Fifteen.
Tightrope Walker
Nightfall came faster than I was anticipating. Probably because the few dusk hours where my eyes could tolerate their sun felt like noon to my senses. Their moon was massive, as their sun had been, but it had a red hue that gave only the bare minimum of illumination. Britta yawned, and I could see other signs that the travelers were tired, but we trudged on.
“Best ta travel at night.” Tor took it upon himself to narrate for me, since I was the outsider in the band of thieves. Nik was a ways ahead of us, scouting the area so we didn’t come across any nasty surprises. What those could be, I wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to find out. “Foss, yer awful quiet. Ya thinking we’ll get tha same welcome with yer people?”
Foss had not spoken in nearly half an hour, now that Nik was not near enough to fight with. “I’m certain we’ll get it with every nation we visit. We don’t come with great news. We come to destroy an old artifact that they see as a service to the people. We’ll be hanged for this if we’re caught.” He shook his head as he helped Jens push a roadblock out of the way. It was scary how strong they were. Foss looked like a Mediterranean version of The Rock, and apparently had the strength to complete the picture. “No, it’s best we move quickly and quietly. Do the deed and live with the secret, if we live at all.”
“Well, aren’t ya just a bucket of sunshine.” Tor grumbled under his breath and broke wind at the same time. It was really a thing of misfortune that he volunteered to take the lead behind Nik. He couldn’t walk a whole minute without oozing some noxious gas out his rear end. It was a good motivator to stay quiet. Didn’t want any of that nonsense wafting into my mouth.
Nik came jogging back toward us with news that stayed our progression. His white-blue hair shimmered in the red moonlight, making it look like it had tiny glittering stars in the tresses. “Up ahead’s a spindel lair. We can try to scale up or down the mountain if we don’t want to chance it.”
They debated this while I wondered what a spindel was. Since no one bothered to clue me in, I assumed I would not be granted a vote. We were high up – too high up on the mountain for comfort. I gulped and decided to keep closer to the inside of the trail.
I was right. Neither Britta nor I were asked our opinions when it was decided we would forge through, due to lack of proper climbing equipment. This bothered me not for my own pride, but for Britta’s. She did not take offense at being discounted in such an obvious way, but I did on her behalf. I doubled the silent treatment I was giving Jens. Doubling the punishment entailed not speaking… even more. I decided I wouldn’t even look in his direction. This did little to hurt him as I hoped it would, since he was behind me and there was precious little reason to look at him anyway.
We reached another roadblock due to a rocky avalanche that had made our path its resting place. The boulder was as high as my shoulders, and had a bunch of smaller, but still giant rocks atop it, making it impossible to move or climb over. The path we’d been walking on was wide enough for someone to always walk on my right, keeping me a healthy distance from the edge. The barrier left only a couple inches of space from the steep drop-off to tiptoe on.
This would be a challenge. I tugged at my necklace, my nerves bundling up inside me, making my hands and feet stiff.
Nik wasn’t worried about maneuvering the giant obstruction. “I once fought a Were on a precipice not unlike this one. Not a scratch on me when I finally killed the beast. I could probably dance on that ledge with my eyes closed and be just fine.” He tossed me a cheesy game show host grin that I tried to return, but my smile was faked and cracked with fear.
“Let’s see it, then,” Foss challenged, pointing to the less than half a foot of clear road right on the edge of the path. The drop was abrupt and several stories down, ending in a rocky death. “Dance us a jig up there, Nik. Give us a twirl like a good little barmaid.”
Nik held his nose up in the air and stretched his long legs around the obstacle. He didn’t even care that there had only been room for the balls of his feet on the ledge.
I cared. My palms were sweaty, and I wondered how to delicately tell them that I was afraid of heights. And falling off them. I didn’t want them to think all humans were wusses, but I mean, seriously, climbing the rope in gym class was more than I could handle. I’d never been this high off the ground in nature. Never. Asking me to tiptoe on the edge was beyond my current capabilities.
I really felt like a dunce when Tor managed the feat. He had help from Foss, who held his sleeve from behind until Nik grabbed onto Tor on the other side. Not foolproof, but it worked.
Britta was like a friggin’ ballerina twisting around the wide obstacle with her long legs.
“Go on,” urged Jens from behind me.
“Um, I’m okay.” My voice came out pinched and higher than I would’ve liked. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.” I cringed that he’d gotten me to talk.
“Nice try. It’s easy, Loos. Just walk on your toes and lean toward the mountain.”
“Really?” I snapped. “Is that all? Now do I walk one foot in front of the other?”
“That’s how the cool kids do it. Come on.”
“Don’t rush me!” I looked at the narrow space and did my best to keep my racing heart inaudible.
“Useless females!” Foss growled.
Jens threw out his hands. “Don’t rush you? Sure, take all the time in the world. We don’t have a possible army after us. You’ve been chased out of town by the king before, right? Maybe you can toss your blonde hair and do one of your flirty laughs to distract him.”
“Shut up!” I shouted, the panic gripping me by the throat. “I… I… I can’t do this!”
Foss did not bother hiding his frustration. “Just throw the rat on your back and have done with it. Come on!”
Nik came back across the ledge and backed me into the side of the mountain before I fell over to my death from a panic attack. He put his hands on either side of my head and looked me dead in the eye. His gaze was so intense out of nowhere that my fear shifted to confusion. “Miss Lucy,” he breathed, a calm smile lighting his features. I sucked in my stomach as he boxed me in with his body.
Then Nik did something that was so surprising, I could only gawk at him with my mouth hanging wide open like a guppy. Instead of speaking his instructions to me, he sang. A low, melodious voice that was meant for beauty floated around me in a dizzying improvised tune. I felt Jens stiffen to my right, but paid him no mind.
Nik sang, “We’re crossing over to the other side of the rock now. You won’t be afraid, and you’ll follow me wherever I lead.”
Then he leaned into me, still maintaining eye contact as if he was trying to enchant me with his ocean-colored orbs. He breathed heavy in my face, and then placed my hands on his waist.
“Uh, Jens?” I broke Nik’s intense gaze and turned to the fuming man beside me. “I think your friend up and lost his mind. You want to deal with this?”
Jens spoke through his teeth as he snarled at Nik. “Look, Nøkken, we have to be able to trust each other on this trip. That won’t happen if you try mesmerizing her. Or any of us, for that matter.”
Nik released me and stepped back, puzzled. “Why isn’t it working? Have you trained her to resist us? That takes years.”
Revelation dawned on me. “Oh! I’m sorry, were you trying to mind control me? I forgot about that part of your people. Go ahead. I’m ready. Mind control me into not being afraid of heights.”
“Don’t you dare,” Jens sneered.
I palmed Jens’s face to silence him.
He responded by licking my hand.
“Aw, gross! Sick, Jens.” I wiped my hand off on my jeans and tossed my hair over my shoulders, readying myself for Nik’s mojo. “Go ahead, Nik.” I let out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t realize that’s what you were trying to do. Kinda freaked me out, singing like that. Thought you needed a head check.”
Nik frowned. “Well, if it didn’t work b
efore, it won’t now. Why isn’t it working? I thought humans were easily suggestible.”
I kept my voice a sugary brand of pleasant. “Huh. And see, I thought Nøkken were arrogant, racist fools. I guess we were both wrong to think an entire race could be reduced to a stereotype.” I gave him a superior look as I tried to reassemble my bearings. I did not often have men singing in my face and looking at me like… well, like that.
Nik had the grace to look ashamed. “A thousand apologies, Miss Lucy.”
“Just the one’s all I need,” I replied with a small smile.
“Really?” Jens did not mask his irritation. “Get back over there, Nik. You don’t know the first thing about humans, or Lucy. I’ve got this.”
I hated that he treated me like I needed to be handled. I geared up to yell at him, but he held up his finger to silence me.
“Do you want to look weak in front of everyone? Do you want Foss to win?”
“I… no.”
“Then you will do this.” He grabbed my hand and led me to the blockade. “I’ll hold your hand on this end, and Nik can grab you from that side. If you slip, one of us’ll catch you.” I’m sure my sorry puppy expression was visible, because Jens gave me more of the “man up” speech until I could take no more. I wanted to cross to the other side just to get some space from him.
I stepped forward and stretched my arm around the blockade. “Nik? Nik, I can’t reach you.” I closed my eyes and felt Jens grab onto my other hand. I wanted to bat it away, but decided death was worse than holding his hand for a whole minute. My feet shuffled around to the precipice and inched forward.
Jens huffed. “Loos, you’re not moving.”
“Yes, I am!”
“Are your eyes closed?”
“Of course!” I wanted to vomit, but luckily my stomach was empty.
“Open your eyes! What are you thinking?”
Foss opened his mouth to complain in his brusque way. “Just stick your rat in a cave or something, Jens. We’ll come back for her once we’ve destroyed the other portals.”
My eyes flew open and found Jens’s emerald ones in the moonlight. “I don’t like this!” I choked out, determined not to break down in tears as I balanced on the edge of the cliff. “I want to go home!” Yes, I know I sounded childish, but I didn’t care. You try balancing on a mountain’s edge with your butt hanging over the side and see how you like it.
“Are all humans this useless?” Foss questioned.
Jens softened, my fear bringing out a slice of his lurking humanity. “Hey, it’s okay. Um, do you remember that awful restaurant in Idaho? The one with the menus shaped like cowboy hats?”
“Huh?”
“You and Linus got food poisoning from the chili cheese fries and spent the whole night taking turns barfing in the bathroom. You couldn’t eat anything after that for days.”
“I remember. Great, irrelevant story, Jens. I’m kinda hanging off a mountain here!”
Jens glanced around as if he wished he did not have to speak about this with so many witnesses. “I stayed with you that night and all the next day. You were delirious and I was invisible, so I took my chances and held your hand until your fever broke. I didn’t let go until you were ready, and I won’t this time. I’ve got you.”
I stared into his impassioned eyes and saw in there years of commitment to my family that had not faded. “Please don’t let me die on this mountain.”
“Never,” he promised solemnly. “I plan on your death being something involving a go-kart, a few dozen clowns and cheez-whiz.”
“I don’t want death by cheez-whiz!” I squeezed his fingers. “And don’t be funny! I’m freaking out!”
He smiled as if we were old friends shooting the breeze. “Reach for Nik. Can you feel him yet?”
I stretched toward my goal and gasped. “Nik! Is that your hand?”
Nik’s voice came back to me further away than I would’ve liked. “Yes! You’re doing great. Keep moving.”
I obeyed as fast as I could, but it was still a snail’s pace. Jens tried to let go of me, but I panicked at the thought. “Don’t you let go, Jens! I’m not ready.”
He responded by clutching my fingers tighter and nodding. His voice was quiet, and spoke peace into my fear. “You have to trust me to know when it’s time to let go.”
I heard Foss say in exasperation, “This is exactly why I didn’t want any women on the journey. They can’t handle the mountains.”
Oh, I wanted to kick his seven-foot-tall mountain climbing butt. “Do you think my wingspan’s as big as yours? Shut your smackhole, Foss!”
“Drop her off the mountain!” Foss commanded. “Talking to a Fossegrimmen chief like that.”
Jens shook his head to dismiss Foss’s grumping. “Don’t worry, Loos. Just focus on moving your feet.”
I begged Jens with my eyes not to leave me. I knew my mouth would never cooperate and admit that I needed him.
He nodded, as if he knew what I would never say and completely understood.
Nik’s voice tried to soothe me from the other side. “Just a few more steps. You’re almost there.”
“Now, Nik!” Jens commanded as he let go of my hand.
Before I could give in to the terror, Nik gently reeled me over to his side until I’d cleared the avalanche. I was lowered to the ground to quell my shaking as Britta and Nik got in my face and began speaking in soothing tones at a rapid pace. “She’s white as a sheet,” Britta fretted, mopping the sweat off my brow with her apron. “You poor thing. This is more than you bargained for, isn’t it.”
I nodded as my chest heaved from relief and extreme dread at what I’d just done. Before I knew it, I was being hefted to my feet and wrapped in a warm hug. The smell of Jens was familiar and comforting. In the back of my brain it registered that he had spent half a decade with my family, so it made sense he smelled familiar, but in that moment, I clung to him and inhaled the soothing balm. I sucked him into my lungs and let him fill me with his strength and peace. His hand palmed the back of my head and gripped my hair, pulling at the roots.
“I did it!” I cackled madly at the success and brush with my greatest fear. “Did you see me? I was a ninja!”
Jens leaned back and beamed at me, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of how scared he actually was for my safety. “Next stop, trapeze artist.”
“No way. Not now that I know you plan to off me at a carnival with all those clowns.” We laughed in each other’s arms.
It dawned on me when neither of us was willing to let go that Jens had made himself invisible for my family. His job was to disappear. No one touched him. No one talked to him. It began to make sense that he was occasionally grouchy.
I rubbed circles into his lower back and buried my face in his chest. It was a heady thing for both of us, being in the presence of such comfort, and we did not consider breaking apart until Foss cleared his throat.
“We should get moving,” Foss said, interrupting our newly acquired calm. “Do whatever that is on your own time.”
Britta whirled on Foss as if she meant to give him a thrashing for breaking us apart prematurely.
Jens looked as embarrassed as I felt when we rejoined the group. He situated his red pack on his back and moved me to his left, so I was in between him and the mountain. Even now, he was taking every precaution to keep me safe. He nodded to me and tried to reassemble his stoic personality. “Let’s go, Mox.”