6. Forest #2
From this vantage point, I’m face to face with the watchful gaze of the forest. All the carnage of the troll attack and the mocking festival are hidden from view, the sharp bones of this place rising in the opposite direction, but the woods stretch.
Are the men I saw earlier still out there? Are they waiting for me? Or for her?
I stand at the window longer than warranted until Helene clears her throat. She pads louder than normal on bare feet across the creaking floor to announce herself.
Clean, fresh faced, the awful costume discarded and her hair slightly damp…she’s breathtaking.
“I hope you like spaghetti.” Her tone lifts despite the redness in her eyes. Tears. Hastily scrubbed away. “I’m not saying it's great, but Mom’s meatball recipe never fails to impress.”
“Didn’t you have enough meatballs today, Helene?” Audra scoffs and limps over to the couch, falling gracefully into a worn nook in the corner.
She fluffs pillows around her, a mountain, a shield.
“I’m happy to accept whatever you’re offering,” I say. “I enjoy pasta.”
I think I do. I want to say the right thing.
My thumb flutters over the handle of the ax on my belt. There’s comfort in steel.
“Then sit here. It’s the only place you’ll be out of the way.” Helene grabs a chair from the tiny aluminum table tucked into a neat vertex of the room. “You want some water? I can make tea or coffee too?
“Mead. Or ale.” I stare around the tiny galley. “Where do you slaughter your cattle? This place looks hardly big enough to skin them.”
Helene stifles a grin. “Sit.”
Audra laughs, big and loud. Something I said? “He’s too large. He'll break it.”
“Well, there's no room on the couch for him with your legs stretched out. Sorry.”
Helene moves around the ninety degree angle of the kitchen counter with practiced ease. A ceramic pitcher with faded wildflowers holds a bouquet of wooden spoons. She grabs one after setting the pot on the stove to boil, adding salt liberally.
It takes two steps to get to the refrigerator, the only behemoth in the space. She bends to open the door, her plump ass in the air.
My mouth waters.
How long has it been since I’ve tasted a woman? Since I’ve run my fingers along the curve of a hip, a breast, buried my cock in welcoming heat?
Desire stays lodged like a thorn in my paw through dinner. I manage polite conversation while the pasta cooks and soon Helene serves up a massive pot of sauce with round meatballs floating like survivors on the ocean.
She helps Audra into a chair at the front of the table and pulls it away from the wall slightly so I’m not pressed in the corner.
“Go on, eat.”
Without waiting for further permission, I serve myself, scooping out a heaving portion and sloshing it on the plate.
“Forest, how did you know about the troll? Do you teach history?” Helene asks once I’m finished.
She releases the barbed edges of the trap, her words deceptively calm.
Once I’m hooked, the undercurrent of tension is impossible to ignore. Calm and collected on the outside, seething on the inside.
I glance up, a strand of pasta trailing sauce in my beard, slurping the spaghetti. “History?”
“No, it wouldn’t be history,” Helene fills in, snapping her fingers to summon the term. “Mythology, right?”
Audra chuckles and serves herself next. “It’s not mythology if the thing actually exists, Hel. I mean it. The man is still covered in green blood.”
Helene sinks deeper into her chair. “I should have let him shower while the water was super-hot.”
“I hear your stomach growling from here,” I murmur through another mouthful. “Eat.”
There isn’t much left in the pot but Helene scrapes it clean and tops the meal with flakes of something white from a container.
The sisters naturally pick up the train of conversations. They bicker back and forth, words between them like a ball bounced off a wall. Helene slices her meatballs into tiny chewable pieces but the act makes no sense.
I shovel another bite to my mouth, the flavor bursting and filling part of the hole inside of me. The ones in my head remain no matter how much I eat.
The troll...
Not mythology, but history, truth. Was the veil always thin here? Is this the first time a creature has come through here, and if it isn’t, why has no one increased their protections?
I grunt at the migraine.
“So who are you?”
The sister’s question catches me off guard and I choke on my next bite. Beating the obstruction clear leaves my eyes blurred. “What?”
“Who are you,” Audra repeats.
“Forest. Ulfson.”
“Professor of history and part time cosplayer?”
There is nowhere to run in this rickety trap of a kitchen or in this conversation.
“I’m simply a man on the hunt for knowledge.” Yes, that seems appropriate.
“A man who knows where the troll came from?” Helene narrows her eyes at me.
I spear these tiny tines into the mound of pasta and twist, dragging half of it off the plate with the motion.
“If you know, access across the nine realms can be accomplished along branches and roots of the world tree, Yggdrasil,” I say through a mouth of food.
“Specific travel methods vary, and if a thin spot on the trunk grows large enough, beasts can utilize those to break through.”
The sisters share a long look, their silent message painfully clear. I’ve lost the thread.
“Um, sure. Of course. So what do you think is going to happen now?” Audra nudges me with her elbow. “If this is a thin spot?”
I turn to her slowly, assessing. “Now? We wait.”
She chuckles. “Wait for what?”
“For the next one to strike,” I clarify.
Helene shivers. “Do you think there’s going to be another one? I’m trying not to panic but a literal troll destroyed the Longship Festival. If you weren’t there, I’m not sure what I would have done.”
If the veil is thin here...
The energetic conduit of the world tree is growing unstable. There’s no telling what might happen.
I offer an indulgent grin the girls see right through. “It’s up to fate. And if I hadn’t there, you’d have killed the thing yourself.”
“You have a lot of faith in me.”
More than she knows.
We finish dinner with enough silence to give me time to collect my thoughts despite the headache. Things are strange. Matters are heavy and changing in a way I should recognize, so why do I not?
Why is it always out of reach? And how do I know it’s always just out of reach?
“Are you sure you don’t want more, Forest?” Helen hangs back in the doorway, her arms over her chest.
I shake my head and swear the landing shakes beneath me. This place is nothing but woodchips held together by nostalgia and dirt. She doesn’t belong in a setting like this. So what brought her here?
Why do I care?
“I’m fine, my thanks.”
Her lips open before she snaps them shut, nodding. “Then I’ll walk you out.”
I tower over her. “You don’t have to.”
“I don’t have to do anything, but I want to.” She gestures me down the stairs and the wood creaks out a melody under foot.
The wind carries the brisk richness of an autumn night and immediately claws beneath the neck of my cloak. It ruffles the feathers, and the raven inside of me sits up and pays attention.
The stars overhead mean nothing in terms of safety, although the sky is clear otherwise. Squalls brings change. The others are out there, watching.
I take the steps off the stoop and stop below her, Helene perched near the door. Close enough to reach up and touch, hold, carry off.
“Thank you again for what you did.” She huffs out a breath. “I’m not sure I can reconcile what happened, but I know if you weren’t there, I’d be toast.”
My hand curls at my side and I leave it there. “You would have had it handled.”
“Oh, absolutely, me.” She clamps down on her lip before saying more.
“Yes, you.” Leaves scatter around our feet in a whirlwind. “I only provided the last shot. Otherwise, you had the situation under control.”
A smear of blood forgotten on her temple does nothing to hide her beauty, the simple, seductive curve of her chin. And the way her pants hug her body.... damn me.
I’m done without feeling the slip or the slide off the edge of the cliff.
“It’s cold.” My voice drops. “Go inside before you catch a chill.”
She shivers but when our eyes lock, it’s not the frigid blast that bothers me. It’s the heat and the sudden spike of it shooting straight down to my cock. “Goodnight, Forest. And thank you.”
“Goodnight, Helene.” My pleasure.
Beneath the watchful gaze of the other, the one hidden across the street, I turn to leave and a fresh wave of pain slices through my head. The image of Helene and her final smile, her posture unbent and proud, shifts.
It changes into something different. A memory I had no idea I’d lost until now.
The same woman, in another time, dressed differently. Blood soaked through her leathers and the metal breastplate dented over her heart. She lifted a sword with a fierce battle cry.
And this one stays rather than disappearing.
I clutch my head and stop dead center of the sidewalk. The rough ground beneath my boots, the frantic calls from the others still fighting—it’s real. It’s here.
Panic lodges in my breastbone because I don’t know what it means.