I felt excited, and a little sad, but I also felt free. Like the time I ran away, but without the adolescent fear which sent me fleeing back home. There’s still a part of me which wants to go back to the boat, fill the sails and head out into open waters, and discover what the world is really like without being smirked at by hard-handed gods who spank me and steal my sister.
But Lucy is in danger. What I want doesn’t matter until she is safe.
“Give my sister back.”
Tanuk smiles, bright and wicked. “You think you can come here and make demands? Alone?”
“You have to know I’m not really alone.”
“Oh, but I think you are. In more ways than one.”
Those two sentences spear to the very core of me. Tanuk sees me, instantly, in a way my family never has in eighteen years. He seems to know me, though we’ve barely met.
I am sure it is a trick of some kind. He doesn’t know me. If I feel he does, then it is because I am an eighteen-year-old demigoddess and he is a very old god. I’m sure he’s devoured girls like me over thousands of years in a variety of ways.
I don’t trust him, and even though Lucy is spoiled, she doesn’t deserve to be left to his mercies either.
“Give me my sister back.”
“I can’t. Or rather, I won’t.”
“Why? Because she’s just so pretty and amazing and you can’t live without her?”
“Because Helios owes me a debt, and has never made any attempt to pay me. Without me, there is a very real chance you, your mother, and your sister might never have survived the birthing process.”
“What, you delivered us?”
“No. I allowed your father to take the doctor who delivered you from my island.”
I stand and stare at his arrogance. “So you did something any decent person would have done, and you think you’re owed an entire human for it? You’re an asshole. Give me my sister back, you snake.”
“You speak like a human, but you are part god. Do you know anything of the majesty of your powers?” Tanuk changes the subject. He is trying to distract me from Lucy, and whatever nefarious things he is no doubt doing to her.
“Don’t worry about the majesty of my powers. Give me my sister back.”
He shrugs. “She is at my home. Come and get her.”
This feels like a trap. But it also feels like the first interesting thing which has happened to me in quite some time. It feels as though I am being taken seriously. It feels as though I matter — and that is an intoxicating feeling like no other.
“Fine, I will then,” I say, thinking I should have come up with something more impressive to say, but those words will do.
Tanuk turns and walks away from me, leaving me to follow. His island feels very different from the one I grew up on. The trees are different. They’re shorter than the ones on the island where the golden palace lives. Not a single one of them is more than a foot or so taller than my head. The grass is different. Lusher. Greener. Almost cartoonish. A bug sits on a stump, cleaning its wings. When we get close, it flies away with what I could swear is a little cackle of amusement.
“You’re very quiet, daughter of Ragnar.”
“I’m Helios’ daughter too.”
“I don’t think there is much of the sun in you,” he says softly, stopping and turning to me. He extends a hand and runs the back of his fingers over my cheek. “No. You are pure night. Daughter of the raven king.”
“I’ve never heard Ragnar called that,” I say, trying not to blush too much. This Tanuk, he sets me on edge, he leaves me not knowing what way is up and what way is down.
“I’m sure you’ve never heard Ragnar called many things. He’s not just a guardian of a tree, even a very special tree. You should talk to him sometime. If you see him again.”
Well, that is rather ominous, but I’m not afraid. I have the button in my pocket, a means of calling Helios to my side at any time. He can appear anywhere in an instant, and he will destroy Tanuk if there is so much as a scratch on either one of us.
A duck waddles by the pair of us. It is rather large, and it appears to be wearing a waistcoat.
“’Ello guvna. Nice night for it, ain’t it,” it says as we pass by.
“Is that a talking duck? Do you live with talking animals?”
“Humans are talking animals.”
I suppose I can’t argue with that. He’s right. I am only half human, but half human goes a very long way to ruining all things godly as it turns out.
I don’t have any powers. I can’t command the winds or the tides. I can’t make the ocean boil, something I have heard our parents make reference to with hushed smiles from time to time. I have been waiting for a long time to receive some kind of god-manifested greatness. But it has not come. My mother tells me to wait. Ragnar tells me the precise opposite, that if I was not born with it, I’ll probably never have it. Helios offers me shrimp whenever I mention it. I like Helios. He’s not the most engaged father, but my mother explained to me when I was old enough to understand that gods kind of suck from a human perspective and I’ve learned to accept him as he is, for what he is.
“Here we are,” Tanuk says, stopping outside what I suppose is a house. “Lucy is inside.”
“This is your home?”
“The world is my home. This little hovel is where I am currently keeping what you might call, my things. Your sister is among that number.”
I shoot him a dark look. I wish I had some powers. Even just a little power would be useful right now. I’d like to smite Tanuk. Smite him real good. Smite him all over this weird little island.
I don’t know where I expected him to live. A castle, perhaps. Some kind of palace of lies. Not this storybook cottage. It has several stories and criss-crossed wood beams running over the walls, half-timbered so the structure itself is exposed to the strange world.
I know the moment I see it that Lucy won't like it. She was always asking Helios to make the palace more grand. He was always saying that she’d have the entire island covered in turrets and the like if she had her way. And then he would give her her way anyway. Because she was his princess, and he would do anything for her.
“This place reminds me of the stories my mother used to tell me when we were small. If that house doesn’t contain a cage to fatten unfortunates…”
“I keep my cage elsewhere,” Tanuk smiles. “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
There’s something suggestive to his tone. Suggestive of what, precisely, I am not sure. I find myself blushing for unknown reasons. I would not like to be put in a cage, obviously. Why does it sound as though it has some kind of carnal connotation?
“I don’t think so."
“Oh, I’m nearly certain you would. Bad girls like to be treated like very bad girls.”
“I’m not a bad girl.”
“Of course you are. You’re the black sheep of your little family. Lucy, she takes all the attention you should rightfully share, and why?”
“Because she’s beautiful.”
“She is, isn’t she. In an obvious sort of way.”
“Beauty is always obvious. That’s kind of how you define it. You look at it with your eyes and you're like, is it beautiful? If you say yes, it is.”