1. Helene #2
Behind us, the ghost of the town watches from the high point of Wentworth Street. The listing, sharp points of a wrought iron fence separate the sidewalk from the hillside park, and the flat spot below that floods in the spring.
Nightshade Hollow puts on the festival annually with booths, games, and a long boat race. It’s an excuse for white men who are bored with their lives to claim their Viking heritage that they may or may not have, and drink beer. Lots of beer.
It’s LARPING without calling it LARPING, the same way a man wearing a football jersey while watching an hours long game is actually cosplay.
Where is the magic?
My chill deepens.
Where is the lifeforce of this entire damn town? Is it hidden in the forest, a path or a bog or a change in terrain hiding historic markers?
It’s definitely not in the updated cement monstrosity of a pavilion like Athena’s temple. Right now it’s filled with picnic tables and food vendors, jostling lines snaking out like varicose veins.
I skid to a stop, angling Audra around the crowds.
“One hundred points if you get the woman and her dog.” She's breathless for an entirely different reason when she indicates with her book at our next victim.
Unlike the elderly retiree, the woman and her poodle both have the same clipped pace. The woman saunters her hips a bit more than the immaculately manicured poodle’s butt.
I groan. “No. No more.”
“Okay, two hundred,” she adds. "Final offer."
I pull the chair to a stop when the sidewalks fill. Too many people mill around, too much laughter. The clouds part, and a steely cut of sunlight clips the orange edges of the stubborn maple leaves.
My head spins.
It might be the most sun we get today but the air is crisp. The heat of summer broke a while ago, and as the trees change, the world holds a hint of a bite to it.
Midnight feathers ruffle and stir the foliage. The raven’s beady eyes meet mine, the bird tilting its head to the side to watch my struggle in silence.
Ravens and crows always circle this town that doesn’t know it’s already dead. The birds understand what the rest of us labor to figure out.
I mince forward—what use is a fucking motorized wheelchair without a working motor? —and sidestep a burly dude with a beer gut poking out over his weapons belt.
He bares his teeth to tell me off, then notices my cleavage, which puts a stop to the snarl.
“Get back to your story, Audra,” I murmur, hunching, which only pushes the girls closer together.
Ignore him.
"You have to admit it's an epic tale. Whoever wrote this knows how to keep a person on their toes."
"Some fiction is a work of art," I say.
The vendor tents are right in front of us now. Mine is the farthest from the asphalt lot or street parking on Wentworth, of course, and tucked against the trees ringing the park.
They’ve stuffed us between the sewing club selling crocheted dreamcatchers and macrame bikinis on the left, and Mitzi Jones and her informational brochures for everything Nightshade Hollow on the right.
Audra grits her teeth. I know it without looking at her, from the way her shoulders go tense and how the frail line of her leg bobs once before falling still again.
Pain. Do I have ibuprofen? No pockets in this getup, but I should have some in the first aid kit at the tent.
She pulls open the book, the journal, whatever it was mom collected, and reads, “In blinding rage, Odin ripped her wings from her body. He imprisoned her until he brewed up a worthy punishment for her act of rebellion.”
He could try my life, if Odin wanted to talk about discipline and karma.
Ah, shit, that’s not fair. Guilt ate away at the inside of my ribs and mottled them the way it always does. When I glance at the maple tree again, my progress halted to a crawl by the throng, the raven is gone.
Things are fine.
Fine is a blanket dismissal for everything bad.
Most people hear the word and think you’re doing remarkable, so they don’t ask more questions. There’s safety in fine.
“They did not want her thrown into Helheim which would be a dishonorable afterlife for a legendary warrior,” Audra intones.
“Helheim might be enjoyable this time of year.”
We have our own brand of warriors at the Longship Festival. They mingle with the crowd now, middle aged men in borrowed outfits swinging fake rubber and plastic weapons around in the air like fire jugglers.
By the time we reach the first line of tents, Vikings have overtaken the pedestrians.
I hold up my wrist to one of the security guards, a young man with a harried expression. He gives an exhausted nod at the mustard colored vendor band.
“I don’t know how you lose yourself in your stories,” I mutter, dragging the chair off the path and onto soggy ground.
I don’t know how, but I’m damn grateful for it. She deserves the distraction. Little takes her mind off the limitations of her body these days.
She shrugs one bony shoulder high, her dark curls stacked on her head. “I like them. They’re cool.”
“Lucky thing we work in a bookstore.”
The stench of burned popcorn and oily fake butter scalds the inside of my nostrils. Someone calls out a greeting, but if I lift my hand from the handles, I’ll never build forward momentum again. Audra will be stuck in the mud, and I’m not in decent-enough shape to carry her to our booth.
Paths snake through the tends, emergency routes maintained by vendors and neighbors.
A pile of boxes block the quickest trail, and I pull my sister left, toward a cluster of technicians on the field making sure we’ve all got power.
She reads aloud the rest of the story on our mad trek. The trees are somber here, the forest stealing the light. The black bark and lichen-covered edges are a hell of a lot better than the Toss an Axe game with its trailing line of kids waiting to hit the bullseye.
My gut takes a deep dive when the shadows part, a flicker of movement darker than natural. I freeze, the movement snagging my attention for a moment, and stare, squinting through the blur.
“The tale remains a stark reminder to never cross the gods—” Audra adds.
“Something's over there,” I interrupt. “In the woods.”
A tall, handsome someone, rooted at the edge of the forest. The silhouette solidifies further, a glint of light on metal and shaggy black hair.
She glances up. “Yeah, people flock to the festival, Helene. This place is packed. Oooh, seventy-five points. The kid with his nose buried in the cotton candy.”
I sigh. “I’m not running over a child.”
The wheels snag in a combination of mud and leaves and I heave Audra through them until my legs scream for a break.
By the time I lift my gaze again, the man is gone, present one moment and a hallucination the next.
“Okay, fine, what about this guy? He’s wearing some kind of stupid feather cloak,” she says. “He’s too bulky to miss, but I’d say if you manage wheel prints on his shoe, it counts for at least twenty-five points. And he’s seven-feet-tall so...”
I’m close now.
He can’t fire me. Mr. Barnes knows. No one else stocks the shelves the way I do. He maintains a strict order to his store, to reader expectation. He owes it to me, to my mom—
“I was joking!” Audra screams.
My attention fragments long enough for her screech to drag me to the present moment and the adrenaline surge to sicken my stomach. I pull up short as we collide with the massive man wearing a feathered cloak.
But not before the front wheel bumps over his foot.
Not before he lifts his head and glares at me, his square chin clenched. Aw, fuck. I hit a man who resembles a god with my little sister.
A flock of startled birds obscure sight lines with a flap of wings. The already slippery ground goes liquid, throwing me off balance.
Twenty-five points. My gut weakens.
The wind swells again, not to tear us apart, but to bind us together in danger and darkness.
He’s staring at me like he’s not sure whether to use his ax on me or not, and this one gleams with the unmistakable shine of real, honed steel.