The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves

by Richard Heredia

  “This leader of theirs is a real hardass and he can do some wicked shit, so don’t mess around with him. He goes by the name of Fenris, or at least that’s what I heard his subordinates called him. Let me tell you, he is not something you ever want to underestimate, because he is much more than any Swüreg or Isighünd or Jötun. He is about as tall as your average man, but he looks very different, because he is a man and a wolf blended together with long black hair, he wears pulled back over his head. He has very dark, reddish skin. He carries no weapon any of us could see, but he possesses something far more dangerous and unpredictable, which makes him very, very powerful.”

  Riveted by Anthony’s words, Sophie and Louis couldn’t look away.

  “He uses Magic.”

  “What?” cried Sophie, looking at Anthony as if he was crazy.

  “You mean real Magic like in Harry Potter or something like that?” asked Louis excitedly, gathering his knees underneath him.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous, but –,” again Anthony was interrupted as Joaquin let out a squeal of pain, making them all cringe as they glanced his way.

  “It’s true,” he moaned through clenched teeth. “He is called Fenris dok Kór, the Hand of Metohkangmi, the Lord of the Storm. He has been chosen as the first to corral us - the Twelve - and leads what is known as the Vanguard or the Host. They are the first of the Great Maelstrom’s troops to set foot upon the Melded World. This is their name for this place.

  “Before this, he had been more commonly known as the Crown Prince of the Vülfen Kur Ambalaj, the Crown Prince of one of the six royal lines that originate from his home world. Since his elevation to his current position, he is now known as merely the Hand. If the Lord of the Storm needs something done, then the Hand must show results. It doesn’t matter how difficult or how gruesome this need may be. The Hand is charged with its immediate and ultimate execution, whatever the cost.”

  He finished.

  Only stunned silence remained.

  Jason was looking at Joaquin as if he had lost his mind.

  Anthony squinted at the large teenage boy through a frown. “Are you all right, Joaquin?” he prodded, knowing, with greater certainty, there was something going on with Joaquin. This wasn’t a normal, run-of-the-mill, headache.

  “I don’t know, these things just keeping popping up in my mind. I can’t control it. It feels like my skull is going to burst,” Joaquin mumbled. His lips were quivering, his face flushed with some internal exertion.

  “Why is all of this happening?” pleaded Sophie at no one in particular.

  But again, Joaquin answered. He had no ability to stop himself. “We have been chosen… This is why the Snow Baby watched over Anthony and his sisters. This is why they took us from our world and placed in this melded one. They must do the bidding of the Lord of the Storm. They must take us before the Yule Throne. We must be present when he casts his final doom upon the real world. He is the Snowman, the true evil returned after thousands of years. He comes to reclaim our world for his own, to forever cast out the Light…”

  They all watched stunned, horrified to the core, as the words spewed forth from Joaquin.

  Then, without preamble, he passed out, unconscious. Before any of them could react, he folded to the floor in a heap.

  ~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼ }>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

  ~ 52 ~

  Realization

  Day One, Thursday, 1:11 pm…

  After the rest of them had determined he’d merely fallen asleep and wasn’t in mortal danger, they decided rest was the best thing for him.

  Mugzy and Mr. Patas had just returned from placing Joaquin upon one of the temporary beds when Andrew asked, “So, if Joaquin is right, then where does all of this leave us?” He said it to the group, but he was finding it difficult to take his eyes off Anthony, who was sitting next to the gorgeous babe, Sophie. He sought him out through the tops of his eyes. His head he held in his hands, as if he could no longer hold it up, too overwhelmed with everything to want to move.

  “I think,” began Sophie in a sweet sounding, measured tone.

  It made Andrew breathe deeply, putting him at ease, though he wasn’t certain as to why.

  He listened.

  She went on.

  “We should search for the other four kids still out there in the storm. That has got to be our first goal, because of the weather. From what you all have told me is pursuing us, they are going to need our help. They are going to need the protection of the ‘pets’. Without them they’ll be defenseless, wide open, especially if they’re little like Anthony’s sisters and Louis.”

  “The Fist, my dear,” corrected Kodiak. “We are the Fingers of the Lord of the Light, together we make a Fist.”

  “Sorry, Kodiak,” she mumbled.

  Anthony looked down at his hands in thought, turning to look at the girl. “I agree with you, Sophie, but that is in the short term, something we have to do now. I think Andrew is talking about is our ultimate task. Now, that we are here in this place, that we know we represent some sort of special group, chosen specifically for something, Andrew means: ‘what are we going to do about that’? How are we going to deal with our enemies?’ Is that right, dude?” specified Anthony gently.

  Andrew looked between the two of them, nodding, knowing in that moment, his friend liked the girl. Wow, so fast, but then again, how could he not like her? He asked himself. She was so freakin’ fine!

  A silence stretched for a time.

  “We are going to fight,” announced Kenai, speaking for the first time in a long while. She held her head high, sitting on all fours, looking at all of them through massive brown eyes.

  Kodiak gazed over at her daughter.

  Andrew could’ve sworn he could see a proud expression cross the older bear-dog’s face, though he was uncertain how he was able to see it.

  “Yes, we are going to fight,” said Kodiak, her voice so deep it was like an earthquake, rock rubbing upon rock, miles beneath the surface of the earth.

  “But how?” asked Jason, clearly unnerved.

  “With our powers, silly, why else do you think we were chosen?” asserted Mikalah as if the others were children and she was the teenager.

  There was a profound silence, lasting for nearly a minute. None of them moved or breathed - it seemed - each was lost in the tangled morass of their own thoughts.

  “OH, MY GOD!” shouted Anthony with such vehemence it practically startled Andrew out of skin. “Why didn’t I see that before! It makes perfect sense! Crap, I am such an idiot!”

  “Why are you an idiot? What are you talking about, Anthony?” queried Sophie. Her voice faltered, her look dismayed, confounded. Anthony’s reaction to Mikalah’s unexpected reply had left her mind reeling with misunderstanding.

  “When we first met Joaquin and Jason,” Anthony explained.

  The memory floated to the surface of Andrew’s brain. Suddenly, it all fit together for him as well.

  “A Swüreg warrior had me clean in his sights with his bow,” continued Anthony. “I mean, I was toast. When he loosed the arrow, I knew I was dead. There was nothing I could do. I had three feet of steel and wood coming my way at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour. ”

  Sophie glowered with misinterpretation, trying to understand what Anthony was trying to explain.

  Andrew could see she was wondering if she should take his friend literally or not, trying to balance what he’d said with the fact, he was standing before her unscathed, unhurt. The creature he was describing should’ve harmed him in some way, right?

  “Then, out of nowhere, came Mikalah from an impossible distance, hurtling across the landscape faster than she should’ve ever been capable of moving.” Anthony shook his head, still having a hard time believing what he’d seen atop the La Loma footpath.

  Sophie didn’t appear to understand, her head tilted to one side.

  Elena laughed, curled up once again in Mugzy lap. “She knocked me down.”

  Andrew no
dded at the thought, because she’d knocked him down as well. The kinetic energy she had unleashed when she left his side had been so explosive, it had tossed him to the ground like a ragdoll and covered him in half a foot of debris.

  Anthony went on, “She came so fast, it was like she literally vaulted out of the ground and flew. Before I had even begun to blink my eyes, before I had moved a muscle, my baby sister snatched the arrow out of the air with her hand and hit the ground like a meteor hitting the earth. I think she even left a crater where she landed or something like that, because the ground around her was all overturned and splattered in every direction.” He stuck out his hand and mussed up Mikalah’s hair. She was still in Sophie’s lap, within easy reach.

  Mikalah laughed, pulled her head out of his grasp.

  Sophie looked down at the little girl with her brilliantly blue eyes. “You did that, Mikalah?”

  “Yeah, I did, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just afraid the arrow would hurt my brother, badly. Before I knew it, the arrow was in my hand. I was on the ground all full of dirt and snow and junk. I don’t know how I did it, but I did. That is why I know I was chosen. I have a power inside me that makes me go fast, real fast - faster than anyone else on this planet, maybe even the whole solar system.” She said it all as a matter of fact, though it was an amazing proclamation.

  Andrew knew it for truth. He’d seen the girl in one place and then in another, faster than his ability to think.

  “Mine allows me to call light,” stated Elena, condemning them all to silence with her tiny voice.

  “Really?!?” asked Anthony, shocked. He whipped his head in her direction, so the longer portions of his hair flew over his shoulder and lay across his clavicle, despite being synched in a ponytail.

  “Yeah, I asked for a light once when I was in my closet. It came, although it wasn’t very bright. It was sort of an ugly yellow, but it was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I called and it came,” replied the girl twirling a lock of Mugzy’s salt and pepper hair between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Have you been able to do it again, child?” asked Kodiak without a doubt in her voice. To her, Elena would have no reason to lie.

  “I sort of forgot about it with everything that has been going on. Until Mikalah said the thing about having powers, I hadn’t remembered I had done it before.” Andrew watched the girl shrug her shoulders, speaking in her tiny voice. She was shy again.

  “Call the light to shine before my eyes, Little Flower,” solicited Mugzy in the soft version of his formally sounding voice.

  Elena wasted little time doing what her beloved pet asked. Andrew observed as the girl close her eyes, steady her breathing, still holding the lock of Mugzy’s hair, and uttered a single word - “Come.”

  Before he could take another breath or feel another beating of his heart, the fire they had kept up the entire day seemed to dim for a second. A wink later, it regained its’ former luminous strength. Yet, when Andrew glanced back at the girl, there was a pulsating, yellow-orange ball of light, dancing a few inches above Mugzy’s head. It was the same color as the blaze beside them, but clearly not of the fire itself. Rather, it seemed to be the very essence of the light the fire emitted. Andrew felt his jaw drop to his knees as the girl opened her eyes. Her gaze followed the bobbing and weaving, sphere of light she’d created, a proud smile chiseled on her delicate face.

  “There you go, Poochers. I light just for you.”

  Mugzy peered up at the glowing ball, an awestruck grin spreading from ear to ear. “You are incredible, Elena, a treasure among treasures.” He cooed to the girl. She seemed to melt inside.

  “Well, I guess that solves it, huh? Now, all we have to do is figure out what the heck the rest of us can do and we should be ok against these jerk-offs that are messing with us,” jibed Andrew as if the entire thing was a small matter.

  Elena mouthed a silent “Go”. The flame-colored light winked out of existence.

  Mugzy gave the girl a thankful squeeze, which made her giggle.

  Anthony huffed with mild sarcasm. “Yeah, that shouldn’t be too hard, considering the number of the possible miraculous things a person can do. How many superheroes do you think have been invented and written or drawn in the last hundred years?”

  Andrew glanced over at his friend at the same time Sophie, Mikalah, Jason and Elena did as well, already knowing where Anthony was taking them on this specific train of thought.

  “Jeez Louise,” began Jason, “the possibilities could be endless.”

  Smart dude, agreed Andrew.

  Shit, what’s this crap really all about?

  “We need more information,” stated Sophie with a mournful tilt of her head at Andrew’s friend.

  “Yeah, we sure do – a whole lot more…”

  There was some movement at the entrance of the cave. The furniture pad Andrew and Joaquin hung to keep out the cold air from outside was moving inward, pushed to the side as something large entered the cave.

  They jumped to their feet, the animals forming a protective wall before the children.

  Relief spread like wildfire when they saw it was only Garfield, poking his head into the chamber. In his gruff way, he said, “The way remains clear.” Whether he noticed their reaction to his return or not, he gave no indication. He wove his way to the fire and began to warm himself before it as if nothing had happened.

  Then, Kodiak, looking at Kenai, spoke: “Daughter, I believe it is your turn to watch for enemies.” It was an order, but given in an easy, motherly fashion.

  Kenai smiled through her snout and teeth. “Yes, mother, you are correct.” With no more said, she quickly bound for the portal and vanished behind the heavy blanket keeping the warmth of their fire within the room. Most of them peered after her, orbs riveted to the billowing movement of the furniture pad she’d left in her wake.

  Until we know more, there ain’t a whole lot we can do. We’re sure in The Shit now, thought Andrew, resigned.

  ~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼ }>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

  ~ 53 ~

  Strange Tidings

  Day Two, Friday, 12:27 am…

  Garfield sat on all fours, in the snow, above the entrance of the cave. He was perched at the highest point of the rock pile, having begun his watch only half an hour ago. He had closed his eyes, though he could see much farther than any mere human. He could peer through the murk, the wind and the snow and see for almost an acre in all directions before him.

  Instead, he chose not to gaze about the landscape. He was using his nose and ears, clearing his mind of thought, letting his other senses dominate his consciousness – all the sounds and smells of the night filled his brain. He quickly determined each one, a continuing method of categorization, hundreds and hundreds of sensations within seconds. As he did this, his mind’s eye reached out further, a thing he couldn’t have dreamed of doing before he’d been transported to the Melded World. His dramatic alterations hadn’t been merely of the body. They had involved a massive evolution of his brain as well.

  Blindingly fast, he recognized the changes to the land about him. Since he had last kept watch, in less than twelve hours, a great number of things had emerged in this combined plane that hadn’t been there before. He felt plants, trees and insects, creatures of the wing and of the land by the thousands burst into existence. Some he was able to recognize at once. They were from his world. On the other side of the coin, he identified an equal number he’d never heard or smelt before. These were alien to him, much more strange than the million, million scents and noises he’d heard, both as the household feline of the past and as the lion-like beast we was today. These were odd. They felt wrong to him, as if the sounds themselves were made incorrectly. He couldn’t quite formulate his initial reaction to them into a coherent thought, because he didn’t know what they were. But, every time a new creature or plant came into being, one he didn’t know – could not know - it made his skin crawl like he was infested with fleas and ticks.

>   Such had been the case, when he heard the unnatural sucking of a bird-like creature, feasting on a nearby branch. Those sounds shouldn’t have come from a bird!

  Earlier, he’d watched it swoop down upon an unsuspecting field mouse. He had been utterly surprised to see the birdish creature swallow the tiny rodent whole. This wasn’t accomplished through a beak or an over-sized maw of any sort. Rather, the strange bird had consumed the smaller animal through a slug-like aperture in its chest! It had flown to a nearby branch and sat there sucking at the remains of the absorbed mouse, its’ gooey chest pulsating, in and out, with each successive gurgle as it fed.

  Plaaa! That was definitely not normal! Times upon the Melded World were about to get extremely hostile. Garfield’s instincts were telling him so.

  The wind and snow had stopped. Then, it had started again when he’d returned to the outdoors from the warmth and camaraderie of the cave. The temperature had dropped significantly with the setting of the sun, but none of it touched Garfield. His thick, striped coat kept him warm, oblivious to the chill about the land. Still, the temperature about him was low enough for him to feel its’ icy bite with every breath. This was going to be a cold night, indeed. He let his mind continue to wander, feeling no immediate threat. Other than the grotesque bird-slug, there wasn’t much moving out here at his hour. There wasn’t anything close enough to the cave. All remained subdued. The cold was seeing to that. The land was caught in its’ frozen grip. Even the emergence of species from his world and the other had slowed as the night progressed.