Childhood Demons

The things we do…

I remember standing next to a woman as we looked at an autographed photo of a country singer. I admitted that I liked some of his stuff and she astounded me by saying “I’d crawl through a mile of broken glass to get to that boy.”

I got the feeling, but the statement sort of rattled me, since if I had to, I guess that I’d crawl through a mile of broken glass to get to a medical kit, personally. Because I’m sure that my lust for whomever it was at the outset would have cooled just a tad by that time, just sayin’.

Still, with that in mind, consider that Yasmikha has that kind of drive.

I’m sure that for her, it might only take like 5 minutes or so anyway. But God help the object of her desire if the attraction wasn’t mutual.

For the second half of this chapter, well… try to imagine what it might be like to be reunited with friends who would do anything for you if they found you in a tight spot.

Yeah, Anything. 0_o

******

Yasmikha stopped for a moment as she walked up the incline carefully, feeling a little for her footing in the early evening gloom. The snow could hide all sorts of surprises on a night with as little moon as this one promised to show. She didn’t mind particularly, since she could see well in the darkness. The issue was what might lie under the cold white blanket which hid her feet at present.

She was tracking, hunting as she often had to, but it was seldom a good thing to press your game if they’d become a little aware of your presence behind them at this early stage. She wasn’t in a hurry and she wasn’t driven by hunger; she just liked to hunt here for a couple of reasons.

There were a lot fewer people here and she liked the climate. As well, the terrain reminded her in some ways of home. Right now she was enjoying it all and was in no hurry to return to the coast. She already had one kill waiting to be carried down the steep passes to the flatter and warmer land beyond.

She chose a large boulder to hide herself behind and to lean against as she looked down to watch the little drama down below for a time. She didn’t know all that much of the combatants and she didn’t particularly care to learn of every one of their reasons – though she would in a little time.

All that she knew for certain was that the more numerous side was comprised of locals – Kabyles and a few Berbers. The other side was a much smaller force and she’d been around enough to know Europeans when she saw them – even here. And since out here, there likely wasn’t a large blonde Caucasian behind every rock, the fact that she was seeing Europeans at all meant that she was likely fairly close to the real quarry to her.

She didn’t much care who won in their slow struggle, though if she had known what fuelled the hatred in the hearts of the ones who lived around here, she might have been swayed. Throwing off an oppressor had always counted for something in her book. She was really only after one man, knowing that he might well be in need of a little help.

But what settled the way that she sided in the end came down to one of them, a large man who looked as though he belonged here even less than the others. Yasmikha sighed.

She’d found him.

She was a little entertained as she leaned and watched saw the way that the locals all tried to slip forward undetected. But it didn’t often work because of that man, most often. He seldom used the rifle which was issued to the troops on his side. His prize for being as large and strong as he was – was to be the one who used the belt-fed machine gun.

Which meant that most of the time, he had to carry the thing.

But he didn’t use it in the normal way, not here anyway. It was set on it’s low stand, but he didn’t use it to spray down the landscape. He used it more like a rifle, shooting only one shot at a time or two at most.

From that, she knew that he was running low on ammunition as were they all. And yet, whenever she watched him and followed along the line of his aim, she saw that he hit almost every time.

She didn’t know this place particularly well, other than to know that it had been a village once and was now a few dilapidated and pock-marked buildings to hole up in.

It was snowing lightly and growing darker, but as she watched, she found that the large one appealed to her even more somehow and after a little time, she was filled with wonder and curiosity. By watching the actions of any of the others of either side, it was easy to see who was afraid. There were now no more than ten of the soldiers and of that number, she could see the tremor in the rifle barrels from where she stood. Unless something changed down there, the ending was a foregone conclusion.

Still that one man and another near him took their time to aim and when they fired, most often it was telling, leaving another dead or dying man lying in the snow, his corpse half-hidden behind some cover.

She watched the other soldier who stayed near to the large blonde gunner. He looked nothing like that one. He had dark hair and slightly darker skin, seen easily against the snowy backdrop. He shot like he meant it as well and most of all, he looked angry at the others and like his large companion, he never wasted a round.

Her quarry forgotten for the moment, she watched some more until there were no more than five of the soldiers left alive. That was when she unslung her own long gun and as one tribesman fired at the soldiers, she saw it and he became her next target.

She seldom missed also, but for perhaps a different reason. To miss was usually more than a reason to curse quietly to her. A wasted shot in her case was an expense which no foreign government stepped up to replace.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was quite a while before anyone began to look around, having put it together that there was someone else out here that evening.

She stopped shooting then and drew back into the shadows for a time.

After a little while, she slung her rifle over her shoulder and began to walk back down. At a place that looked good as a hiding spot, she laid her long gun down and went on with other weapons.

The shooting match died almost completely away as she strode silently onto the flatter ground, stealing from stone to stone. It was too dark for men to really try to shoot each other, though she didn’t suffer from that failing.

In the ruins, a young trooper stood up and stepped back a little from the fire that he’d laid, holding out his hands, just wanting a little warmth. But the darker soldier not far away began to curse him quietly for being an idiot. His words were wasted, since the young soldier didn’t care and thought that he was well-enough concealed to be able to enjoy a few moments of something that felt a little like home to him.

He was on his back a few moments later, coughing up blood in between desperate gasps from the damage done by the ragged volley of shots fired at him.

With no one to tend it in it’s infancy, the little fire almost died soon after as well. It sputtered and blew down in the fitful breeze, coming close to being blown out many times, and yet still it hung on somehow, beckoning anyone to come for a little warmth in exchange for something else to burn. It’s light wasn’t much, but it did cast enough of a glow into the air to make seeing nearby things just a little easier.

But no man came near it. One look at the young man’s body was enough.

The four who were left set up the best defensive position that they could, and things settled back down to a stalemate in the dark.

It was over an hour before anything at all happened. The soldiers were taking turns on watch through the night trying, most of them, to get a little sleep. Most of them didn’t want to fall asleep at all, but after a day and a half of fighting and slowly losing ground, they were beyond weary and soon slept deeply, trusting in their sentry not to give in to the same thing.

So for a time – a long while – there was nothing but the wind and the light snow which was blown by it in that little valley, high up in the Djurdjura Mountains late that night.

The Finn was awakened by the gentle nudge of the Spaniard’s boot in the darkness and he looked up. He expected to see the motion of the man’s chin in a sideward direction, silently telling him that it was his turn to go on watch.

As he stood up a little slowly, his companion dipped down and began to whisper in rough French, “They’re not doing anything but keeping us trapped,” he hissed softly, “They know they only have to keep us here until more come in the morning.” The big blonde nodded and pulled his cloak around himself in preparation to step out on watch.

“One thing,” the Spaniard said, “There’s something else out there tonight. I’ll be fucked if I know what it is Northman, but it’s hunting.”

The statement caused the Finn to glance around, but the Spaniard pulled him close and whispered, “Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be hunting us, thank the virgin Mother. I think it might be a lion. All I’ve seen is the outline of a lion’s head for only a moment now and then.

Then it’s gone again. But I’ve heard it out there, killing them.”

“A lion,” the northerner said in a doubting whisper, “Why here? Lions have to have more sense than that. Are you sure of what you saw?”

“Hell no, I’m not sure,” the man whispered, “All I’m telling you is what I thought that I saw. And it’s not any of us out there crying out for our mothers for a moment before it’s still again. Just be watchful and try to stay a little warm.”

The big man chuckled softly, “This is a little warm to me, Juan. I was born to this.

I’m not like the rest of you babies, crying because you can’t feel your fingertips. I hate the heat like you all hate this, but I never say a word then. This is a fine night to me. I just wish that this was home. I’d at least have a fucking beard then. It’s not a cold night where I’m from until at least an hour and a half after your beard freezes up.

When you have to walk backward as you piss, that’s when you know it’s cold.”

The Spaniard grinned at the image, “Just don’t let it come for me while I get a little sleep, uh? And try not to shit your pants when you hear the next one of them scream when what’s out there comes for them.”

The blonde nodded, “Get some sleep, you half-crazy fuck. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

He picked up the dead kid’s rifle and after going through the pack next to the body as well as the pockets to take the ammunition, he stepped over near his machine gun. Pulling his hood over his head, he slipped into the shadow of a pillar; the remains of a gate long ago as he settled down to wait.

Maybe a quarter of an hour passed, before he heard it.

Somewhere close out in front of him, maybe thirty, forty yards, he heard a sound. It was soft and lasted only half an instant and then it was followed by another sound. The second sound was something like meat being hit in a way to his mind. There was no cry or sound of alarm.

What he heard next caused him to really listen hard. It was a sigh – like the last outward breath of someone out there. Most of all, it had been the first sound that held his ear as he listened. He knew what it was; it just took him a little while to search his memory until it clicked.

It was the sound of a large blade singing through the air before it hit something.

He looked off in the direction that it had come from and as hard as he looked, he saw nothing. But almost a minute later, not far off to the side of where he’d been looking, he saw a shape rising up a bit, something just a little darker against the snow out there.

Damned if the Spaniard wasn’t right.

He saw – or at least he thought that he saw, the shape of what looked like the head of a lion for just an instant. But… that sound. It bothered him a little and it seemed incongruous to what his eyes tried to tell him.

There was a scream that time, high and thin and full of fear. It ended in a short prayer which was cut off at the end of the first sentence. None of it had bothered him but one sound – coming somewhere in there just before the scream. For maybe a quarter of a second…

He heard that blade sing.

What lion could use a sword?

Fifteen minutes later, off in another direction, there was a cry and a rifle shot, followed by the sounds of something being hit over and over several times.

Then nothing once more.

The last time, he heard someone alright.

He heard a man’s voice begging and then crying out as those striking sounds began again. The voice stopped speaking and began to sob as whoever it was cried out in agony. He counted more than four strikes before there was silence for a moment. And then he heard more of the strikes against meat, perhaps five more and then there was silence.

He glanced back and saw that the others still slept and he gave a thought to waking them. Looking back outward once more, the Finn began to see something out there. It grew in both size and consistency and he realized that it was coming his way. He just didn’t know what it was.

Then he saw that shape to the head once again, but there was something wrong even still.

No lion in the world grows that tall.

No lion on Earth walks on two legs.

And no lion or any other kind of large cat can manage to form low words out there in the darkness.

The voice that he heard was low and quiet with a bit of a growl to it and he wondered then, because it sounded almost female in a way. It wasn’t loud, though the way that it carried to him indicated that it was meant for him to hear, and it spoke French, only a little better than he did himself.

“I bring gifts. Point the rifle away. I mean no harm to you.”

As he was digesting it, the figure moved a little and something sailed through the air to land and roll crookedly up to near where he stood in the shadows and there were two of them.

Human heads.

“The rest are gone,” the voice said flatly, “Those I did not kill, those four ran. They will bring others when it gets light.”

“Who are you?” the man asked quietly, “and thank you.”

He wasn’t aware of it, but his voice, even carrying that accent and the question delivered without a hint of fear, went a long way to keeping him alive.

“I have come here, clearing my own path because I… I wanted to ask you the same thing,” the voice said, “I think that the answers for us both will come if we step a little closer. Keep your rifle ready if you think you might need it, but I will do nothing unless you look to be ready to shoot.”

He pointed the gun away and down, easing his grip as he stepped forward.

The figure stepped toward him as well and they stopped about two short paces from each other.

Neither one said a word; they only looked, trying not to stare too much.

It was the head of a lion that she wore, but there was no skull inside of it anymore and the eye sockets held a pair of yellow-colored stones. That empty head served her as the hood of a long, dark fur cloak. And there was something more, he saw after a second. His view of her face was a little obstructed and he reached out very slowly to touch the edge of… a rough, but efficient helm underneath.

He must have looked puzzled because she smiled a little and told him that wearing a pot on her head on a night like this would give anyone a headache from the cold, even though she didn’t mind the night air much.

He looked into her eyes and saw that they were like the overcast of a rainy day – a light gray with vertical irises. Her nose was a little wide, but not much and her lips were full and…

He saw the two small tusks on her lower jaw, just visible as they peeked out at him.

Up until then, she’d been standing, looking to him as though she held her hand on one hip – and she wasn’t wearing much under the cloak. What he saw was a brown, heavily-muscled, heavenly body only covered a little in pieces of fur over her well-shaped breasts and around her hips. It was then that he saw the broad-bladed axe in her right hand, dripping a little blood even now.

He drew his hand back just as slowly and he saw the cloak fall forward on the one side and it was then that he saw that she’d been holding the butt of a firearm of some kind, ready to draw it if necessary.

But she didn’t. She hadn’t needed to.

She set the head of the axe in the snow next to her and leaned it against her leg as she pulled off a bloodied gauntlet and her long fingers reached out and up a little to touch his mustache.

“I like it but… Where is the rest?” she asked.

He gave her a small, somewhat sheepish smile then, “They won’t let me grow it. Only the sappers in the regiment may grow beards.”

“You are not French,” she said as a statement and he nodded, “No. Not many of us are. Only some and the officers. You are not French either,” he pointed out and she smiled for him again.

“No. I have seen Frenchmen with light hair, but never hair like yours. To me, you must come from the north, far away. Do you know what I am?”

He nodded a little, “Someone I never thought that I would ever see. You are… Jötunn?”

She chuckled, “Maybe I am, and maybe I am only a little like the ones with that name.”

“Close enough,” he smiled.

“You also,” she smiled back, “I have never seen one of the Jötunn either, but you are big enough. Where are you from? Do I hear Finnish in your voice?”

“In a way,” he smiled, “so you are near enough again.”

He smiled a little ruefully, “Here I have to speak French. What are you doing in this place?”

She changed instantly to Finnish and they both grinned at being able to speak with less trouble in finding words.

“Again,” she nodded, “I wonder the same thing of you. I come from mountains – under them – as is the way of my kind. But we lived in an age-old place. Men came to mine and we hid from them, not wanting trouble. Now I think that we should have killed them in the beginning, for what they did weakened the walls of our home and it all fell in one day.

I was twelve, walking outside with my little brother and sisters when it happened. Everyone inside was crushed in a moment and we took to wandering with a few others. My brother was only eight then and I protected him.”

“Why were you out without your parents?” he asked. “An errand?”

There was a pause while she considered the differences in their cultures for a moment. At last she shrugged, “I wasn’t a stick thing anymore. By then, I’d begun to… develop. My kind, no matter how much males might care for their females… they can often… admire their daughters a little too much. That did not happen in my family. My father taught me much, seeing that I would be big one day. He even taught me his magic and he never touched me in the wrong way. But our women…”

She looked a little sad, “Most mothers love their daughters dearly from birth. But as the girls develop, they know that there are some males who… well, it is natural for mothers to grow slowly jealous of their daughters and think that they see something which is not there. It was not there in my family either, but my mother grew to slowly dislike me.

This is sad, but for us, it is natural too, for the females wish to keep their males and not lose them to their own daughters, so girls are driven out not long before they reach their eighteenth year. My mother had already begun to pick fights with me over little things. My brother spoke for me, wanting to defend me, but she hit him and I took him and our sisters to go for a walk outside then.”

He looked as though he understood in a way, though it was a strange thing to him, “You took him out before she could hit him again?”

She shook her head, “No. I took him away before I killed her. I was already stronger than my mother.”

She looked at him, trying to come up with ways for him to maybe understand. “We were a little different, my family. My father was large and very strong, and I take many things from him in that way. My mother was half-human and she was neither of those things. My father loved her very much, but she had more doubts than she would have had if she was not… what she was.

What will you do in the morning?”

He snorted a little quietly, “First I must live through this night.

I cannot say. There are only four of us left, and we are a long way from being anywhere that is safe. It was a good walk to come up here from the coast. I cannot begin to think of how we will get back down with a horde of men after us every step of the way. And we have very little ammunition.”

She looked at him, “Do you wish to go back to your outpost? I have the feeling that you do not like these Frenchmen very much, other than the others that you fight with – who are not French as you said to me.

I have a boat down at the coast. I was told that many of the ones here only fight since it is better than dying right away. If you are one like that, then you may wish to consider a different road now. What if I told you that I wish to leave this land and go to the northern coast and from there, father north – somewhere in the mountains?”

He thought about it and he nodded at last, “I would want for the three with me to have the same chance, if it is possible.”

She smiled back and opened her cloak for a moment so that she could tie it a little tighter around her neck, “If it is what they wish. But they will still have to fight their way down – with my help, of course. Then it remains to be seen if they would want to travel with such… strange shipmates to their eyes. The question in my mind is… would you? I think yes.

He nodded, “I would anyway I think, Jötunn girl. To have the chance to be free once more and far from here…” he looked across at her and smiled, “I think that I would swim across the Mediterranean – if I had you to hold onto.”

She thought it was a humorous thought and so she nodded as she stepped closer, “Stay here. I will try to hunt the ones who have gone to get more. They are frightened of the dark, for they cannot see well in it. It might not be a long hunt. I will return to you and we will see how hard we must fight to get down

You and I both carry too much muscle to float well. I think that some practice might be required in swimming together before we put things to the test.”

“Where would we practice?” he asked with an intrigued smile.

Yasmikha’s head went back as she laughed softy, “Somewhere safe to begin, I think. We wouldn’t want to drown from our floundering at the outset, so it must be a place without water – just to start.

I had my bed in mind for such a purpose.”

The Finn could swim well, but he decided not to let on. He only grinned and nodded, “Then I cannot wait to begin to learn at your hand.”

He didn’t know if it was meant as a parting shot or anything of that nature, but he felt it as her hand caressed his backside for a moment.

“I am a little different,” she said, “I have the sight and with it or not, in all of my life, I have never seen a man like you are. You are a human, this I can feel from you, no matter what my eyes tell me, though they are in agreement.”

Her long fingers patted him back there once and then she drew her hand away to turn and walk off, “But I have never met one who has a tail like yours. I wonder,… how you keep that secret living as you do. Soldiers or warriors have little to hide from their fellows. So there is also some power in you to be able to hide it. I am very interested.”

He was alone again the next instant and he looked back to where the rest slept, wondering at her words and about if the others would want to leave by sailing away. He drifted back to check on them and set down the rifle. After a moment, for some reason, he elected to pick up the squad weapon to have it a little handy and he walked out into the road for a moment.

He didn’t have an answer for much of what was in his mind, so he just let it drop there, since right then, he had something else rising within him. There was nothing to be seen out there; only the flakes of snow blown about by the fitful mountain breeze.

Not wanting for the level to go too high, he stepped over to one of the ruined buildings and set his weapon down to take care of the most immediate matter.

He looked around in the deepening gloom, glad of the hour and the way that it could hide things that needed to be hidden – such as him needing to piss right then.

This idea to come here to ‘teach the herders a lesson’ had been the purest folly from the outset, but then he was merely a trooper. Who would listen to a condemned criminal sent here to serve out his sentence instead of greasing the guillotine with his blood?

A pity that the locals weren’t cowed at the sight of the legionnaires marching in.

He snorted softly to himself. How stupid were the French officers anyway? Did they really think that these people hadn’t heard, didn’t know just how thinly the Legion was spread in Algeria right now, what with so many men shipped westward to help the Spanish with their little ‘problem’ in keeping the Rif tribes under their heel in Morocco?

Here, just as in many localities, the Berbers and all of the other assorted groups had done the only thing possible. They’d set aside their squabbles with each other and were working together to throw off their own yokes.

So coming here – in the teeth of a cold winter’s early onslaught – seemed especially stupid to one trooper.

Probably the only one who actually liked the weather up here in the mountains.

By perhaps the purest foul luck and happenstance, Kari had walked off the tramp steamer that he crewed on, dying for a night off the old barge on that one night long ago. He’d only wanted a quiet drink alone in a place where the floor didn’t creak under him just because it was moving. He’d been a sailor for a good while, but even to him, surviving that last Atlantic storm deserved a drink just to put the memories of those two hellish days and nights to bed.

But the net effect was that there were two men dead at his feet that night – two snot-nosed toughs from the back alleys of Brest. They’d tried to call him out for a fight, all the while wanting only to single him out in the street where no one would help the big Finn and they’d split whatever proceeds that his corpse held in it’s pockets.

He wasn’t concerned over their fates, since they’d done everything possible to ignore what was plain to most any man with eyes and a brain. The trouble with two dead turds on the ground was that they were French turds, and that little fact opened the sluice gates for the world of shit that landed on him for it.

Kari had taken the only choice offered him, to travel to Paris under guard and join the Legion to serve his sentence out in Algeria or wherever the Legion took him.

The way that things looked to him this night, he might be at the end of his long road at last and would soon see his darling Thrud once again on the other side.

The fighting, once it had begun was just a long, slow battle of attrition. Mathematically, it was simple. Throw enough zealous men against the limited number of legionnaires and you were bound to come out on top – sooner or later and given enough time and bullets.

In spite of it all and the rather bleak and hopeless way that things looked to him at the moment, Kari hoped that his adversaries didn’t mind too much if he went out fighting and took as many of the bastards with him as he could.

He wondered for a moment as he stood pissing against the wall of a building set into the hillside under the mountaintop. He smiled a little after a moment. They didn’t know it and it likely wouldn’t have meant a thing to the ones out there in the dark trying to kill him, if the big girl had missed any, but in his heart, he was on their side. He figured that he had about as much reason to hate the French as they did.

But he was loyal to his comrades. The French government could go down in flames for all he cared, but there was a bond between men who fought side by side or back to back, if necessary.

He bent to pick up the heavy machine gun, careful to lift and cradle the ammunition belt as he did. It wasn’t meant to be portable once in action, but it was his weapon and his responsibility out here. If he kept it out of the shit, then there was a better chance that it wouldn’t fail him when he needed it.

And if Kari needed that heavy piece of machinery, then his comrades needed them both even more.

Kari Fornjót was something of a rarity even here, in a regiment of men from many places and many lands. He met the occasional Swede or Norseman in the Legion, but even to them, he was someone who proved difficult to laugh and joke with, or to bond to as a comrade. He didn’t care, particularly. If the world to turned to shit again, he’d still defend the lot of them.

He was six-six, heavily-muscled, white-blonde and under the right circumstances, he could be murderous. Some thought him stupid, but if they came to know him, they’d walk away with the thought that he was really just a large, quietly-thoughtful man. Those whose notions regarding his intelligence persisted would see his slow, slightly shy smile as he began to laugh along at whatever joke had been played on him.

But then his good-natured slap on the back might take weeks to feel better all the same – if it ever really did.

There was more to Kari than any of them knew. He looked as though nothing affected him, but that was only the front that he maintained. He was actually a little shy. He actually did have feelings, and he actually did have a tail – which some other aspects about him kept hidden so that no one would ever know of it or even suspect that he was different.

It had been an unforeseen part of a bargain made long ago when he was just a boy, but all the same, it was there.

He actually still mourned the loss of his wife, taken from him by the full weight of the avalanche which crushed her and their home in the shadow of the only mountain large enough for it around for miles. He carried that pain locked within his heart in a state of stasis, like it was only last week and not seven years ago.

His mother had taught him the old ways and he knew many arcane things. To the uneducated – or the overly-educated, he seemed like an anachronism for the things that he mumbled at odd moments when they were in action. He seemed sometimes to be able to almost bend space and time a little; giving the impression that he’d merely sidestepped away from something which was had been bound to kill him only a moment before. To the right person – who took the time to actually get to know him so that he might trust them a little, he might smile and nod that it was what seemed to have happened.

He never spoke of it and he could indeed manage many things – but he couldn’t pull a mountain off his Thrud.

Something else which Kari had learned at his mother’s knee was that space and time were continuums much like say, the confluence of a pair of usually quiet rivers right where one was at any time. If you were gifted, properly taught, and sensitive enough, you could feel them all around you at any moment in time.

And if you were all of those things, then you could also feel it when something in those continuums shifted, for like any fluid mediums, shifts such as that produced ripples both above and below.

That was why Kari froze in place at that particular instant and stared at the closed door to what might have been a rough sort of blacksmith shop in the ruins of what might once have been a little village situated in the long hollow of a mountain pass where they were holed up, killing the tribesmen who were either too full of fervor or desire to kill legionnaires that night to mind the danger to themselves then.

He looked at the thin line of darkness under that door for a long moment.

After a little while, he saw the darkness fade and then become a barely-lit and slightly flickering line in the snow before it.

And after a little while longer spent with his senses bent in that direction, he heard the first of the screams.

There was nothing to be heard outside where he stood, not a real sound there in the darkness, other than the cold wind and the soft sighs of the snowflakes there against his cheek. But that didn’t change what they were.

They were the sounds of a female from one of the many… other sides, being dragged against her will over to this one.

There was only one real cry, and that was when she appeared on this plane from wherever she’d been until now. Even that ended in quiet sobs which were still muffled out on the other side of the door in the snow.

Kari looked back in the direction of his few, still-breathing comrades. They were all asleep, overtaken with the debt that running and fighting for one’s life could place on a man after two days of it, once he had a few minutes to relax and really rest for a time.

None of them stirred.

He looked at the door in front of him once again. Another man, had he heard what Kari had, might have come to doubt that he’d actually heard anything at all.

But Kari didn’t.

When the real screams started – the ones which were originating completely on this side – he knew that he’d been right. He just didn’t know yet what this was.

There were more screams – this time in agony – followed by deep sobs and at first, unintelligible speech. Kari knew that sound, though he couldn’t understand it clearly by more than feel for a long moment before something clicked in him and then he understood everything. It wasn’t easy because that form of speech had no relation here, not even a dialect spoken anywhere on this world.

He’d heard it before, again at his mother’s knee, before he’d come to know it a little well. She couldn’t speak it either at first.

But the ones that they’d seen together through the portal ‘mirror’ that she’d erected out of nothingness in the darkness had spoken it as they’d looked back certainly had. So he knew what he’d likely find on the other side of that door once he opened it.

In spite of himself, he spent a moment remembering. In his mind’s eye, he recalled the small young pair there among them, a small girl and an even smaller boy, a brother and sister as he came to learn later. The mirror couldn’t be passed through by a hand, for example, yet it could pass other things. He and those little demons had spent many minutes with their hands flat against the membrane there between two worlds each time that the portal had been created and maintained by two mothers for a time.

And each time, for periods which had lasted from seconds to over an hour now and then, three children had held their hands up so that their palms could touch through the thin boundary.

Kari’s father was a fisherman – and a reindeer herder both. It meant a lot of nights where Kari’s mother was alone, doing her best to raise her son by herself until her man could find someone to buy the rights to his share of the herd.

She raised the portal one night in order to show her young son that other places existed beside and beyond theirs. In doing that, she’d come over time to make a friend in one of the ones on the other side – a mother just like her, the mother of the young pair of demon-children.

For his part, Kari could remember the feel of those clawed hands against his own across that boundary, where things couldn’t – or weren’t supposed to be able to travel through. Yet he remembered staring into those eyes and learning to exchange feelings and even thoughts as foreign as they were to his own at the time.

He looked at the door again.

The worn and tired old door was locked, but that only slowed Kari for a moment. When he bashed it in with his shoulder and stepped through, his own personal reality seemed to shift and bend. The place was lit by a fire in a hearth and Kari wondered where the smoke went, since he’d smelled nothing of it outside and they’d been here for over a day now. There were oil lamps burning here and there and there were many crude tallow candles set all around.

There was indeed a female trapped and bound by iron chains within a circle and the nature of that circle kept her in a great deal of pain. But that didn’t account for half of what he felt from her. Her skin was a very dark gray and she had clawed feet and hands. At the moment, she was in a pile, curled up in agony and grief on the floor.

There was a second one there – a small male – flying over everything and looking both enraged and frustrated as he crashed into things in the limited space that he had for it as he tried to get into a position where he could defend the one on the floor from what assailed her.

She was sobbing, shorn of her wings and left with bloody, torn, short stumps there on her back. Her tormentor was a man, a human man who brandished a strange old sword and held it a little high as he tried to grasp her tail so that he could hack it off as well.

She screamed and tried to pull her doomed tail away and the pair struggled for a moment until Kari told the man to stop in Arabic.

At the sound of his voice, many things happened.

The man yelled one incantation after another as he hurried to stand inside of a second circle, still waving the sword in a threatening manner at Kari now. Kari for his part, knew what was being attempted and he did his best to mutter the things that he knew of to combat the binding that he began to feel on him. He had to hope that whoever this person was, he would have no idea of the… flavor of what a Skolt shaman might use in his defense.

He muttered bindings of his own and the sword fell from the man’s icy numbed fingers as he stood covered in thick hoar frost, held completely in the fetter of Kari’s binding. With a look around – especially in the direction of the other one of them, who hovered and stared back at him, he set the machine gun down. Out of all of his comrades, there was no one who could pick it up and hold it for long, never mind use it without it being on it’s pintle tripod. Only Kari could.

When Kari looked at the female, he found her looking back and then things turned to long moments of horror to Kari as he saw the luminous green eyes which until then had seemed to be almost capable of lighting the room by themselves turn to soft brown ones and an instant later, he was looking at Thrud herself as she pleaded and beseeched him – by name – to help and free her.

Even still, he stepped nearer to her, trying not to let this illusion overtake him.

She spoke of her joy at seeing him again in his own language perfectly as she stood bound by chains fastened in different directions all around her and begged him to free her, saying that she was so weak and hungry that she could hardly stand.

He shook his head firmly.

“I know what you are,” he said.

“So please, if you want my help, then stop this and let me see you just as you are. What you do now hurts me too much and I know that it is false. I want to help you – if you will let me live once I do so that I might do what I can for you.”

At first, she continued, but he kept shaking his head. “You waste what little time that I might have. I cannot hold that one forever,” he said, indicating the motionless man with his chin, “He is dismayed and frightened, so he fights me even now.”

Nothing seemed to work for a time, until he slowly moved his hand forward to place it in the middle of her chest between the breasts which were killing him to feel against his skin again.

She looked at him and finally saw the pain that she was causing and shifted back. When she did, her speech became rougher and much less polished, “Please… help… me. On this side… here… I am so hungry.”

They both knew that it was only the chains on her that prevented her from attacking him out of need and hunger.

“Give that one to me,” she rumbled, discarding Thrud’s voice as she did. What she was left with was more of a yearning growl.

“I cannot be held like this forever,” she moaned, “I will break free in time – if I am given enough. Give him to me, and I will spare you, Kari.”

The statement had been intended for only Kari, but hearing it almost caused the other one to crash to the floor in stunned shock. As it was, he managed to settle down onto his clawed feet a little unsteadily and he stared openly.

“You will only spare me for a time,” he nodded, “I did say that I know what you are. But I will do my best and have to hope that you can overcome your need.”

He looked at one of her chains, fastened to the wall, “Stop pulling. You will pull the whole place down on us and I can’t help if I am dead. You will both be stuck here and alone.”

She looked down at his hand against her breast for a moment and when she looked up, he saw her confusion and her tears as well as her many sharp teeth. She had an inkling and it kept her in disbelief, so she asked what she thought that she needed to know, since… since it couldn’t be what she’d… who she thought…

“Why? Why do you help me? You say you know what I am. Why would you want…?”

Kari shrugged, “Every living thing deserves a chance at a life. You are meat eaters when you are on this side of the curtain. I know this. There are birds here no different than you. There are fish here who do as you do. Many, many land creatures also. The only difference to me is that you can speak to me. Yet you are no less than they are and you are both far more lovely. You might not see it, but I don’t belong here any more than you. I am far from my home and have no way or reason to go back now.”

“I cannot go back,” she said in several voices, her pain coming to him in ways that he could feel, “He has imprisoned me and taken my wings. Winged ones will not suffer a damaged one near to them. But for you he would have taken my tail and weakened me even more.”

“Why?” he asked, “Was there a purpose that he told you?”

She nodded, “He sent for another, but I was pushed into his grasp by her. My brother saw it and rushed through to help me. That one,” she pointed, “he seeks to control me by force. I am… I am to be sent out to kill men like you. If I go back as I am – with no wings anymore, I would be killed as soon as I am seen by others.”

He nodded, understanding a little, “I would like to try to help there also. But first… hold still and try to trust me.”

She nodded, but Kari saw the way that she felt her hunger as yet another pain, and a growing one, so he knew that he had only a little time.

He bent quickly, holding onto her shackles as he could and trying to work both a binding on one person and a release on another at the same time and he failed at it.

He turned from her and he strode right into the other circle to grasp the man by his throat, forcing the terrified fool forward. He looked at the chains and saw that they were old, corroded and weak, but he still didn’t know if he could manage things. The only thing that he could see in his favor was that what held her was not by the strength of the chains and the shackles. It was that they were made out of iron and they held her by their nature and hers – though only for a time.

He also knew that they were another source of pain to her by that same nature.

So he drew the man forward against his will, knowing that the demon would do her best to reach him. Maintaining his hold, he searched the man, looking for talismans and anything which might be used as a ward against her.

“Around his neck!” she hissed, “And one around each limb. I cannot abide his touch so long as they are on him. I have little strength against him too.”

Kari drew his knife and had the thongs off in seconds.

“You want to use an imprisoned creature to do your will?” He asked in Arabic, “You need to test the quality of your plan.”

He smiled coldly, “Look a little closer.”

He held the man in his fetter forward and left him standing there as he moved to the wall and found a bar to use as a lever. Looking over, he pointed to the other one and told him to come and pull on the chain evenly and in a moment, he had first one of her leg restraints pulled out of the stonework and then the other. With that small increase in her freedom, the demon found that by moving a little, she could grab her tormentor and pull him to her.

He stood shrieking as she began to devour his face. He thrashed and flailed, but she snapped his arms easily, tearing one of them clean off. Well, not cleanly. That arm lay on the floor and the long tendons which had until then operated his fingers hung like cables from his ruined and empty shoulder socket.

When Kari had the last of her chains worked loose from the masonry, he began to work at the hinges of the shackle closures with his mind. Before he had the first one open, he looked back at the male, who stood near him, almost quivering for several reasons. Those eyes in that dark skin were striking to Kari, but the way that they squeezed shut as the man screamed told him of something more urgent. They felt it when a human screamed in agony and it drove them.

“Go to your sister and ask if she will share. I can’t get her free if I have to fight you.”

Before he looked back at the task of opening the shackles, Kari saw the thin male ask and she nodded. Before he died the man who had thought to summon a demon to serve him found himself being devoured alive by two flesh-eaters.

The man was almost dead a minute later and the demonic pair sank to the floor to eat what they needed. Kari came nearer carefully, telling her that he would not take her meal from her and asking her to allow him to remove her shackles for her. She said nothing since she was gorging. She only nodded to let him see that she was listening to him.

By the time that the last of the shackles fell from her, she was feeling much better for the moment.

She didn’t turn around out of a little respect for Kari, who knew what she was doing all the while. He just didn’t want to watch and she knew it. In the case of the other one, he was not so fortunate, having to watch at least a little as the male knelt covered in gore and looking back thoughtfully as he gnawed.

“Where did I fail?” she asked quietly. “I have been brought here before and I never failed to convince a human then, other than one perhaps, and he needed no convincing.”

“A subtlety, perhaps,” Kari replied as he examined the ruined wings on the floor and then the stumps on her back. When he looked at her from behind now, she didn’t look anything like Thrud in her build. She was taller than Thrud had been and she was much thinner.

He stepped over and began to remove the markings on the floor to obliterate at least a wide part of the circle which had caused much of her agony. He knew that he’d succeeded when he heard her sigh of relief. The male stopped eating and moved to hug her, glad that something was better. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at the one who had saved his sister. His voice carried some sound of quiet wonder to it as he whispered, “Kar-i?”

Kari looked over and nodded, since there was no point in denying anything from this sort of demon. One glance from them and there were no secrets to withhold.

“You couldn’t know of it,” Kari said to the female, “but my dead wife and I were from different groups. There were differences in the way that we spoke. I am Skolt and she was Inari. The two groups live not far apart and even so, there are little things in the ways that we both speak. The illusion which you showed to me spoke Skoltish as I never heard my wife speak it. Also, I think that I would never be able to forget the way that she smelled, for each woman’s scent is different.”

“I am sorry,” she said, still not turning around, “I see it now. I was not trying to insult you. I was… desperate then.”

“I knew that as well, “Kari replied, “and it needs no apology. That was why I mentioned it, so that I could begin without… the distraction. You have a gift to know the speech of a person in an instant, yet I think it fails a little at other times. Just something that I notice, nothing more.”

He saw her nod her horned head, a little taken with the way that she looked. “A different thing to us to know the way to… attract a human closer than it is to speak only for talk. I know the speech all at once, but most of what I do lies in the acting. To speak… properly takes some… thought.”

She didn’t have the classical horns to her. Her larger ones were a little rearward-facing and they curled back and down to end not far from her pointed ears. In the front, she wore a smaller pair, much like what one might see on a young goat. He’d seen her kind before, a few times even, but he found that there was something about her which seemed familiar in a way, where all of the others hadn’t.

She looked something like one… that he’d known as a child.

“You may not believe me,” he said, “but I do like the way that you look naturally, both of you.”

She turned her head to look back over her shoulder with her green eyes gleaming once more, “You joke with me.”

That was one thing right there, he thought. He’d only seen yellow eyes on all of the rest. Theirs were green.

Kari shook his head, “No, I was being sincere.

I am faced with a problem here,” he said, “I have the choice before me to either clean and bind the stumps of your wings or to try to bind them back onto you. If I do one, you would probably heal but not have them any longer. If I do the other, you would not be free to move much until we saw that they were mended together again and healing.”

She shook her head sadly, “Then let me make it… simpler for you. They are lost to me now. I have seen others like this before they were killed. They cannot heal, so… in order to go on living, I must remain here. Feed often. There are many of us who like nothing better. I am not one of them. I can do it, but this is not how I wish… to live.” She held her face in her hands and began to weep and since their kind possessed multi-layered vocal chords, the sound of it was all the more heart-rending for the way that it sounded like a choir crying softly in unison

Kari disagreed as he slowly moved around to face her a little better. “That was there, though I know that your kind only has that hunger on this side. Here, I think that all of the same rules do not apply, necessarily. Or at least – that is what I have learned.” He said the rest of the thought quietly, “that is my hope.”

He carefully cut a small piece of each wing near to where the damage had been done and he poured a little of his water bottle’s contents over them before holding them against the ends of the stumps as he wrapped them in some battle dressings that he carried in his trouser pockets.

“The fact that you – or any one of your kind is even here alive shows me that the laws are immutable only in the place where each of us belongs,” he said as he worked, “And they are different sets of laws.

By any physical law which binds me, you should not be able to breathe or walk or talk at all in this place. You should not even exist here. Yet you are here and you do those things. Let us see if I am right.” He tore off a section of his shirt and carefully bound the pieces against the stumps over the wrappings. “If I fail, we will know it in only a little time and then it is still not the end.

Please, if I can ask it of you, tell me something honestly.

You both know my name,” he said. “Is that only a part of the powers that you wreak to entice your meals to you? That you can play the part of a lost love and even know the hapless one’s name? Or is it… something else?”

“I have this ability,” she said quietly, “though I did not need it for you. I have seen you before, long ago. I was only not sure for a time. I knew your name as soon as I saw you, Kari Fornjót. I just could not help but try to get you to help me by believing that I was the one that I saw in there in your heart. The way that you held to your intent to help, even though I did not stop in my desperation told me as surely as anything that it was you.

What man would want to help one of us?”

She turned her head away fully as she began to mutter to herself. The words weren’t meant for him to hear, but Kari heard them anyway and after a moment, he remembered why.

“What do you mean, ‘after all of this time’?” he asked.

He watched as she pulled some of the more unsoiled of the dead man’s garments to her and tore off a piece large enough to wipe her gore-covered face. She handed it to the other one and he wiped his own face with it carefully.

Her voice was distant and soft when she replied.

“We knew you once.

We were all small, us more so than you.”

He stepped forward then, coming around to put his hands onto her shoulders. He gently moved her to turn away from the half-devoured ruin there in front of her. She looked up and into his pale blue eyes as her mouth opened a little and she stared because she had no choice.

“Ahnyazh?” he whispered, “Ahnyazh, is… it you?” He snapped his head around, “Felldis?”

The male almost burst into tears as he nodded and drew a little closer, sniffling.

She nodded and allowed him to gently pull her arm a little, turning it over to look for and then see the lines of some old scars on her wrist, long healed and forgotten by anyone but her – and him. They were little more than thin ridges of skin, but he knew them.

She turned her other hand to take his arm and she turned it over to see the same pale old scars on him. As they both looked, Felldis slid his arm into view and Kari saw the lines there too.

Kari looked up into their eyes then, peering for a moment and then he had the answer to something which had troubled him earlier. “Not green,” he sighed and they shook their heads.

Kari saw it clearly from this close up. Her pupils were black and larger than what was normal for humans in this light. But that wasn’t what he was looking at now. Outside of those pupils, he saw the yellow that was supposed to be present in all of her kind, since no natural variation was possible to them genetically unless it came from someplace or someone else. He also saw a second ring, for her kind possessed double irises and the outer one in her case – was pale blue as were her brother’s.

The net effect from a distance was that their eyes looked green.

“The yellow is what we were born with,” she whispered, “the blue I… we got from you. You have… a tail now?”

Kari nodded, feeling strangely at ease to make the admission to perhaps the only ones who could understand.

“Then know that we cannot do to you what we did to this one,” she said, “Why would we want to?”

The male nodded, “We cannot eat others… like… us.”

When he’d been a boy, Kari looked as though he’d grow large like his father, yet he tended to be sickly and his growth suffered for it. His mother knew that his weakness would probably send her son to an early grave, for life where his people lived spared only those which were hale enough to laugh at most ailments.

Between them, over many nights, the two completely dissimilar women spoke of it in their way, once they found that they could and after that, one time when Kari lay ill, held in the throes of another high fever which kept him not very far from death’s door…

The two females, each so different from the other, worked together to weaken the boundary enough so that two beings could pass through – the smallest ones.

For seven nights and eight days, Kari drifted near to dying as the wind screamed outside of the door and the snow flew hard enough to feel like a lash against any unprotected skin. He lay in bed burning up with fever and just barely able to only sit up to sip the broth that his mother held to his lips.

He knew little of it at the time, other than some small glimpses as he faded in and out, but he had not been alone there in the bed. The young demons were with him, holding him when he needed holding, supplying the heat to a degree that his own body never could to kill off the viruses within him so that his already overtaxed system didn’t need to, and lying beside him while they drew his sickness from him for three nights.

They stopped only when he slept deeply and rested. At those times, they crawled out of the bed on weakened legs and Kari’s mother wrapped their small, sweat-soaked bodies in warm blankets before she sat the little ones down near the portal where their mother waited to heal them. When they felt better, Kari’s mother offered them fresh, slightly cooked meat carved in hunks right off the bone, telling herself that she’d find a way to explain the loss of an extra head of livestock to her husband somehow when he returned.

Once Kari had turned the corner, still so terribly weak and frail, those little demons had still lain there in his bed as Ahnyazh tried to teach him a little of the things that she barely knew herself of her own tongue and how to protect himself against things for which men have no natural defense – things that came from her side of the fence now and then. Mostly, the knowledge was passed by their thoughts. As they did that, Kari’s mother had boiled her thin skinning knives and with them, she’d opened up small cuts on them all, one each, though in her son’s case she opened two.

The demons placed their open cuts against his and held them there for a time before they drew their arms back and all of the cuts were bandaged.

Then for a time, there were three sick young ones, burning with a different sort of fever.

The demons recovered first, not long after being handed back through the portal. Then both of the mothers had bent their hopes and wills upon the sick boy.

When he’d sat up, feeling better for the first time in so long and complaining that he was hungry, both of them wept and as Kari’s mother set about feeding her son so that he could finally grow strong for what had been done, both of the females nodded, feeling pleased over their bargain as the little demons looked at Kari through the membrane.

Her question tore him out of his uncertain memories. “What do you remember of us?”

Kari focused on her eyes and nodded as his eyes stung him, warning of his own tears approaching, “I owe you my life, for you saved mine when I was so sick. It has been so long. I thought you were dead.”

She nodded, trying hard to find a smile that would stay a little and not be distorted by the emotion that she felt, “The debt is repaid, Kari. You saved mine this night. Whether now or some other night, I would have died sooner or later, doing as I could to kill the one who pulled me here.”

They all stood up together, still holding on in light touches, almost as though they didn’t believe. Finally they just held on to each other, stopping to draw back now and then to look again.

“We watched when we could,” she said in their demonic speech, “though it was not often enough for us. Most times, we just stood alone where the portal would have been if it were opened. We were never so happy as when we could see you.”

“I also,” he nodded, “At least we could talk to each other then, before we were parted.”

Kari had gone to go to school because his father had found a way to be home much more and by then, his mother had grown to resent his presence even more than she’d resented his absence for years. No option had been given him. When he came home during the summer recess, he found that his childhood home had turned into two armed camps. Kari had his head filled with the teachings of his professors later on and gradually – since he never saw the demons again and didn’t dare to mention it to his mother for fear that his tyrannical father might overhear, he was able to set them aside in his mind for a time. But he never forgot them.