by Mary Twomey
Nik held his nose up in the air and stretched his long legs around the obstacle. He didn’t even care that there had only been room for the balls of his feet on the ledge.
I cared. My palms were sweaty, and I wondered how to delicately tell them that I was afraid of heights. And falling off them. I didn’t want them to think all humans were wusses, but I mean, seriously, climbing the rope in gym class was more than I could handle. I’d never been this high off the ground in nature. Never. Asking me to tiptoe on the edge was beyond my current capabilities.
I really felt like a dunce when Tor managed the feat. He had help from Foss, who held his sleeve from behind until Nik grabbed onto Tor on the other side. Not foolproof, but it worked.
Britta was like a friggin’ ballerina twisting around the wide obstacle with her long legs.
“Go on,” urged Jens from behind me.
“Um, I’m okay.” My voice came out pinched and higher than I would’ve liked. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.” I cringed that he’d gotten me to talk.
“Nice try. It’s easy, Loos. Just walk on your toes and lean toward the mountain.”
“Really?” I snapped. “Is that all? Now do I walk one foot in front of the other?”
“That’s how the cool kids do it. Come on.”
“Don’t rush me!” I looked at the narrow space and did my best to keep my racing heart inaudible.
“Useless females!” Foss growled.
Jens threw out his hands. “Don’t rush you? Sure, take all the time in the world. We don’t have a possible army after us. You’ve been chased out of town by the king before, right? Maybe you can toss your blonde hair and do one of your flirty laughs to distract him.”
“Shut up!” I shouted, the panic gripping me by the throat. “I… I… I can’t do this!”
Foss did not bother hiding his frustration. “Just throw the rat on your back and have done with it. Come on!”
Nik came back across the ledge and backed me into the side of the mountain before I fell over to my death from a panic attack. He put his hands on either side of my head and looked me dead in the eye. His gaze was so intense out of nowhere that my fear shifted to confusion. “Miss Lucy,” he breathed, a calm smile lighting his features. I sucked in my stomach as he boxed me in with his body.
Then Nik did something that was so surprising, I could only gawk at him with my mouth hanging wide open like a guppy. Instead of speaking his instructions to me, he sang. A low, melodious voice that was meant for beauty floated around me in a dizzying improvised tune. I felt Jens stiffen to my right, but paid him no mind.
Nik sang, “We’re crossing over to the other side of the rock now. You won’t be afraid, and you’ll follow me wherever I lead.”
Then he leaned into me, still maintaining eye contact as if he was trying to enchant me with his ocean-colored orbs. He breathed heavy in my face, and then placed my hands on his waist.
“Uh, Jens?” I broke Nik’s intense gaze and turned to the fuming man beside me. “I think your friend up and lost his mind. You want to deal with this?”
Jens spoke through his teeth as he snarled at Nik. “Look, Nøkken, we have to be able to trust each other on this trip. That won’t happen if you try mesmerizing her. Or any of us, for that matter.”
Nik released me and stepped back, puzzled. “Why isn’t it working? Have you trained her to resist us? That takes years.”
Revelation dawned on me. “Oh! I’m sorry, were you trying to mind control me? I forgot about that part of your people. Go ahead. I’m ready. Mind control me into not being afraid of heights.”
“Don’t you dare,” Jens sneered.
I palmed Jens’s face to silence him.
He responded by licking my hand.
“Aw, gross! Sick, Jens.” I wiped my hand off on my jeans and tossed my hair over my shoulders, readying myself for Nik’s mojo. “Go ahead, Nik.” I let out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t realize that’s what you were trying to do. Kinda freaked me out, singing like that. Thought you needed a head check.”
Nik frowned. “Well, if it didn’t work before, it won’t now. Why isn’t it working? I thought humans were easily suggestible.”
I kept my voice a sugary brand of pleasant. “Huh. And see, I thought Nøkken were arrogant, racist fools. I guess we were both wrong to think an entire race could be reduced to a stereotype.” I gave him a superior look as I tried to reassemble my bearings. I did not often have men singing in my face and looking at me like… well, like that.
Nik had the grace to look ashamed. “A thousand apologies, Miss Lucy.”
“Just the one’s all I need,” I replied with a small smile.
“Really?” Jens did not mask his irritation. “Get back over there, Nik. You don’t know the first thing about humans, or Lucy. I’ve got this.”
I hated that he treated me like I needed to be handled. I geared up to yell at him, but he held up his finger to silence me.
“Do you want to look weak in front of everyone? Do you want Foss to win?”
“I… no.”
“Then you will do this.” He grabbed my hand and led me to the blockade. “I’ll hold your hand on this end, and Nik can grab you from that side. If you slip, one of us’ll catch you.” I’m sure my sorry puppy expression was visible, because Jens gave me more of the “man up” speech until I could take no more. I wanted to cross to the other side just to get some space from him.
I stepped forward and stretched my arm around the blockade. “Nik? Nik, I can’t reach you.” I closed my eyes and felt Jens grab onto my other hand. I wanted to bat it away, but decided death was worse than holding his hand for a whole minute. My feet shuffled around to the precipice and inched forward.
Jens huffed. “Loos, you’re not moving.”
“Yes, I am!”
“Are your eyes closed?”
“Of course!” I wanted to vomit, but luckily my stomach was empty.
“Open your eyes! What are you thinking?”
Foss opened his mouth to complain in his brusque way. “Just stick your rat in a cave or something, Jens. We’ll come back for her once we’ve destroyed the other portals.”
My eyes flew open and found Jens’s emerald ones in the moonlight. “I don’t like this!” I choked out, determined not to break down in tears as I balanced on the edge of the cliff. “I want to go home!” Yes, I know I sounded childish, but I didn’t care. You try balancing on a mountain’s edge with your butt hanging over the side and see how you like it.
“Are all humans this useless?” Foss questioned.
Jens softened, my fear bringing out a slice of his lurking humanity. “Hey, it’s okay. Um, do you remember that awful restaurant in Idaho? The one with the menus shaped like cowboy hats?”
“Huh?”
“You and Linus got food poisoning from the chili cheese fries and spent the whole night taking turns barfing in the bathroom. You couldn’t eat anything after that for days.”
“I remember. Great, irrelevant story, Jens. I’m kinda hanging off a mountain here!”
Jens glanced around as if he wished he did not have to speak about this with so many witnesses. “I stayed with you that night and all the next day. You were delirious and I was invisible, so I took my chances and held your hand until your fever broke. I didn’t let go until you were ready, and I won’t this time. I’ve got you.”
I stared into his impassioned eyes and saw in there years of commitment to my family that had not faded. “Please don’t let me die on this mountain.”
“Never,” he promised solemnly. “I plan on your death being something involving a go-kart, a few dozen clowns and cheez-whiz.”
“I don’t want death by cheez-whiz!” I squeezed his fingers. “And don’t be funny! I’m freaking out!”
He smiled as if we were old friends shooting the breeze. “Reach for Nik. Can you feel him yet?”
I stretched toward my goal and gasped. “Nik! Is that your hand?”
Nik’s v
oice came back to me further away than I would’ve liked. “Yes! You’re doing great. Keep moving.”
I obeyed as fast as I could, but it was still a snail’s pace. Jens tried to let go of me, but I panicked at the thought. “Don’t you let go, Jens! I’m not ready.”
He responded by clutching my fingers tighter and nodding. His voice was quiet, and spoke peace into my fear. “You have to trust me to know when it’s time to let go.”
I heard Foss say in exasperation, “This is exactly why I didn’t want any women on the journey. They can’t handle the mountains.”
Oh, I wanted to kick his seven-foot-tall mountain climbing butt. “Do you think my wingspan’s as big as yours? Shut your smackhole, Foss!”
“Drop her off the mountain!” Foss commanded. “Talking to a Fossegrimen chief like that.”
Jens shook his head to dismiss Foss’s grumping. “Don’t worry, Loos. Just focus on moving your feet.”
I begged Jens with my eyes not to leave me. I knew my mouth would never cooperate and admit that I needed him.
He nodded, as if he knew what I would never say and completely understood.
Nik’s voice tried to soothe me from the other side. “Just a few more steps. You’re almost there.”
“Now, Nik!” Jens commanded as he let go of my hand.
Before I could give in to the terror, Nik gently reeled me over to his side until I’d cleared the avalanche. I was lowered to the ground to quell my shaking as Britta and Nik got in my face and began speaking in soothing tones at a rapid pace. “She’s white as a sheet,” Britta fretted, mopping the sweat off my brow with her apron. “You poor thing. This is more than you bargained for, isn’t it.”
I nodded as my chest heaved from relief and extreme dread at what I’d just done. Before I knew it, I was being hefted to my feet and wrapped in a warm hug. The smell of Jens was familiar and comforting. In the back of my brain it registered that he had spent half a decade with my family, so it made sense he smelled familiar, but in that moment, I clung to him and inhaled the soothing balm. I sucked him into my lungs and let him fill me with his strength and peace. His hand palmed the back of my head and gripped my hair, pulling at the roots.
“I did it!” I cackled madly at the success and brush with my greatest fear. “Did you see me? I was a ninja!”
Jens leaned back and beamed at me, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of how scared he actually was for my safety. “Next stop, trapeze artist.”
“No way. Not now that I know you plan to off me at a carnival with all those clowns.” We laughed in each other’s arms.
It dawned on me when neither of us was willing to let go that Jens had made himself invisible for my family. His job was to disappear. No one touched him. No one talked to him. It began to make sense that he was occasionally grouchy.
I rubbed circles into his lower back and buried my face in his chest. It was a heady thing for both of us, being in the presence of such comfort, and we did not consider breaking apart until Foss cleared his throat.
“We should get moving,” Foss said, interrupting our newly acquired calm. “Do whatever that is on your own time.”
Britta whirled on Foss as if she meant to give him a thrashing for breaking us apart prematurely.
Jens looked as embarrassed as I felt when we rejoined the group. He situated his red pack on his back and moved me to his left, so I was in between him and the mountain. Even now, he was taking every precaution to keep me safe. He nodded to me and tried to reassemble his stoic personality. “Let’s go, Mox.”
Sixteen.
Spindels
“So I single-handedly destroyed a coven of Weres armed with only a dagger. Not a scratch on me.”
This was hour seven hundred and fifty billion of Nik regaling us with his heroics. Or twenty minutes. I started to lose time whenever he talked about his greatness. It was… great.
“Funny how you never have a scratch from any of these battles,” Foss interjected, “or any proof at all. Our slave trade is getting out of hand. Perhaps we should hire you to remedy that.”
Nik smiled graciously, giving Britta a shot of his dazzling teeth. “Oh, I think I’ll stick to defending the Nøkken borders. Wouldn’t want to be a glory hog.”
Sometime later (I really missed having the ability to tell time), Nik held up his fist, indicating we should stop. “Up ahead’s the spindel lair. Did we decide on fire or trying our luck with stealth?”
“We didn’t decide,” Tor grumbled. “Ya keep arguing, and we land on the same thing. Fire’s safer, but draws more attention ta where we are. Sneaking by the lair’d be tricky, but if it works, our location’d be secure fer now.”
Foss and Nik began their usual disagreement, so I sat down and leaned my back on the mountain. I had not walked this much in… ever.
It was pretty dark out, though I welcomed this far more than the blinding daylight. Their red moon was a thing of beauty and grandeur. If mine was a Frisbee in the sky, the one in Undraland was a monster truck tire.
I was bordering on exhaustion, but did my best not to show it. Jens sat down next to me, leaving the others to their debate. He handed me his canteen, and I took a grateful swig.
“How’re you holding up?” Jens asked, looking at my mismatched shoes instead of at me.
I shrugged. “Oh, you know me. Bulletproof.”
“You don’t want to weigh in on fire versus sneaking?”
I glanced up to the others, who were having a heated discussion in hushed tones. “Nah. I’ll let Frick and Frack duke it out. I don’t actually know what spindels are, so I can’t imagine I’d have a useful opinion.”
“Spiders. Well, mostly. Spindels are poisonous spiders with black hairy bodies the size of softballs.” He held up his fist as a visual of the size.
I turned my head slowly to look at him. “Excellent. So, we’re dying soon? Good to know.”
“The poison doesn’t kill you. It paralyzes you so they can lay their eggs in your body while you sleep. Then they hatch and the larvae feed on you.”
My mouth dropped open. “What? Gross! What is wrong with your universe? That’s horrifying! When do we get to meet some unicorns, or something awesome?” I shuddered at the thought of spiders crawling up my back and biting me all over.
“They’re actually not a big deal because there’s herbs that flush them totally out of your system if you come into contact with them. When we get to Elvage, Alrik can get us some. We’re almost there, actually. Just another day’s trek, and you can get some rest.”
“I look that bad?”
Jens turned his head to look out into the night. He bumped his shoulder to mine. “You never look bad.”
I was glad the sun was gone, so my confused smile would not be seen. “Thanks. You’re one smooth talking garden gnome. In fact, you’re the smoothest garden gnome I’ve ever met.”
Jens grinned, the golden diamond-shaped tattoo on his cheek wrinkling around the crinkles next to his emerald eyes. “Good thing you’ve only met two other ones. Let you think the standard of amazing is me.”
I nodded ahead to Britta, who was interjecting politely when Foss and Nik hit a wall in their back and forth. “What’s the deal with your sister and Jamie? They’re very cutie pie for each other, but it seems like it’s all hush-hush.”
Jens repacked his canteen and offered me an apple from his sack. “He’s the Tonttu king’s son. His wife was picked out the day he was born. Freya from the Nisse tribe of Tomten. As a group, they’re a little more high maintenance, and Freya embodies that. Jamie’s getting to the age where marriage is expected. They didn’t do anything wrong, Jamie and Britt. He’s my best friend, and she’s my sister. Of course they would spend time together if they’re around me. They’re both solid Toms. Why shouldn’t they fall for each other?” He shook his head. “King Johannes didn’t like me before, but when he found out Jamie was in love with my sister? Let’s just say it was a good time for me to take a security job working for
your family in a whole nother world. The only job my sister could get was… you know, the worst one.” His words were clipped when he spoke of the king. “Jamie’s going to fulfill his family obligation, but it’ll kill them both.”
“That’s pretty sad.” I tapped the side of my shoe to his boot.
Jens nodded. “It’s very sad. Britta’s twenty-two, which is at the tail end of normal marrying age for our kind. I know that’s weird to you, being that in your culture women get married or not at any age without it being a big deal, but here it’s a stigma. In another year, she’ll be seen as an old maid. Like, there must be something wrong with her if she’s still single kind of thing.”
A few beats of silence passed between us before I spoke. “Do you need me to tell you how messed up that is?”
“Nope. All I want is to see Britta happy. She’s pretty independent for a Tom. Not many women choose to live alone. None are as handy with outside work as she is, either. She’s had offers for marriage, but she turned them all down. For her, it’s Jamie or no one.”
“Good for her.” I looked up at the woman in a new light. Though she looked oppressed with her quiet nature and Amish clothing, I admired her resolve to stay true to herself and not cave to society’s rules when they crossed with her own. “You must be pretty proud of her.”
I could feel Jens staring at me. “I am. Funny, but not many people get that. I kinda knew you would, though.”
“Single girls unite?” I tried to keep any unhappiness out of my voice. Sure, Britta was an old maid at twenty-two, but someone was in love with her, and she had that bliss of being over the moon for someone. Her singleness was a choice. Mine was every guy on the planet’s choice. I shifted uncomfortably on the rocky surface and fished for a change of subject. “So, spiders. That should be fun. Anything else I should know? Got any pterodactyls around? Space monsters? Killer tomatoes?”
Jens snorted. “Boy, Linus would love that.”
My smile instantly mutated to a false one as I pushed through the thought of my brother at the dinner table. He had an aversion to tomatoes, calling them The Red Plague. He claimed he was allergic to them, but I still maintain it was placebo. He just hated tomatoes and pretended to have a stomachache whenever they were on the plate.
