Mystic Passage

Heartbreak

Heartbreak

My cousin and I charged into the trees, running as swiftly as we could in our linen dresses. I hiked my skirt up a bit with the fingers of my left hand while my thumb pressed the Torstein against my palm. My bag banged against my right hip, and I pushed myself faster, trying to rein in my ice for fear that its verve would prompt me to outrun Beth. But my blood felt frigid, and the hairs on my arms had begun to stand up. I could hear the bellowing voices of our adversaries not far behind.

“Joel?” my cousin gasped out after we had run for at least half a minute. She was out of breath and had begun to slow. “Sw . . . Swanie . . . Joel?”

“Come on,” I urged her without looking back.

“Wait!” she panted, desperation tainting her tone. “Joel . . . isn’t . . . here.”

I slowed my sprint, thinking again that maybe we should not have brought her boyfriend along at all. Maybe he felt the need to be a hero and defend us from the spear-bearing foes—but he had no weapons aside from the knife in his bag. And he did not yet know about that. I felt Beth’s fingers tug at my right sleeve, an attempt to bring me to a complete stop. “Please . . . we have . . . to go . . . back . . . .” I heard Joel’s voice shouting amongst those of our antagonists, and I slowed my pace, taking a deep breath before pivoting around a spruce tree. There I halted and turned to face my cousin.

Beth had stopped several paces away, her chest heaving, her face flushed and damp with sweat. Her tawny head covering had slid down around her neck; it must have gotten caught on something during our flight. She bent over, her hands pressed to her knees, and raised her head to meet my gaze, her lips parting to say something . . . .

And just at that moment, a burly man converged upon her from behind, pushing her into the dirt. A strange squeak escaped her lips, and the man drove his spear deep into her back.

My ice erupted in my veins, my bag and the Torstein falling to the ground as I flung myself at the man like a feral animal. I did not think; I reacted. I shoved him away from my cousin and closed my icy fingers around his throat. One of his comrades appeared while I wrestled him to the ground, but he stopped short at the sight of me. I screamed in fury at the attacker, whose face had begun to turn blue, his hands struggling in vain to release my grip on his throat. But it was far too late for him now, and I glared into black eyes that slowly glazed over. His body slumped backward, and when I loosened my fingers I saw that I had broken multiple blood vessels on his neck.

I spat an icy globule of saliva upon his face and stood up, realizing suddenly that I had killed a man, and that it had been the first time. I looked from his corpse to my cousin, who had twisted onto her side, groaning softly. Her back was facing me, dark blood pooling around the shaft of the spear. The bastard had likely pierced her heart, and a sense of dread washed over me. I raised my eyes to the other man who stood in the brush with his own spear in hand, his expression clearly implying that he would rather run than fight. But rage churned in my veins, stoking my element’s power, and I took one step toward him, clinking my icy fingers together in an ominous fashion. “So. Do you still think it’s wise to fight a Teuton?”

I could tell that he understood me, though the one who had stepped out from the trees first had not. He hesitated one more second, looking again at me, then at the one I had killed. “No,” he responded, his accent quite odd.

“Then get out of here, and tell your friends to leave the boy alone.”

The man nodded fearfully at me, hitching up his belt around his brightly colored robes, and dashed away. I watched him go for a count of five, trying to pull my element back just a little and calm my racing heart. Part of me feared to confront what had happened to my cousin, for I knew that rubbing alcohol and gauze would do no good against a stab wound of that magnitude. But I had to find my courage and go to her, to let her know that she was not alone.

My stomach twisted when I saw that the spear’s blade had passed through her torso completely. Its grimy edge protruded just below her left breast, the front of her dress stained with ever-increasing crimson. I fell to my knees before her, a deluge of guilt destroying all of my dreams. “Beth,” I choked on her name, a solid lump forming in my throat as I reached for her right hand. “Oh . . . Beth . . . I’m . . . sorry . . . .” The words came in Bayerisch; I could not recall any other language. My eyesight blurred, and tears of ice seeped from my eyes. I had brought her here, and now she would die. I had caused my cousin’s death.

Shallow pants breezed from her lips, her brown eyes roving around vacantly, all of the color having drained from her face. Her entire body shivered, in shock, and I clasped her hand to my chest, the prominence of my ice likely doing little to ease her suffering. I whispered meaningless gibberish to her and stroked her forehead with my free hand, wishing that I could undo the events of the past hour. If I had drilled Joel more thoroughly on the concept of picturing the city of Muniche, this would not have happened. All of the adventures I had planned to share with my cousin had evaporated into smoke.

Beth’s eyes finally seemed to focus on my face, her brows crinkling in what appeared to be hopelessness. A small cry broke from her throat, and she gasped more sharply as she choked out her final plea. “H . . . help . . . Joel . . . .” Her right hand had not returned my grip at all, but I felt it twitch, and then she exhaled one final time, her eyes darkening into a void. It consumed me like the currents of time, destroying my confidence. I moaned in anguish, bowing my head over her hand.

And then I felt it vanish from me.

I blinked against the icy tears that had caked my eyes, a sense of utter loss dragging me to the depths. But she told you to help Joel, I reminded myself, trying to get a handle on my tangled emotions. You can’t help him if you sit here bawling all day. You can grieve later. Now is the time for action.

I pushed myself to my feet and focused on my element, awakening its full magic to enhance my senses and stamina. When I looked down at the place where Beth had fallen, I saw that naught but the spear and blood remained. Her body had vanished along with her bag. That must mean that the writings were true, that only Teutonic ritual suicide could send a time traveler into eternity. “Okay. Get it together,” I told myself. I retrieved my bag and the Torstein from where they had fallen at the outset of my struggle, then paused for one final moment to look at the man I had killed. I knew that at some point I would have to face what I had done. It was wrong for a Christian to kill, so I needed to rescue Joel some other way.

I shut my eyes and stretched my icy spirit forth to scan the forest, searching for some way to escape this band of spear-wielding freaks. I felt four empty souls not far off, and I hoped that meant that Joel had somehow killed one of them. If he had died too, I would have to use the Torstein to send me home. My ice swept over innumerable trees, and finally I sensed a familiar presence—running water, a river nearby about the length of an American football field away. If I could get Joel there, I could use my ice to agitate its waters like I had done upon the Leutascher Ache, and we could escape.

As I raced for the sounds of conflict, using my ice this time to push me faster and give me endurance, another disquieting thought struck me. I had killed a man, and I had done it in the past. Did that mean I had changed something in history, or did it mean that I was supposed to be here, that I in fact had been fated to kill that man? A cold hand grasped my heart at that awful concept, for I had chosen to come to the year 1064, to spend two full years with my people before witnessing their demise. How many others would I kill, how many others would I change, how many would I ruin before I could leave? I whispered a silent prayer to God while I ran, that somehow I could influence at least one person in a positive way here in the eleventh century.

At last I came upon Joel and the other three men at the edges of the same clearing in which we had met them. One man lay still near a bush, bleeding from a deep gash in his throat. Joel had stolen that man’s spear and now battled one of the others, each of them trying to outmaneuver the other, attempting to plant their respective spears home. The third opponent, to my consternation, was using Joel’s distraction to his advantage. He crouched over Joel’s bag, sorting through its contents with the hands of a professional thief. A frustrated scream escaped my lips, prompting all of them to pause, and I threw myself upon the scrounger, the man who had confronted us first. Since I had no other weapons ready for use, I dug my icy hands into his robes, into the flesh of his back, ripping as hard as I could. “Get off of our stuff, you scoundrel!” I screeched at him in Teutonica.

The man squealed and jerked. I leaped off his back and swatted him across the face when he turned to stare at me, leaving four b****y streaks. He yelled something at me in his own language, putting a hand to his cheek and looking around for his spear. I saw it first, lying nearby, and kicked it sharply into some brush. Then I let my claws loose on his robes, tearing them from his body, for I knew that he had pocketed some of our valuables from Joel’s bag. The man cried out in rage as his clothing hit the forest floor, leaving him quite n***d. He was ugly.

By this time, Joel had finally gotten the upper hand with his opponent, having knocked him senseless with the shaft of his spear. He raced over to where I was attempting to roll the leader’s clothing into a bundle and jammed his spear into the man’s back. He groaned, and the booted kick he had aimed at me fell short as he sank to his knees. Joel bent down to retrieve his bag, and I thrust the wounded man’s bright clothing into his hands, scooping my bag and the Torstein up from the leaves where they had fallen. “Okay, we need to get out of here now!” I snapped at Joel, jumping to my feet once more. “And this time, make sure you keep up!”

Joel just stared at me as I adjusted the bag onto my right shoulder, gripping the Torstein in my left hand again and snatching his hand with my right. I dragged him into the forest, running in the direction of the river. “What happened to Beth?” he asked in a huffing voice. His green tunic was drenched with sweat. He had the man’s clothing stuffed under his right arm, balancing it atop his bag.

I winced but knew that I could not hide the truth from him. “The other two attacked us while you were fighting with those three. One of them stabbed her in the back.”

“What?” Joel ground to a halt, prompting me to do the same since our hands were joined. “Stabbed her in the back?”

I tugged on his hand, but he remained standing in place. “We need to keep moving. There could be more of them.”

Joel dropped my hand, wriggling his own with an accusatory look. I noticed that his gauze bandage had disappeared at some point during the fray. “Wait. Did you move her to someplace safer or something? Is that where we’re going now?”

I sighed and placed my hands against my temples, working to block terrible images from my brain. “We can’t talk about this now, not if we want to get away from those freaks. I think they’re Gypsies probably looking for new slaves.”

“Swanie.” Joel crept closer to me and bent his head down to look directly into my eyes. “Is my girlfriend dead?”

“Her body vanished, so technically, no. She’s back in the twenty-first century. But we’re here, and we need to keep moving.”

Joel blinked at me, his cheeks going pale. “Wait . . . what?”

At that moment, a spear parted the brush behind us, embedding itself firmly into a tree trunk not two steps away. “Here they come,” I announced, snatching his hand again. “Unless you’ve got an element I don’t know about, run. I can’t beat all of them myself.” I set off in the direction of the river again. I could sense its waters flowing some thirty meters distant.

“I should have . . . brought some . . . arrows . . . .” Joel panted, obviously still exhausted from his earlier fight. He had a good point. I wished that we had been able to find a suitable bow and arrows for him before striking out on this journey. The one store we had visited back home had stocked only modern bows.

We reached the river’s banks a few seconds later, poised on a hillock about a meter above a glorious expanse of light green. The river was shallow, but I watched its currents churn in response to my element, choppy ripples rising up to meet me. I called all of my ice out of my soul, disregarding what Joel might think, and wound my frozen fingers around his muscular arm in an unbreakable hold. I looked him straight in the eye and stated in no uncertain terms, “Don’t let go of me.” I sprang forward, my frozen shoes merging perfectly with the waters. Then I pointed my toes downstream, shooting that direction with the current. Joel yelled in horror, trying to tear his arm from my grip. “Stop fighting me, or you’re going to die!” I roared at him, stretching my ice out behind us to arouse the river’s currents. I wanted to be sure that the Gypsies could not follow our path.

I had had quite a few new experiences that day, I realized in passing while we flew down the river. I had killed someone with my element, and now I fled from an army of Gypsies, also using my element. Though I had danced upon both the Isar and the Leutascher Ache, I had never fled down the Isar or any other river for that matter. In some ways it was similar to dancing. I rode upon the water like I would during a dance, my feet barely wet, ice flaring out behind me. There was certainly glory in this, I could sense that, but there was no beauty. I made no ice sculptures in the water around me, nor did I bother to glide gracefully. This flying resulted from pure fear, and my element responded expertly to my bidding, pushing me faster, reinforcing my strength.

We had gone at least a kilometer downstream before I judged it safe enough to slow down and consider our options. Here I stood in the center of a river, an icy Teuton woman holding a total outsider out of the water. We were supposed to be in Muniche, but I had no clue where we were, or which river we rode. The presence of the Gypsies reassured me that we must be in Europe, particularly since one of them had understood the Teuton language. The color of the water beneath me was similar to that of an Alpine river, so I hoped that we were not too far from Muniche. About that time I caught sight of a large log floating a little farther downstream. “We’re going to get on that log and decide what to do next,” I informed Joel, who clung to my waist like a lost puppy, his hazel eyes wide.

Less than a minute later, we climbed onto the log, which looked to be the length of a house. It had probably come from one of those huge oak trees in the forest, I figured. At first I did not bother to fully observe the log, for despite my ice my endurance was nearly spent. I simply sank down upon it and placed my leather bag onto my lap, concentrating on abating my ice at long last. When my hands and hair had fully melted, my eyesight returning to its natural blurriness—so much for that pair of contacts—I grinned at Joel. He crouched at the far end of the log, slightly wet, panting and shaking his head. “So, what did you think of that?” I asked him, thinking that now we may actually have time for full explanations.

“I think I’ve gone insane,” Joel answered, still shaking his head and staring down at the colorful robes and leather bag that he held. “I think I just rode an iceberg down a river.”

I laughed out loud. “Is that what you think?” For some reason I found myself giggling, as though my subconscious wished to put off remembering Beth’s fate for as long as possible.

Joel’s eyes met mine for an instant before focusing on something behind me, alarm registering on his face. “I think we’re not alone,” he said.

Chapter Three: