by K. Panikian
He smiled at her gratefully.
They shouldered their packs and Julian picked up the duffel with their weapons safely stowed again. They walked down the path to the dock and climbed into one of the skiffs. They’d leave it with Josephine and she could tell Caleb they’d had to unexpectedly head back to Anchorage, but thanks for the hospitality.
When they got to Iliamna, Josephine waited at the dock with a small paper bag.
“I’ll come along to the pond,” she said, “then take the boat back for you.” She climbed aboard the skiff and Julian motored them to the trail to the portal.
They pulled the boat up onto the rocky beach and then hiked up through the trees. At the pond’s edge, they strapped on their weapons again and gave the empty duffel to Josephine for safe-keeping, along with their cell phones. Josephine watched interestedly as Julian pulled out the fish bone necklace and grabbed Astrid’s hand.
She handed them the paper bag. “Your first meal.” Then she moved away.
They stepped into the green water and, after a few paces, the pond started to glow blue. Julian heard Josephine gasp and glanced back at her. Her eyes were round and her mouth was open. She closed it and waved at them. They took another step forward and then Josephine vanished and they stood on Terra Novum again.
It was almost night, so they climbed out of the pond and set up their tent. They rinsed their muddy clothes in the clear, warm water and Astrid steamed them dry with her air magic again.
The night air felt warm and the long grass beside the pond was soft. Stretching out on his side, his head on his hand, Julian watched Astrid dig interestedly through the paper bag. He heard frogs singing in the pond and the breeze rustling the cattails, knocking them together in a faint, drumming rhythm.
He took a moment to marvel that he was in a parallel world, that he was sitting where no human being had ever sat before, and that he was on a quest to find a dragon. Nothing was ever peaceful in Astrid’s presence, he laughed to himself, and he loved it.
Astrid unpacked some fried chicken sandwiches on what looked like homemade, crusty bread; a couple of pears; and two slices of blueberry pie in little triangle-shaped pastry boxes. Grinning at him, she divvied up the meal.
They ate and talked about what to expect in the coming days. They had no idea how long it would take to reach the dragon’s mountain and only vague directions as their guide.
Astrid knew how to live off the land. She understood the dangerous monsters and animals that made Terra Novum their home. Julian recognized he would have to trust her experience and judgment a lot in the coming days.
“Does it feel weird to be back?” Julian wondered, trying to gauge if she was upset to leave her new life behind, even if it was only temporarily.
Shrugging, Astrid looked at the twilight landscape around them, noting the complete absence of human noises she’d gotten used to in Anchorage. “It’s not weird,” she finally said. “This place still feels like home, even though Earth feels like home now too.”
She lay down in the grass, sighing. “Too bad I can’t go back and forth whenever I want.” She smiled over at Julian. “And it feels good to be doing something important again.”
Nodding, Julian agreed with that assessment. He was excited too.
Laying in the grass beside her, exhausted, full, and content, he watched the stars begin to glimmer in the darkening sky above. They had a long journey ahead of them, but as he looked over at Astrid relaxing beside him, her fingers twined with his, he knew there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
Chapter 16
Lord Abaddon paced through the dark, damp tunnel under the mountain. Behind him, a sniveling besy followed, afraid. Abaddon was not afraid. She was chained and caught. She’d been his prisoner for a year now and showed no signs of trying to escape, despite the pain he put her through regularly.
The tunnel continued to slope down and his hooves clicked along the stone floor. Ahead, he saw a dim light and knew he’d reached the prisoner cells. They were not his destination that day though, so he ignored the stench of human waste and the distant whimpers in the gray gloom.
On the other side, the tunnel dropped again until finally opening into a large cavern. Hundreds of slick stalactites hung down from the high ceiling like dirty icicles. Chained in the center of the cavern, her wings shredded and weeping blood, lay the dragon.
She breathed stertorously, her sides heaving and relaxing, her dark green scales catching the shimmering lights of glowworms that lined the cavern walls. Huge, she stretched the length of the open space and her scaled body loomed taller than his horns.
Her tail had been the first to go and the wound on her back had long since closed over. Her hind legs curled under her body, the claws pulled out. She cradled a small, limp, pale green body in her short forearms.
Her three necks and three heads twined together in a tight knot. Each neck bore a studded collar and the scales underneath appeared broken and bloody.
Inspecting her, Abaddon noted her prominent ribs and the sickly yellow color near her mouths and nostrils. She wouldn’t last much longer. Still, he’d made good use of her over the past year, her and her babies.
He had a new crop of besy coming up to the mountain from the southwest, his scouts reported. If enough of them survived the transformation, he would decide whether or not he was ready to march.
And in which direction to march. He still held out hope that Chernobog’s promise of a gate to the magic-less world would come true. But if it did not, he had a surprise for the sneaking humans holed up in their citadel. They thought their ability to create Greek fire protected them. Well, they would see.
He had a plan and, this time, his plan wouldn’t fail.
Part II
Chapter 17
Waking up, one week into our journey westward to the smoking mountain, I felt sore all over. I’d grown used to soft beds and take-out food. The long days of hiking, carrying my heavy pack, plus hunting and foraging as we walked, were taking their toll. I knew I was losing weight that I didn’t need to lose. Last night at dinner, I saw Julian scooping some of our secret M&M stash from his bowl into mine. As if I wouldn’t notice? Still, it was sweet. And I ate them.
Groaning, I stretched in our tent, reaching my arms high above my head and pointing my toes. Julian mumbled next to me, and then rolled over, snoring still. I smiled to myself. I had learned in the past week that Julian was not a morning person.
I sat up and pulled on my pants and socks, then my hiking shoes, and quietly unzipped the tent. I paused there, my hand on my knife, for a long minute. I’d startled a lone wolf just a few mornings ago, unzipping the tent as it nosed our cold campfire. I’d frightened it and myself, and I was not in a hurry to repeat the experience.
Nothing moved near the campsite this morning, so I stepped out of the tent and zipped it behind me. The early morning air felt cool as the grass wet my boots with dew. Pearly blue, the sky arched over the uninhabited landscape around me.
Walking to last night’s campfire, I dug a stick deep in the ashes and cinders before I found a warm spot. I swirled my air magic around it, blowing, and carefully fed it some dry grass. The coals slowly got hotter and hotter until the grass sparked into a flame. I quickly fed it more grass, then some dried animal dung collected the day before.
Soon, I had a nice fire blazing. Setting up the metal, folding tripod, I hung the kettle to boil water for tea. Then I brushed my teeth and spat my baking soda toothpaste into the grass, toeing over it with dirt when I finished.
Grabbing our steel mugs, clean and dry upside-down by the fire, I dropped in two teabags. After pouring the boiling water, I fished some beef jerky from our bear-proof food container. I munched the jerky and blew on my tea, then scratched the tent walls to wake Julian.
I heard a muffled groan from inside and then the zipper came down, revealing a wildly bearded and sleepy-eyed Julian. My heart stuttered. That beard.
Picking up his tea mug, I brought it ove
r. Julian sat up in our half-unzipped tent and took a big swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Thanks,” he muttered when he’d finished it all and I handed him the container of jerky next. He made a face but picked out a piece.
I refilled the kettle from the creek that churned and gurgled a hundred yards or so from our campsite. Early morning birds trilled in the bushes by the stream. I set the kettle to boil again so we’d have water to drink as we hiked that day.
Emerging from the tent, Julian pulled out our sleeping bags. He draped them across a tall shrub to air them out a little before we packed them up again, then he collapsed and packed the tent.
He came over to the fire, where I waited for the teapot to cool before pouring the sterilized water into our canteens. Wrapping his arm across my shoulders, he kissed my forehead. I leaned into his hard body. We stared across the steppe, looking west. There was still no sign of a smoking mountain or a dragon.
I sighed.
Julian smacked my behind lightly as he moved away. “Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder as he walked down to the creek to wash up. I stuck my tongue out at his back.
We finished packing up our campsite, rolling the sleeping bags tightly and dumping creek water on the campfire ashes. Then shouldering our packs, we headed west.
Julian had a compass that we referred to occasionally. For the most part though, it was sufficient to pick out a western landmark first thing in the morning, like a tall hill, or an oddly-shaped boulder or crag, and then walk toward it all day. When we reached it, we’d find another landscape marker to the west to walk toward next.
We left cairns as we walked, too, marking our path back home again carefully.
As we hiked, we scanned the tall grasses and plants at our feet for edible items, like berries, bulbs, and mushrooms. Sometimes we found whole patches of wild strawberries, their bright green leaves calling us like beacons by streams and on hillsides, and we’d sit for a while until we ate everything within reach—each berry was only the size of a pea, but with a bursting sweetness.
We cooked the bulbs and mushrooms we scrounged at night, and sometimes we had nuts or wild onions to add to the meal.
Mostly though, we ate meat. I carried my bow and arrow at the ready as we walked and when we flushed a partridge or a rabbit from the tall grasses and bushes, I killed it. Julian got good at skinning fur and plucking feathers.
We left the larger game alone, like deer, and the bigger predators, like fox and wolves—we couldn’t take the time to jerk or smoke the extra meat. We needed to keep moving.
Sometimes we found nests with eggs, too, and that was my favorite thing to save for breakfast the next morning. I’d collect some hot ashes in our cooking pot and bury the eggs deep inside. The eggs slowly cooked overnight and in the morning, we dug them out and peeled them, sprinkling on only a little salt. We passed natural salt beds almost every day, so I didn’t worry about running low on that supply.
It was hard work, to hike for miles and feed ourselves at the same time, but we made it farther west every day.
At first Julian had been pretty excited when he realized we must be crossing a North American/Russian land bridge. Such a thing hadn’t existed in his world for the last 10,000 years, since the last ice sheets receded and the sea levels rose, he explained.
The dry, grassy steppe around us was dotted with shallow lakes and streams and small copses of spruce and willow shrubs.
We saw giant wooly mammoths a few times, always at a distance, and once, a woolly rhinoceros. There were no signs that people had ever come this way before.
The days were long—it was the height of summer and the air felt dry. We usually stopped to set up our camp long before it actually got dark outside.
Our feet shushed through the long grasses and scraped across lichen fields. And still, we saw no sign of a smoking mountain.
Skirting a stream, I saw Julian eyeing it as we walked and finally put away my bow. I had a feeling we’d be eating fish for dinner.
Eventually, the stream widened and roughened, turning into a river. Its whitewater rolled over and around gray rocks and gushed through the sedge-brown and green landscape. It curved across our westward path as we stopped at its edge.
We had two choices. We could backtrack about an hour to where the river was much narrower and calmer and cross it there, or we could cross it here.
I raised my eyebrows at Julian. “It doesn’t look that deep. It’s moving fast, but probably no higher than our waists.”
Sighing, he replied, “I know, I hate to lose the time, but I think we should be safe. If one of us gets hurt, it’s a long way back to civilization.”
I sighed, too, and nodded.
We followed the river back as it curved through the landscape and eventually stopped, deciding on a crossing that looked calm enough. The river was still wide, but much slower-moving, without any white peaks in the ripples. I saw a gravel and sand bar about halfway across.
I took off my pants and tied them to my pack, but kept on my hiking shoes. I didn’t want to risk stepping on any sharp rocks. Julian did the same and we waded into the icy cold, frothing water.
After a few paces, my toes went numb. The water slowly climbed up my legs as I carefully stepped, making sure the gravel under my feet felt firm. My pack made my balance a little unsteady and I didn’t want to lose my footing and go down. I didn’t think I’d get swept away, but everything in my pack would get soaked, including my sleeping bag.
On the other side, we took off our wet shoes and socks and I steamed them dry with a sustained gust of magical hot air.
Then orienting to our landmark, we turned to the west again and started hiking.
THAT night, after we ate the carp that Julian caught earlier, I sprawled by the fire. Stretching my legs out and arching forward, I tried to relax my tight back and shoulder muscles. Julian saw my grimaces and pulled me to my feet. He showed me some different stretching moves, calling them “yoga,” and I felt better. His hands on my body, bending me, sent my pulse racing.
We sat again and this time, he pulled me into the space in between his spread legs and I leaned against his chest. In the week since we talked about starting over, we’d been taking it slow. There had been a few sweet kisses here and there, and definitely some lingering looks, but I was in no hurry to push for more. It was enough to be near him.
Julian’s chest rumbled against my back as he talked about surfing and other stuff he did for fun in California. He rubbed my shoulders with his strong fingers, and I absently stroked my hands along his thighs and asked questions.
After a little while, Julian fell silent and we gazed at the sparks shooting up from our fire into the purple- and pink-streaked twilight sky.
THE next day was more of the same—more walking, more foraging, and more creeks to ford. In the early afternoon, with the sun at its peak, I called a break beside a clear, shallow pond. I gathered cattails on the bank, cutting them down to the young shoots and fresh roots barely under the dirt. We could grill them up later over the fire and they’d taste like asparagus.
My back ran with sweat when I took off my pack to grab my steel folding knife. Removing my shoes and socks next, I stepped into the pond. The mud squelched and the water felt refreshingly cool on my hot feet. I looked speculatively at the water and then turned to Julian. “Want to swim?”
He’d been standing guard, pack at his feet and hand on his sword as he scanned the landscape around us. At my question he focused on me. “Is it safe?”
“The pond is too shallow for a bes,” I said, “and we can see for miles in every direction. I don’t see any of your ‘megafauna.’” I used his special term for the animals we’d been seeing.
Julian grinned at me. “Okay.”
I stepped out of the pond again and stripped, feeling my skin heat in a blush. Peeking under my eyes, I saw Julian’s bare body gleaming next to me. His powerful thighs were firm and as he moved forward into the pond, I sta
red at his muscled butt, flexing in the sunlight. Exhaling shakily, I grabbed the biodegradable soap from my pack and followed him in.
The shallow water felt warm. A few yards in front of me, Julian stretched and then dove under the surface. He stroked across the pond, splashing and kicking up sparkling droplets. I smiled and crouched, ducking my head. Then I scrubbed my hair and my body, dipping to rinse and then scrubbing again. It felt blissful to be clean.
When I was done, I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked around for Julian. I saw him standing a few feet away, watching me. I flushed again and tossed him the soap. He snagged it out of the air and squirted some onto his hands, then raised his arms to run his fingers through his wet hair. His biceps glistened as he kept his heated eyes on mine.
I shivered and then dove under the water, trying to cool my feverish skin. I swam for a bit and then flipped over, floating on my back. The sky above was cloudless and vibrantly blue.
A hand grasped my ankle and I gasped, briefly submerging my head. I came up snorting water and Julian laughed at me, holding my foot still.
“Sorry,” he said, chuckling. “I called your name a few times before I grabbed you.”
He dropped my foot and we knelt in the shallow water, facing each other. I wiped the water out of my eyes.
I felt restless under his intense gaze, my heart pounding and my insides quivering. I swallowed and his eyes dropped from my face, looking lower.
We reached for each other in the same moment. Julian grasped my cheeks with his firm fingers and I wrapped my arms around his neck. Bending his head, he crushed his lips to mine. He kissed me hungrily, his fingers stroking back through my hair and then down to my neck. I opened my mouth to him and jumped up, wrapping my legs around his waist. His beard scraped my skin and I gasped.
