Page 14 of Brought to Light
“What?” I switched the apparently magic flashlight off, feeling both smug and kind of silly. I’d picked up a couple of fantasy novels while I was deployed, old tattered paperbacks kicking around the FOB, remnants of a long-ago care package from someone’s mom, probably. The heroes of those always had some magical thingamajig, a sword or a crown or a diamond or some fancy shit like that.
Not a plastic flashlight. Then again, I wasn’t any damn hero.
Linden said a few words to his friends in their language, and they both nodded, looking less confused, although Oskar still had his glare turned up to eleven. Not that I expected that to change anytime soon, no matter what Linden told him.
Kaspar shrugged, gave me a funny look, and said something in reply, gesturing at the floor. Linden sighed. “I explained that you got it from the one from our realm. And Kaspar would like you to turn it on again,” he said. “Being able to see the sigil clearly will help them get us out of here.”
Well, I was all for that. I clicked the button and aimed the flashlight back at the flagstone. The three of them bent over it and muttered, Kaspar tracing the sigil with his fingers.
The stone glowed more brightly, the floor started to shake, and Kaspar wrapped his free hand around Linden’s wrist while Oskar grabbed the arm holding the staff. Linden snagged me by the arm in turn, and the whole world jolted and melted, like wax running down a shaken candle. With a tremendous, ear-shattering pop, the tunnel disappeared. I blinked to clear my vision and took a deep breath. Fresh grass, something flowery and sweet in the air, and above us, a huge dark sky dotted with brilliant stars.
The moon was twice as large as it should’ve been, and also faintly purple.
Welcome to fairyland, Callum. Fuck. All I could do was brace myself for the next surprise.
Chapter Seven
Linden
My first breath of home felt like the first breath I’d taken in weeks, full stop. No taint of lead and petroleum and plastic and tar…only rain-freshened grass and the sweep of wind down from the moonlit, snow-painted mountains. Beside me, Callum could only have been more alert, wary, and ready to kill the next comer if he’d been a wolf growling and raising its hackles. He held his appropriated flashlight like a weapon, although he held his actual weapon down by his side, in a way that didn’t fool me in the least.
I’d briefly interacted with the odd realm humans called the internet while hiding in their world, and I’d run across a joke about a serial killer with a pencil and a cheerleader with something called a bazooka, and their relative ability to inspire fear. I’d had to search for nearly every word in order to figure out roughly what it meant, and I still hadn’t been sure I’d understood it.
Now I did. I could have wielded the most fearsomely razor-sharp enchanted sword in any of the realms, and I wouldn’t be half the threat Callum was holding a flashlight. His gun was the least of it.
“We’re not safe here,” Oskar said briskly, snapping me out of my thoughts. “We need cover for what’s left of the night, and we need to talk, Linden.”
Ah,we need to talk. No matter the realm or the language, no one enjoyed hearing that.
I started to reach out with a trickle of magic, trying to get a feel for where precisely we were, and Kaspar whacked me in the arm. “Don’t be a fool!”
Suddenly Callum was somehow between me and Kaspar, even though there’d only been a foot of space there. His eerily calm, silent looming somehow said more than words could have.
I craned my neck and saw Kaspar very wisely taking a step back, eyes wide.
“He’s my friend,” I told Callum again. I appreciated the man’s willingness to keep our bargain and protect me, but—wait a moment, hadn’t our deal only lasted until we escaped from the labyrinth between worlds? Or had I misunderstood? I wasn’t going to be the one to remind him he was no longer required to be on my side, but at the same time…at the same time, I was home, and these were my friends, my oldest friends, whom I’d played with as a boy and confided in as a youth. Having them at odds with Callum would be, for lack of a better word, exhausting. And I was already so exhausted I’d started to sway on my feet. “Don’t you have friends? Who hit you in the arm when you’re doing something stupid?”
Callum’s back looked so broad and sturdy. I could lean on it. Maybe he’d let me climb on and sleep with my head on his shoulder while he carried me wherever Oskar meant to lead us. And it was right there, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him in contrast to the chilly bite of the evening. The pull I felt to him was more confusing than pleasant, knowing as I did how close he’d come to ending my life. But I couldn’t forget the look on his face as he drank the magical hot chocolate I’d forced on him. Surprise, and delight, and a softness that had been markedly absent before and since. A voice in the back of my head kept whispering that perhaps he’d have that same look on his face if he tastedme. I shivered, and it wasn’t the cold.
Callum sidestepped a little so that he could glance at me while still keeping a wary eye on Kaspar. “You weren’t doing anything.”
“I was trying to use magic, which would be the fastest way for anyone hunting me to find and track me. He felt it. You didn’t. He was right to stop me, and if you want to stay alive here, you ought to pay attention to the people who know more about this realm than you do.” I was too tired to be tactful.
He frowned at me, but his posture eased a trifle. “We’re in your realm, now?” I nodded. “Fine. I’ll—take a step back. A small step,” he said sharply, as I started to smile in relief. “I don’t trust them. For that matter, I don’t trust you.”
“I’d be surprised if you did,” I said with a sigh. “Just please don’t kill them. We need them. And I’m—attached to them. They’re my oldest friends.” He didn’t look all that pleased. I tried again. “They’re like brothers to me.”
And, oddly, that wiped the frown off Callum’s face. He barked out a laugh. “At least I’m managing expectations. Fine. What’s next?”
Oskar and Kaspar had been muttering to one another, with Kaspar digging around in the satchel slung over his shoulder, while I got Callum in line. I turned to them. “Where are we going?”
“Do you remember my grandfather’s hunting lodge?” Oskar asked me. And then it made sense. I hadn’t recognized the place right away because we generally approached the lodge from the other side, and we rarely came down into this valley, only looking at it from above and from the opposite direction. But with a quick reorientation of my perspective, I recognized my surroundings at last.
“We’ll have to cross that river, won’t we?” I couldn’t help my tone of dismay, and Kaspar laughed at me, the bastard.
But he also handed me a chunk of bread and a piece of cheese, and gave me a drink from the water canteen he’d taken out of his bag. I fell on it like a starving beast. He handed the same to Callum, who eyed it for a moment, shrugged, and then dug in.
In a spray of crumbs, I explained the route to Callum: over the river and up the hill into the forest. There were nods all around, and we set off.
