Undraland (14 page)

I nodded as my chest heaved from relief and extreme dread at what I’d just done. Before I knew it, I was being hefted to my feet and wrapped in a warm hug. The smell of Jens was familiar and comforting. In the back of my brain it registered that he had spent half a decade with my family, so it made sense he smelled familiar, but in that moment, I clung to him and inhaled the soothing balm. I sucked him into my lungs and let him fill me with his strength and peace. His hand palmed the back of my head and gripped my hair, pulling at the roots.

“I did it!” I cackled madly at the success and brush with my greatest fear. “Did you see me? I was a ninja!”

Jens leaned back and beamed at me, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of how scared he actually was for my safety.  “Next stop, trapeze artist.”

“No way. Not now that I know you plan to off me at a carnival with all those clowns.” We laughed in each other’s arms.

It dawned on me when neither of us was willing to let go that Jens had made himself invisible for my family. His job was to disappear. No one touched him. No one talked to him. It began to make sense that he was occasionally grouchy.

I rubbed circles into his lower back and buried my face in his chest. It was a heady thing for both of us, being in the presence of such comfort, and we did not consider breaking apart until Foss cleared his throat.

“We should get moving,” Foss said, interrupting our newly acquired calm. “Do whatever that is on your own time.”

Britta whirled on Foss as if she meant to give him a thrashing for breaking us apart prematurely.

Jens looked as embarrassed as I felt when we rejoined the group. He situated his red pack on his back and moved me to his left, so I was in between him and the mountain. Even now, he was taking every precaution to keep me safe. He nodded to me and tried to reassemble his stoic personality. “Let’s go, Mox.”

Sixteen.

Spindel
s
             

“So I single-handedly destroyed a coven of Weres armed with only a dagger. Not a scratch on me.”

This was hour seven hundred and fifty billion of Nik regaling us with his heroics. Or twenty minutes. I started to lose time whenever he talked about his greatness. It was… great.

“Funny how you never have a scratch from any of these battles,” Foss interjected, “or any proof at all. Our slave trade is getting out of hand. Perhaps we should hire you to remedy that.”

Nik smiled graciously, giving Britta a shot of his dazzling teeth. “Oh, I think I’ll stick to defending the Nøkken borders. Wouldn’t want to be a glory hog.”

Sometime later (I really missed having the ability to tell time), Nik held up his fist, indicating we should stop. “Up ahead’s the spindel lair. Did we decide on fire or trying our luck with stealth?”

“We didn’t decide,” Tor grumbled. “Ya keep arguing, and we land on the same thing. Fire’s safer, but draws more attention ta where we are. Sneaking by the lair’d be tricky, but if it works, our location’d be secure fer now.”

Foss and Nik began their usual disagreement, so I sat down and leaned my back on the mountain. I had not walked this much in… ever.

It was pretty dark out, though I welcomed this far more than the blinding daylight. Their red moon was a thing of beauty and grandeur. If mine was a Frisbee in the sky, the one in Undraland was a monster truck tire.

I was bordering on exhaustion, but did my best not to show it. Jens sat down next to me, leaving the others to their debate. He handed me his canteen, and I took a grateful swig.

“How’re you holding up?” Jens asked, looking at my mismatched shoes instead of at me.

I shrugged. “Oh, you know me. Bulletproof.”

“You don’t want to weigh in on fire versus sneaking?”

I glanced up to the others, who were having a heated discussion in hushed tones. “Nah. I’ll let Frick and Frack duke it out. I don’t actually know what spindels are, so I can’t imagine I’d have a useful opinion.”

“Spiders. Well, mostly. Spindels are poisonous spiders with black hairy bodies the size of softballs.” He held up his fist as a visual of the size.

I turned my head slowly to look at him. “Excellent. So, we’re dying soon? Good to know.”

“The poison doesn’t kill you. It paralyzes you so they can lay their eggs in your body while you sleep. Then they hatch and the larvae feed on you.”

My mouth dropped open. “What? Gross! What is wrong with your universe? That’s horrifying! When do we get to meet some unicorns, or something awesome?” I shuddered at the thought of spiders crawling up my back and biting me all over.

“They’re actually not a big deal because there’s herbs that flush them totally out of your system if you come into contact with them. When we get to Elvage, Alrik can get us some. We’re almost there, actually. Just another day’s trek, and you can get some rest.”

“I look that bad?”

Jens turned his head to look out into the night. He bumped his shoulder to mine. “You never look bad.”

I was glad the sun was gone, so my confused smile would not be seen. “Thanks. You’re one smooth talking garden gnome. In fact, you’re the smoothest garden gnome I’ve ever met.”

Jens grinned, the golden diamond-shaped tattoo on his cheek wrinkling around the crinkles next to his emerald eyes. “Good thing you’ve only met two other ones. Let you think the standard of amazing is me.”

I nodded ahead to Britta, who was interjecting politely when Foss and Nik hit a wall in their back and forth. “What’s the deal with your sister and Jamie? They’re very cutie pie for each other, but it seems like it’s all hush-hush.”

Jens repacked his canteen and offered me an apple from his sack. “He’s the Tonttu king’s son. His wife was picked out the day he was born. Freya from the Nisse tribe of Tomten. As a group, they’re a little more high maintenance, and Freya embodies that. Jamie’s getting to the age where marriage is expected. They didn’t do anything wrong, Jamie and Britt. He’s my best friend, and she’s my sister. Of course they would spend time together if they’re around me. They’re both solid Toms. Why shouldn’t they fall for each other?” He shook his head. “King Johannes didn’t like me before, but when he found out Jamie was in love with my sister? Let’s just say it was a good time for me to take a security job working for your family in a whole nother world. The only job my sister could get was… you know, the worst one.” His words were clipped when he spoke of the king. “Jamie’s going to fulfill his family obligation, but it’ll kill them both.”

“That’s pretty sad.” I tapped the side of my shoe to his boot.

Jens nodded. “It’s very sad. Britta’s twenty-two, which is at the tail end of normal marrying age for our kind. I know that’s weird to you, being that in your culture women get married or not at any age without it being a big deal, but here it’s a stigma. In another year, she’ll be seen as an old maid. Like, there must be something wrong with her if she’s still single kind of thing.”

A few beats of silence passed between us before I spoke. “Do you need me to tell you how messed up that is?”

“Nope. All I want is to see Britta happy. She’s pretty independent for a Tom. Not many women choose to live alone. None are as handy with outside work as she is, either. She’s had offers for marriage, but she turned them all down. For her, it’s Jamie or no one.”

“Good for her.” I looked up at the woman in a new light. Though she looked oppressed with her quiet nature and Amish clothing, I admired her resolve to stay true to herself and not cave to society’s rules when they crossed with her own. “You must be pretty proud of her.”

I could feel Jens staring at me. “I am. Funny, but not many people get that. I kinda knew you would, though.”

“Single girls unite?” I tried to keep any unhappiness out of my voice. Sure, Britta was an old maid at twenty-two, but someone was in love with her, and she had that bliss of being over the moon for someone. Her singleness was a choice. Mine was every guy on the planet’s choice. I shifted uncomfortably on the rocky surface and fished for a change of subject. “So, spiders. That should be fun. Anything else I should know? Got any pterodactyls around? Space monsters? Killer tomatoes?”

Jens snorted. “Boy, Linus would love that.”

My smile instantly mutated to a false one as I pushed through the thought of my brother at the dinner table. He had an aversion to tomatoes, calling them The Red Plague. He claimed he was allergic to them, but I still maintain it was placebo. He just hated tomatoes and pretended to have a stomachache whenever they were on the plate.

I didn’t like talking about Linus or my parents anymore. Now I was the one with the placebo stomach pains at the mention of Linus’s tomatoes.

I stood abruptly with my tour guide smile plastered in place and extended my arm to help Jens to his feet. “Ready to breakdance fight those totally harmless spiders?” I held up my hands like a ninja and jiggled my shoulders to demonstrate what a good dance fighter I could be.

The look Jens gave me was also wrapped in a smile, but beneath the layers, I saw pity. That accursed pity I could never manage to escape, even in the magical land of Undra-Narnia. He was about to say something, but saw something behind me and tensed. “Don’t move,” he cautioned, smile still intact. “Just stand still.”

The hairs on my arm stood up, and the urge to whip my head around like a maniac was overpowering. Jens inched by me with the grace of an actual ninja. There was a quick movement, a gasp and several more wafts of air hitting me from behind. I nearly jumped out of my skin (not a great thing to do on the side of a mountain) when Jens yelled, “Spindels! Run!”

I whirled around and saw exactly what Jens described: eight-legged furry creatures bigger than rats. A line of them was spilling out of a crack in the wall to our left like a waterfall. Black monster of Frankenstein critters scurried over my feet and up my legs. They were tripping and jumping out at us, separating Jens and me from the others, who ran further down the trail. “Follow me, Loos!” Jens commanded.

I screamed and covered my ears on instinct as I ran behind Jens. He knocked dozens of them out of the way, acting like a linebacker for me (or whatever the crap that position is that blocks the bad guys from taking down the quarterback. What do you want from me? Linus played soccer). Kitten-sized arachnids landed in my hair, their spindly legs tangling in the curls. I felt one scurry under the hem of my shirt and bite the small of my back. It was a small pinch of a needle with a cold chill that lasted long after I shook the fur ball loose. My scream was high-pitched, but only exhibited a tenth of the terror I felt inside.

We ran as fast as we could, but the spiders were ambitious. When we trampled through the last of the black mess of them, I did not slow until Jens began to stumble. He tripped a few times, but picked himself back up. He grabbed onto my hand and trudged a few minutes more to a little cavern where he collapsed. “Jens!” I knelt beside his heaving form and patted his back to calm him down.

“Go on ahead and tell Britt to run for Alrik.”

“I’m not leaving you like this,” I protested, surprised that he would even suggest such a thing. “They’re not that far behind us, Jens! They’ll be crawling all over you in minutes!”

He waved a shaky hand like I was being too dramatic. “We passed giftig bushes. They repel spindels. They won’t cross the giftigs. I’m fine here.”

“I don’t want to just leave you here!” I protested, feeling all kinds of wrong as I watched his strong body slow down.

“You have to. I got bit a few times, and the poison’s already moving through me. My knees are shaking.” When he saw my horror, he put on a weak smile. “I’m fine. Takes 48 hours for the gestation to run its course. We’re a day out from Alrik’s village, so we’ve got plenty of time. Just go with the others and bring back Alrik as quick as you can.”

I nodded and scrambled to my feet, bolting up the moonlit path and shouting with abandon for the others. I ran with renewed energy, despite having not eaten much or slept in who knows how long. The dark of night was disturbed by my brazen volume, and though I was alone, I couldn’t really connect with any fear that wasn’t related to saving Jens.

When I heard footsteps running toward me, I slowed, heaving a sigh of relief when I saw Foss. “What happened? Where’s Jens?”

“The spiders got him! Lots of them bit him and he can’t walk. He sent me to tell you to run for Alrik, and I mean, run!”

Foss needed no other explanation. “Let’s go, then.”

I wiped the sweat from my brow. “No. I’m going back to stay with him. If more spiders come, he won’t be able to fight them off.” As the words came out of my mouth, I questioned them. Did I know how to fight them off? I mean, other than using a shoe, I’d never defended my territory from spiders before. Not like this.

“Is he on the other side of the giftigs?”

“Yeah, but I won’t gamble on that. I’m not leaving him.” My chin raised, daring him to argue with my resolute tone.

“Are you sure?” Foss gave me a hesitant look, which affected my volume greater than I meant it to.

“Run!” I shouted. “Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Run!”

He was startled by the crazed look in my eye. “Alright, little rat. He’ll be fine. I’ll go get Alrik right now.”

“Do you think I’m speaking metaphorically? How are you not running? Do you need me to put the fear of God in you?” I stepped toward the enormous warrior menacingly, not quite sure what I might do to evoke a sprint from the man.

“I’m going!” He turned and ran up the incline as if I might unleash the powers of PMS on him.

I stumbled back down the path, my heart clenching in my chest when I found Jens collapsed on the stone floor of the small cave. He had looked so strong just moments ago when he helped me across the blockade. My wobbly knees were quaking from adrenaline, and the cold spot on my spine felt like it was spreading to my hips.

Jens groaned. “What are you doing? I told you to go with them!” His face was red, and little pink spots were bulging out on his cheeks and neck.

“Shut up,” I snapped. I was too excitable to feel repentant for my attitude. “I can’t believe you thought I would leave you here. You think you know me so well?” Sweat was pouring off me now, and my lungs were beginning to feel the cold that was working its way around to my navel. I shouted at him over his coughing, not even feeling remorseful for yelling at him in his pathetic state. “I stayed with Linus through every chemo treatment, every needle and every new doctor! I held his hand while he died! Now you’ll shut your mouth and let me take care of you, or so help me, forget Martin Luther King! I’ll end you!”

“There’s nothing you can do, Lucy. Nothing you could’ve done for Linus, either. Only Alrik can help me now. You would’ve been better off going with the others.” He coughed again, and I could see the color draining from his face as the sweat dripped off his chin onto the ground. “If something finds us up here, I can’t protect you.”

“Then I guess they’ll have to deal with me. What else you got up here? Besides the radioactive spiders, I mean. Boxing kangaroos? Chainsaw-wielding elephants?”