Endless Seas

EPISODE: 1: Chapter 1

Enid gasped and pressed herself harder into the side of the crate.

Those villagers lying on the muddied ground outside the church were dead, definitely dead. No one alive could lie at such an awkward angle like that for that long.

Why had Enid looked?

She shouldn’t have looked.

It had been a mistake to look.

No, the mistake had been racing into town when she’d heard the church bells ringing.

The church doors boomed open then, and Enid found herself looking despite the terrible burning in the pit of her stomach.

A man stepped out, so big he had to duck to fit through, the large golden cross from the altar in one hand, a sharp red blade in the other.

Enid had to bite back a sob at the sight of the blood that speckled his monstrous face and dirtied his clothes, and any thoughts she’d had earlier of warm suns or Cormac’s arms were long forgotten.

Cormac.

Enid had made a mistake by running into town, but Cormac would be able to fix it.

All she had to do was find him, and he could save her from that giant man with the church cross, and any other demons who had come with him.

She stole another look, watching that creature disappear into a neighboring shop with his sword raised and ready.

Why was he doing this? Why was he hurting them, and how many people would he kill before he’d had his fill?

Enid had no way of knowing, but she knew she didn’t want to add to those bright red splotches on his face, so she gathered up her skirts and started running.

Times like these were a test. That’s what the priest would tell them on Sundays. They were meant to try men’s souls and sort out the true believers from the pretenders.

As Enid rounded every corner, her mind whispered another prayer. As she tore down every once-familiar and now-plundered alley, her heart begged for forgiveness.

And then she saw him.

Cormac stood outside his shop, his muscles rippling with the effort of swinging his mighty hammer against not one but two of those giant foes.

Enid had been right to come to him.

He would protect her, he would save her, and when this horrible day was finally through, she knew what answer her father would give him.

“Cormac.” She found herself smiling as she bent down low to gather up her skirts once again, but when she started running, she heard the thick slap of leather and went down hard before she could feel the burning of it across her face.

Something that resembled a man stared down at her then, his eyes an unnatural shade of blue, bright and almost like the sky.

No man that Enid had ever seen before had had eyes like that, with that impossible color laced with the biting chill of winter.

A bundle of braids ran down the middle of his head and tumbled down one of his shoulders, tied off at the nape of his neck by a thin strap of leather.

His lips parted into what could have been a scowl behind his full beard, but by then Enid had stopped looking, her eyes drawn instead to the large ax he held in both of his hands.

No man that Enid had ever known had needed an ax like that.

Axes were for chopping wood or for cutting down trees.

They weren’t meant for what this man was about to do to her.

When Enid had imagined this day before coming into town, it had gone much differently.

There had been promises.

There had been warmth.

There had been a bright future with a man she could have loved, but now there was only death and the devil who had been sent to bring it.

“Cormac,” she whispered, too frightened to keep her eyes open, but then she felt big hands grip her waist and a large shoulder dig into her stomach as she was lifted and thrown over it.

For a moment, she hung there, stunned and almost relieved that she was still alive, but then she thought about the only reason a dangerous man would let a woman live, and her blood turned to ice.

“Cormac!” she shouted, slamming her fists into the giant’s back and kicking her feet. “Cormac, help!”

“Enid?”

“Cormac, please!” she cried.

She could see him not that far away in the distance, still swinging his hammer and now trying to make his way to her, but he was still outnumbered, and the man who carried her was quick and light on his feet.

“Put me down,” she told him. “Put me down now!”

An arm slipped over her calves to keep her from kicking, and a deep voice rumbled in the chest underneath her.

Enid couldn’t understand a word of what was said, but when another voice answered, she felt it in her bones that they would all be sharing her.

“Let me go!” She pounded her fists into his hard, leather vest and screamed.

She heard a laugh from the chaos around her, bright and warm and chilling her to the bone.

The giant beneath her gave a quick grunt in response before turning a corner and heading for the riverbanks.

It was there that Enid went flying, only for a moment, before she came crashing down onto hard wood that gave a stomach-churning sway beneath her.

For the first time in her life, she was on a boat, and though the floor of the deck was flat, Enid was finding it didn’t stay nearly as still as solid ground did.

But she was finally free.

Without a second thought, she raced for the curved walls around her, lined with crates and chests and bundles of tightly packed sacks.

Stolen goods, the lot of it.

Stolen from good people, Christian people, her people.

When the fighting was finally finished, Enid would tell the men where this boat was, and the townspeople could reclaim the valuables they had worked so hard for.

That was the right thing to do, and that’s what Enid would have done if she hadn’t leaned over the side of the boat and stared straight down into a pair of icy, sky-blue eyes.

Both of them went still; him with his hands above the giant ax he had just hooked onto his belt after throwing her up onto the deck, her with the sickening feeling one gets when the wind has just blown the last flame in a torch out in the night.

He stared up at her, silent and never blinking, like he was no longer a man but had turned to stone.

“I have to go.” Enid found herself telling him.

He gripped the ledge of the boat beside her, and despite the lurching sway, seemed to lift himself up with no effort.

“Please.” Enid took a few shaking steps back toward the front of the boat, her hand clutching at her dress. “I need to go. I can’t be here.”

Slowly, almost like a cat, almost like he was approaching a wild animal and didn’t want to scare it, he stood to his full height, and Enid knew that even if she stretched, she would be lucky if the top of her head reached his shoulder.

He wasn’t natural.

He wasn’t human.

He must have been some demon, some devil, some changeling creature come to spirit her away to a realm not of this world.

“No.” Enid raced to the side of the boat and fought off the hand that grabbed her arm to stop her from throwing herself over. “No, get off of me. You can’t, I won’t, I have to go.”

The boat tilted like a tall hill as she raced to the other side and kept swaying long after she’d taken hold of the wooden wall to keep herself upright.

He stood beside her, seemingly never making a sound as he stared down at her, waiting, daring her to try to jump again.

Water tore past the boat, carrying sinking crates and goods that had been lost farther upstream to the hungry mouth of the river meeting the sea farther along the coast.

Enid didn’t know how to swim, but she knew she couldn’t stay on this boat with him, so she gathered her skirts and made her move.

But more hands appeared, and the world vanished behind rough fabric.