I softened, embarrassed at needing to be told something so basic. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m not being fair. Is it okay with you that he stays here? You’d be given pretty good status. Personal bodyguard to the king has to come with some perks.”
His reply was glib as he sat up and situated himself next to me. “Yes, an arrow through the heart, I’d imagine.”
I frowned. “The people love Jamie. Once Johannes and his family are gone, I’m sure there won’t be those kinds of threats all that often.”
“Ah, the optimism of youth. Good for you. I don’t think mine lasted as long.” I shivered, so he wrapped his arm around my shoulders, warming my bicep as his hand provided the necessary friction. The few sounds of nature added to the cozy camping ambiance – bugs doing their thing, the slight breeze moving through the trees, and Bjorn peeking out at us from his forest across the way. We looked up at the stars in the sky, and Tucker held up my naked arm to see if any of my stars matched the brilliance of the view. “One thing Undraland’s got on the Other Side? Most romantic sky. Can’t get that with streetlights and skyscrapers.”
My whisper felt like an intrusion on the night. “One thing I’ll regret is not being able to go to Paris. You made it sound so pretty.”
He pulled me even closer, my head ducking under his chin. We weren’t just sitting together; we were fused. “It is. Jamie will be granted small bits of leave from the kingdom after things get back on their feet. You’ll have a little freedom. You’ll see.”
I heard Jens’s boots before I saw him. When he appeared, he was standing over us, a frown on his face and a growl to his tone. “This is how you guard, huh? Next time, I want to see Jamie in your arms like that, Tuck. Loos, don’t encourage him.”
“Come here, Jamie. You feeling chilly, love?” Tucker called to the forlorn prince. “If you like, I can even ‘accidentally’ trace the side of your breast with my thumb while we snuggle and talk about running away together.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved Tucker’s face away as I stood to calm Jens’s bull snort. “He did no such thing. Shut it, Tuck.” I stretched my arms above my head, drawing Jens’s eyes to my glittering hands. “Did you get the weed?”
“You know, I’d almost feel better if it was actual pot I was scoring you. I don’t like this.” Jens kicked off his shoes and peeled off his shirt, momentarily distracting me with the perfection of his body that belonged on a romance book cover.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m going in with you. Not out of my sight down there. Got it, Mox?”
I nodded, secretly glad that I wouldn’t have to face the horrible river alone. I could feel more hands crawling on me the closer I got to the edge. I took off my shoes and socks, but that was as far as I was willing to go. If I’d had a parka, I would’ve donned it just for extra protection.
The plight of the women of Undraland weighed heavy on my heart. There was the “women can’t make decisions for themselves” understanding in the Tomten culture, “women as manipulative sex objects” in Bedra, and the “women aren’t people” rule in Fossegrim. That last one sunk in my gut as I recalled the screams of the girls who were taken by slave owners in my stead. I wished I’d been able to save them all.
Jamie touched my bare foot. “You can’t save everyone. We got you out. That’s my victory.”
I petted the top of his head. “Yup. But what about theirs?”
“You can’t save everyone,” Jamie repeated.
There was always something defiant that stirred inside of me whenever I was told the word “can’t”. I bristled, but kept my mouth shut so as not to stir up an argument there was a good chance I could lose.
“You sure about this?” Jens asked, handing me something that looked like a slimy golf ball-sized thistle.
“I’m sure.” I took in a deep breath, waiting until the last minute to tell them the rules of the new plan. “From what Six told me, you shouldn’t touch a Kunna Tofs, unless he invites you to. They’re spirits who traded their ability to float to the surface so they could keep their lives. My mom asked for some of his magic, so at least part of him would be able to live on the surface. He gave her some of his power in a kiss.” I looked to Jens, who glowered at me. “So, you know, be cool.”
“Why are we doing this?” Jens asked again. “Is it just to prove you’re not crazy? I know you’re not, Mox. This isn’t worth the hassle.”
I rolled my shoulders back, trying to stand tall among the giants. “I have things I need, and I think he can help me. I have to try.”
Jens looked like he’d expected my stubbornness.
I swallowed the whimper in my throat as I stepped to the edge. I pushed the weed in my mouth and choked it down. It tasted like nose-watering licorice, mulch, and a little like rancid chicken. I gagged next to Jens, who had known better than to let the thistle touch his tongue. “Ack! How are you not barfing right now?”
Jens offered up a smile that had a small amount of his wit wrapped in the crevices. “Lifetime of chugging Gar, baby. It’s not so bad. Tastes like chicken.”
I blanched, but managed to keep the abomination down.
Tucker and Jamie watched with mixtures of trepidation and angst on their faces as Jens wrapped his arms around my waist from behind me. Before I could back out, he jumped down into the river, plunging me into the depths with him.
Eighteen.
Havard
It hadn’t been as dark last time, so I’d been able to see every degradation coming at me. Though there was no such danger this time, the utter blackness lent itself to all sorts of possibilities playing themselves out like a horror movie in my mind. I couldn’t even see the brilliance of my arms unless I held them an inch from my eyes.
Jens kept his arms around my waist, his chest pressing into my back as he led the way toward the bottom of the river.
The air in our lungs didn’t pull us toward the surface, like it normally would. After half a minute, I expected the burn of impending suffocation to introduce itself, but it never came.
“It’s the vatten liv,” Jens explained.
I could hear him plain as day. There was a little bit of echo due to the water, but he spoke easily, as if his lungs were meant for both air and water.
I opened my mouth and gave it a go. “This is totally bizarre. Can you hear me?”
“Only if you tell me how much you love me. Anything short of that, and I’m going spontaneously deaf.”
“I love you,” I admitted, not reaching for sarcasm in a moment I truly needed him. “Thanks for this. I know you don’t believe me, but I need to try.”
Jens held me tighter as he swam us downward to an even murkier abyss. The water changed temperatures, growing icy. “I don’t think anything’s down here, Loos. How long do you want to search for your genie?”
“He’s not a genie.” Then I called out into the water that pressed in on me from every angle. “Hello? Kunna Tofs? Can you hear me? It’s Lucy Kincaid.” Then I thought further on that. “I’m bringing down Hilda inside of me. Can you help her? I need you.”
We swam lower, and the water began to grow warm. Like a velvety blanket, the heat pulled me in towards the source of coziness.
Then I saw it.
The ball of white light was faint, but it stood out easily as the only illumination in this area of the abyss. “Hello?” I called out again, pulling Jens toward it.
It flickered in response.
“Can you hear me? Is it you? Will o’ the Wisp? I’m here!”
I motioned to Jens to swim us toward the light, and he acquiesced with a note of hesitation. “Um, what is that? I don’t know about this, Loos. Stay close.” His arms remained belted around my hips and ribs.
When the source of the white light answered me, it was like a whisper in my head, but I somehow knew it was reaching Jens, as well. Though we still had a ways to swim before we got to our goal, the voice spoke as if we were right next to it. “Hilda?”
> I nodded vigorously, swimming faster to close the distance. “Yes! Sort of, but yes! I’m Lucy, her daughter, and she sent me to you! Oh, I’m so glad it’s you!” I nearly sobbed at the revelation that I was not crazy. My mom hadn’t sent me on a fool’s errand. I wanted to cry, but knew I had to stay on task. The words babbled out of me like I’d had too much caffeine. “She used your magic to preserve her spirit in my mind. That’s how you can sense her right now! I was here last year. The Nøkkendalig tried to take me and my friend, but you saved us! I didn’t know it was you back then, but it was your light that scared them away. Thank you for rescuing us.”
“Hilda had much power,” the voice remarked, as if recalling the fondness of a granddaughter he’d not seen in years. “She was not as polite as you.”
Jens swam us closer, though I could feel his desire to swim up to the surface increasing the closer we got to the source of the light.
“What’s your name?” I asked, approaching a man more slowly, now that I could see him clearly. The white light emanated from his stomach. He was bare-chested, dressed only from the waist down in seaweed. He sat cross-legged, and it almost looked as if the seaweed was holding him to the bottom of the river like an immovable anchor. He was probably around Jens’s age, but with white hair and a hook nose. “I know you’re a Kunna Tofs, but who were you when you lived on the surface?”
The man considered the question as if I’d just asked him the square root of banana pudding or something. “I… I think it was Havard.”
“Nice to meet you, Havard.” I wasn’t sure how long the vatten liv would last, so I cut to the chase. “My mom came down and asked you for some of your magic, so at least part of you would be able to live on the surface. She used it well. I’m proof of that. I was born because you saved her life. Thank you.”
He was taken aback. “You… You’re quite welcome.” Havard reached out and touched a lock of my hair that floated in the water around us. “I can see she used the powers I granted her. I warned her of the physical affects. A guldy in Undraland. Never thought I’d see the day.”
Jens’s grip on my waist tightened, but I let Havard caress my hair as I continued, pretending it wasn’t completely weird. “My mom kept me and my brother hidden from Undraland using a block in my mind that keeps my powers from being accessed.” I looked into his aqua eyes that were lit only by my arms and the ball of light that seemed to originate from Havard’s stomach. “I wish I didn’t have to ask you for a favor the first time I’m meeting you face to face, but I need help.”
“You’re a domslut. Odd that you think you need any kind of help. By the amount of siren blood on you, I’d say you were every bit as fierce as your mother. She fought valiantly.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know about all that. I caught a couple lucky breaks.” I felt Jens’s arms tightening around my torso as I moved closer, so there was only a foot of space between me and the foreign man.
“Humility. Peculiar thing to find here.” Havard examined my face as if checking for meaning in the pores on my skin. “Tell me what you need. You have limited time to speak your mind under the water.”
“I need lots of things. If you can help, I’ll take it. If you can steer me in the right direction at least, I’ll go that way. If you can’t or don’t want to help me, I guess that’s cool, too. I mean, I am a stranger.”
His white hair floated around in the water. The corners of his mouth drew up in an amused smile at my fifty thousand disclaimers. “I’m listening.”
I held up my hand and began ticking off points on my fingers. “I’m laplanded to my boyfriend’s best friend. Can you help me break the bond?” I felt Jens stiffen around me. Before Havard answered with more than raised white eyebrows, I pressed onward. “This is a big one, but I didn’t come all the way down here for little things. You’re the best, so I’m thinking you’re the only one who can help me. The Depravity of Man curse. How can I break it? Not just for one man, but the entire Isle of Fossegrim.”
At this, Havard stopped me with a raised hand. “I’ve not heard of anyone seeking redemption for the men there. Why should I help them?”
I shook my head, trying my best not to look down. Havard was… very naked, and the strategically placed seaweed sometimes shifted with the gentle current. “Lifting the curse isn’t really for the men. It’s for the women. They’re the ones who suffer the most because of the curse. Heck, you live here. Haven’t you had enough of listening to women suffer? If you can help them, you should,” I said, putting the screws to him. When he looked taken aback at my gall, I took on a more respectful tone. “My husband is a Fossegrimen.”
“You have a husband and a boyfriend?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
Jens was stiff behind me, but we really didn’t have time for that whole mess to be explained.
“Yes, I do. I know my husband’s a good man beneath the curse. If you can help him become the man he wants to be, I would be grateful.” I cleared my throat and lowered my voice. “You saved my mother. You don’t like it when women suffer. I know you care about goodness and justice.” I leaned closer, imploring him with my eyes. “You could singlehandedly rescue a whole island of women. Generations of them. At this point, you might be the only one who can.”
Nineteen.
Favors and Strings
Havard swallowed, letting my requests sink in. “Those are lofty favors, little girl.”
I bristled at being referred to as a child. “I’m an adult, actually. And it would be insulting to you if I asked you to magic me a cup of tea or something. You’re filled with big things inside of you. I won’t ask you to lower yourself by doing mundane acts. You weren’t meant for that.”
A genuine smile broke out Havard’s face. “You’ve been trained for politics, I see. I almost granted you the spoils of eternity just for that. Thank you, Lucy. Tell me, is that everything you wish for?”
I pursed my lips, wishing I didn’t have to admit the things I wanted aloud. “Can you fix my arms? I don’t like that they’re dipped in siren blood. I don’t want to walk around like the poster girl for death and violence.” Then, because who was he really going to tell, I plunged deeper. “The last siren forced her arv on me before she died. Can you get it out of me?” I held up my hands, drawing his eyes to the stars. “I don’t want to be her daughter. I’m Hilda’s daughter.”
Havard’s tone was clipped. “You’re a siren, but your magic is being held from you by the wall I taught Hilda how to construct? You’re of no threat to me, then.” He said this as if he’d been considering destroying me on the spot, and had only just ruled me as not a danger to him.
I huffed (Under the water. Totally freaky). “I wouldn’t hurt you even if I could, which I can’t.”
“I’m afraid there is nothing I can do if you want your other requests granted. You have to choose. Do you want the curses lifted and the bond broken, or do you want Pesta’s mark off of you? The former requires siren blood, which wouldn’t exist anymore if I took her arv off of you. It’s your decision.”
I whimpered, but selected the obvious choice. “The curses, then. Help me remove the curses.”
“Good. The choice was yours to make peace with. The block will hold throughout your life, if Hilda did it correctly. Unleashing a siren on Undraland would be chaos I wouldn’t want my name on.”
I nodded. “Okay, then. The block stays up. That’s fine. I don’t need magic.” Though I wanted to be cool with it, part of me was bummed. I wanted to be able to Gandalf things out of thin air and Peter Pan myself to a better life. Lame. “How do we do the other stuff?”
“Not so fast, little siren. I’ll need my own favor from you if I’m to help.”
“Name it.” My heart started to pound more rapidly in my chest, unsure how far I would go to help my friends and their world.
Havard turned to Jens. “And you? What favor do you ask me for?”
Jens looked taken aback at being addressed. “Me? Oh, um, well I hadn’t really th
ought about it. This is Lucy’s deal. I can really ask for anything?”
Havard nodded, and I thought I saw a hungry gleam in his eye at the two people who would now owe him favors. “Anything I can give you, I will.”
Jens released one arm from around me to gesture about as he spoke, and kept the other tight around my hips, so we didn’t float away from each other. “I’m Lucy’s Tom, but she doesn’t live an easy life.” He gave me a look that told me he wished I wasn’t privy to this conversation. “My body isn’t what it needs to be for the job anymore. I took a bad beating after years of living like it didn’t matter how long I lasted. If you could make me fit for the job I’ve got so Lucy’s safer, that would be the best thing you could do for me.” Then another thing came to him. “And Jamie. Prince Jamie of the Tonttu was born with a curse.”
Havard’s aqua eyes glinted with a darkness that sent a chill through me. “I’m familiar with it.”
“I need it lifted. Lucy helps him by letting him escape into her mind through the laplanding bond, but if you’re removing their bond, he’ll be thrown right back into the curse. Can you lift it from him? He wants to rule Tonttu. Tonttu needs him. He can’t be all he needs to be for his country as he is now.”
Havard contemplated Jens’s request, adding it to mine for the sum total of one whopping favor as yet to be determined. “You don’t want fame? No money? No power?”
“Nope,” Jens answered for the both of us. “We can work hard for what we want and be satisfied with where that gets us. What we need are things for Undraland to make the world better.”
Nice spin. I was kicking myself I hadn’t thought to add Jamie’s curse to the list.
“Can you raise people from the dead?” I asked meekly.
“No,” Havard replied like a stone wall, his tone sharp. “If I could, do you think I would remain here?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Lucy at Last Page 10
