Woman King

CHAPTER 6

Elsa asked me either to close my business or take a leave of absence. Both suggestions seemed too dramatic, so I put her off, saying I would start with a vacation. I informed my remaining clients I would be out again for several weeks. Then I called my staff and apologized profusely for being out of touch, giving them all modest pay raises as encouragement to stay on and manage things while I was away.

My home has three bedrooms. Besides mine, one is an office that I use when I work from home rather than downtown, and the other is a smallish guest room with a double bed. I gave that room to Elsa, complete with a fresh set of sheets and a tutorial on how to use the remote control for the small television perched on a table inside. It was obvious that wherever Elsa normally spent the bulk of her time, cable was not available.

I went to bed that night and slept soundly for the first time in weeks. My peace was short-lived, though, when I was awakened at 6 am the following morning by Elsa, who stood looming above me, a pair of my running shoes in her hands.

“Up!” she said. “It’s time to begin your training.”

I mumbled something about it being too early and rolled over. This time she pulled the blankets off and let the cold air roll over me. I shot up and tried to pull the blankets back, but Elsa was not budging.

“Up!” she repeated. “You need to get into fighting shape.”

“Where are we going?”

“I did a little scouting while you were asleep last night. There is a place nearby where we can begin our work.”

“Are you going to feed me to the lions?” I grumbled.

Elsa snorted. “I am not quite that old, if that is what you were implying. Besides they would not have fed their seer, possibly their local healer, to the lions.”

That caught my attention. I didn’t know anything about Elsa or where she had come from. For all I knew, she did live when the Romans built their coliseums. She seemed to know I had a few questions on the tip of my tongue because she quickly cut me off. “Later. I will answer your questions when we return.”

Not long afterwards, I was staring at a steep set of steps inside Kezar Stadium, an old football stadium located nearby.

“You want me to run the stairs? Why?”

“When I was your age I could ride a horse for miles while holding a crossbow,” Elsa said, her hands on her hips. “ I’ve fired a rifle from horseback while hunting with my tribe. Can you do that?”

I shook my head, trying not to laugh at the image of me with a crossbow.

“You need to get into fighting shape to protect yourself,” Elsa chirped. “After a few weeks with the demon, I fear you’ve lost some of your energy.”

“I have no need to shoot anything from the back of a horse,” I barked back. “I can’t see how this will help me at all.”

“Just run the stairs,” Elsa deadpanned. “I will see you at the top.”

This was too ridiculous. Hunt. Ride a horse. I was a modern woman. I rode public transportation. It was with that kind of mindset that I prepared to walk away. But where would I go? I had asked Elsa to stay, and more importantly, I hated to abandon a challenge. How hard could it be to run the stairs?

I took off with gusto. The first few steps seemed easy. “Piece of cake,” I mused privately. As I climbed higher, however, my legs began to quiver. Then they began to ache, my hamstring muscles burning like a match to the strip on the box. I gasped for air, unsteady as my legs began to wobble. As I was nearing the top of the steps, I tripped and missed breaking my nose on the corner of one of the wooden benches by mere millimeters. I barely managed to pull myself upright, still gasping for air.

As I sat down to collect myself, I watched Elsa, decked out in a pair of my yoga pants, come running up the stairs. She was not out of breath when she reached the top. I hid my face as she approached.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “I didn’t do that to humiliate you. But I did want to make a point. You need to know your body and know your emotions. The best way to do that is to be physically fit. Being fit also gives you mental endurance, and you will need those skills when you allow your gifts to return.”

“I think I might throw up,” was my brilliant reply.

“By all means,” Elsa said in response, “But when you’re finished you need to run the stairs again. We’re going to be out here every day until you can do this easily.”

“Why?”

“I outlasted my enemies because I rode harder, rode faster and rode farther,” Elsa said. “Endurance is everything in war.”

“War,” I said, a shiver running up my spine. “I’m not at war.”

“Do you want your career back? You will have to stand up to the demon and Stoner Halbert to do it. That is not something that can happen without work. Think of it this way. I have been watching television and the men of your era seem to like fit women. It is easy to distract men using physical beauty. It will give you one more skill to use to your advantage.”

It was not the motivational speech one would normally hear from a personal trainer, but it worked. And so, my training began, and in those first few days, Elsa and I settled into a comfortable schedule. We exercised for several hours each morning before returning home. The city, it turned out, was a wonderful boot camp, with endless hills to climb, many lined with hidden staircases. We drove to Crissy Field and ran the path to the Golden Gate Bridge. After a few weeks, I was able to run across the bridge as a part of my regimen. My afternoons were left open, and I spent that time running errands, touching base with my office and working in the garden.

Although I was feeling better, I wondered what Elsa had in store for me next. She’d asked me not to tell Lily about her, and so far, I had honored her request. Lily was pretty busy with her own life, but eventually she would want to spend time together. One afternoon as Elsa and I were having tea—she’d banned coffee from my diet—I asked if I could see Lily.

“Not yet,” was her reply.

“Why?”

“Because you need to focus,” she said in a schoolteacher’s voice. “If you bring your friend into this, she will only distract you.”

“Distract me from what? It seems as if your work is almost done here,” I said, feeling confident. “I am exercising, I feel great.”

“We are a long way from being done,” Elsa said. “This is simply the conditioning you need to get physically ready. We have yet to unlock your senses and see how they work.”

“No,” I said. “How can allowing myself to feel more possibly help?”

“You will not help yourself by remaining ignorant,” Elsa said. “The reason you feel well is because I’m here, and because you’re not in the direct path of the demon. The minute you step back into your office, you will experience the same problems again.”

I didn’t know what to say. I did feel better and I was growing used to Elsa, although I knew next to nothing about this woman living in my guest room.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I know you said my grandmother summoned you, but why do you have to stay?”

“I don’t have to stay,” she countered. “But as a spirit guide, my job is to help you escape danger. My work isn’t finished yet. And, I have business with the Council that keeps me here.”

“So you aren’t necessarily staying for me,” I said, certain there was something she wasn’t telling me.

“Why are you so anxious to see me leave?” Elsa asked. “We have much work to do. I sense you have a great power, Olivia,” she said. “I feel the energy in you. But you are in danger as long as you fail to use your instincts to see what is happening around you.”

“I’m afraid,” I said. “This gift you keep referring to has made my mother’s life difficult. I don’t want to become like her.”

“Mother, father, sister, brother,” Elsa said shaking her head. “We cannot escape the bonds of our family, their blood is our blood.”

“I don’t have any of those except my mother. I never knew my father and my grandparents are dead.”

Once again, Elsa paused for a moment as if she were acknowledging something important in my statement. “Your gift is passed through the women in your family, so it matters little about the rest. My mother was a shaman in our village, as was her mother before her. These skills pass through one generation to the next. One day, you will have a daughter.”

“Stop,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m not getting married. I’m not having a child. Look at me. My life is out of control. I am having a conversation in my kitchen with a ghost about how to beat the devil at his own game. How on earth can you talk about a future with marriage and children?”

Elsa looked amused, but not in a good way. “Technically, I am not a ghost and I have never seen anyone beat the devil at his own game,” she said. “You are nowhere near ready to do that. I am asking that you take responsibility for your own life and use the tools you were given. By all the goddesses of the known world, I have never seen anyone reject her bloodline so readily. This wasn’t a choice when I was your age. People in my tribe, in my village, depended on my mother to seek out the spirits to learn about the harvest, to heal the sick and protect our elders.”

“What about you,” I asked, angry at her lecture. “What did they depend on you for?”

Elsa turned her head away from me slightly. For the first time since she’d revealed herself to me, I could see hesitation. It seemed that she too had secrets.

“We are alike in many ways Olivia,” she continued. “I did not reject my skills when I was your age, but I did not manage them well, either. I wanted to do more than help old men bring in good crops for the village. So I began to dabble in things that were beyond my measure.”

Elsa got up from the bar stool and began to pace around the kitchen.

“Eventually, I left my village in search of someone or someplace where I could learn how to gain more power. I was not content to see the future; I wanted to control it. After much searching, I found an old witch who promised to help me gain introduction to a school of magic where I could learn the secrets of casting powerful spells to control things… nature, the weather.”

“So you wanted to be a powerful witch?”

“I wanted power,” Elsa said. “I had no specific occupation in mind.”

“Did you find the school?”

Elsa nodded, but her face was grim. “The scholomance was in the mountains of Romania. It was very remote. I began my journey in the fall. It took more than a day to reach the top of the mountain and find the castle.”

“And…?”

“The witch was true to her word,” Elsa said. “She sent me to the door of a school where all things dark could be learned. I should have been more cautious, but I was eager to begin my lessons. I knocked upon a large wooden door with a raven engraved on the front. After some time, an elderly man dressed as a servant opened the door. He confirmed it was a school, but said they only accepted ten students at a time. At first I thought he was sending me away, but then he said that I had arrived just in time and would be the tenth student. He instructed me to secure my horse in the stables nearby and return to the castle. Excited, I quickly did as I was told. As I walked back toward the school, an angel appeared on the branch of a tree next to me.”

I raised an eyebrow, but did not interrupt.

“The angel called out to me by name, and implored me to not enter the castle. He told me it was the house of the devil, and that of the ten students chosen, one would have to stay behind and be sent to hell as payment for the lessons. The angel was certain I would be the one to make good on the debt, and he urged me to reclaim my horse and ride away from the castle that very moment.”

“Did you leave?” I asked, caught up in her remarkable tale.

“I was eager to become more powerful, but I did not want to give my soul to the devil. I agreed to leave with the angel. As I turned to retrieve my horse, the door of the castle swung open. The servant I spoke with was there again, but this time, he was dressed in the clothing of a gentleman. I realized I had been conversing with the devil himself the entire time.”

At this point I was speechless. The devil? Was she joking with me to make a point?

Elsa sensed my skepticism. “If you decide to continue with your training, you will come to see that there is more to this world than meets the eye. I didn’t believe I would ever stand toe-to-toe with the devil until that day, either.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“The devil asked us both if we would like to come inside for a cup of tea. The angel laughed and said ‘you know very well that I will not walk through those doors.’ ”

“‘Then I will come to you,’ the devil said. I had seen many evil spirits in my time as a shaman, but I had never felt such evil as I did when he approached us. He was standing as close to me as I am to you. By knocking on his door, he said, I had already offered myself to him. The angel replied that he had been watching the school for more than 100 years and knew very well that until I crossed the threshold, I was not subject to the devil’s contract.”

I have to admit, she had captured my attention. I motioned rapidly with my hand to continue.

“To my surprise, the devil asked the angel if he would take a walk with him. I did not know at the time, but it seems that the devil enjoys making deals and negotiations. Testing the intellect of his opponents gives him great pleasure.

“The angel agreed to walk with him, but only if they stayed outside the castle. It was dark now, but a full moon glowed, illuminating the grounds. While waiting for them, I leaned against the tree, listening as the mountains came alive with the sounds of creatures in the area, including wolves. I vowed to myself that I would go to the barn and lock the doors if they didn’t return quickly.

“After a short while, they returned. But at that moment, I had never been so frightened. I had climbed the mountain to the school full of the energy of an ambitious woman in her thirties, with no idea of the true expense of the knowledge I desired. Exposed at the doorway to the devil and his brood, I now understood that some things are too costly to pursue. And furthermore, I had angered the devil by refusing his wish. If he won the argument, what would become of me once I was inside the castle?”

I had the same question burning in my mind and was beginning to imagine all kinds of torture, images straight out of all the late-night horror movies I had seen.

“The devil seemed to enjoy my apprehension, for he grinned broadly and took his time to speak. ‘You are free to leave,’ was all he said, and then he disappeared into the darkness.”

“Is that it? You walked away?”

Elsa was about to finish her story when my doorbell rang. We both looked at each other, wondering who it could be. I shrugged my shoulders and got up to find out.

When I opened the door, Lily was standing outside.

“Where have you been?” she asked, pushing past me. “Why are you blowing me off? You won’t come out, you don’t answer my texts…”

She stopped mid-sentence when she saw Elsa standing inside. Both women grabbed me, each trying to tug me to safety. I yanked free and yelled at them both.

“What is the matter with you two?” I asked, gesturing with my hands to make introductions. “Elsa, this is Lily, my best friend. Lily, this is, well, this is Elsa.”

Elsa responded by asking me a question. “Your best friend is a fairy?”

Lily, not to be topped, asked, “Why is there a time-walker in your house, Olivia?”

This clearly was not going to be a normal ladies night at home for the three of us. I wasn’t sure which one to answer first.

“Elsa is the panther from my dreams. She is here to help me… it’s a long story. Why does Elsa think you are a fairy?”

Lily spoke to Elsa, ignoring me. “Who sent you?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Elsa said. “Are you supposed to be guarding her?”

Lily looked slightly defensive as she turned to me to give her reply. “I met Olivia when we were neighbors. I don’t usually take humans as close friends, but I could see she was special. I am not officially her guardian, I never asked for permission. We became friends. I have always tried to look out for her. She is flying blind, you know.”

“Have you seen the demon?” Elsa asked.

Lily shook her head. “No, but I sensed his presence. I placed a few minor charms around her home to keep him away, but since I am not her guardian, I could not intervene.”

This seemed to satisfy Elsa, because she took a step away from me as she nodded in agreement. But I was not happy being an invisible third party.

“Hello,” I said, waving my arms at them both. “I am standing right here. Can you two tell me what is going on? Lily, you’re a fairy?”

Lily smiled. “Yes, but honestly, is that so shocking to you, after seeing Elsa appear? You must know by now that there is another world of creatures beyond what humans can see. When I first met you, I could tell right away that you had extra gifts.

I expected you to notice what I was, but you never did. After a while, I realized that you weren’t even trying to use your senses.”

I was feeling a little embarrassed. Only a few weeks back, I’d sat across from Lily at dinner, staring at the tattoo on her neck, which was clearly some kind of fairy marking, and she did not reveal herself to me. Now, everyone in the room seemed to know more about me than I did.

“So what is this? Are you my friend out of pity? I’ve been telling you everything that is happening to me—am I some kind of project for you to look after?”

“I’m a fairy, Olivia,” Lily said, clearly annoyed. “We don’t reveal ourselves to anyone. I’m your friend because I want to be. If I pitied you, I would have asked my clan to assign a real guardian to watch over you, someone you would never have seen nor met.”

“Is it against the rules to be friends with humans?”

Lily and Elsa looked at each other and laughed. “It’s not encouraged,” Lily said.

“Why?”

Elsa held her hands up. “I think you’ve heard enough for the time being, Olivia. Why don’t we go into the kitchen and make some dinner.”