Ljuflingur

Author's Note: In Icelandic folklore, there are many tales of huldufolk—the hidden people. One tells of ljuflingur, huldumen known to seduce and impregnate human women ('ljuflingur' means 'beloved' in Icelandic).

Many thanks to mac ropis for the thoughtful comments, spelling/grammar check, and insightful questions! Volunteer Editors are the best idea since oral sex.

***

The knife in Eirik's right boot chafed painfully against his shin, but he did not dare pause to shift it. He could barely keep up with his sister, and he knew Alfdis would not wait if he slowed. His little sister was fleet-footed and confident on the slippery mix of mud and snow that covered the ground. She knew the path better than he, if it even was a path that she followed so quickly in the night. The girl could see in the damn dark.

Alfdis reached the waterfall's rocky entrance and began to climb. If she slowed at all, Eirik could not tell. He swallowed a sudden wave of forbidding and jogged up after her. His sister might have clever feet, but he knew desperation when he saw it. The rocks were too slippery in the sheeting mist, the night too dark under the clouds. Her pace was madness.

The distance between them lengthened. Eirik cursed and dropped closer to the ground, using both hands to crawl spider-like across the treacherous rocks. By the time he slid down to the path that led behind the falls, Alfdis had vanished.

He rolled to his feet and raced after her. Calling for her to wait would only have wasted his breath. The basalt stacks that formed the vast cliff wall stretched into deep shadow to his right; to his left beat the plunging falls. Sheets of colorless mist wafted across his path, and he tugged the fur of his hood forward to keep the water from his eyes.

As he emerged on the other side of the waterfall, he caught sight of Alfdis again. She had left the path, which curved gently to the left, to clamber up the steep rocks that adjoined the cliff face.

Eirik roared. "Alfdis!"

The girl twisted and her boot skid, sending down a shower of small pebbles. She gasped and, finding purchase with a grasping hand, regained her balance. "Go back," she cried.

Eirik ignored that, leaping up to confront her. She scrambled back out of his reach, hissing.

"Are you mad?" he exclaimed. Did the mad ever know their own madness? Alfdis looked wildly fey, holding on to the mountainside with one hand, the other tangled in her muddy skirts, and one golden plait escaping its weave. Her slender face was set, her blue gaze sharp.

Sharp, but sane.

Eirik growled. It didn't matter if the girl thought she knew herself. She was fifteen and only half huldu, and her sense of the hidden paths was stunted. He reined in his temper with some effort. Directing battle crazed warriors could not be easier than handling his little sister.

"Alfdis," he repeated firmly, but without accusation. "You have to calm yourself. You'll get where you're going no faster if you slip on the ice and fall to your death." He kept his words measured and his tone reassuring. "I want to help. Please, tell me where you are headed, what you must do."

Pale brows quirked. "You would help me, priest's son?" The mockery was fond and bitter at once.

Eirik captured her gaze with his own. He stared hard at her for a long moment, then spoke without relinquishing her eyes. "I would, little sister." He kept his words level and calm. "If you let me help, I promise not to stop you." That was right; make it a deal. Children and huldufolk loved bargains, and Alfdis was half of both. Eirik bit his tongue to keep it from telling her he feared for her safety. Alfdis's pride was a giant shield of thorns.

Still, she hesitated. "It's more dangerous for you than me," she began, but the words trailed off as Eirik slowly pulled himself up towards her, and when he extended a strong hand, she took it.

Eirik gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Where are we going?" It started to rain, water and ice.

Alfdis shot him a guilty frown. "I'm not sure."

Eirik knew better than to erupt at that. He swallowed his anger at her recklessness and waited her out.

"I am... called," she murmured finally. "To the paths. I can sense the need, and something in me wants to help. A birth, maybe. Or a death. I... I think if I'd been taught, I could feel it clearer." Frustration burned in her soft words, but it was not aimed at Eirik. It was not aimed at their mother, nor at her vanished father and his clandestine huldufolk brethren, who would in theory have done the teaching. No, all blame went to the priest, as Alfdis had referred to him since she had started talking in full sentences at eleven months old.

Eirik winced as a sudden blast of wind blew ice flakes into his face. Unwilling to give up his grip on Alfdis, he rubbed his eyes clear with the hand that should be securing him to the frozen rock face. He cut straight to the heart of the matter. "And you feel that the way lies at the top of the falls?"

Alfdis nodded with certainty. "I thought I was headed to the waterfall, at first," she said. "But then the pull brought me behind it, and up this way."

Without warning, she bent over sharply, gasping and tightening her grip on Eirik into a painful vise.

"Alfdis?" Eirik asked in alarm, but the spasm was over as quickly as it started. His sister straightened, her face pale.

"The call," she breathed.

"I felt nothing," Eirik ventured, but fell silent under the weight of his younger sister's scornful gaze. The beginnings of fury with the huldufolk who had spawned and then abandoned a beautiful child, only to subject her to unquenchable thirsts, stirred deep in his gut. "How," he tried again, "can they give you a summons, but no directions?"

Alfdis shrugged angrily. "It's not their fault I'm too stupid to understand."

"You are not stupid," Eirik shot back automatically.

"Not as stupid as he is," said a voice from above them.

Eirik surged forward to place himself between Alfdis and the unseen source of the voice. Bodiless laughter filled the night.

"Ugly," Alfdis exclaimed in relief. Eirik spared her a puzzled frown, but stayed at full alert, one ax falling from his belt into his hand as he scanned the rocks above them.

"Oh yes, you're much smarter than he is," the voice gloated. It sounded more solid, suddenly, deeper and with a hint of gravel. Eirik squinted into the darkness, expecting a figure to coalesce directly before them.

"Eirik," Alfdis said in a strange voice. "Can't you see it?"

"It?" the voice echoed in outrage.

"Obviously not," Eirik grated back the clipped words. "Where is it?"

A rock toppled off the cliff face to glance off his right shoulder before spinning off into the darkness below.

"Ugly!" Alfdis exclaimed, clambering nimbly around him. "You stop that right now!"

"Not an it," the voice grumbled. It sounded petulant, now, like a small boy's. "I am a man." Only the last, emphasized word fell to a pitch that might actually be produced by a grown man.

"Show yourself, then, if you would claim manhood," Eirik growled.

Alfdis tossed her head in exasperation. "It's not his fault you can't see him, priest's son. Come on, Ugly will show us the way." Her spirits seemed to lift along with her confidence. "I've done this before."

Eirik had to struggle again to keep up with her swift ascent. Steps seemed to have formed abruptly, where before there were none. The climb was far from easy, though; it was still steep, wet, and dark. The icy rain was soon overwhelmed by the spray of the falls drumming to their right. "He's mad I can't see him, but you get to call him ugly?" He glanced behind himself, and swallowed hard. There was no sign of the path leading down the way they'd come. The rocks swallowed it back up on his heels.

Eirik understood, then, that the voice came from the mountainside itself, and that he walked across the features of a hill troll.

"Yes," Alfdis threw over her shoulder, sounding almost happy. "Hill trolls can't abide blind flattery, which is mostly what they get from those come to spy out the hidden ways."

"We're on a hidden path?" Eirik forced himself to ask.

Alfdis paused long enough to shoot him a puzzled glance.

"I told you he was stupid," the rocks said smugly.

"But nothing changed," Eirik protested. "We're still where we were. The falls, the night—everything is the same." As they ascended, the waterfall sounded less like thunder and more like rushing wind, but this, too, was familiar.

"He keeps thinking like that, and he'll be dead before dawn."

Eirik growled. "Tell your ugly friend I can hear him."

Alfdis grunted, and leapt for the top of the cliff. The rocks beneath her feet seemed to rise and push her over. She disappeared for half a second, and then her head peaked out over the edge. She panted lightly. "Ignore him," she advised. "And be thankful he let you follow."

It vexed Eirik to be indebted to one who scorned him so openly, but he reminded himself that he considered pride an unattractive trait. "Thank you, path maker," he said, somewhat stiffly, and vaulted himself up unaided, to join Alfdis at the summit of the rocky trail.

The voice trailed after him, no more than a whisper. "You are welcome, stupid."

Eirik grimaced. "At least he spoke to me." That felt like a triumph.

Alfdis rolled her eyes. "Men! Come on." She turned and hoisted her cloak and skirts above the mud of the bank to slosh upriver. The waters were deceptively calm, though the falls roared in warning just a leap away.

"How much further?" Eirik dared ask.

"I don't know," came the expected answer.

They were running, again. The rain had passed, and with it the heaviest of the clouds. Low on the western horizon, the moon struggled to shine through layers of filmy haze, touching the land with the barest hint of silvery light. The ground hardened into lumpy rock, slippery moss, and thick veins of black ash. This unforgiving mix stretch away from the river as far as Eirik could see, broken only by scattered patches of never-melting snow. Out of habit, he scanned the limits of the darkness as they ran.

Twice, Alfdis stopped to crouch and hug her knees as the summons pulsed through her. When she rose the second time, she tightened her grip on Eirik's arms as he tried to pull away, expecting her to run on. Panic flitted across her features.

"Not that way," she gasped.

Eirik frowned. "Are you sure?"

Alfdis spun in a full circle, as if disoriented. "Yes," she said finally. "Yes, I'm sure." She pointed across the frozen wasteland. "The pull comes from there."

Eirik stared. "There's nothing there. You can see yourself. It's empty moss and ash and snow, for miles."

He was unsurprised when Alfdis plunged towards empty moss and ash and snow. With a curse, he followed.

His eyes picked out the marker stones before Alfdis's; her sight might be better, but he was looking. "There!" he cried. "Cairn ahead!" Alfdis angled towards it, her hood falling back to let her long golden waves swing free in her wake.

The pyramid stood only as high as Eirik's knee, nearly swallowed up by the fractured landscape. It was composed entirely of carefully stacked black stones. His sister stuttered to a halt before it.

Eirik joined her, most of his body drenched in sweat, though his exposed nose and cheeks burned in the bitter cold. He opened his mouth to tell Alfdis to replace her hood.

"Take my hand," she said before the words could leave his tongue. She stuck a slim white hand out of her furs.

Eirik obeyed warily. "Do the stones mark a hidden way?"

"Yes and no," Alfdis answered. "On the hidden paths, where we now walk, they mark a meeting of the ways. A gate." She raised wide blue eyes to meet his. "A gate with more than one entrance and exit."

Eirik swallowed and tightened his grip on her hand. "Do they talk?"

The corners of Alfdis's mouth twitched upwards. "No, a cairn is not a troll."

Thank the night for small blessings. "How to we know where to go?"

In answer, Alfdis let her eyes fall gently closed, stilling her face. Eirik kept one eye on her and on the other trained on the surrounding night.

The world repainted itself around them. There was no lurch, no dizzying flight, no sensation of movement, at all. The shape of the darkness around them—black dust, bloated lumps of moss-covered lava rocks, shadowed splotches of snow—was wiped away, like colors doused in water, to reveal a new world. The only constants were Eirik and Alfdis, the pile of rocks, and the cold night.

Alfdis opened her eyes in wonder. "I did it," she whispered.

They were on a black stone beach. Eirik took a step and slipped as his boot encountered slick pebbles instead of hard earth. He stumbled and caught himself, cursing. The ocean rose in a familiar, ominous form.

"Wave!" Eirik yelled, and grabbed Alfdis, crushing her to his chest as he anchored himself to the ground, tightened every muscle in his body, and held his breath.

The icy water crashed over them. Alfdis shrieked, but they withstood both the impact and the swift, relentless pull back out to sea. As the waters retreated, Eirik shook his dripping head roughly and yanked Alfdis away from the shoreline. "Come on," he urged, "the next one's building already." Salt prickled on his lips and burned his eyes.

Alfdis stumbled after him and the next wave fell harmlessly in their wake; foam surged around their boots. Eirik paused just beyond the water's reach to catch his breath.

"I'm soaked!" Alfdis wailed. "Who on earth thought this would be a good place to put a gate?"

"Who goes blindly through the hidden gates?" a stern voice demanded from behind them.

Eirik whirled. A tall, slender form was silhouetted in a gap between the surrounding rocks. In the darkness, he could not make out the man's features, but his voice had an authoritative ring.

Alfdis gulped at his side. "It," she stuttered, "it is I, Alfdis Halkellsdottir. I come as called."

There was a long silence. Eirik unobtrusively shifted his stance and let both hands hover around his ax hilts.

"Do you also," the tall man asked finally, "answer to Alfdis Sigridursdottir?"

"I do," Alfdis confirmed without hesitation, her voice ringing proudly.

There was another, shorter hesitation, and then the man tendered a slight bow. "My deepest apologies... Halkellsdottir. I did not intend... you to hear the summons. Nor did I suppose you would have learned to follow the gates. I fault the strength of the pull. Your forgiveness."

"She might have drowned," Eirik exclaimed angrily, ignoring the horrified glare his sister fixed on him.

The man walked forward slowly, emerging into the moonlight as platinum haired and fine featured. Wrinkles touched the corners of his eyes, but the eyes themselves looked ageless, luminescent, dark silver. His otherworldly beauty was marred by the arrogant twist of his lips. "Who is your manservant, Alfdis?"

"He's not my servant," Alfdis told the stranger nervously. "He's my brother. My—my half brother." She shot Eirik a scalding look, as if this were his fault.

One elegant white brow lifted. "So," the man said. He turned to consider Eirik with his piercing silver gaze. "You are the priest's son?"

Eirik straightened to his full height, which matched that of the older hulduman—for he could be nothing else. "I am Eirik Audunsson," he said boldly. "My father is a Christian priest of the Ice Island, and my uncle is Thorgeir Thorkelsson Ljosvetningagothi, Lawspeaker of the Island."

"A fearsome lineage, young Eirik," the hulduman told him gravely. "But not one that will aid you now. Our world is forbidden to men. I risk much, allowing little Alfdis passage, but it seems to me now that she has come too far on her own for certain lessons to be safely neglected. Once, perhaps..."

"Why the summons?" Alfdis interrupted. "Is it a birth?"

The man turned his solemn gaze on the girl. "No, Alfdis. It will be an execution. First a trial, of course, but there's little doubt, now. Even with the Prince missing. It is the opening gamble of a long war, we fear, and so the families call their own to them."

"I'm not leaving her alone in a war," Eirik said firmly.

Silver eyes blinked slowly, and then the world was wiped away.

Eirik drew his axes before their new surroundings had solidified. He leapt deftly around the tall hulduman and balanced one blade against his collarbone. "Alfdis," he said tightly. "Where is she?"

The man stiffened, then released a low chuckle. "So you have your mother's ferocity, Eirik, as well as her sunny looks." He held up a hand. "Peace! I would not hurt you, boy."

"I'm holding the ax to your throat," Eirik reminded him.

"Spoken like a priest's son," the man murmured. "Alfdis is safely where we left her, on the beach. I will return to her immediately."

"I'm going with you."

"No," was the cool reply. "You are not. The hidden paths are no place for human blood, and I cannot guarantee your safety."

"I can take care of myself." Eirik would have released his death hold, but he feared the man would vanish as soon as he did. "If it's not safe for me, it's certainly not safe for Alfdis."

"The world is not safe for little Alfdis," the man countered calmly. "Humans and huldufolk alike will fear and envy her ability to pass between and draw on the strengths of two worlds." He sighed heavily in Eirik's embrace. "Two worlds, equally cruel."

"I can protect her." Eirik forced more certainty into the words than he truly felt. "Let her return with me."

The man shook his head slowly, tugging fine platinum hair from Eirik's hold. "The dangers of our world, she must learn to navigate from the huldufolk. I promise you, no harm will come to her tonight. It will be a long war, as I said, and the night's only death has already been decided."

Eirik withdrew his axes and stepped around to face the slender hulduman. "Before the trial."

"Even so. The families gather to watch a killing."

"I don't like it," he said bluntly. "You're right. Alfdis's knowledge of the paths already far outstrips my own. But I do not trust you."

An expression reminiscent of pain flickered across the older man's face. "A Christian priest's wisdom, my boy. I will not try and persuade you otherwise. I can only promise to do my best to deliver Alfdis back to you before the day is through, and that I will protect her life with my own."

The damn elf sounded sincere. Eirik held his gaze for a long moment, then asked, "Who are you?"

The man's smile was brittle, cold, and beautiful.

"I am called Halkell."

Then he was gone.

Eirik cursed and slammed his axes back into his belt. He looked around. The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten. With a dull shock, he realized he knew where he was. In the next second, he wondered what he would have done if he hadn't recognized his surroundings, and in the next, it occurred to him that he had no idea whether he had been dumped all the way back into his world, or if he still trod a hidden path. That the trek home would take well over an hour only made his mood viler.

Alfdis had better survive the day, because he was going to strangle her himself.

It was in this black temper that Eirik tripped over the boy. Literally. One instant he was slogging towards the distant, jagged rise of glacier striped mountain, the only life for miles in every direction, and in the next instant the ground moved. With a yell, Eirik jumped to the side to avoid stepping on the body. He landed in ankle deep mud, slipped, and just barely managed to throw his weight forward to avoid falling onto his back. He spun and stared.