White Stag

by Kara Barbieri

  “That’s only because you think about it too much.” The voices might’ve been strangers, but the conversation was eerily like the one I’d had with Soren hours ago, and a small ball of nerves was hardening in my gut. “If you don’t tell the truth…”

  “I can’t!” the other voice shouted, its words echoing across the walls, surrounding me.

  Bones and scales crunched under my feet as I wove through the small passages. The walls shone like oil spots, a dark rainbow against the shining moss. A human skeleton was on its knees with hands outreached. I shuddered as I passed by. It looked like it was begging for mercy.

  “Don’t complain then if you don’t feel right. It’s your own fault.”

  I kept an arrow notched, but there was no one to shoot at. The voices came from everywhere and nowhere, carried by the cold tunnel winds.

  “You know the thing they say about goblins, right?” the voice asked. “We can’t lie to ourselves.”

  A growl shut out the voices and resonated deep within my bones. I clutched my bow, keeping the arrow aimed at wherever the sound appeared next. There was a lump in my throat, and it was growing bigger by the minute. Unsteady hands shook the bow, making it impossible to aim.

  A shadow stood before me, long, lean, and goblin-like. Faceless and nameless, it was a stranger, but I couldn’t shake the growing feeling that I knew it. It came forward toward me as if it could hear the sound of my heart racing. My blood froze as I aimed at the creature, the arrow shaking against the bowstring. Cornered, trapped, and with nowhere to hide, sweat dripped down my face and my eyes darted around wildly.

  The shadow reached out to my cheek with long, delicate fingers dripping with darkness and blood. I closed my eyes at the faint feeling of a hand brushing against my cheek.

  “Maybe,” the voice agreed with the first. “But I can try.”

  With a hiss, the shadow-creature vanished, spluttering out in short, staccato bursts.

  I stood there too stunned to move as the fear dwindled until all that was left was the hard lump in my throat. These are just mind games. Svartelves were known for playing with people’s minds, driving them mad with their tricks and visions.

  You seek knowledge. The phantom voice spoke in my head, and I shivered at the intrusion, my body going cold all the way to the core. Choose wisely. The sound of a child at play floated from behind me, and the shadows swirled and merged together until they covered the dark passages of the cavern and exploded into light.

  I stood, staring into the distance. The harsh light burned, and I held a hand up to shield my vision. It was brighter than fire, brighter than the sun glinting off the snow, and the light called to me. The soft, motherly voice spoke my name as I drew closer, and wind whirled around me as I stepped into the light.

  There was no more darkness, no more dripping of red water onto stones, no more shadows flitting around, or voices muttering cryptic warnings. The field of wheat shimmered in the wind like an ocean of amber, and the smell of warmth and springtime brought long-buried memories back from the dead.

  And the sun, oh the sun. It hung in the sky unmuted, sending rays of warmth down onto me. I tilted back my head, soaking up every last drop.

  “I knew you’d never change.”

  My arrow was ready to go before I even turned, but the man in front of me smiled as he waited until I was over my shock. I stared, unable to believe my eyes. Crow’s feet webbed around the man’s brown eyes, and his shaggy hair was the color of night and was wound in curls so much like my own. His bushy beard was a few shades darker than the rest of him. Like me, his dark, tawny skin blended in with the amber field.

  Unable to take my eyes off the man before me, I drank in his features. Whoever this was, whatever this was, it was in the form of my father. The man who raised me, trusted me, and made me his heir. The man I failed. I choked back my tears.

  “When you were born,” he said, “it was the happiest day of my life. Not just that you survived, but that I finally had a child who was like me, and who was an heir. It was such a little thing, but out of all my children, it was you who was closest to my heart.”

  “Father,” I whispered. “Is it really you?”

  The man smiled at me. “You’ve been so brave. My beautiful child, my lastborn.”

  Weapons forgotten on the ground, I raced into his arms. This was my father. My father. Whether he was an illusion or flesh and blood, I didn’t fight his embrace. The scent of wood musk and smoke came off him just like it had when he was alive. I breathed deeply, hoping the scent would still linger with me when he disappeared.

  A hand touched my face. “I knew you’d never change. You always loved the sunlight on your face.”

  I looked up at him, afraid to see disappointment in his eyes. I had changed. He must know that. He’d lived for seventeen years with the burden that his child would be as good as goblin-born one day. He knew everything.

  “There’s sun in the Permafrost, but not like this. It’s not warm. I missed the human sun,” I said. “I missed you too.”

  There was a long, quiet moment. My father rested a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it lightly, before he spoke again. “There is a way to return.” His breath tickled my ear. “If you would have it.”

  My heart leapt in my throat. “What? How? What can I do?”

  He smiled, the crow’s feet by his eyes crinkling. “I knew you would want to return.” He let go and dug his hand in the satchel hanging on his waist. Resting in his palm was a tiny iron knife.

  I took a step back. “What … what are you doing?”

  “Don’t you want to be with us? With your family? After a hundred years among them, don’t you miss us?” I flinched at the coldness in his words.

  It took me a minute to find my voice. “Of course I miss you! I think about you every day!”

  He thrust the knife toward me, and I stepped back. “Did you? Or were you too busy becoming part goblin to notice?”

  The warmth drained from my body. “You can’t speak,” I said. “When were you going to tell me I was born on the border of the worlds? When were you going to let me know a goblin would take me away once I turned eighteen?”

  My father spat, “I would’ve expected you to weasel your way out of it like you did with everything else.”

  “You lied to me,” I shouted. “Maybe not by words themselves, but by omission! You knew what would happen to me and fed poison in my ear!”

  He narrowed his eyes. “And all that poison still couldn’t stop you from becoming a goblin’s lapdog. But you have a chance to redeem yourself now.”

  My fingers curled into fists. “I am not Soren’s lapdog. I am my own person and I make my own choices, and I don’t need redemption from you.”

  His face turned dark at my words, and he gestured wildly around him. “You’re corrupted, then. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember walking in the ashes? This is what he did! All of it! This is what he and his kind do!”

  “And are we any better?” The burning inside of my reached its peak. “We raid and steal and capture! Why is it okay for us and not for them?”

  “They’re monsters, Janneke. You should know that by now, after all they’ve done.”

  One by one, the dead appeared beside him. My six beautiful sisters with their faces marred and bodies scarred, my mother who bled from a wound in her breast, three children with crushed-in skulls, a man almost ripped in half, a woman whose scalp hung from her head. They stood there in silence, but the anger in their eyes spoke for them.

  I stared back at them calmly, meeting each and every one of their gazes. They could blame me for their deaths and call me a traitor for surviving under Soren. They could replay the horrors they’d gone through over and over until every image was engraved in my brain. They could remind me of Lydian pounding away inside my body, tearing chunks of flesh out of my breast until it was so full of infection it had to be removed.

  They could do all those things, but they could not make me feel asha
med.

  It’s a wonderful thing. Donnar’s voice rode on the wind. Being able to choose. It’s a wonderful thing to know and not have that knowledge destroy you. It’s a terrible burden to bear alone. I don’t envy you, child.

  I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders, staring my father directly in the eye. “It wasn’t Soren’s fault the village was raided. It wasn’t Soren’s fault that I am who I am. And it’s not my fault either. If you really were my father, you wouldn’t try to guilt me into admitting it.”

  The man before me laughed bitterly. “You think this is an illusion? I am your father. You are my daughter.” His laughter died, and a tear slid down his face. “You were my pride and joy, my little shadow, my Janneke. You can still be that. You can be here, with me and your sisters and mother and those who love you for eternity. You could escape from those monsters, who poison your mind day and night. Who make you believe they care.”

  My gaze was steely, but inside, my heart was breaking. This was my family, whom I’d mourned and missed and prayed for each night. Yet when I looked at them all, their faces were full of contempt, of pent-up anger and jealousy and mistrust. If you really were my father, you wouldn’t try to guilt me into admitting it. This man twisted in rage wasn’t the father who raised me. The hate he spoke, which he tried to instill in me so many years ago, that was real and true and powerful, but it was something I could understand because I knew now how much it was mixed with his fear for me. But even at my father’s worst, he would never ask me to take my own life. My family would never blame me for their fate. These things before me … whatever they were, they weren’t them.

  Promise me you’ll never hurt yourself. I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt. It was as if he were right next to me, whispering in my ear. Did I do something wrong? I thought touch was how humans established bonds of trust? That infuriating smirk that he saved just for me. Is it normal for your kind to do that? Does your kind normally have that really cute nose crinkle when they make certain facial expressions, especially ones of humor or anger? Maddening, self-centered, arrogant, vain, passionate, protective, concerned, playful, teasing: all the things Soren was. And maybe he was a monster too. But if he was, then so was I.

  My father turned the small knife over and over in his hand, the iron barely tainting his flesh. Even with the antler bone grip, just holding it would be agony. I bit my lip, the scars across my body burning.

  “Why won’t you let me die?” I asked the she-goblin hovering over me. In the dark room it was hard to tell if her hair was naturally red or if it was just my blood. There was so much blood.

  The she-goblin huffed. “If it were up to me, I would. But it isn’t up to me. I’m just following orders.” She plunged another needle deep into my arm until I was silent.

  The man that replaced her had white hair that hung just past his hips. His eyes burned into me from a chair across the room as I feigned sleep. If I woke, something terrible would follow. I knew it in my bones. But I was past the point of death; the infection in my body was no more and the deadly fever had broken.

  “I know you’re not asleep,” the man said. “I want you to know you’re safe here. I protect my own.”

  My father continued, “It will be over quickly. And then you’ll be free. You’ll never be a monster.”

  I looked past him at the sun spilling across the wheat, turning it to waves of amber. When I spoke, it was almost as if it were the voice of a stranger. “And what exactly is a monster, Father?”

  My father took me into his embrace. “A monster,” he whispered in my ear, “is anything that is not us.”

  He released me, then cradled the blade in his hands and offered it to me hilt-first. Taking a deep breath, I gripped the bone and waited for the pain. The ironwork didn’t even sting—or if it did, it was nothing compared to the agony inside me.

  I admired the designs carved into the blade and the way the hilt was shaped like a ram’s horn. It was a shame that something this beautiful could be so tainted. “There are monsters in this world.”

  My father sounded pleased. “Go on. Make the right choice.”

  “I loved you all so much,” I whispered. Then, before fear stilled my hand, I shoved the knife between my father’s ribs, through his sternum, and into his heart. “But you are not my father.”

  He gasped, eyes widened with shock as he fell to his knees. Blood spurted from around the knife. He scratched at his chest with his hands until he ripped the blade out, but all that did was quicken the spill of blood. He screamed one word over and over.

  His body shuddered and convulsed. His eyes rolled back into his head as his mouth stayed open with a silent accusation. His body shimmered, morphing until it no longer looked like my father but like a faint echo of myself, before dissipating in the wind. Tears dripped from my cheeks. “Yes, I am a monster.” I pity the fool who can’t remember that. “But so is everyone else.”

  With those words, the world exploded into whiteness. As my vision faded, I swore it took the shape of the stag.

  11

  TO FEEL

  WHEN MY EYES opened again, I was back on the cold ground of the black ice caverns. Vines lay in a pile around me, and I coughed as dust and cobwebs stirred up in the air.

  My mind reeled. The bruising from the fight on the mountainside and subsequent fall was now an ugly yellow instead of hideous purple, and pale scabs had begun to cover where my wounds were. My brow furrowed at the sight. The wounds looked a few days old instead of a few hours.

  I glanced at my hands, half expecting them to be coated with my father’s blood, but there wasn’t even the burn of iron on my fingertips. Bile rose in my throat. It’d all been so real.

  “I do not envy you, child.” Donnar approached from the darkness, his tail swishing up the dust.

  “What … what happened?” I coughed. The dust and cobwebs stirring in the air didn’t help my already parched throat.

  “You simply made your choice,” he said. “And though winter law dictates I be impartial in the wars to come, I must say I believe you chose well.”

  My bow and quiver lay against one of the rocks. I scooped them up, the familiarity of the bow against my back easing my anxiety.

  “Was it real then? All of it?”

  Donnar frowned. “When faced with a choice between what has been and what will be, either option is as real as the other. You chose your future over your past, though the decision took quite some time.” I blinked in confusion. It couldn’t have been an hour since Donnar kissed my forehead. Donnar smiled at me sympathetically. “A few days, dear, nothing drastic.”

  A few days could be a lifetime on the Hunt. I shivered. Soren could be dead; he could think I was dead. He saw me fall down the cavern with Elvira, I was certain of that. All that time I was in my limbo, he was alone and ally-less, if not dead. Soren is strong. I tried to convince myself. He can survive without help.

  “He’s down here,” Donnar interrupted my thoughts. “Your goblin. I can tell. He smells like another who came before; they must’ve been related.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Donnar shrugged. “It was a long, long time ago. Some seek more knowledge than they can bear. They usually do not last long. I wouldn’t concern yourself with such things. Either way, you will find who you are looking for down here.”

  He began to turn away, but as he did, something he said stuck out. “What do you mean, ‘the wars to come’?”

  Donnar met my eyes. “For thousands upon thousands of years, you have sat beside your throne, firmly rooted into the earth. After thousands upon thousands of years, the roots are devoured and torn away. A thousand wars have been fought for you, thousands of deaths offered to you. Each time you have been ripped from the earth, and each time you regrow stronger than before. One day your roots will spread across the worlds, and when they do, they will be all that is there to anchor it in place. As I said, I do not envy you.”

  “I was hoping for something a li
ttle less cryptic,” I said, my voice quivering at Donnar’s warning. Gooseflesh rose on my arms, and I rubbed it away.

  “I must go now, child,” the svartelf said. “Don’t linger in this place; it is not for your kind.”

  “Wait!” I called. “You must be able to tell me something else.”

  The svartelf’s soulless eyes stared into mine. “By the new moon’s time, all will come undone. Now go.” The words came with a powerful wind, blinding me and pushing me to the ground. When I stood, the svartelf was gone.

  I muttered some choice words under my breath. Frustration bloomed inside of me, bursting like an ugly sore. Of course the svartelf wasn’t going to give me a straight answer. Still, for all the dire warnings mixed in with riddles and nonsense words, I had the unshakable feeling that everything that had happened to me in the dreamland limbo was real. And the warning he gave me before he disappeared—if it was one at all—chilled me to the bone.

  I stood and started through the cavern. I’d made my choice, and now it was time to live with it. The passages around the svartelves’ caverns wound and twisted deeper into the earth until there was only me and the dark silence, not even the trickle of water or the crunching of bones underneath my feet. The sides of the caves glittered with iridescent stones, enthralling in their beauty. In some places bits of the regular wall had been worn away with what looked like a miner’s chisel. But none of the stones were missing. Perhaps a miner had come down here years ago to take the jewels and ended up losing his sanity. Perhaps his corpse was still down here.

  Perhaps the corpse of Soren’s relative was down here somewhere, undisturbed and unseen. I would have to ask Soren after if he knew of any family member who perished in these caverns—that was, if there was an “after.”

  Donnar was right about one thing: A war was coming. On one side there was me, and on the other, Lydian. My blood was hot with the desire for revenge, and I pictured myself standing over him, the axe hanging over my head gone forever. One thing was certain: Lydian and Soren were the ones who split the marble floor. If one of them became the Erlking, the other would not be allowed to live. If Lydian survived, Soren was done for and I was as good as damned for eternity. Even after the Hunt ended, even if we all survived unscathed, I would never be safe until Lydian was dead.