Page 61 of Entwined

Her sigh’s prolonged, but I ignore it, and eventually she turns around and walks toward the building. After banging on the door for quite a while, she finally draws a sword and uses the hilt to smash the handle. I move forward, shifting into my human form to follow her inside.

“Axel,” she says. “What on earth are you?—”

“The others can’t see us from here,” I say. “And I’m not letting you disappear from my sight.”

“Humans have things like cameras. They could out you—have you thought of that?” She groans. “Why did you bring me to a church, anyway? I probably just smashed their door open for no reason—no one sleeps at a church.”

“This is a church?” I look around.

She just ignores me, stomping through the doorway into the dark building loudly and unafraid.

I have to jog to keep up. “Humans worship their god here? How? Do they pray and chant?”

She continues to ignore me, bursting from one room into the next, all of them empty. After a few more moments of searching, she gives up. “Well, there’s either no one here, or they’re hiding.”

A moment later, I’ve shifted back into Azar, and we’re flying over the streets of the city. Not a single light is on, and not a single person appears to be awake. “Hey, you have dragon senses. Are they better than mine?”

What do you mean?

“Can you hear humans?”

I can sense their heat and hear their heartbeats if I try.

“Do it,” she says. “Find me a human.”

But there aren’t any. I fear they’ve all fled. There’s not even any significant animal life. They took their horses, their cows, all of it, with them. There are a few stray dogs and cats, if that’s of interest.

“How can that be?” Liz is barely hanging on to the saddle. She flings her arms outward. “Where did you all go? And how did you know we were even coming?”

She screams, long and loud.

And that’s when I feel it. Wait. I found one.

I swing wide and drop in line with the Ölfusá river, shifting slightly as it bends and winds, and then I feel the single heartbeat again. I hover momentarily, isolating the heat signature. There.

Just on the north side of the river, there’s a tiny, red-roofed home sitting in a largish yard for a human, between two much larger homes. I feel it there.

I land in front of the home.

Liz slides down slowly, looking around. Her boots crunch in the snow as she lands, and I radiate slightly, melting the snow around us in a wave that moves outward from where we’re standing. Liz draws one sword, preparing to smash the door handle again, more than likely, but as she approaches the door, it opens and a hunchbacked woman with white hair steps onto a small porch.

“Welcome,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

13

Liz

Nothing has been normal in my life for a very long time, but today has been bizarre, even by my new standards. An old woman in Iceland welcoming me into her evacuated town in English is just. . .

“Who are you?” I ask. “The town oracle?”

“I am Margrét, and I’m not an oracle, but when they asked someone to stay, I volunteered.” She smiles with a cackle, her teeth darkened, perhaps by coffee or perhaps just by age. She looks like she could easily be a hundred years old.

“How long ago did they evacuate Selfoss?”

“Two days?” She shrugs.

“But you speak English?” It may be a strange thing for me to ask when there’s a dragon behind me, watching our interaction with interest, but I don’t speak any Icelandic. It feels almost too lucky that the one woman who stayed speaks English.