White Stag Page 11

  8

  RAPPROCHEMENT

  THE WIND BLOWING through the trees was the only sound I heard while I digested what Soren had told me. Every cell in my body ached to reject it and prove it wasn’t true, but I knew he wasn’t lying. The revelation had me shivering.

  My mind whirled with the memories of the past; bits of stories that at first had no meaning now held all the answers in the world. The way the other villagers looked at me, the scornful whispers as I streaked by them with a bow in my arms, reveling in the feeling of solitude in the freezing forest, the ambitious drive that pushed me to be faster, stronger, smarter, better than all the others, the things my father told me when I was no higher than his knee about the Permafrost and the despicable creatures who lived there. Was it his ultimate goal to poison my mind against my eventual home? Somehow, I thought it was. It all made sense except for one thing that sank in my stomach like a large stone.

  “You didn’t…” I could scarcely get the words out, “… have anything to do with the raid on my village, did you?” I fought the dread threatening to swallow me as I waited for his answer.

  Soren’s eyes shone brightly with concern.

  “No,” he said, and my heart lifted in relief. “During the time of Lydian’s raid, I was busy finalizing my lordship.”

  I nodded. It was no secret that younger goblins usurped and killed their sires when they became strong enough to rule in their place. If there were goblins loyal to their old lord, they were dealt with just like the castellan was all those years ago. For a young goblin, the path to power was always stained with blood.

  “When I came to the village, it was already in ruins,” he continued. “You can imagine my surprise when Lydian threw you in front of my feet.”

  I looked away as Soren searched my face. I didn’t want him to see the fear there.

  “I don’t know all of what he did to you, Janneke, and I’m not going to force you to tell me before you’re ready to,” he said softly. “But I know some of it, and I know I will never let him touch you again. What’s more is I know you won’t either.”

  I took a deep breath, pulling my arms around myself. The temperature had dropped to freezing, the sun all the way below the horizon. In the dark, moonless sky, the trees stretched up like fingers trying to steal the stars. It was so quiet, so still, nothing but the sound of the breath in our lungs.

  “So why didn’t you tell me? Why was I like any other thrall? Why for the past one hundred years was I in servitude—enslaved by you?” I asked, the question burning inside of me. “In all that time you could’ve said something! Why didn’t you?”

  Soren shook his head. “That wasn’t part of the original plan. But the original plan was foiled when Lydian captured you. You know some of the laws of winter, about fighting and gift-giving. Another one is that a gift can only be used according to its nature, unless the gift fundamentally changes. In the spirit of the Permafrost, Lydian gave you to me as a thrall, thinking I would kill you. Obviously, that backfired. I thought I could make your nature change and keep everything to myself. If things had worked out the way I planned, then I would have tried to go down the path of a changeling anyway.” He sighed. “And … I was scared. I told myself I’d say something when you were healed, but then I didn’t. I kept promising myself ‘next year’ but the longer I said nothing, the harder it was to tell you the truth. I wanted to win your trust, and I was afraid the truth would break it.”

  I swallowed, hoping to dislodge the lump forming in my throat. “A hundred years and you couldn’t take ten minutes of bravery?”

  Soren looked down at his feet, something similar to shame and a hint of humility in his body language. “I know that while I never thought of you as truly enslaved or treated you like that, my lack of communication, my fear of telling you the truth, left you afraid and imprisoned, like you were trapped in Hel. Lydian might have captured you and the law of winter might’ve imprisoned you, but I—I did nothing to change it. I continued it. That was wrong, and I know none of this can make up for the past, but I am so sorry.”

  He was right. Nothing he said could make up for the years passed by, but at the same time a fissure in my soul mended and knitted back together like yarn. It was a crack I’d never realized was there, but as the weight lifted off my chest I breathed my first truly unburdened breath in a long, long time.

  The wind howled around us. I swore the roots we sat on were coming to life. The Permafrost was full of the sounds of night: hooting owls, the calls of wolves, and the far-off cries of fighting goblins. My mind wandered back to the camp where Rekke and Elvira were. I wouldn’t put it past Elvira to be plotting another way to kill me. After I injured her snow cat, she looked mad enough to disembowel me right there and then.

  I looked down at my hands. The tawny-colored palms were full of calluses and old scars. Hard muscle shaped my arms and shoulders, rippling down my sides. Was this the body of a human or a goblin? Did these hands, which could bear the razor-sharp bowstring of a Permafrost bow without bleeding, belong among other humans who would never understand them? Somehow, I didn’t think it mattered anymore.

  Pain burst deep in my chest at the thought of my family: my mother, my father, and my sisters. They must’ve known my fate as I grew wilder by the day.

  In the deepest, darkest part of my memory, my parents whispered about me by firelight and a dream of a frozen land reappeared over and over while an inhuman voice called for me.

  “What are you thinking, Janneke?” Soren asked, appearing alarmed at my long silence. “What are you feeling?”

  Nothing. Not horror or anger or sadness. Numbness, yes, so thick and strong it was almost painful, blocking out any type of thought, emotion, or reaction. Just a blank stare wondering if this had always been my fate and the feeling that yes, yes it probably had been.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”

  Born on the border of the Permafrost with the coldness of the land in my blood, it made sense.

  Soren reached out and brushed a lock of my hair back into place. The brush of his fingertips against my cheek sent a jolt of electricity down my spine, but for once it wasn’t one of fear. He thinks it’s how you build trust. I had to give him credit for trying.

  “You’ve earned my trust,” I said. “You don’t need to keep trying.”

  “Maybe I just like touching you.” The smirk was back.

  “I think you’re ill. You’ve been smiling way too much.” I was only half teasing. I truly had never seen Soren smile or smirk so much in the entire hundred years I’d spent with him.

  He immediately trained his features back into his signature scowl. Conversation lulled into silence for a few moments.

  “Will I really turn into a goblin?” I asked.

  “Your blood is laced with the same type of power as mine, so you have the blood of one, so to speak,” he said. Then after a moment, he added, “But you have the heart and mind of a human. You clutch to the heart as if it’s your lifeline, but you need to be one with your blood if you want to continue to survive, otherwise you’ll go mad.”

  I took a deep breath. Continue to survive. The chanting of the flickering flames inside me grew stronger. Survive. Survive. Survive.

  “Then what was the point of this, of you taking me on the Hunt? Did you lie?”

  “I wanted you to accept your blood and”—he paused, sharp canines biting his lower lip—“I went about it the wrong way. I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning, but I didn’t know how. The longer I kept putting it off, the harder it was for me to tell you. I was afraid. I’m sorry.”

  I stilled. I didn’t think Soren would ever apologize for anything. I didn’t think he understood the concept of an apology, and here he was, apologizing for the second time in under five minutes. Maybe he was ill.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Always,” he promised.

  “I’ve had illus
ions of choices, Soren. Not real ones.”

  Soren dropped his gaze again, like the guilt was holding him down. “You’re right, again. I apologize; that wasn’t fair of me to say. For true, this time. You will always have a choice. Every option and every path. If I break faith with thee, may the sky fall upon me, may the sea drown me, and may the earth rise up and swallow me. Until I die, so long will I keep my oath.”

  The air crackled as Soren finished the words of the ritual oath. “We’re on even ground now, then,” I said, the ghost of a smile on my lips. “So, what now?”

  “As far as I see it, you could leave. Releasing you from the bind I’ve made would be hard. It might even kill you, which was why I thought it would be better to dissolve it over time as you embraced your nature. Assuming you survived, you could go back to the human world. You’d have to travel far away from the Permafrost, somewhere where the burnt lands are no more than just legends. With the power built up inside of you, you probably wouldn’t be able to hunt again. It would attract others. But you could have a chance at a normal human life. Fall in love, raise a family, the things you wouldn’t have had even back in your own village. Or … you could stay here…”

  “And become a goblin, or as good as,” I finished.

  “There aren’t many like you, Janneke. Human-hearted and goblin-blooded. I don’t know which choice would make you happy and which wouldn’t. I know that you’ll go mad if you’re torn between the worlds.”

  The stillness in my heart frightened me; there should’ve been turbulence. There should’ve been pain crashing down like spiked ice and despair rushing through me like sucking mud. There should’ve been hate and fear and rage. But instead, there was the quiet calmness of a land after surviving a strong storm.

  I could leave. I could leave the Permafrost and go back to wherever I had been before here; find Elvenhule, see the remains of what was left of my family. I could find some other village, far, far away from the Permafrost, and assimilate back into human culture. Fall in love, raise a family. I could lock all the memories of the Permafrost in a corner of my mind and never let them out again.

  But the heartbeat of the Permafrost was like thunder underneath my feet, and the prey lines were clear as the morning’s sun. Insects began their symphony, and I could recognize each of their individual songs and hear the direwolves singing their serenade to the moonless sky. The cold air on my shoulders was a mother’s caress, and the darkness in my eyes a warm, thick blanket.

  This place could become my home if I let it, if I accepted the beauty, however cruel, that it possessed. If I left, I would never hunt again, much less in the near-magical way I was doing now in the Hunt, and I’d forget the whispers of the trees and the language of the living. If I stayed, there was a chance my humanity would slip away. It was such a thin line: happiness and comfort, spirit and safety.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do,” I said finally. “I need to think.”

  Soren glanced up at the dark, moonless sky. “You’ll need to decide soon.”

  “It’s more than a decision … I don’t want to be—”

  “A monster?” Soren cut me off. “Remember what I said before? We’re all monsters, Janneke, in some way. Every creature is prey of something … or someone. That doesn’t mean we’re evil. Besides, I always thought that a being was only a monster when they became blinded to the outcome of their actions.” He let out a small smile. “I don’t think you’re the type of person to forget that everything comes with a price.”

  “I never took you for a philosopher,” I said.

  His lips twitched. “I won’t lie and say my kind are never monstrous. Just that we’re only as monstrous as your kind are.”

  A chilly breeze blew against my still-wet hair, and I shuddered. “We should probably get back.”

  Soren nodded. “Your teeth are beginning to chatter. Besides, we don’t want Elvira to think someone picked us off now, do we?”

  “We’ve been lucky.” A fight with Helka and a few humans, a race against collapsing ground, a few dead bodies—those were nothing against a full-scale fight between us and any other armed group out for our power and the stag.

  But as we headed deeper and deeper into the stag’s territory and farther away from the edge of the worlds, it wouldn’t be long before we ran into someone. Not to mention sooner or later our alliance with Rekke and Elvira would break for good. There could only be one winner of this hunt.

  We trudged through the darkened landscape with Soren in the lead. His eyes were stronger than mine by far, picking up little anomalies in the blackness that I couldn’t see. I was silent as I chewed over my question, wondering if it was worth asking. Then I spoke.

  “When are we going to double-cross Elvira and Rekke?”

  Soren turned to me, and through the darkness his purple eyes glittered. “Do you think so little of me that you believe I’d betray our most honorable allies?”

  I snorted. “Does that question need an answer?”

  “Can you just humor me?” he groaned. “I’m trying to be sarcastic.”

  “That’s not sarcasm.”

  “I can tell.” The words came out in a quiet growl.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Growl? It’s … a way to express how I’m feeling, I guess? Different tones mean different things. I was frustrated. So, I growled.”

  “Like a cat,” I said.

  “A cat?”

  “Every meow means something different,” I explained. “Every growl means something different. Like a cat.”

  Soren tipped his head to the side, looking very much like a confused cat. “A cat,” he repeated, frowning. “I’m much more regal than a cat.”

  “You’re as arrogant as one.”

  “I will pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said. “Also, cats aren’t arrogant. They just know who’s in charge. Besides, if I’m a cat, you’re a dog.” He smiled at the look on my face. “You’d be one of those scruffy little mutts. A hybrid of some sort, I think. You would look cute. I would even let you on the furniture. As long as you didn’t shed. I hate shedding.”

  I blinked. There was no responding to that. Soren chuckled to himself, as we continued back toward camp. Right here and now, he definitely didn’t seem like a monster. He had given me a choice. He’d given me the opportunity for my freedom. The idea was almost as painful to absorb as another goblin’s power, but it was slowly sinking in. The sleeping forms of Rekke and Elvira materialized before us. I glared at the older she-goblin. Now there was someone I could do without.

  “You don’t like them?” Soren asked.

  “Rekke is fine. She reminds me almost of a human. It’s Elvira who bothers me,” I said. “Not just because she wants to kill me either.”

  “You threaten her,” Soren said, shrugging.

  “How can I threaten her? She’s more than a millennium older than me, and I don’t even want to guess how many times more powerful. Then again, considering that she took Rekke on the Hunt in order to kill her, perhaps she has an inferiority complex.”

  He shook his head, sighing. “Rekke shouldn’t be on this hunt.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust her.”

  “I didn’t. I thought her innocence was an act. It isn’t.” He scowled. “She’s young. Younger than you are, even. She should still be learning with a tutor and playing games with goblins her own age.” His eyes grew dark. “I’ve done many things and I don’t regret most of them, but I can’t abide those who snatch little birds from their nests and break their wings before they’re even ready to fly.”

  My hands clenched into fists.

  Soren’s gaze was thoughtful. “Are you afraid?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not afraid. I’m angry.”

  The conversation ceased as we reached the camp. Both women were fast asleep on their bedrolls, the giant snow cat resting its leopard-like spotted body against his master’s. When his chest rose and fell with each breath, the wound
on his flank glistened red. Rekke was curled in a tight ball, little whimpers escaping from her lips every so often. My heart hurt watching her.

  “We can’t do anything about it,” Soren said from beside me, but reproach glittered in his eyes.

  I unrolled my bedroll, placing it as far from Elvira and Rekke as I could. I wasn’t going to tempt fate with the elder goblin. Panic trotted over to me, his sleepy brown eyes blinking lazily. Attached to his saddle were my bow and sheath, as well as my axe. I unhooked them, placing them where I could easily reach them in case of an emergency or assassination attempt. The horse nickered and pawed at the dry, dusty ground. I shook my head at him.

  “Sorry, Panic. No grass.” He flattened his ears, so I added, “I don’t have anything to eat either. We’ll be hungry together.”

  I lay on my bedroll, trying to get comfortable when the whoosh of air suggested someone was lying down beside me. My shoulders tightened. Soren was so close I could feel the warmth radiating off his skin. Like before, my body greedily sucked it up. His breath was even in his lungs like a gentle nighttime rhythm among the silent darkness.

  “Give me some space,” I grumbled.

  Soren rolled over so he was facing me. “You know, you could eat if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t like raw meat,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if I can digest it. It’s gross.”

  “Suit yourself.” You’ll cave sooner or later, his eyes said.

  I scowled and tried to get comfortable on the bedroll. The bearskin was on the other side of Soren, and if I got closer to him, I was sure I’d end up in a position like the night before. The last thing I needed was Rekke commenting on my relationship with Soren. “Go to sleep,” Soren said softly.

  My eyes closed, and I willed my body to relax, releasing muscles I hadn’t known were stiff. The hard riding, the humans’ attack, the sinking ground, and the revelation all were echoing in my head like the pulse of a beating drum. Icy wind blew through the trees, and I shivered, only to be covered with the thick bearskin. When I turned around to shoot Soren a glare, he lay still, feigning sleep.