The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (52 page)

Day One, Thursday, 6:27
am…

She was confused, holding
on for dear life, to what yesterday had been a large, fun loving
dog, but was now a hulking, hybrid canine/bear. In all honestly,
what Mikalah saw once she, Elena and Kodiak emerged from the
confines of the cave, was so intense and widespread, her mind could
only conjure up two words - utter chaos.

Across a wide arch, before
the entrance of the cave, there was some sort of fighting between
Swüreg, the Jötuns, Jätung, Vallüm, even Inghëldir and a smaller
group of very agile, very strong and very fast opponents. The
struggled would begin in one area and then somehow dissolve into
nothing, only to begin in another. Even to her untrained eye,
Mikalah could tell, whatever the evil creatures were fighting -
they were highly skilled. Though they numbered less than Fenris’
group, these newcomers were coordinating their efforts with such
speed and efficiency; they had their vile foes on the brink of
defeat. The rest was incomprehensible to her, because she couldn’t
keep up – they were too
fast.

She was struck by a single
thought, though it had many components - the fighting, the snow,
the wind. All of it, together, was like a macabre dance of life and
death, of good and evil. They, she and her siblings, and Andrew,
were running through it, stuck within its’ very center. She knew
they were fighting, because of the four of them. Both sides were
willing to die, to possess, to save or to kill –
them.
She had never felt
more horrified in her life.

Why are we so
special?!?

She could tell they were
at the back of the box canyon, facing opposite her grandmother’s
house. It was at the rear of the property owned by the orphanage
that had stood on the east side of Avenue 64 for nearly a century.
They had been moved no more than a few blocks overnight!

It was the same canyon she
remembered seeing the time her grandmother had taken her and her
siblings on a short hike to the large crucifix implanted atop the
highest portion of the ridge forming the canyon itself. Only then,
she’d looked into the canyon from above, not outward, upon its
floor. She remembered there’d been a fenced-in swimming pool next
to a large open area of grass, both of them at the mouth of the
canyon. There had been three large buildings behind the pool and a
playing field. The edifice furthest back had a small parking lot
with around fifteen parking spaces.

None of that was visible
now. In fact, the cave from which they’d emerged gaped where
“furthest-back” building had once stood. Now, there was nothing but
snow-covered ground and dense forest all about them.

And, of course, the raging
battle between the Fenris’ Swüreg and the mysterious
newcomers.

She craned her neck to see
the battle once more, her perspective having changed since Kodiak
hadn’t stopped striding through the throng.

She saw something
reddish-brown and definitely feline, racing through snow, kicking
up a tremendous rooster tail due to its speed. It decapitated one
Swüreg warrior and took another’s throat in the wink of her
eye.

There was a flash of some
sort of bright light from between the upraised hands of Vallüm, the
horribly shrunken old man. Whatever it was, it smashed into a
nearby tree, shattering it into a thousand splinters of wood, just
missing his intended target. His intended victim looked somewhat
wolf-like, but with a pug nose and fangs that gleamed white, even
from a distance.

Next, she watched
Inghëldir rush forward, so fast, she was almost impossible to
track. A fraction of a second later, she collided in mid-air with
something Mikalah swore looked like a giant rabbit, but was somehow
able to run like a man.

Well, almost…

She almost pointed at it
in disbelief, but at the last second realized, she might lose her
grip on Kodiak and fall off. She stayed her hand.

The grunts and shouts and
screams assaulted her ears, the rips and rents in flesh making her
squirm with revulsion. She felt suddenly numb, her senses
overloaded. It was too much for her to digest at once. There was
too much to watch in mere seconds. She could only process a
fraction of it.

In a blink of an eye, the
battle was behind them. They plunged through a copse of magnolia
trees and onto a broader expanse of flattened land. This was where
the playing field should’ve been, but that too was gone.

Of Fenris, there was no
sign.

Kodiak slowed a bit as her
brother and Andrew came alongside of her, panting and gasping for
breath, but having no intention of stopping.

“
Oh my god, that was one
hell of a fight! Did you see that shit, man!” exclaimed Andrew, as
his wind would allow. “Jesus H. Christ, did you see what they were
fighting?”

“
Yeah,” Anthony said,
looking up at her and Elena to make sure they were all
right.

Mikalah gave him a weak
smile and a brief nod. They all plowed on through the wind and the
snow, trying to put as much distance between them and the battle as
possible. She glanced around the bouncing form of Elena and then to
her right and left, realizing they had passed out of the box canyon
proper. They had entered what should have been the grounds of the
orphanage itself, but, like everything before, there was no sign of
an orphanage anywhere. Every structure was gone.

She was about to mention
it to Elena. She knew exactly where they were. The buildings of the
orphanage should’ve been all around them. But, she thought better
of it when she noticed her older sister’s head was whipping back
and forth as well. Elena had unearthed precisely what she had
moments before. They were where the orphanage should’ve
been.

Instead, she glanced
around once more, at the magnolia trees and snow-slung patches of
wild grass and underbrush, trying to get her mind around what she
was seeing.

Where had everything
gone?

Kodiak trotted up a small
rise leading to the intersection of what should’ve been Avenue 64
and Church Street. Mikalah wasn’t surprised to see where the
Episcopalian Church should’ve been to their right was nothing but a
thick meadow, thick layered grass under fluffy snow. Beyond that,
there was only a large, dirt road where Avenue 64 should’ve been
and a small trail bisecting the road at the exact location where
Church Street would’ve crossed. There were no stop signs, no
sidewalks, and, above all, as far as she could see, there were no
houses. There should’ve been scores of them in her line of slightly
now.

“
Wow,” began Andrew as
Kodiak looped over what should’ve been the front lawn of the
church, but was now just a large clearing randomly covered with
dead leaves and snow, “everything is gone.”

“
Still sharp as a samurai
sword, eh Drew?” added Anthony sarcastically, and was about to ask
Kodiak a question.

“
What did I say? Look
around, man, everything is freakin’ gone!”

Anthony rolled his eyes
still in mid-stride. “Yeah, I get it.” He looked back at Kodiak.
Mikalah heard him ask, “So what now, where do we go from
here?”

One of her huge, brown
eyes glanced his way, but only for a gallop and a half. She focused
ahead once more, not once slowing her pace. They were traveling
fast enough to get away and yet, slow enough so she didn’t outrun
the boys. “We have to run up this trail a ways until we come upon
smaller footpath. From there, we make a left, passing quite a few
more paths until we run down a hill. At the bottom of the hill,
we’ll run to… well… to what we have found. One of us has found a
safe place to hide for the time being until our next course of
action can be determined.”

Mikalah turned to see
Elena’s brow wrinkle at the answer.

“
So, we’re running to La
Loma Road and then all the way downhill by Vons?” inquired Anthony
through a few large gulps of air. He was running with long, fluid
strides. Mikalah hadn’t known he move with such fluidity. She had
never seen him run before.

“
If you say so, I’m not
acquainted with the names of Human streets. I merely remember the
way, child,” replied Kodiak.

“
Who’s ‘we’? Who’s ‘one of
us’?” questioned Elena, making Mikalah shake her head. It was true
– her sister never missed a single detail.

“
Why, the rest of us, of
course,” came Kodiak’s simple reply as if the girl should’ve
figured it out.

“
You mean there are more
like you?” She eyes were burrowing into the back of Kodiak’s skull
as the bear-dog continued to run.

Kodiak chanced a quick
look over her shoulder briefly gazing upon Elena’s bright curious
eyes, before she returned her vision to the road.

Mikalah could tell that
her sister was trying to keep her mind off the strangeness
of
everything
about them. She was trying to find something – anything – to
think about other than their tenuous situation. She always did that
when she was scared.

“
Well, yes and
no.”

At Mikalah’s right knee,
Andrew giggled blew air between his lips explosively – a sarcastic
gesture.

“
Hush, boy!” uttered
Kodiak with a rumbling out of the corner of her jaw.

“
Sorry.”

She began anew. “Yes, it
is true, child. We are alike, since, not too long ago, we are all
your pets and had been for years. But, it is not true at the same
time, for we are all very much unlike one another,” she explained
in a motherly fashion, slow and concise, so as not to confound. She
somehow was able to manage this while she was trotting across the
one-time lawn of the historic church.

“
You’re talking about
those creatures fighting the bad guys back there, aren’t you?”
concluded Mikalah, remembering how big and strong they’d all
looked. What Kodiak was saying rang true. She recalled they hadn’t
look alike at all, not in the least.

Oh my god, our pets came
with us!?!

“
Yes, child, I
am.”

Anthony thought intensely
for a few moments. “How many of our pets are with you?”

“
There are five of us. We
are called the Fingers of the Lord of the Light,” she announced in
a tone sounding proud.

Anthony looked puzzled,
asking, “I keep hearing that title over and over again. Who is this
Lord of the Light?”

“
Later, my child, it will
have to wait for later. Right now we have more immediate issues at
hand,” said Kodiak smoothly, still lumbering on through the
snow.

Mikalah could see her
brother wanted to press the issue, but decided not to, opting to
focus on keeping pace with the bear-dog, silent for now. Mikalah
knew he was just biding his time. The time for questions would come
later. Rather, he settled himself, wading into deep
thought.

She looked from her
brother to what lay ahead, seeing they’d already passed the slight
left hand curve of earthen road and were entering the second curve.
The trail was positioned exactly as it would’ve been back home,
except it wasn’t paved. There were no houses. All the people were
gone. She knew this second curve would be a bit sharper and angle
to the right. From there, La Loma Road was only a city block or so
farther up the steady incline they were traversing. Again, she
glanced around, hoping for any signs of human habitation as her
vantage slowly changed through the dense trees. The homes that
should’ve been hanging to the steep hillsides on either side of
them were gone. Some of the side streets that should’ve been there,
branching off in either direction, weren’t in evidence. As they
continued up the trail, there was no trace of them.

She shivered slightly in
the gloom surrounding her, hanging on with all her might, as the
bear-dog’s huge muscles flexed underneath her. The snow had not
abated since they’d left the cave, but it hadn’t increased in
intensity either. It fell steadily, a continuous, falling drapery,
cutting down visibility to just over forty yards - ok, but not
great. The temperature had stayed the same as well. It was cold.
Each of the children had blotchy, reddened noses and cheeks chapped
to a light blush, but no frost bite or anything as severe as that.
About them, the wind blew in short, swirling breezes, barely
touching the white flakes falling around them. The gentle play of
air did make them eddy in unison, slightly from side to side as it
did so.

Kodiak and the boys
reached the second bend in the road and the full view of the road
beyond cleared when a deep resonating voice said,
“Mother!”

Kodiak stopped in her
tracks, peering through the snowfall toward the left hand side of
the trail where Mikalah remembered a street had once intersected
Avenue Sixty-four. It wasn’t there now. It had been replaced by a
gradual incline of grass, weeds, and a few bushes as well. The
cleared stretch of land reached upward over a hundred feet or so
before it was obscured by the weather. The entire expanse of it was
laden with snow, uneven and lumpy.

Through this, Mikalah saw
another bear-dog creature, much like Kodiak, only not quite as tall
at the shoulder, with a body at least a foot longer. The beast
ambled forth. Its’ fur was the same color as Kodiak’s, though the
hairs looked half an inch longer. Its eyes they were as black as
coal. Kodiak’s were brown. Other than a slightly shorter snout, she
was the spitting image of the taller Bear-dog.