On the Verge

by Garen Glazier

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that this is a lot to take in. The lodge has been my only home and the goblins my only company for a very long time. I feel as though I’ve almost forgotten how the rest of humanity lives.”

  Freya let her gaze linger on him for a moment longer and then turned her attention back to the search for her keys.

  “It’s fine,” she said quietly. “I’ve never really understood the rest of humanity myself. I get by, but I’ve always been a bit socially awkward too, so there’s no pressure here. Just do you and the rest will work itself out, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Rusty, but he was still a bit unnerved.

  He was glad when they had both settled down for the night, she in her bed and he scrunched uncomfortably on her chaise longue, his long legs hanging over the end. When his day had begun he had never imagined it ending with himself in the middle of the city in a young woman’s apartment. He looked up at the sky through the window. It was starless, so different from the dazzling celestial blanket that he could see through his window at home. His eyes shut and his breathing deepened. Dreams filtered through his mind of caves and kobold and colors, and of Freya. She was smiling at him and then she disappeared into the blackness behind his eyes. In his sleep, Rusty shivered. He slept like the dead for the rest of the night.

  “Do you want something? A latte maybe?”

  They sat in the little bakery a few blocks down from Freya’s apartment. They’d both slept late, a function of their crazy adventure in the Cascades and the gloom of an autumn morning in Seattle. The morning rush had passed. It was just them and a few other stragglers, nibbling at pastries and staring at computer screens. It was still a crowd compared to what Rusty was used to. When he’d awoken to find himself sprawled awkwardly on Freya’s little couch, it took him a moment to remember where he was and what had happened. A tightness formed in his throat and his heart began to pound. Then he looked over and saw Freya curled on her bed, hair a mess, head resting on the crook of her arm, and his pulse and breathing slowed. She seemed to have that effect on him.

  “A what?” Rusty asked, perplexed.

  “A latte. You know like the most basic espresso drink on the menu?”

  Rusty shrugged.

  “Seriously? I mean I know your cave was remote and all but, still, dude. This is Seattle. Everyone knows espresso.”

  “I just need something simple. Fancy’s not really my thing.”

  “You don’t say?” Freya raised an eyebrow. “I’ll just get you a black coffee and a bagel. Why don’t you find us a table?”

  Rusty located a suitably secluded seat in the corner. He’d tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but as a brawny six foot two man with a deformed face it wasn’t all that easy to blend in. He could feel the eyes of the other diners on him. He hunched his shoulders and stared down at the marble tabletop, wishing they’d just eaten at Freya’s apartment. Freya hadn’t been to the grocery store in days though, plus it was good for him to get out in public after hiding for so long. Once the initial discomfort of being seen wore off, he actually started to feel something he hadn’t thought was possible in many years: free.

  Freya sat down and passed him his breakfast before tearing into her croissant, flakes falling across the chest of her green army jacket. She took a few frantic bites and then sipped her latte.

  “Mmm,” she said. “That tastes so good. You know after we made it out of that nutso cavern of yours and the terror of almost dying subsided, this was one of the first things that popped into my mind—a fresh croissant and designer coffee. What can I say? I have a bit of a thing for good food.”

  Rusty stared at her, bemused. It was fairly obvious from her full features that she rarely missed a meal, but her statuesque frame could support a few extra pounds and the curve of her chest was distracting. Especially so for him, a man who’d lived the life of a reclusive monk for years.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” Freya asked.

  “No.” Rusty realized he was staring and, embarrassed, studiously applied cream cheese to his bagel with the plastic knife he’d been provided.

  “Right,” Freya said. “So, what now?”

  Rusty looked surprised.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “I assumed we would go get the next color on your list. If I remember correctly, you don’t have much time.”

  “There is no way in hell that I am going on any more color quests for that bitch,” Freya spat.

  “There’s no need to swear, Freya. You’re so much classier than that.”

  Freya frowned.

  “Don’t patronize me, Rusty. I’m not putting on my filter for you. I think we’re beyond formality don’t you?”

  “I just don’t think it’s very becoming for a beautiful woman.”

  He looked away when he said it, and Freya blushed in spite of herself.

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” she said with a smirk, “but the fact is that she obviously needed some dupe to do her dirty work. She must have known what finding these colors entailed, and if the other two are anything like our experience with the kobold, there’s no way it’s worth attempting the rest. I’ll change the locks, my name, move away. I don’t care. She can find someone else to do her bidding.”

  “I have a feeling she won’t make it that easy on you,” Rusty grumbled.

  “Why do you say that?” Freya asked, a touch of dread in her voice.

  “Freya, you underestimate her. If a human has sent you on this fool’s errand, she is extremely dangerous.”

  “I don’t understand,” Freya said.

  Rusty stared down at his hands neatly folded in his lap.

  “If there wasn’t anything unusual about these colors, she would have just collected them herself. Instead she sent you, because she knew that obtaining them would be dangerous, maybe even deadly. That indicates a complete disregard for your safety, a willingness to sacrifice an innocent person in order to achieve her own ends.”

  “How do you think she got me to go get the blue in the first place? Asking nicely? Of course she’s a psychopath. She showed me photos of women she’d murdered, dressed up as famous paintings. She’s dangerous, but she’s not omnipotent. There must be a way to escape.”

  “I’m just urging you to be careful. The Verge is dangerous. That’s for certain, but you’ve survived it once. Most of the time, when a human comes in contact with the Verge they are the victim. Few people emerge from an experience with the otherworldly unscathed. Those that do find themselves building an immunity to it. You don’t have that same advantage with Beldame.”

  Freya took a long sip of her latte, swallowed, and then exhaled slowly. It was too early in the morning for her head to be reeling again.

  “An immunity?” Freya gave Rusty a quizzical look.

  “I’m not sure how else to describe it. The more times you interact with the Verge and win, so to speak, the more likely you are to succeed in the future. It’s like an invisible shield against the supernatural. Unbeknownst to you, when you escaped the kobold you became better equipped to survive future attempts to secure the colors Beldame needs. It’s called aegis.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  Rusty looked incredulous.

  “Have you forgotten that I lived among the kobold of the Verge for years? I was their slave, a burden placed on me by an accident of birth, an unlucky inheritance. But their survival depended on mine, so I served them for years without grievous injury or death. Certainly I suffered, but all that suffering gave me aegis and now you have a bit of it too.”

  Freya rested her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands. She wasn’t sure how to process all of this information.

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” Freya said, her head still hung low. “Why does she need these colors anyway?”

  “I’m not sure,” Rusty said. “But artifacts of the Verge are very powerful. There are many ways they can, and have, been
used by mortals for less than legitimate purposes.”

  Freya took another sip of her latte, but by this time it was lukewarm. She grimaced at the taste, but the shock of the bitter coffee on her tongue seemed to snap her out of the fog of fear that had clouded her mind since the night before. Her instincts told her to run, but abandoning the color quest meant she’d simply trade one hazardous situation for another. It was a decision that should have taken longer to make, but the high stakes left her little choice. Cower and hide or meet the challenge head on. Constantly looking over her shoulder was no way to live. She was a fighter, and as long as she had the colors, she had bargaining power. She pushed her plate and cup back and stood up from the table.

  “Where are you going?” Rusty asked.

  “I’m getting the next color. I’m scared, but you’re probably right. It’s pointless to run away from Beldame. You said I have some protection now from the Verge and that the colors are powerful. If there’s a way out of this mess the colors are it.

  “I’m coming with you,” Rusty said.

  “No, you’re not. This is my fight. You’d be putting your life at risk.”

  “I know the Verge. I have aegis. I’m the greatest asset you have right now.”

  He said it with downcast eyes but there was certainty in his voice.

  “Rusty,” Freya began, “I don’t want to see you hurt or killed because of–”

  “What’s the next one on your list?” he said before she could finish.

  “Red,” Freya replied.

  “I never liked that fucking color.”

  Freya felt a smile creep across her face despite the unfortunate circumstances.

  “Now you’re speaking my language.”

  Rusty and Freya walked quickly down Second Avenue. It was raining, but it was that peculiar Seattle rain that doesn’t fall straight from the sky like decent precipitation but instead hovers in the air rendering umbrellas virtually useless. There’s nothing for it except to hunker down and trudge on.

  Freya was particularly annoyed because she was having one of her rare good hair days and the mist meant that her thick, dark hair quickly turned into an unruly mop of frizz. She normally wouldn’t have minded. She’d long ago given up trying to tame it, but she couldn’t help wanting to look her best around Rusty.

  It hardly mattered now, however, because all the time and hair products in the world couldn’t have saved Freya’s bedraggled tresses. It had been a crisp, clear autumn morning when they’d left the café and neither one of them had thought to bring rain gear. Rusty reminded her of a sea captain in his heavy woolen sweater. Tiny droplets clung to its dark navy fibers, but he appeared impervious to the damp, striding down the sidewalk and stomping through the murky puddles. Freya shivered slightly in her light cotton jacket. It was one of her favorites, a dark olive green in the style of army fatigues, but it was absolutely useless in this weather. Luckily she’d pulled on her leather boots that morning so her feet were dry, but she was anxious to get to their destination even if it did mean another run in with the Verge.

  They reached the wide intersection where Second ran into Third Avenue and Main Street in a strange collision that had never made much sense to Freya. But the odd crossroads seemed to fit with the character of the place. They were in the oldest part of the city. Now called Pioneer Square, the neighborhood had been known as Skid Row in the old days. At that time it had been a hotbed of seedy gambling parlors and whorehouses built into the marshy tidelands in the southwest corner of Seattle. Then a fire started by a cabinetmaker’s overturned glue pot burnt the entire place to the ground in one of those great fires that seemed to be so common in the clapboard cities of the nineteenth-century frontier. The rough and ready inhabitants, their coffers full from the burgeoning lumber business, took the opportunity to rebuild. Wood frames were replaced with brick and mortar and the entire neighborhood was regraded in an effort to raise it out of the muck and mire.

  In the process, the ghostly burnt-out frames of the opium dens and pleasure houses were buried two stories underground. The improvement effort never seemed to reach to the dodgy heart of the place though. Today it was still a haven for the city’s dispossessed. Only now they rubbed shoulders with tourists and small business owners who took advantage of the relatively low rents to establish bookstores, coffee shops and a surprisingly lively art scene.

  They waited for a few moments for the walk signal to change, then darted across the slick streets to the other side of the road. On their right was a low building with a red brick exterior. Its lower wall was entirely plastered over with peeling posters advertising bands whose tour buses had long since departed. Brilliant blue and silver graffiti cut across the ephemera in an artful swath. The effect made the building and its environs appear at once degraded and compelling, an apt metaphor for the entire neighborhood.

  “The shop should be just a little ways up ahead around the corner,” Freya said, checking the map on her phone. “But before we get there, I have a question.”

  “What is it?” Rusty asked.

  “Why did the Verge take all of the kobold when it was the queen that lost her horn? I mean, I understand that without that essential piece of her identity she no longer matched the legend. But the other goblins still had both of theirs.”

  “She was the queen of the Juwelstein,” Rusty said. “They were all deeply connected to her. Without their königin the Juwelstein and all its members could no longer exist. But don’t feel too bad for them. The queen may be doomed to an eternity adrift in the Verge, but the others can return when their legend is told again.”

  “So, the goblin, the b-blamieren,” Freya said, stumbling over the foreign word, “he understood what would happen to them when he threw that ax?”

  “Most certainly,” Rusty said, “but if you knew the queen as well as he and I, you would know that returning to the Verge is a small price to pay for being free of her.”

  Turning the oblique angle, the pair found themselves on a wide tree-lined sidewalk and, just ahead, jutting out from the building’s exterior on their left, was a black awning with the name The Belfry written in white block letters across the front. They hurried into the dry patch of pavement underneath the anachronistic canopy just before a serious downpour burst from the heavy clouds. Freya put her hand on the cold brass doorknob and stepped in with Rusty following close behind her.

  They hadn’t stopped to look through the large plate glass window that fronted the store, so Freya was surprised by the odd array of objects that greeted them, each arranged artfully within the narrow shop walls. Mounted animal trophies, Victorian portraits of somberly dressed men and women and ornate crucifixes decorated the walls. Neatly arranged white skulls, lacy coral, and exotic butterflies pinned in frames stood neatly on black shelves while on an elegantly carved antique table hunks of crystals and diminutive busts of long forgotten philosophers stood among mysterious vials of powders with tiny handwritten labels.

  Freya felt instantly at home. It spoke to her inner collector and she was momentarily delighted before she was quickly reminded of Beldame, of how she had claimed they shared certain characteristics, the particular features of a lover of objects. She shivered and pushed the thought from her mind, but after that it was difficult to enjoy the beauty of the odd assortment of things the place held.

  At the back of the eccentric little store was a display counter with jewelry. Her eyes passed over gaudy signet rings and rosary beads before alighting on an intricate little cameo featuring a detailed image of a beautiful young woman. Freya thought it might have been made with the finest of ink pens until she noticed that one of the lines seemed to escape the paper and curl upwards.

  “It’s hair,” came a voice from above her, and Freya nearly jumped out of her skin.

  As she brought her head up with a jerk she found herself face-to-face with a beautiful young woman with high cheekbones and almond eyes. A few wisps of straw-colored hair escaped from the crown braid that framed her
face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She spoke with the hard-edged accent of Eastern Europe.

  “No worries. I’m easy to scare lately,” Freya said, a wan smile flitting across her face.

  The girl looked at Freya thoughtfully. Something passed behind her eyes and she opened her mouth to speak, then apparently thought better of it and paused to collect her thoughts.

  “This might not be the place for you then,” was all she said. “There are things to be found here that are not for the faint of heart.”

  “Right, like the hair in the cameo? It’s okay. I’m quite familiar with the Victorian practice of commemorating their dead. I actually have a similar broach. They’d snip off a locket of the deceased’s hair and use it to create these intricately beautiful designs to be worn as jewelry or displayed as art. It’s fabulously morbid, isn’t it? And actually kind of beautiful in a totally macabre way.”

  The girl looked at her, a hint of mischievousness animating her blue eyes before a pall of moroseness smothered it again.

  “Perhaps you’ll find what you’re looking for here after all.”

  She came out from behind the counter and Freya noted the fullness of her long skirts and the narrow corset cinching her waist. The anachronistic outfit seemed oddly at home on the girl, its varying shades of black making her appear disconsolate and elegant by turns. The effect was unnerving. She felt Rusty brush up against her sleeve and turned her head slightly to look at him. His eyes were dark. His guard was up.

  “Perhaps, but I’m not really here for Victorian baubles,” Freya said. “I’m Freya. I’m looking for Vasilisa.”

  “You’ve found her,” said the girl, her eyes downcast.

  “Oh, well, nice to meet you, Vasilisa.” Freya paused, unsure of how to continue and then spoke quickly before she lost her nerve. “This might be an odd question, but I’ve been informed that I can find a certain kind of carmine red in this shop. Is that right?”