself from looking any lower. “Janneke can bathe wherever she wants to.” Was it me or did he sound amused?

  Fighting off embarrassment, I stalked downstream. If Elvira was right and some goblin was going to slaughter them, at least I’d know by the blood in the water. It was blissfully cool against my burning skin, turning the pain in my arms from agonizing to tolerable. I dove down, relishing the sharp coldness. Before everything, when I was still normal, I used to swim all the time on the fishing docks that were a half hour’s ride from my village. But now, I was among creatures who couldn’t stand the idea of running water, and setting the village record for breath-holding was the least of my concerns when we could literally be killed any time.

  I dove into a deep patch of the river, darkness surrounding me with walls of stone as the current rushed to pull me under. I could live among these people and try to make whatever bonds I had blossom. I could let Soren grow closer to me than he already was, become a true friend to Rekke, hunt the stag, and revel in my own power. Or I could run away. If I ran and managed to live among humans again, then I might have to forsake hunting forever. I would never feel the forest beneath my feet or hear my heart roaring in my ears during a successful hunt. I would never feel the reassuring weight of a taut bowstring or the smooth sides of an axe. If I was goblin enough for men to notice, I might secrete power without realizing it. Any Permafrost creature might be able to find me. Any goblin surely would; my power would mark up the town I settled in like a flare. I didn’t have the desire to be anything but a huntress, a shieldmaiden, but other than death, in the human world my only option would be to leave life as a huntress behind.

  I had lied to myself over and over and over again. Maybe it was time to stop trying to convince myself of things I knew weren’t true. Maybe it was time to start living for me, accepting the feelings I felt, and unshackle the burden of my past.

  By now, my lungs were crying out for air, and I burst onto the surface of the water, gasping. As I cleared the water from my eyes, I found myself almost nose-to-nose with Soren, who was sitting on the riverbank.

  Before I could control myself, I shrieked. “What the Hel do you think you’re doing?” Gods be damned. Can I ever be alone? At least he was clothed. The thought of his naked body sent shivers down my spine in an unfamiliar, but oddly pleasant way. I was not used to that reaction and wanted to squash it.

  He looked unabashed. “Waiting for you to emerge. You can hold your breath for a long time.”

  “How long were you crouching there?” I asked, flustered.

  “At least a minute, maybe two,” Soren said.

  “And you didn’t think, ‘Gee, maybe crouching like this by the riverbank is going to scare the life out of Janneke!’?”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?” he said. “So, where did you learn to hold your breath for so long?”

  At the moment, I was gasping, but it had more to do with Soren attempting to frighten me than the dive. “I used to dive … before.”

  “You must’ve been very good at it,” he said.

  “Yes I—” I froze. Maybe he wasn’t naked, but I was. Humiliation burned through me, and I sank back down until the water came up to my collarbone.

  Soren eyed me like I was being ridiculous. I guess from his perspective, perhaps I was. Considering he and the others had stripped down in front of each other with no hesitation, I doubted nudity bothered goblinkind as much as it bothered me.

  “Do your arms hurt?” he asked.

  I brought them out of the water, careful to keep my chest from being seen. It was stupid, I knew. He’d already seen the mass of scar tissue, the bits of skin that snagged and curled grotesquely where Lydian had dug in his fingernails and sunk his teeth and burned with a white-hot brand, but I couldn’t bear the idea of showing them to the world again.

  “Yes, they hurt,” I said, glaring at the blisters and burned flesh. From the sight of Soren’s smooth, pale skin, he must have already healed. That had to be the single good thing about being a goblin: As long as they weren’t near a swift-moving source of water and were i
nside the boundaries of the Permafrost, the spirit of the landscape healed them.

  “May I see?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t trust me?”

  “Must I answer that, again?” I asked, then sighed. “Fine.” He took one injured arm in his hand and brought it close to his lips. I jerked back. “What are you doing?”

  Soren let out an irritated hiss. “Just wait.” Then, he twisted my arm to the lightly colored underside and brought his lips to the vein in my elbow. As he pressed his teeth to the skin with the slightest of pressure, his humanlike features melted away. His eyes grew slanted and his face became gaunt, the tips of pointed ears peaked out of the cascade of white hair, and the length of his canines grew until they pierced through my arm. I shivered as a chill went through me from my neck all the way to my belly. When he pulled away, the burns on my arm had gone.

  I stared at my now-healed arm. No scars—nothing remained as a reminder of the Fire Bog. The light-brown skin was as smooth as it had been this morning. While I marveled, he took my other arm and did the same.

  When he was done, he sat back and admired his handiwork and looked utterly satisfied with himself.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.

  “We’re all full of surprises,” he replied. “You don’t know everything about me.”

  “You don’t know everything about me either.”

  He chuckled. “I bet I know more than you think.”

  I rolled my eyes. “While this conversation is lovely, some of us need to get out of the water and change. Go back to the others.”

  “Is that an order?” he asked, his voice almost teasing.

  I glowered at him in response. “Go.”

  He stood, brushing the frost-covered dirt off his leggings, and turned away, heading toward a stunted tree in the distance. “Meet me by the lightning-struck tree after you’re dressed. We need to talk.”

  Muttering some choice words under my breath, I slid out of the water and wrung my hair dry, then quickly dressed. The warm woolen wraps felt good against my legs, and the thick furs lining my tunic took the chill from my body. My hair, which I’d taken out of its braids, was plastered against my face and neck, dripping water down the length of my back. I tied it up in a high ponytail, hoping it would keep the worst of the water away.

  Dread rose slowly as I glanced to where Soren went. In a crowd of goblins in the Erlking’s hall, or in his manor’s archery range shooting at corpses, it was easy to be around him. But as soon as the others disappeared, everything changed. Maybe it was the infuriating way he’d tilt his head like a child acting at innocence, maybe it was how what he said needled me into long conversations where we shot words at each other like arrows. I was good at snark and being witty. I was not good at talking.

  So I gathered myself, composed my features into an emotionless mask, and joined Soren by the stunted tree.

  He lounged among the roots as if they were his own personal throne. The ancient tree was blackened by lightning, and its skeleton arms reached up toward the sky. The sun-bleached white roots covered the ground around us, growing over each other and twining together like a mass of snakes. I sat a few feet away from him and waited.

  He turned so his body was facing mine. The animalistic features of his face had returned to their natural, eerie, too-perfect-to-be-human look. “Do you think something is wrong with you, Janneke?”

  I almost choked, the mask I’d composed shattering into a million shards. “Is this some kind of sick joke?” Of course something was wrong with me. I was sitting here next to the world’s most deadly predator, hunting a sacred stag in the middle of the Permafrost, after one hundred years of servitude that should’ve left me dead. I was the epitome of wrongness.

  “I’m serious,” Soren said, and from the glint in his eyes, I believed him.

  “Yes.”

  “Even before you were brought to the Permafrost?”

  I thought about it. Growing up, I watched my sisters get married and have babies, one by one, while I ran wild in the woods and learned to use a bow and axe like they were extensions of myself. When the young men of the village erected courtship poles outside the huts of the girls they admired every midsummer, I ran out to see if one would have my name carved into the side, until one year my father took me aside and told me that would never happen. When stories were told by a brilliant fire in the middle of the long winters, I was forced to sit far at the edge away from the others as if somehow my very presence was tainted. For the longest time, I thought it was just because of the role I played in my family—the seventh daughter raised to be a son in the absence of male offspring. But maybe it was more.

  “Yes,” I finally said.

  “Do you know how old I am?”

  “Is there a point to this?”

  “Just answer the question.” He sighed in frustration.

  “Relatively young, for a goblin in your position,” I said. “Not yet a millennium.”

  “Seven-hundred and sixty-eight.” He paused, his eyebrows furrowing. “I think. It gets a little fuzzy after a while.”

  “And?” Impatience crept into my voice. The sun had almost sunk beyond the horizon, letting the sky bleed crimson red. Soon the temperature would drop, and I didn’t want to be without my bedroll and bearskin cloak when it did. I would’ve frozen to death last night if it weren’t for them. And for Soren. I banished that thought from my head before it could take root and grow.

  “One hundred and eighteen years ago, before I succeeded my father as lord, I was on a hunting mission near the edge of the Permafrost. It was just me, enjoying myself before I had to go back to court and deal with the numerous assassination attempts being thrown my way by various relatives. I was after a snow cat, the biggest thing you ever saw, and I wandered a bit too close to the border between realms.”

  Something about his voice made the hair on the nape of my neck rise, but I forced the unease down and nodded. “Go on.”

  “There was a woman near there with a man, her husband, or so I assume. She was pregnant, though I’d say she easily had two months left at the least. I’m not sure what they were doing so close to the border either. I probably could’ve killed them and added to my hunt. I debated it, but before I could decide anything, she started screaming something awful. The man was trying very hard to keep calm, but I could smell the fear on him.” He paused, waiting to see how I took that.

  My mind felt strangely numb. “And what happened?”

  “To spare you the gory details, she collapsed on the border and gave birth. The current between the realms probably didn’t help the birth; but even so, soon enough a child slid out from between her legs—a girl. It wasn’t crying or, I suppose, breathing, and its body was turning blue.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and waited a minute, his eyes catching mine as the purple reflected the fire in the sky. “They placed the child on the ground so they could hold each other and mourn the dead girl … but as the girl touched the earth, she started to scream louder than I would’ve thought possible.”

  Beads of blood trickled down my skin, and I released my arm from the grip I hadn’t known I was holding. My heart was hammering in my chest, thrumming away like a bat trying to escape a trap, millions of thoughts rushing in my head, all too fast for me to understand them. The numbness that was spreading through my body covered me like a blanket, shielding me from the conclusion that was right in front of me.

  “Three years later, I found myself at the same spot,” Soren continued after a moment. His voice was quiet, as if he thought any loud sounds would scare me away. “And I saw her again, the girl. I’m not sure how I knew it was her, but I did. I’d gotten into a fight with some young lordling my father had sent to kill me and was dragging his body across the border so he would be denied a peaceful afterlife. She was standing there, looking more inquisitive than a toddler had the right to. In all honesty, she looked older. Her
limbs were leaner, her eyes possessed a certain type of cunning. She came up to the dead body and examined the wounds, then looked up at my bloody sword and touched the metal, giggling as her hand was smeared with blood. That’s when I knew this human child had the Permafrost in her blood, and the human world would never satisfy her. Not for long, anyway.”

  I closed my eyes. “Please don’t continue. Please don’t.”

  A soft sigh passed through his lips. “I waited until it was dark, and in my impulsiveness, I tracked her back to her hut. I wasn’t sure what I was planning to do once I had her—again, it was impulse, almost instinct I acted on—but I lifted her from where she lay and was about to leave when the father woke. I could’ve killed him, but if I did, I probably would’ve ended up slaughtering the whole village and I felt like it wasn’t worth the effort, so I listened to him plead. He begged for the child’s life, and though I said I had no intention of killing her, he begged still. We made a deal. I would wait until she became an adult, let her live among the people of her birth, and then I would come and I would take her home.”

  I covered my ears, screaming. “Stop! Just stop! Don’t say anymore! Stop!” My body shook violently, and I dug my nails into my cheeks until they drew blood.

  There was the rustle of boots against the ground, and his strong hands wrapped around my wrists, restraining them so they could cause no harm.

  “Janneke.” His eyes searched my face, and I turned away, squeezing my own shut. No. No. No. He’s lying. He’s lying. No. That never happened. He’s lying. He’s lying. Father wouldn’t—Mother—no. No. The world spun until I couldn’t tell which way was up or down. The sky collapsed inward, crushing everything I knew to be true. The world fell apart in front of me, and I had no way to stop it, only the feeling of grim certainty as my life turned to ashes and scattered in the breeze.

  “Janneke,” he said again, his voice almost a whisper, “it’s all right. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.”