Ekir

The strong Boston wind pulled at my clothes, my stomach in a plethora of different knots and spasm as I tried to prevent myself from looking down.

‘Quit being such a baby,’ my strange companion snapped, a fearless look in her eyes despite being dozens of storeys from the ground on the edge of a fucking skyscraper.

She was quite a sight to behold, standing taller than he and far more muscular yet he knew she was agile. Her red hair blazed even in the moonlight, not ginger nor auburn but bright red with no roots to speak of – it had an almost-magical property to it. The strange tribal-looking tattoo on her face ran from her exposed shoulder across her neck and up the size of her face right to the top of her partially shaved head where the bandanna blocked the rest. I knew that there were horns beneath however, I’d seen them when she stepped between me and the sorcerer, right before my first transformation.

‘Excuse me, but I don’t feel like dying today!’ I snapped, holding onto the railing with all my might.

‘You won’t!’ she called back over the fearsome wind. ‘You have to trust me.’

Trusting Elaya was the difficult part. For days I’d ran from my new transformation, this new life and new destiny I’d been told about. The sorcerer’s spell had gone exactly as planned, and I was now some sort of lycanthrope, a werewolf like out of the movies. I’d been cursed with dark magic derived from a wolf, by an evil magical being from another world. This was the world Elaya was from, the one she was taking me to – Ekir. In truth, the reason Elaya didn’t look human was because she wasn’t, at least not entirely. She was half human, half Viltashki – the native race of Ekir.

A bark sounded behind me and I nearly lost my grip in shock, throwing myself back to safety where Arturo sniffed around me on the rooftop. I caught a glimpse of Elaya rolling her eyes and coming to fetch me, on the floor with the great Viltashki war-hound whose company at least gave me a fraction of comfort. I stroked his head and saw those sad and concerned eyes looking deep into mine, and wondered if there was any semblance of the boy he’d been only a few days ago. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been the sorcerer’s first target, and even more unfortunately, Arturo’s willpower hadn’t been strong enough to battle the bestial form. Yup, my best friend was now a dog, and nobody on this plane of existence could change him back.

‘Get up!’ Elaya snapped, the curved blade at her side making her all the more threatening.

‘I’m not leaving Arturo.’

‘Ugh, how many times do we have to go over this? The Viltashki hound-master will be able to summon him to us once we’re in Ekir – he’s bonded to you and for all intents and purposes you are now his master so it should be no problem.’

‘You talk as if he’s some beast,’ I spat. ‘He’s my friend!’

‘Your friend who just happens to be a beast now, and we’ll find away to reverse this Sebastian, I promise you that. But right now I need you to follow me before King Garlont sends more sorcerers after us.’

I stood and glanced over Boston, staying safely from the edge but allowing myself to look down. I could see Charlestown High School from here, as well as the Mystic River. If I squinted really hard, I could make out the street where Arturo and I had grown up together, back when times were simpler and before other kids’ racial prejudice had kicked in. I didn’t care about this legendary destiny of mine that Elaya kept blabbing about, nor did I give a shit about these sorcerers – I didn’t fear them, not with my new wolf-like abilities. What I did care about however was my friend wagging his tail next to me and panting in the cool night air, who I needed to restore to his original form.

‘Fine,’ I said to Elaya. ‘Run me through it one more time.’

‘Okay,’ she said, moving towards me with the closest semblance of a smile I’d ever seen from her. ‘I’m going to show you the place again and I want you to keep it in your mind. As long as you have the image clear in your head, and you experience enough pure adrenaline, the magic that holds our worlds apart will make an exception for you and you’ll be able to pass through the barrier.’

‘And you definitely can’t just taser me or something?’ I pressed.

‘That would be dangerous! Jumping off a building is much safer.’

‘Naturally,’ I murmured.

‘All right, now close your eyes.’

I did so and felt her hands on my head, then suddenly the vision came to me again of bright lilac grass and a peaceful lake which refracted the light of two ageing suns. The trees grew outwards as much as they did upwards, looking more like enormous oversized hedges, and all of the wildlife seemed to shimmer and flow and meld into nature like a thousand tiny lava-lamps.

I opened my eyes and took a step towards the edge.

‘Remember, keep it fastened securely in your mind, and follow after me.’

With her words, she took a few quick steps and leapt off the building. I held my breath in suspense, feeling like I was going to pass out as she kept falling and falling quicker than anything I’d seen – then, in an instant, she was gone. I started hyperventilating but Arturo nuzzled my hand and I remembered why I was doing this. I gave him one last stroke on the head.

‘I’ll see you soon, homey.’

Then, with the fantastical images still planting in my brain, I jumped. I felt the wind pulling my clothes back up while I spiralled and ass over head and feet behind my back and into more crazy and unnatural positions only achievable at falling near-max velocity. Those images started fading and I could see the ground beneath me for brief flashed, knowing I was getting closer and feeling like I would pass out before anything could happen. Lower and lower I went, the ground rushing up to meet me, in five seconds…four…

I needed to recall it, but how could I with my eyes so focused on the city streets becoming closer, and the haunting thought of my body splattered across it? Three…two…

Then I closed my eyes, thought of that lake, and suddenly I was no longer falling.

But I was still descending. I opened my eyes again and it was bright, though the brightness was distorted through a layer of the clearest blue. I was in the lake I’d seen, I was sure of it, descending lower and lower until my feet hit the bottom. I panicked for a second as the water-pressure was intense and I struggled to clamber back to the surface. However, a plethora of wildlife in a multitude of colours and shapes passed me by and I instantly felt more relaxed. I subconsciously took in a breath and instantly freaked out, though I found that I wasn’t drowning. It must’ve been something about this world – Ekir – that I could breathe underwater. I could follow this magical rainbow of refracted colours to my heart’s content and discover the marine life in a way next to nobody on Earth had ever experienced.

Then I noticed a shadow above me, a figure plunging into this sacred space, and grabbing me. It wrenched me back to the surface, and the second my head left the water I heaved up a lungful of water. Everything poured out as I coughed and spluttered, feeling like I was about to die but Elaya was there patting my back a bit too hard which sent half the fucking lake out of my throat and onto my nice school-clothes.

‘Wh…what the hell?’ I choked.

‘Yeah, I probably should’ve warned you about that,’ she admitted, her voice riddled with guilt. ‘The lakes will try to entice you by making you think that you can breathe, but in reality, you’re slowly drowning. The sea creatures trick you so that they can eat your body.’

‘No, no,’ I coughed. ‘Don’t worry about, I like to be told these kinds of things after they almost kills me.’

She shrugged. ‘Okay, as you wish.’

My teeth clenched in frustration – it seemed her culture didn’t do sarcasm.

Still, despite my anger, I was instantly put at peace by the magical vision surrounding me. The images had looked so clear and precise when Elaya had planted them in my brain but seeing them first-hand was something completely different. We stood on an open field where the blades of crass seemed much tougher than the grass back home, but they also shone with the entire spectrum of the colour purple, from raspberry to imperial to amethyst and everything in between. Those trees I had seen were now revealed to be in full, and I marvelled at how huge and frightening they were, as if nature was launching out to get me everywhere I looked. I hated English class in school, especially poetry, but I now understood what all of those long-dead Romantic poets were talking about when they wrote about the Sublime. Fear of nature, while simultaneously being in complete awe of it – it was surreal.

Small rodent-like creatures scurried through the grass and into the shadows of the trees where they seemed to become engulfed by the wood itself, disappearing into holes and crevices they shouldn’t have been able to fit into. Birds did the same, flying beneath the two crimson suns before seeming to blend into the redness of the sky itself. I knew from my physics lessons that stars turn redder the older they are, and I could only imagine what this world looked like once upon a time when the suns had been bright and yellow like ours was back home. Still, the toned-down light and the deep-red glow did not subtract from the true plethora of colour I saw all around me. I saw shades and colours I couldn’t describe, ones beyond words or regular spectrums – colours that were, by all means, impossible.

Elaya gestured for me to follow, though put a finger to her lips, and only when we were on the outskirts of a small grove of trees did I see why she was silencing me. A quadrupedal animal with horns like a stag but with a flat, muzzle-less face was eating strange-looking berries from the low branches. Its fur was bright yellow and shaggy, though much like on Earth its teeth was suited to its purpose and I knew this was no predator. It was able to shift its weight and move clumsily onto two legs to reach the higher berries and my breath caught in sheer fascination. Though, far too late I realised that just because this marvellous animal wasn’t a predator, it didn’t mean that there were none around. In an instant, Elaya pulled her curved blade back and launched in with such ferocity that it spun through the air as if propelled by a canon and sliced right into the beast’s stomach.

‘Fuck,’ my travelling companion spat, rushing over to the beast which was howling in pain, not unlike the cry of a fox.

I followed sheepishly but stayed a handful of paces back as she mounted the creature to keep it to the ground and grabbed the hilt of her weapon, wrenching it further into the creature’s chest until it eventually let out a final, defeated cry and stopped moving. I felt my eyes swelling up with tears. I was by no means a vegetarian or an animal right’s activist or anything – I’d eaten venison amongst a whole plethora of meat and not batted an eye, but the way that this beautiful creature had suffered shocked me to my core. At the exact same time however, I felt myself overcome with an unstoppable, raging hunger and realised I was being drawn to the sent of its blood. My stomach rumbled and Elaya shot me an apologetic look as she withdrew her weapon from the corpse.

‘Sorry about that, I was aiming for the neck. It would’ve been a clear kill but my angle was off – I regret that you had to see such a sloppy display.’

‘Hungry,’ was all I managed, and she looked into my eyes with understanding.’

‘They’re turning yellow again,’ she said. ‘I can only apologise once more – such a bloody kill around your new wolf-like senses must be torture for you. Don’t worry though, I’ll clean this up and we’ll make a fire to cook it. You’re going to need to eat some food for this world soon otherwise your body will try to reject everything not from your own world.’

‘Why?’

‘Your human body is adjusting to what it doesn’t know, figuring out what about Ekir is harmful to it and what’s safe – a little bit like a new strand of flu or food you might be allergic to. Putting food from here into your stomach right away will help your body realise it’s safe before it tries to create defences.’

‘Okay,’ I said, still tearing up at the slain creature. ‘But I think I best stay away from the meat until it’s cooked.

‘Don’t worry, I can skin it on my own. Try to find me some firewood?’

I solemnly nodded and began searching around the grove for loose branches. Upon picking the first one up I realised it was moving and quickly threw it to the ground, worried I’d picked up a snake or something. However, the second it touched the hard earth beneath me, it stopped again. I cautiously lifted it, and the same thing happened, though the movement and morphing wasn’t random. Instead, the wood was curling in on itself for me, to be more manageable for me to pick up. Every branch I touched did the same, the pile seeming almost to become lighter as I picked up more and more, then instantly regaining their full weight once I returned to Elaya and dumped them on the ground before her. I wasn’t sure how she’d cleaned up the blood, but the animal was at least skinned, and I no longer felt that inhuman hunger, though my body still growled and grumbled for the succulent taste of meat.

Within the hour we were tucking into food, eating in silence as I looked up at the strange crimson sky. I didn’t even bother to ask about the branches, knowing they were no doubt part of this world which I would have to get used to. This was only the start of it, and I both anticipated and feared the things which would come next.