White Stag (Permafrost #1)(79)

The stag.

Wisdom twinkled in the animal’s black eyes. This creature before me was ageless, sacred, with nothing that came before him and nothing that came after.

He kept my gaze for one second longer before gracefully leaping through the underbrush.

I followed, crashing through the bracken. It’d been a long time since I’d had practice stalking with this much foliage, and from the noise, it was showing. But the stag didn’t quicken its pace, staying just ahead of me.

“Hey!” I called out. “What do you want?”

The stag stopped and turned his massive head to face me again. Those large, wise eyes met mine and slowly blinked. His long eyelashes brushed against his pure white fur, and I stepped forward. He bounded away.

I almost screamed in frustration. “If you’re trying to talk to me, just do it already! I’m done playing games! You’re in danger!”

By now I was running, calling to the stag. But it kept on going faster and faster until it was almost a dot on the horizon. “Hey! Please come back! Talk to me!”

Just when I thought I’d lost sight of it, I entered a clearing. “Clearing” probably wasn’t the right word for it. Nothing grew, no trees, no grass, no weeds. The land was just ash and dirt. The stag stood at the center, waiting for me.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose at the openness of the burnt field. In the open there was no cover, no advantage, no way to hide. The stag could even kill me if it had a mind to; there was nothing I could use to defend myself.

I steeled myself. The stag wasn’t going to kill me. “What do you want?” I asked, approaching the animal.

He pawed at the ground, once, twice, then twice more.

“What are you trying to say?”

He snorted and pawed at the ground again. The ground. He wanted me to look at the ground. But there was nothing on the ground, nothing except for ash and dirt.

But I bent down anyway, unable to deny the stag’s command, and brushed the dirt away from where he’d been pawing. Eight hard lumps rolled into my hand. They were seeds, though I didn’t know what type. They must’ve been ancient, but there was life gently stirring inside them.

I stood. “What does this have to do with anything?”

The stag came close enough for me to smell his hot breath; it smelled like the grass and the wind and the sun all rolled into one. He pressed his nose to my cheek, filling me with his warmth. Then he bounded away, leaving me in the open field.



* * *



WHEN I WOKE the next morning, I was uncomfortably aware of the eight small lumps in one of my pockets. It couldn’t have been just a dream, not if the seeds were still with me. There were no stories of the stag visiting a person in their dreams; so why me?

We rode at a slow pace through the forest as its dead came to life. Despite the discomfort deep in my body, I said nothing about my dream. We already had enough to worry about without having to interpret a dream. Who knew, the seeds could’ve rolled in my pocket while I slept. We were all thinking of the stag; surely dreaming of it was normal. But it was just that. A dream.

We’d gone a bit before I started to smell the difference in the land. Wet earth, moss, and growing things, the scent of life all around me. I breathed in deep, trying to capture the smell and remember it for all eternity.

“We’re about to cross the border,” Soren said. “Be careful. Be watchful.”

I looked around. There was barely any marker that this was the place between worlds, only that the ground shifted from brown and frozen to soft and green.

A bubble of disappointment rose in my chest. Out of all the times I imagined returning home, I expected to feel some type of joy and freedom. But there was nothing; it was just a place like anywhere else. It might’ve been my home once, but that was long ago.

The stag’s trail was now a thick silver line as the wolves trotted through the trees. They weaved their way through the forest until it became thin again. My nose crinkled at the smell of sulfur and burnt earth.

“We won’t run into any humans here,” Soren said, and Seppo nodded, a grave look on his face. Perhaps he was thinking of his father, if he’d been taken from a land too close to the border. Maybe he never even knew who his father was.

We’d entered the burnt lands. Villages too close to the border of the Permafrost were always raided, but the ocean nearby was full of fish and whales, the forest plentiful with herbs and game. If it weren’t for the goblin raids, one could live out a good, long life there. And many still try.

The sky above me was tinged orange from the haze that hung in the air. Unease pressed hard against my throat, but we continued forward through the ashy ground until something made me stop.

I wasn’t quite sure what it was, why a tugging in my gut told me to go farther east. But, almost trancelike, I slid off Breki and started forward. Underneath my feet, the ground crunched and crackled; I was walking on bones. They’d never decomposed; not even after a hundred years. My heart was empty of rage and shame as I tried to remember what the village looked like before. Before there were huts and lodges that sheltered multiple families, dogs running through the camp, and women tanning hides and sewing clothing out in the sun. Now all that was left was ash. Ash and me.

Soren dismounted Lykka and started forward, but Seppo grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Let her do this alone.”