Chapter One #2
I looked at my hands. At the scar on my left palm, white and puckered, from the time I'd pulled a dog out of a frozen lake when I was sixteen. The dog had lived. I'd needed twelve stitches. I'd always been good at saving things.
“Your grandmother asked us to give you this opportunity.” Julian leaned forward. “To continue her work. We're offering you a position as a junior Velascan. Six months of training in our Swiss office, then you'll come to our headquarters and receive your first assignment.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then you say no.” Julian stood, buttoning his suit jacket, and helped Zoe to her feet.
“We don't force anyone to join us. You need to be passionate about this work to do well in the Velasca.
But I think you'll say yes. You've spent your whole life studying myths, Ethan. Wouldn't you like to meet one?”
He left his card on the table. Heavy cream cardstock with a single line of text: Dr. Julian Baptiste, The Velasca. There was a phone number below it, but no address.
I sat in that café for two more hours, drinking cold coffee and watching rain run down the windows, trying to convince myself I'd hallucinated the whole thing. But the card was real. And the memory of bark spreading across Zoe's skin was impossible to deny.
Two days later, I'd called the number and said yes.
Now I stood before the Velasca Headquarters—their first and main estate—surrounded by living beings who shouldn't exist. This was where my grandmother had worked. It was where she wanted me to work. But looking around, I knew this would be more than a job.
I forced my legs to work and went to the front door of the main hall.
It was wood, dark and heavy, with an iron knocker shaped like a tree.
I tapped it three times. That was the magic number, wasn't it?
The sound echoed through the crisp air, and several people looked my way.
After a few moments, I heard footsteps, and then the door swung open.
Julian looked the same as he had in Reykjavik. Same charcoal suit, though his pocket square was bright orange silk. Same confident bearing and that same twinkle in his dark eyes.
“Ethan. You have excellent timing.” He stepped back, motioning me inside.
“Mateo, our head chef, has declared breakfast a crisis, which means someone brought a creature into the dining hall that they shouldn't have.
It should be entertaining. He took my suitcases and set them down near the wall.
“I'll have someone take that to your room. Come with me.”
The entrance room was all stone and wood, with a staircase curving up to the left and hallways branching off in three directions—left, right, and forward.
Paintings covered the walls. Not the stuffy portraits you'd expect in a place like this, but vibrant, strange images.
A woman made of water. A man with antlers. A dragon curled on top of a mountain.
“I assume your training was satisfactory.” Julian glanced at me as he led me down the right-hand corridor.
“It was eye-opening. Everything fascinated me.” I was still trying to process what I'd seen in the gardens. I'd read about myths, but nothing could have prepared me to see them in person. “Dr. Müller is very thorough.”
“Thorough is a diplomatic word for pedantic, but yes.” Julian's voice carried a dry humor that I found charming. “You must have been very fascinated indeed to have finished in half the time. Every report I received about you was glowing.”
“My grandmother taught me a lot before she passed away. She framed it differently, of course, but now I know she was preparing me for this.”
They had compressed six months of training into three for me because I blew through the classes.
I learned about the Velasca's history—nearly five hundred years of preserving myths and reintroducing their stories to the world so that they wouldn't fade.
I learned how to document without exploiting, how to observe without intruding, and how to help without controlling.
Everything else I already knew thanks to Grandma and my studies.
“I'm sure she did, but Dr. Müller said that you have good instincts.” Julian glanced at me again. “I'm excited to see what you can do in the field.”
The sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of dishes carried down the hallway, along with the scent of coffee and freshly baked bread. The paneled walls held more of those strange paintings, each with a metal plaque beneath it bearing a name.
Julian stopped before a painting. It was the last one before a door at the end of the corridor.
In it, a slim man stood on a hill, dressed in robes.
He held a walking stick and was smiling.
His dark hair was tousled, and the artist expertly rendered his blue eyes so they seemed to catch the sunlight.
The artist's signature was one name: Caelum.
Julian gestured to the painting. “This is the man who started everything. This is Velas.” Julian clasped his hands behind his back and peered at the man in the painting.
“He was a monk who was fascinated by folklore. He spent years traveling, collecting stories, and trying to preserve them before they disappeared. Then he met Caelum.”
“The founder.” I had learned this in Switzerland, but hearing it there felt different. More real. Especially with Velas's image before me.
“Yes, Caelum is the founder,” Julian nodded.
“Though he would tell you Velas founded the Velasca, that he just gave it a name and a home. Caelum was the first myth Velas saved.” He turned to look at me.
“Caelum was dying. Not from illness, but from disbelief.
These days, he's known now as a Green Man, but back then, he was a forest god. People worshiped him, but then the world changed. A new religion was taking hold. The old ways were fading, and he was fading with them.”
“But Velas saved him.”
“Velas believed in him.” Julian's voice went soft.
“Despite his god, he believed in Caelum.
And that belief was enough to anchor Caelum to the world.
He wrote down Caelum's story and then told it to everyone who would listen. His belief and love stopped Caelum from fading. They spent the next forty years traveling together, finding other myths who were fading and helping them survive. When Velas died, Caelum buried him and planted an oak tree over his grave. He built the Velasca around it. That was four hundred and seventy-three years ago.”
“Where's Caelum now?”
“Still here.” Julian went to the door at the end of the hallway, opened it, and led me into the dining hall. “You'll meet him eventually. He's particular about new Velascans. Likes to observe them before introducing himself.”
I followed him into the dining hall and then just stood there, gaping around me. It was pure chaos.