Meg Evans

This is the 15th story in a series. Click here to read all parts from the beginning.

Maybe some people’s lives would have flashed before their eyes when a hungry wild beast leaped toward them, but that wasn’t what happened with me. Instead, it felt like a car wreck I had seen a few years ago, when I’d stopped my Chevy truck behind a line of cars at a red light on a divided four-lane road in Knoxville and some crazy guy came barreling around a curve toward me, going twice the speed limit. He was either going to hit my truck or the car in the lane beside me—there wasn’t time for anything else to happen—and all I could do for that fraction of a second was just sit there hoping it wouldn’t be me.

As it turned out, it wasn’t me, and I got lucky again with the warhagalla. The beast came close enough that I could see every detail of its open jaws and huge fangs before it chomped down on the flying rodent right next to me. Blood spattered all over the snow, barely missing my white fur coat. The warhagalla sat down almost within arm’s length of me, happily gnawing on its prey as its big brown tail thumped the frozen ground, just like a dog with a biscuit.

I edged away a few steps before dropping the shovel and pulling the knife from my belt instead. “Enjoy your breakfast, Rover,” I said under my breath, as I backed away into the trees. Looking to my left, I thought I saw more drops of blood, but I soon realized I was mistaken. A tiny patch of red flowers had started coming into bloom under one of the evergreens.

By the time I got back to the cabin, Ira was busy stoking the fire. He stood up as I hurried inside, still tightly clutching the knife, and dropped the heavy wooden bar across the door.

“A warhagalla in the trees.” Rather than putting the knife back in the box where I’d found it, I set it down on a shelf near my coat for easier access. “Looks like the beast didn’t get the memo about staying away from the cursed mountains.”

“They range widely. Most often they’re in other places.”

Ira didn’t seem too concerned as he tossed another log on the fire and poked at it, watching the flames rise. I walked toward him, thinking I should offer to help with other chores. After two days here, without slaying dragons or doing much else, I’d started to feel that I wasn’t earning my keep. I had been chosen to travel through the sorcerers’ portal, or so the Romanian woman had said; but I still had no clue why.

Then it occurred to me that my host might be able to tell me a little more about it, even though he wasn’t really a sorcerer.

“Just before I was taken through the magic portal,” I told Ira, “someone came up to me and said I’d been chosen because I was neither female nor male, drawing upon all the powers of the earth and sky. Do you have any idea what that might have meant?”

Apparently satisfied with the fire’s progress, Ira took a step away from it. “Dragons are of the sky, and people are of the earth,” he observed, stretching his long-limbed body and cracking his big knuckles.

Okay, that part wasn’t too hard, even for a caveman. “And powers?”

“We have few powers since the sorcerers left us. Probably there are other spellbooks besides the one here, but most of my people wouldn’t be able to read them. As for dragons, if they have any powers other than flight and breathing fire, I don’t know what those might be.”

Nothing came to my mind either. During the years I’d been working in the dragon-control business, no dragons had ever used magical powers to escape my nets.

After a minute or two passed, I was starting to think that Ira had nothing more to say. Then he added, in a distinctly sour tone, “There are some among my people who claim they are neither female nor male. That is another reason why we diminish.”

Well, dang—I hadn’t seen that coming. Yeah, I’d heard worse in Tennessee, but I hadn’t expected to get it from a furry giant on an alien planet.

“Whatever,” I said just as sourly, turning away as if to look out the window. Not that there was anything to see; yesterday’s thick layer of ice still covered the glass, although it looked like it was melting a bit.

I heard logs shifting and sparks popping as Ira poked the fire again, though it didn’t seem to need it. The cabin was warming up fairly well.

“If I had children, I would teach them to read,” Ira finally said, his tone softening. “I’d like to be a father, and I think I could be a good one. But I haven’t found a woman who wants to have children—most don’t, these days. I sometimes feel I can’t blame them. It’s true what they say, that this isn’t much of a world to bring a child into—but if we don’t even try, then how can anything get better?”

A loud crash like glass shattering came from outside the window, but the ice-encrusted pane was still in one piece. A big icicle, I supposed, falling from the roof and breaking on the hard ground. Another of this place’s many hazards. Ira probably had to dodge falling icicles all winter long.

I stepped away from the window, turning to face him again.

“I don’t know, Ira. Where I come from, some people say that we have to find our purpose in life, but I’ve never been convinced of that. For me, it feels like there are many small purposes to be found in each moment, and all I can do is sort through them as best I can.”

This is the 14th story in a series. Click here to read all parts from the beginning.

On the morning after the blizzard, I woke to the cabin door banging shut after it let in a frigid blast of wind. Fragments of a dream fell away—something about a pickup truck on a narrow road in the mountains. I stretched and sat up, feeling stiff after another night of having slept on the rug in front of the fireplace. My head pounded, which I had to admit wasn’t a result of the sleeping arrangements.

“Note to self,” I muttered, “lay off the alien booze.”

Ira hung his snow-covered coat on a peg by the door, next to the coat he’d cut down to a smaller size for me. After yesterday’s creepy discussion of the local predators, I made sure to arm myself with one of the larger knives from Ira’s box before stepping outside. It fit into a loop of the coat’s belt like a dagger and left me looking suitably warlike—not that I had any plans to slay dragons on the way to the latrine.

Last night’s heavy snowfall came almost to my shoulders, with higher drifts in some places. It was a good thing for me that Ira had gone out first. I followed the path left by his much larger body until I got into the shelter of the trees. The branches hung low, but there wasn’t as much snow under them.

The outline of the trench that served as the latrine was clearly visible. And whatever might be said about Ira’s cooking, it didn’t induce constipation. My lower parts hadn’t gotten too chilled before I was finished. Shoveling dirt into the used area of the trench didn’t take long, either. Ira had helpfully left the shovel propped up on the dirt mound, making it easy to find. I decided this wasn’t too bad of a start to the day.

Well—it wasn’t bad until I heard a low growl from the trees on the other side of the trench, where large orange eyes gleamed. The bearlike warhagalla looked much bigger in real life than the pelt of its unfortunate relation that I’d been using as my bed. While it might have been an exaggeration to say the beast was slavering, I did see a glint of fangs that were much too long and sharp for my liking.

Trying not to look nervous, I backed up a step, holding the shovel in front of me like a medieval pikeman about to face a cavalry charge. The shovel’s handle was much longer and thicker than anything sized for humans, which made it somewhat useful as a weapon. I wasn’t entirely confident that the shovel would stay in one piece, though, as rusty as it looked.

Absurdly intruding on the scene, a winged rodent flew out from behind a tree, singing sweetly. It was considerably larger than the others I’d seen, resembling a great fat woodchuck. Flying slowly, with its bright pink wings pumping for all they were worth, it came close enough that I had the good view I’d wanted yesterday. Its melodic tones echoed from the snow-covered trees like a hymn at an outdoor church service. If I got eaten, I’d at least have music for my funeral.

With that thought, I finally lost control and hollered, “Oh, will you just shut up already!”

The rodent, looking startled, fell silent—just as the warhagalla sprang.

This is the 13th story in a series. Click here to read all parts from the beginning.

The morning’s hazy sunshine had given way to clouds and rain showers by midafternoon, turning to sleet soon afterward. A thick bluish glaze had built up on the cabin’s ancient windows by nightfall. Howling winds shook the walls. Ira, lighting candles that gave off the crisp scent of the forest’s conifers, observed in his usual calm tone, “There will be a blizzard tonight.”

Not looking at all bothered by that prospect, Ira sat down in one of the cabin’s two chairs, propped a giant hairy foot on a stool, and started buffing his toenails with what looked like a pumice stone. If I had really been a dragon-slaying warrior hero like some people foolishly imagined, then I’d have been doing something useful—mending armor, or whatever. Instead, not being anything of the sort, I got myself another cupful of hard cider from the old barrel in the back corner.

I was already tipsy enough that I had to look away from Ira so I wouldn’t start giggling. Even if he might not really be a Sasquatch, the thought of Bigfoot’s nail care routine struck my semi-functioning brain as hilarious. But of course, laughing at one’s host while stranded on an alien planet during a blizzard wouldn’t have been the smartest thing to do. I glanced toward the hearth where the stewpot hung.

“Tomorrow’s dinner will be baked fish,” Ira informed me, in the tone of a waiter announcing the daily special. “There’s frozen fish in the cellar.”

Following his gaze, I noticed a trapdoor set into an open area not far from the cider barrel. Its hinged metal handle was tucked neatly inside a groove cut into the floor for that purpose.

“A creek not far from here has good fishing,” Ira went on. “Usually it runs clear and fresh, with meltwater from the mountain’s snows.”

He removed his foot from the stool, swigged some cider from his own enormous mug, and then started working on the other foot. I looked away again, trying not to think about how much this sounded like a normal conversation about fishing with my friends back home. The urge to giggle had gone away by now, and I just felt gloomy as I started talking.

“Where I’m from, in northeastern Tennessee, there’s a road called Stinking Creek Road, high up in the hills. Back when I was in high school, I stole one of the road signs and used it to decorate the inside of my locker. I told my classmates that I grew up in a cabin in the backwoods, along Stinking Creek, eating roadkill for dinner. I wanted to build up some hillbilly cred. None of it was true, of course. I grew up in an ordinary trailer park like any other ordinary kid, and I only ate roadkill once, when my brother hit a deer with his truck and we brought it home to butcher it.”

Ira listened quietly, nodding once, though—even with a magical translation—he couldn’t have understood much of what I was saying. A half-burned log fell to the bottom of the fireplace with a thud, sending up a shower of sparks.

“The creek here doesn’t stink, but it can be dangerous,” he finally said. “Ice serpents lurk beneath the surface. When they haven’t eaten in a while, they become nearly transparent, with only the faintest outline over the mud and pebbles. One of them almost got me last year.”

I added that unwelcome bit of information to my mental file on this planet’s bestiary, which already had gotten too long. Just then, a ferocious gust shook the cabin and dislodged one of the small creatures squeaking in the rafters. It tumbled almost to the floor before spreading its leathery wings enough to stabilize itself. Evidently a juvenile, it wasn’t much larger than my hand, with a sharp beak above a long, wrinkled neck like a turkey’s; it had fur rather than feathers. Cawing triumphantly, it managed to beat its wings enough to lift itself toward the ceiling.

“They’re harmless,” Ira said, looking over at me as he set down the pumice stone. “And beneficial. They keep the cabin free of venomous pests.”

Of course, I started to ask about those pests; but, on second thought, I just drank more cider and kept quiet. I really didn’t want to know.