Page 12 of The Source of Storms

I put my hands on Anam’s uninjured hip to help push him up. He whinnied in protest but continued to struggle to rise. The fear of the monster nearby was motivation enough. I pushed again, and he rose on shaky legs. All four appeared uninjured, the rest of him unharmed except for the gashes across his rump.

“You lucky fucking billy goat,” I wheezed as I flung the reins over the saddle and clambered into it. We limped away, dripping a trail of blood in the snow. I looked back at the monster, still standing, staring after us.

We didn’t make it far before my vision blurred and the open forest around us began to spin. We stumbled out onto a road, and my head pounded and swam. Anam limped beneath me. I urged him on nonetheless, eager to put more distance between us and that creature. That creature… What creature exactly? Oh yes, the horrible horse monster, the nuckelavee.

The world spun around me as I tried to think. I couldn’t remember how we’d gotten here, what had happened. I gripped the pommel to stay in the saddle, then leaned sideways and vomited onto the snowy road.

I couldn’t right myself in the saddle as we walked on. The world around me was moving so much that I couldn’t tell which way was up. Little explosions of fireworks dotted my vision. Then everything went black, and I felt myself falling again.

∞∞∞

“Can you hear me? Gods, you’re freezing,” a deep male voice said. “Can you hear me?”

An arm slipped around my shoulders and sat me upright. I cracked my eyes open and closed them again. The whole world was brilliant white and blinding. It pierced my aching eyeballs from the back like dull daggers.

My cloak hood was tugged up over my head. My head, oh gods my splitting, pounding head. I inhaled sharply through my teeth at the movement. I tried to open my eyes, but somehow the sun reflecting off the snow had magnified in intensity.

“Come on, we need to get you warmed up.” The stranger’s other arm scooped under my legs through the snow, and he rolled me toward him and stood, lifting me gently. “There we go, easy now,” he said.

I breathed in the scent of cinnamon and other warm spices, tobacco, and lanolin from his jacket. His breath smelled faintly of honey when he spoke. I wanted to drift back to sleep.

“Do you know what happened? You and your horse both look like you’ve gone through hell.”

I tried to respond, “There was a monster,” but it came out as a mumble sounding similar to “I’m not here.”

He chuckled, the rumble of it in his chest humming against me. “Yes, I would say you’re not all here. Was it a bear? How did you fall?”

“Not a bear. Monster,” I murmured as he lifted me into a saddle. I swayed and grabbed the horse’s mane to steady myself, my fingers almost too cold to tighten my grip. I opened my eyes to see my own pale hands––so pale they were nearly blue––twisted into black horsehair, and the snowy ground far, far below me. I squeezed my eyes shut again as everything spun.

I felt a heavy blanket wrap around my shoulders; the man tucked it in tightly around me. I pulled my hands into it and sat huddled in the saddle. He swung up behind me and steadied my sway with his arms, pressing his warm body in close. The heat of him was more delicious than anything I had ever felt. I couldhave fallen asleep and never woken up, and been happy with that.

I opened my eyes again and saw large, sturdy hands, decorated entirely with traditional knotwork tattoos stretching from beneath his sleeves down each finger, gripping the reins in front of me. Thick runes in the Seonaid style were also tattooed on his palms.

“I’m Byrgir, by the way.” His voice sounded as if it were coming from far away.

“Halja,” I said, and darkness swallowed me again.

∞∞∞

“Eilith!” Byrgir called.

I jolted awake to see a steading ahead of us bathed in a warm evening glow. A small cottage squatted in a large clearing in the old forest as naturally as if it had grown up from the ground with the trees. Smoke drifted gently from its chimney. Several little outbuildings were scattered around it, all interspersed with fences and shrubs. Everything was a luminous gold as the sunset reflected off the fresh blanket of snow.

As Byrgir swung carefully down from the saddle and reached up to help me, I finally saw his face. His eyes struck me first, a deep moss-green that seemed to glow in the fading sunlight. A strong, prominent nose, and a thick, dark beard, a little unkempt and bushy. He wore a knit wool hat, a small tuft of dark brown hair peeking out from beneath it on his forehead. He was only a little older than me, maybe in his mid-twenties.

There was a wildness to him that intrigued me, enigmatic and deep. The shadows of the forest themselves danced behind his eyes. Tiny crystals of frozen breath clung to the edges of hisbeard. He smiled, and his face lit up with genuine relief. The beauty of that smile made me lose my breath.

“Good to see you awake and almost moving,” he said, reaching up to help me down. I returned his smile but felt myself blush, choosing to look down to focus on my dismount instead. His horse, I saw now, was a black Friesian. Gentle and calm, but very tall. Byrgir helped me down and put his arm around my shoulders to walk me toward the house.

“Byrgir!” A woman’s voice carried out into the clearing. “Here with my firewood, finally. I was getting worried! I– Oh! What happened? Who’s this?”

An older woman, presumably Eilith, had just left the doorway of the house and was making her way toward us, pulling on her cloak as she went. Her gray hair was long, and she wore it loose. It flowed down her back before she slipped one hand under it all, twisted it once, and tucked it into her cloak hood. A few strands fell around her face. Fine crows’ feet wrinkles reached out from her warm brown eyes. High cheekbones gave her face a healthy, regal look.

“This is Halja. Found her on the road, passed out in the snow. She’s been mostly unconscious since I picked her up, I think she has a head injury. All she said was that there was a monster.”

Eilith slipped her arm around my other shoulder to help walk me toward the house. “A monster, eh? Where did you come from, child?” she asked.

“Near Skalmarnes, up the coast. Please, my horse. He’s hurt. Did you bring him?” I tried to turn and look back over my shoulder for him, but I was pinned supportively between the two of them, and the light was still blinding.

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