Undraland (8 page)

His voice turned sharp. “Hey! Knock it off, Helsa. She’s not stupid. She knows how to drive a real car.”

This inane factoid about me earned deferential gasps. What a culture. I wonder what they would’ve done if I mentioned my mad parallel parking skills?

I allowed Jens to help me up, and did not even protest when he held my hand and wrapped his arm around my shoulders in what felt like a protective hold. “Please stop making me look like an idiot and get me out of here. My stomach seriously hurts, and you’re just parading me around, showing them how dumb I am.”

“I’ll take you now. I’m sorry. I just wanted to waste a little time out here. Once we get to my place, it’ll be chaos. Thought we could have a little fun first.”

“Fun? You think any of this is fun for me? People laughing at me? You making me look like a fool in front of your snobby groupies?” I hated that his apology actually sounded sincere.

“Your stomach’s really hurting that bad?”

“I just want to lie down somewhere that doesn’t burn through my retinas. Can you be a grownup and make that happen?”

“Yeah.” He clutched me tighter to keep me from falling when I tripped yet again. “Here, hop on my back.”

“Come again?”

“Sure. Hop on. I was being a jerk. Let me make it up to you by being your pack mule.”

I rather liked the sound of that. Pretty much any option to get me out of the blinding sun and open ridicule was nothing to turn my nose up at. “Anything that makes you look like the horse’s backside you are. Alright.” I sized up his back with my hands as he laughed. “Um, you may have to help me. You’re like, a foot taller than me.” He bent down and reached for my hand, helping me up with a swift yank. I held on for dear life, not used to being this high up off the ground. He set off in the direction I assumed his house was in. “I’m not… um, I’m not too heavy?” I weighed the cons of the five-egg omelet I had two mornings ago.

“How much would you hate me if I pretended to fall over from the extra weight right now?”

“Seven.”

“Seven?”

“That’s how much I’d hate you. Seven.”

“Out of how many?”

“Irrelevant. You don’t want me to hate you seven. It’s painful.”

“Yikes.” I could hear the smile in his voice. I hate that it made him seem less of a monster. “Hey, how are you doing?”

Another nicety. I was going to have to work harder to despise him at this rate. I pushed my face to the back of his neck, relaxing when I could no longer see too much light through my shut eyelids. “Oh, you know. New town. New rules. No home. Just another day.”

“Homes are overrated.”

“You’re overrated.”

“Ouch.” He turned his head in my direction. “You know how when you’d move to a new place, you’d keep quiet for a while until you got the lay of the land?”

“Apparently
you
do,” I grumbled. “Thanks for stalking me for so long. Really. Feels great.”

“You’re welcome. Your family paid me a lot of money to ‘stalk’ you all.”

I thought this over for a minute as he hauled us both up the hill. “So after they died, why’d you stick around? Paychecks had to have stopped then. I know I’m not shelling it out for your stellar services.”

“Alrik pays me. I’ve been working for him for ages. There aren’t many of us still on active duty. Most retired.” He hefted me higher on his hips. “You know those lawn ornament garden gnomes you see in people’s yards? Those get left behind at our last charge’s home when we retire.”

“You already told me that,” I reminded him.

“Well, smarty-pants, it holds a permanent protection charm on the house to keep it safe. Mine’ll stay with you, since I’m bound to your family for the length of my career.” When I did not speak (I mean, honestly, what could I say to that? I’ve probably seen a couple hundred of those creepy things on people’s front lawns and never thought twice about it), Jens pinched my calf. “I know you’ve got a million questions. Hit me.”

“So, there’s lots of you, then?”

“Not anymore. There used to be, but more and more are taking their retirement early. There are only a handful of guardian gnomes in Johannes’s kingdom, which is where we are. Most are the gardening kind.”

I kept my face buried in the crook of his neck. “Why do humans need protection? Can’t all be from bears.”

“Pesta. She’s the last siren.”

“A siren? Like…”

“Like in your English Lit classes you hated so much and should’ve paid better attention in? Yeah. Pesta’s the last siren in existence, and she’s chained to the Land of Be.”

I sighed. “I love that you think any of those words make sense to me.”

“The Land of Be is a place we can go where there’s no pain. There’s nothing sad, nothing violent, nothing at all, in fact. You go there to check out. Apparently, it’s bliss. You go there to just be.”

“Alright. That sounds nice. Why are you guarding me from her?”

His voice took on a serious note, which I did my best to respect. “Because it’s not as simple as nirvana. To get in, you have to give her your dominant arm and the use of your soul.”

“Come again?”

“That’s why when you go there, you don’t feel anything bad, or anything at all. She animates the arms and uses them to keep the people there locked inside. Not that they would try to escape.” He stomped through a bunch of chickens, ignoring their clucking as they scattered.

“Jens! Slay any trolls while you were away?” a passerby called out.

“Not today. Maybe next time.”

“Good to have you back. How long do we get you for this time?”

“Not long. Say hi to your father for me.” We kept moving, and Jens was greeted by a few more farmers in a similar fashion.

“Is that the human female, Jens? Well, I’ll be. Why’ve you dressed her as a man?”

The smirk in Jens’s tone seemed to be a fairly common thing. “That’s her, alright. She’s a dangerous one. Caught her with my bare hands.” He pinched my calf again, this time with a hint of flirtation.

The audience was floored. “Wow!”

I chuckled into his neck at the sincerity of the stranger’s exclamation. “They’ve really never seen a human before? I don’t look that different from them.” When I breathed in, I could smell his skin. A caress of sugar cookie dough seemed to waft off of him no matter where I pressed my nose. It was the same smell our house always had, and even after my mom died and there was no one to make cookies, the scent followed me. Even Tonya would comment occasionally and ask if I’d been making cookies.

Now I knew. It was Jens. Sweet as sugar, mean as a bull.

Jens suppressed a slight shiver any man gets when a woman sniffs the back of his neck. Goose bumps broke out on his skin, which we both tried to ignore. I cringed, hoping he wouldn’t call me out on my nasal indiscretion.

Jens continued the conversation as if I had not just been a freak who smells strangers. “You’re shorter, paler. You wear street clothes. The women here wear only dresses. You have access to all sorts of magical gadgets like phones, cars and things like that. Now, where were we?”

“Um, all the things I hate about you?”

“No, we covered that already.”

“Trolls, then.”

He hitched me further up again. “Right. Eighteen to twenty feet tall usually, pure muscle and not given to diplomacy.”

“Are there actual real live giants around here? I’m trying to be cool, but that’d test my ability to compartmentalize big time.” I let out a short laugh. “Big time? Giants? I’m funny.”

I could tell he was half-smiling. “You are. Kept me entertained on many a boring stakeout.” He shifted me on his back. “There aren’t any trolls in these parts anymore. Used to be, but you don’t have to worry about that.”

“You slayed them all with your massive gnome muscles?” I teased.

“Shut up.” He sniffed. “And, yes, I did. You gonna take back that ‘horse’s backside’ comment?”

“Nope. Giddy up, horsy.”

He neighed, which, I admit did entertain me. “But that’s not what we were talking about. Pesta.”

I nodded into his neck. “Right. The siren who lobotomizes your magical fairy people.”

“That’s a good summary, actually. So she claims to set the truly pure souls free by giving them a new home inside of bears. Sort of like reincarnation. A second chance at life. It’s been in the past few years that she started weaponizing some of the less desirable souls in her possession by using the not-so-pure ones. Breach of her agreement with all us ‘magical fairy people’. The bears aren’t tame when the souls go inside anymore. They’re the Weres you saw when we first met.”

“Do they turn at the full moon, like werewolves?”

“Werewolves don’t exist,” he chided me, as if I were being impertinent on purpose.

But vampires do? You bit me, jackwagon. You injected me with your Edward Cullen poison.
“Silly me,” I grumbled.

Jens continued on, motioning with his hand. “Pesta only has dominion over bears, and they don’t turn at the full moon. The moon’s got nothing to do with it.”

“What about the Weredogs we saw in the parking lot?”

“Exactly. That’s part of the problem. She’s only allowed to put souls inside of bears. That’s a big step out of bounds.”

There were a few beats of silence before I spoke the non sequitur that had been on my mind. “I don’t like that you punched that Stina girl. You shouldn’t solve your problems with violence, least of all violence against women. Kind of makes you a giant tool.”

He sighed. “I can’t believe it took this long for you to bring that up. Stina’s a Huldra. She can control people with her whistle. It’s not just suggesting things like the Nøkken and Fossegrimens can do. Huldras are women that can actually control us. Part of Pesta’s agreement to allow herself to be confined to the Land of Be was that she wanted the Huldras banished from Undraland.” He cleared his throat. “Stina was about to whistle me into doing something, and I won’t be controlled like that. It’s dangerous, Loos. She could whistle me off a cliff, if she wanted. One guy who got tired of her was whistled into the middle of the freeway. I won’t go out like that.”

I leaned my chin against the thin rope around his neck that dipped in the front under his shirt. “Oh. I guess that’s pretty bad. Still, it scared me. If you want me to trust you at all in this, you can’t go punching women in the face. Pretty much common sense 101.”

“Since there aren’t any Huldras in Undra since they got driven from the land, I can agree to that.”

“What are we doing now?”

Jens paused, probably debating if I would screw up the master plan. “Alrik cherry-picked a handful of us for a mission involving standing up to Pesta. He’s pitching the plan to everyone as soon as they all get to my place.”

I let the flood of questions I still had lap at my insides until they quelled. There were too many things I didn’t know, and each thing he answered only presented me with more questions. I clung to my gnome in silence as he wore me like a backpack up the grassy hill.

“You’re all quiet now. That usually means you’re freaking out.”

I frowned when I tried again to open my eyes, but was met with the same blinding sun I was not even close to getting used to. “I don’t think it’s fair that you know things about me a stranger shouldn’t. I don’t like it.” I hugged his waist tighter with my thighs when he reached the plateau at the top of the hill. “You don’t have any pictures in your house.”

“That doesn’t sound like a question. How unlike you.”

“You don’t have anything there that marks it as yours.”

“Still not a question. Stop psychoanalyzing me.”

Nice try, jerk. You poked the wrong bear.
“It’s like everyone knows you, and no one knows you. Kinda sad.”

“Do you want me to drop you? Because I will.”

I held on tighter, in case he wasn’t bluffing. “How much time do you spend here? I mean, you’re off my case probably, and you’re already signing up for some secret mission with Uncle Rick? What’s got you running?”

“I swear, Lucy.” His threat went nowhere, but I could tell there was more to that sentiment. “Don’t go asking questions you don’t need the answers to.” With that, Jens ran down the other side of the hill, as if he could outrun being seen by the girl with her eyes still clenched tight.

Ten.

A Gift from Helsa

I thought I was good with weird. I’d seen enough in my travels, but this was a new thing entirely. “You’re a Nøkken, and your name is Nik? Nik the Nøkken? That’s cute.”

Jens rolled his eyes as he drank the homebrewed “Gar” Nik brought. “Actually, it’s as common as Nick is in your world.”

“Oh.” Why did Jens have to make me sound like an idiot in front of the model from the Swedish Alps? Nik was tall, like the rest of them, young thirties with a charming smile I am not ashamed to admit I found attractive. It’s like once I got my eyesight back in the comfort of the cabin, my eyes only wanted candy. Yum. The only thing weird about Nik that I couldn’t reconcile was his hair. It was a bluish white, styled like a Disney prince, and had a brush of iridescent sparkles throughout. He stood with perfect posture and his chest puffed out, his movements slow and graceful. A young Baryshnikov with a roguish smile.

“And you’re a human?” Nik asked, stirring the tea Britta brought him that he poured a little Gar into.

“Yup. Since I was born.”

He eyed my hair with admiration as he sipped his beverage. “Wow. Blonde hair. So pretty. Are you all guldies?”

“Come again?”

Jens was not thrilled with Nik being nice to me. “It’s slang for golden hair. You’ll be the only blonde in Undraland, so get used to people staring.”

Nik’s eyes were dancing with excitement at being able to interview the odd creature that apparently I was. “So, you have a typewriter?”

“Um, I have a computer. Had.” I jerked my thumb in Jens’s direction. “He torched it.”

“You’re welcome,” Jens grumbled, toasting me with a sour expression.

“I don’t remember thanking you for that.”

“And I forgive you.” Jens took another drink. “It’s getting crowded in here. Pets outside.” He shoved me toward the door, passed Uncle Rick and Britta, who were in quiet cahoots over a jagged knife I recoiled from.

Oh, I wanted to smack Jens. Martin Luther King, Jr. would’ve been very disappointed in the mental images I was entertaining. His personality went hot and cold in an instant. I couldn’t even have a conversation without it turning bitter because of him. I was grateful he’d been invisible all those years he was protecting us
. Jerk
. “I’ll miss you and your hospitality so much. Really. Thanks for bringing me here only to throw me out.” I blew him a spiteful kiss he blanched at, and turned to exit the hut.

I ran smack into the most enormous and terrifying man I’d ever seen. Easily seven feet tall, Mediterranean tint to his skin, horizontal lines tattooed up his forearms like rungs of angry ladders and an expression that tolerated zero irritations, which I quickly sensed I might be to him. He looked kind of like The Rock to me, but without that adorable charm that makes you want to just pinch his cheeks. The charm was replaced with an unhealthy dose of loathing.

In response to me running into him, he shoved me.

Jamie postured, but no one said anything.

Nik stood. “Foss was brought in on this? Really? I don’t know how I feel about this, Jens.”

The angry newcomer slid his quiver full of arrows off his shoulders and dumped it in my hands without so much as a second look. “Sharpen these, rat.” He had a gold ring on his finger with a ruby so giant, I had to look twice.

I raised my eyebrow to Jens, who took the quiver from me and sent me out the door before I could address his rudeness.

The sun was growing less painful as it neared early evening, so I could make out almost two feet in front of me if I squinted. I sat in the dirt and leaned against the hut, irritated I’d been cast out from the grownup table like a child.

About half an hour later, a gaggle of girls around my age or a year or two younger came giggling up to the house. When they saw me, they stopped short, ending their feud over which feature of Jens was their favorite.

“That’s her!” One of them said, pointing at me. “You’re the human female that belongs to Jens, right?”

Great. Now that’s my title.
“Lucy,” I said, standing to offer my hand to them.

My limited field of vision kept me in the dark as to their predetermined disdain for me. While the farmer guys seemed awed by the sight of a human, all these girls saw was competition. I would recognize that look anywhere, no matter what world I was in. It was the universal hatred for anyone with bigger boobs that’s standing in the vicinity of the man you want.

Super.

“Lucy? I’m Helsa, and this is Kerena, Inga and Siri.”

“Hey.”

Helsa did not look too pleased with me. They were holding baskets of homemade food and a pitcher of water for their returning hero. “Well, I don’t know if you heard, but Jens is already spoken for.”

I shrugged. “Have at him. He was only assigned to my family. I have a boyfriend back home.” This seemed to mollify a couple of them. I fished around for a name. “His name is… Vin. Vin Diesel.”

Darn you, Tonya.

Their leader was a foot taller than me, easy. Everyone in this world was far taller than me. “Jens and the princess are together, so don’t get any ideas, human.”

Their princess is slumming it with that jerk? What is this kingdom coming to?

The redhead piped in, “Yeah. Everyone saw the way you were hanging on him.”

Come on.
No matter where I go, into my life, a little Helsa always falls. “You mean when I was literally hanging on him because I can’t deal with your sun? He was just getting me out of everyone’s hair.”

“Are you a dwarf? I swear, I’ve never seen a full-grown woman so short. Unless the rumors are wrong. You’re marrying age, right?”

Red light!
“Um, no. I’m twenty. And where I come from, I fit in just fine at this height.” So long as there aren’t any supermodels around.

Helsa looked up at the pinkening sky curiously. “Oh, my. It looks like it’s going to rain soon.” Then she took the pitcher and dumped its contents over my head.

Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King.

I stood there, soaking wet, searching for the remnants of my kindness, which had gone missing at their arrival. “You know, if you wanted a crack at Jens, he’s wide open. Trust me, I’m not the reason he won’t look your way.”

Yeah, I provoked them that time. Helsa pushed me square in the chest, knocking me down.

“Now, ladies,” a gravelly accented voice of a man interrupted the mean girls’ showdown. “Ya don’t have ta fight over me. There’s plenty of me ta go around. Plenty. I don’t care what ya’ve heard. Dwarves got plenty.”

The girls placed their gifts for Jens in front of the door and scattered at the presence of an actual adult.

“What’re ya doing there on the ground, female?” A hand with thick red hair on the back extended itself to me, and I found myself being lifted off the ground by a very short man. He looked me up and down, as if appraising me as an ally. I was about six inches taller than him, but his wild red hair was so wiry, it stuck up almost to my height. “You’re Alrik’s human female, aye?”

“I guess I am.” I extended my hand to greet him, but he continued sizing me up with a squinty eye. “And you are...”

“Tor. I hear humans are lazy, and here I find ya sitting on the ground outside the most important meeting of century.”

I frowned, not liking his tone. “I’ve been banished. Circus freaks outside, VIPs inside.” I nodded to the door. “Knock yourself out.”

A melodic laugh flowed toward us from inside. The dwarf cringed. “Nøkkens. I can’t believe it’s come ta this.” He shook his head at me, as if I should be just as upset at the Nøkken coming as he was.

“Humans, Nøkkens and dwarves. Oh, my!” I pulled my humor from
The Wizard of Oz
, but upon the dwarf’s distrustful evaluation of my intelligence, I shut my mouth. I was dripping where I stood and wished for a towel. Actually, if I was wishing for things, I’d genie myself out of here.

I would also like a puppy.

“Get inside, female. Ya’ve got every right ta be here. Humans should be just as outraged as we are about Pesta.” He made his opinion of her perfectly clear by spitting on the grass a thick, green globule. “Represent yer race with honor.”

“Alright.” Sure. Kick me out. Scold me for obeying. Dump water on me. I don’t care. Whatever gets me out of here fastest. Maybe my new place can have a dishwasher. Wherever I land, I’ll be sure to get it sprayed for garden gnomes after this.

When I entered with Tor, Uncle Rick quieted the men in the cramped space. Boy, did the cabin smell like man feet. Gross. “Lucy, have you been playing in the water, dear?” my uncle asked me.

“No,” I grumbled, shooting Jens the evil eye as the room quieted at the sight of a sopping wet woman. “Just the welcome wagon for Jens. Might want to spread it around that I’m leaving soon, and I won’t be sticking around to win whatever lump of coal passes for your heart.”

Jens grimaced. “Sorry about that. Was it Olina?”

“No.”

“Saga?”

“No. Sheesh! How many delusional women do you know? It was Helsa and her cronies. The sooner you send me back, the better.”

Jens softened, handing me my green backpack. “Change of clothes in here. But Lucy,” he began, and then stopped. The look in his eyes made me pause.

“What?”

Uncle Rick stepped in and delivered the blow for him. “You’re not going back just yet.”

“Fine. I can wait until tomorrow. You’re having your meeting. I’ll go back outside.” Seven sets of eyes stared at me, observing the human in her new habitat. Nik, who was sitting down, had risen to acknowledge my presence.

“Go change,” Uncle Rick ordered. “I’d like you to join us when you’re ready.”