Wendigo Wars (9 page)

“Yeah, I have been telling His Royal Highness to get some kip but he seems to be completely better, no rest needed! Amazing huh? The powers of the guy! Too ill to get up but perfectly fine to stay awake until midnight to wait for you”

Seb glared at Dash. If looks could kill the wendigo would have nothing on Seb. Dash looked completely nonchalant. In fact he just stared at Mathilde in that annoyingly meaningful way that he always did and seemed not to hear Seb at all. It frustrated Mathilde that he managed to look at her so meaningfully yet make his meaning completely indecipherable. For once though he looked worried rather than arrogant yet still with that edge which made Mathilde unsure of whether he liked or hated her.

“Oh well. With any luck he’ll be asleep soon. I’m sure there is nothing he would want to share with me” said Mathilde as she threw him a glare.

Dash looked deflated and lowered his gaze before lying back on his bed. Seb left with a spring in his step and a new smile on his face. Mathilde thought that her treatment of Dash had cheered Seb up a bit too much but pushed it to the back of her mind, unwilling to deal with the uncomfortable feelings she had been trying to ignore since Amelie’s revelation. Not quite yet. Then Mathilde and Dash were alone. Mathilde sat in the corner chair, as far away from Dash as possible. She glared at him as he avoided her stare. After what seemed like an eternity, Dash sat up and looked at Mathilde. He looked like all of the hope had been sucked out of him.

“So you hate me too because of who I am? I thought that maybe you would be different, maybe there was something different with us.”

“What?”

Mathilde was more than surprised at his assumptions for the reasons for her mood and his assumptions about there being something between them, though that second part she couldn’t deny no matter how hard she had been trying to. “I don’t care who you are. You need to stop thinking you are something special just because you are royalty.”

“So why are you looking at me like that? Why are you so angry?”

“Are you kidding me? You are really so self absorbed that you think that the only reason I could be angry at you is because of who you are not because of what you’ve done? Oh no! You couldn’t possibly have considered that it might actually be your own fault that I’m angry at you. It has to be something that isn’t your fault, an accident of your birth. I can’t believe how arrogant you are!”

“I’m not arrogant, really I’m not,” said Dash sounding upset and slightly embarrassed at least at the first of his assumptions.

“I’m just... I am just used to not everyone liking my family. There are some people who didn’t want Romania to be ruled by royalty, The People’s Rebellion. They thought that we were ineffective because we didn’t find a way to protect them from the wendigo. They thought that if we had stood down and let Romania be run by a committee then we would have had a better chance at getting rid of the wendigo.”

“That’s stupid! No-one has managed to get rid of the wendigo. A committee wouldn’t have made a difference.” Mathilde momentarily forgot her anger and began to feel surprisingly defensive for Dash.

“People like someone to blame though don’t they? I had hoped that the thought had died out when my family disappeared but Protector Superior Paul seems to think that some of the Rebellion may still exist and they thought that my family had fled and left our people for dead.  You can kind of understand why they must hate me.”

“Did you abandon them?”

“No! My family lived to serve our people. The safety of our people was more important to my father than his own.”

“Was?” asked Mathilde quietly.

Dash looked at his barely touched food and picked at it for a while as he slipped into his own thoughts. Mathilde mirrored his actions, unsure if she had overstepped the mark in pushing him to speak about his family.

“So if it wasn’t because of my family then why were you avoiding me? Why are you so angry?”

“Because you look at me as if there is something between us but you don’t think enough of me to actually tell me who you are. Even when I ask you questions straight to your face you just avoid them or give me the absolute minimum. You can’t be that interested in being friends with me.”

“I was afraid to tell you. I didn’t know how you would react.” Dash gave a small laugh. “If I had known that you wouldn’t care at all I might have told you earlier.”

“Right. So why do you always stare at me? What makes you think that there is something between us?”

“I don’t know, just something. I just feel like we are meant to play a part in each other’s life. Like... well I don’t know.”

Mathilde tried to glare at Dash but found herself staring into his eyes, unable to look away. Although she hated to admit it she had also been feeling like they had some sort of a connection or were meant to be in each other’s lives. She imagined that this is what finding a soul mate must feel like but she wasn’t ready to consider that right yet. Romance was something she just didn’t have time whilst the mysterious General Zhu was still a threat.

“So, do you mind telling me what happened to your family? If they didn’t run away I mean. Well you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Just, if you want to talk about it, you know, I’m here and you can.”

Dash nodded. In the small time it had taken to resolve their misunderstandings and go some way towards admitting their feelings for each other, whatever they were, Mathilde and Dash seemed to have crossed a bridge into a much easier relationship. Mathilde felt some of her anger dissipate and be replaced by a real need to find out what had happened to bring Dash here in this state. No longer out of curiosity or her Protector Superior instincts to spot threats but out of a concern for his feelings and wellbeing.

“Yes. I should tell you what I can. I think you need to know. It is a threat you need to know about. We were taken two years ago. We were travelling from the Transylvania settlement to the Bucharest settlement. Though Romania is small we have never been here. We tended not to travel outside of the Transylvanian settlement through fear of the People’s Rebellion. In Transylvania there were only patriotic people. We knew we were safe.”

“So why leave? Why travel here?”

“Despite what the People’s Rebellion thought of my family, all my father has ever cared about is having a safe and united country. He thought that if we could unite the four Romanian settlements – Satu Mare, Transylvania, Bucharest and Suceava - then we could build an army and hunt and slay the wendigo until they were all gone. Then we could begin to build our great country again.”

“It could have worked.” Mathilde admired Dash’s family for sticking around. Many royals across Europe hadn’t. Though the White had affected the whole world some trace of normality had remained in some continents due to their slightly warmer climes. Much of the world had iced over in these continents, however the cold was less harsh and the population continued reasonably unaffected by the lack of electricity and lack of food that had hit Europe and America. This in turn meant that there were no wendigo. Anyone with more money than social responsibility had fled to Africa and Asia and large barriers surrounded the whole of the continents. They had cut themselves off from the Western world and forgotten all about them. Only those rich enough to own their own air transport had managed to cross the barriers.

“Yes it could have worked. Whatever the People’s Rebellion thought about my father he was a good man and he had a plan that could have saved us, one country at a time.”

“So you left Transylvania.”

“Yes. We left Transylvania. We took five of the Transylvanian Protectorate with us and my father, mother, sister and I set out to the Satu Mare settlement. We made it there without any major incidents. A few wendigo attacks but our Protectorate slayed them without sustaining a single injury.”

“You made it to Satu Mare? What did they say?”

“It took some persuading but eventually the whole community agreed with us that it could work. They made a pact with my father that, once we had enlisted the help of the Bucharest settlement - this settlement - that they would join us in arms. Every man, woman and child in Romania would be united in an organised fight against the wendigo. Even the members of the People’s Rebellion couldn’t argue with the plan. We won them over. Ironic huh? Satu Mare was the official base of the People’s Rebellion. That is the reason my father chose to visit there first. They finally agree to unite with my family but it was just too late.”

“So it was going well. What happened? Did the People’s Rebellion change their mind?”

“No. We left with their best wishes at our backs as they prepared for battle. They probably thought that we had second thoughts and fled. That was two years ago. They would have thought the worst of us when we didn’t return.

Our journey back was ok. We stopped at our home settlement in Transylvania on the way, as it is between Satu Mare and Bucharest. We rested for a month then set out again, this time to come here.”

Dash paused, as if what came next seemed too painful to talk about. Mathilde wanted to reach out to hold his hand or squeeze his arm but she didn’t feel like they had crossed that bridge yet. The silence this time didn’t feel angry or tense, merely comfortable. Mathilde could have stayed there forever and not felt the need to say a single word. It was Dash who broke the silence.

“We were crossing the Carpathian Mountains when we were attacked. We had travelled for two weeks and were now only a week away from Bucharest.

We had stopped for a couple of days to rest at a monastery near Polovragi. It has been in and out of use for centuries but there is now a small group of monks living there. Though they are peaceful they are also self trained in combat and so have been able to defend their monastery from the few wendigo attacks which have happened over the years.”

“You all reached the monastery safely?”

“Yes; my mother and father, my sister Suzanna and our five Protectors. It was a beautiful place surrounded by a thick legion of trees, still quite green even in these temperatures. When you stood at the top window in the church tower in the centre of the monastery all you could see for miles around were trees. Though they could have been concealing a thousand wendigo it just didn’t feel like that. It felt safe, perhaps because we were surrounded by men of God. Maybe even the wendigo have some respect left for the men of God; some remnant of their human selves.”

Mathilde raised an eyebrow but did not say anything. Though many of the people she lived with in the settlement worshipped God there were also several who worshipped no-one and many, like herself, who had faith in the spirit world and in dreams and visions but were undecided outside of that. Mathilde did not question or judge anyone’s beliefs though. She knew how important beliefs were when times were hard or scary; something to cling onto like a security blanket or a lucky charm.

“When we set out we were in high spirits. We were well rested and well fed and had supplies for the rest of the journey. The nine of us who were travelling together had spent an exciting few days discussing our plans. We were sure that Bucharest would be no problems after having convinced the main People’s Rebellion themselves. Two hours away from the monastery we were attacked. Almost as if they had been watching and waiting for us to be far enough away from help. There were twelve of them.”

“Twelve of who? The People’s Rebellion? They were bluffing when they agreed to help?”

“No. Twelve wendigo. Hey are you alright?”

Mathilde’s world had begun to spin and she felt herself swaying slightly. Twelve wendigo. Twelve. Not two or three or even six like in the attack on Bucharest but twelve! It wasn’t possible. “It can’t be possible. They would fight. They would sense a meal and fight. Their gluttony does not allow them to share or work together. Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure,” snapped Dash. “They came in a formation, from all sides.”

“They killed your family. I’m sorry.”

“No they didn’t. Not then anyway. They took us. They attacked us and tied us up then carried us away.”

“They can’t do that. Wendigo don’t have the will power not to kill.”

“Can you stop telling me what wendigos do and don’t do. Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I know what they are meant to do, how they are meant to act? But we were wrong. You are wrong. Decades of bloody assumptions are now wrong. Look just let me finish ok?”

“Right, sure. Sorry.”

“Anyway, I passed out. I had tried to protect Suzanna but a wendigo had knocked me away from her. Those things are strong. I hit my head on a tree. When I came round I was tied up and slung over a wendigo’s shoulder. They move at quite a pace. I woke up just in time to see us arrive at a cave. There was a small entrance to the cave and a smaller entrance higher up. It was approaching twilight when we arrived and a flurry of bats swooped out of the upper entrance. Suzanna was crying. Everyone else was silent; the Protectors out of bravery, my parents because of breeding and dignity and me because I was terrified.”

Mathilde was impressed that Dash didn’t look embarrassed when he admitted he’d been scared.

“The wendigo carried us down and down. The cave was dry but bitterly cold and was lit with torches every few metres. There were paintings here and there on the walls - parrots, cheetahs, elephants, the Grim Reaper. After a while we reached a huge chamber and the wendigo put us down.”

Mathilde wanted to interrupt to ask if this is where his family died. She didn’t give in to her impulses though. This was his story and she had already learnt not to jump in. He would tell her everything in his own time. They picked at their meals again in silence, each of them taking a token bite now and then. Violette breezed in for a while, all bubbly chat and happiness.

“It seems a bit depressing in here guys. Are you two arguing again? You should try talking to each other properly. You might like each other.”

Violette left again. Neither Dash nor Mathilde had the energy to correct her, both still trapped in the story of the wendigo in the Polovragi caves.