I keep blinking as I ride through the woods. It’s so different from home. The trees are lush and in full bloom. Everything feels enchanted and full of possibility. The air is sweet with the smell of growth and moisture and warmth. The horse exudes a happy heat as she gallops through the spruce and pine trees. Every one of them looks like a Christmas tree waiting to happen.
I am heading to Nick.
I am heading to Nick!
My little flame of hope has become an action. My little want might become a have. Everything inside of me shivers in a good way, grows like a bunch of secret black-capped mushrooms in a fern grove. I can feel all my darkest worries fade away and become something cool, something real, something good.
I may be a pixie now, but I can still feel love and hope. I can still worry and care. I was so afraid that I would lose those things I think of as “human” that I wouldn’t even let myself contemplate it before I changed. I just rushed in and did it. I won’t regret my decision no matter the consequences, not if I can get Nick back. I won’t regret it at all, not even if it means my own mother can’t bear to look at me.
The thought of Astley and all my friends and my pixies fighting back behind the Brown House worries my stomach, erodes my happiness. So I turn my face up toward the sunlight shafting through the green tree leaves. I focus on remembering Nick’s face, its angles and crinkles.
Something in the woods calls out a low hoot. Another hoot answers in return. It’s meant to sound like an animal, but it is not an animal. Beside us, maybe two hundred feet to our left but on a parallel course, are men running through the trees. They wear some sort of brown pants, no shirts, helmets that obscure their facial features. Their chests are broad and full of muscles. They remind me of those evil Orcs running through the Lord of the Rings movies, pounding strength and terror in each footfall.
“I hope they are on our side,” I murmur and put my heels into the horse, pushing her faster. “Can we hurry?”
The horse and I break out of the woods and into a clearing. She stops. This building is even bigger than Heimdall’s. It’s tall and the roof looks as if it’s made of shields. The metal glints in the sun. The door is this massive, heavy timber-framed monstrosity covered in hammered metal. It looks like it would take ten men to open it.
My fear is not a phobia I can name. I don’t know how to describe it even. What if I repel Nick now? If he doesn’t even want to see me?
There is a thundering noise to the right of me. I turn the horse to face whatever it is and watch as the warrior men pound out of the woods, muscles rippling with strength and power. They are heading right for me.
“Crud,” I curse out, trying to figure out how to back up a horse who doesn’t seem to be freaking out at all like I am. She just holds steady, waiting.
They run in two lines, which I didn’t realize before. Most of their hair is plaited and hangs down. They have boots on and no weapons, which is good news. I pull out my sword and hold it in front of me, but there’s no way I could possibly battle them. No way at all. So I sheath it again, just as the men in the front reach us. I press my lips together, waiting for the inevitable words of threat, the hands yanking me off the horse, the questions about what I’m doing here, but none of this happens. The men divide around the horse, rush forward and past me. They smell of sweat and wood smoke and beer. They don’t make eye contact, don’t say a single word.
I pivot the horse around once I have enough room to move her, which isn’t until the last men are past us, and that’s when I see them entering the hall. They thunder inside and the door slams shut behind them. I can’t believe it.
“I am an idiot,” I tell the horse. “We could have slipped right in there with them.”
She neighs and I swear there’s a hint of amusement in that horsey neigh.
“I guess I have to knock, huh?”
I hop off her back, keeping a hand on her side. Her fur is so warm and rough and comforting. My old wound tweaks a little bit from the movement, but not too terribly much. I’ve healed so quickly. The horse bumps her muzzle into my shoulder and huffs out her nostrils. I reach up and scratch her.
“Thank you,” I murmur. “I suppose you can’t go inside with me?”
She tosses her head back. Her eyes roll so that whites appear. Then she trots off without even saying good-bye. She breaks into a gallop, enters the woods, and is gone. It’s just me now.
I knock.
There’s the sound of rope and pulley working together as the door slowly opens. There’s no sign of the warriors at all. A relatively small hunched-over man dressed like Heimdall, only with dirtier clothes, steps to the center of the doorway and nods at me. A broach near the base of his neck features the image of a wolf, which hitches my breath.
“Hello,” I manage to say.
“Hello.” He nods again and waits.
“I’m looking for Nick Colt,” I explain.
“The warrior recovers in a room on the western corridor.” He points to the left.
The warrior recovers.
“The warrior recovers” means he is alive. He is alive and this all… this all wasn’t for nothing.
He recovers.
A clasping knife seems to be working its way through my insides, cleaning them out, taking away the dead, dried-up pieces.
“H-how-how do I get there?” I ask.
The door guard’s face is as pale as Betty’s winter feet. He shakes his head as if he’s disgusted by my lack of motion, by the look of crazy that I know must be plastered on my face. His voice is annoyed as he says, “Go through the door at the far end of the hall. His room is the last.”
I wait, expecting more, like maybe I have to pass a test or a trial or something.
He waits too. He has two large swords on either side of his belt. People just wear swords here? Does he want to cleave me in half?
“Um, I can just go?” I ask. My voice squeaks. “You don’t need to know who I am?”
“You can just go, Zara,” he says much more casually, as if he’s given up pretending to be formal. “Odin has been expecting your arrival.”
“Okay.” I hop on my toes and then enter the hall cautiously. “Thanks.”
I enter a room that’s built of giant stone blocks with tall, thick pillars that support the roof. The pillars look like they’re made of the biggest trees, the kind that do not exist anymore. Giant spears line the walls like bamboo shutters. There are different levels of stone blocks all set so that each level is offset from the next, forming a shallow shelf. These shelves are lined with white, flesh-bare human skulls.
It is shudder worthy. I race through it as quickly as I can. My shoes echo on the wooden floor. I rush by long wooden tables and toward the door. It leads to a hallway. The hallway is long and dark. There are closed wooden doors on the sides. Nick is behind one of these doors! I start full-out running. There’s a door cracked open at the end. I stop outside it.
“Breathe,” I tell myself. “Breathe.”
But it’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to think. Nick is there, my Nick, behind the wall, in that room. Emotion threatens to explode inside me. I hiccup and then I reach out to push open the door.
How many people
How many people do we have to lose before this stops?” one protestor outside Bedford City Hall asked this morning. “Someone has declared war on the youth of Bedford, and it’s about time we take up arms and strike back.”