On the Verge (11 page)

The man still stared at her with a ferocity that sent a chill of real danger straight down Freya’s spine, but his grip on her vest softened perceptibly.

“Been expecting you,” he mumbled. “Just wasn’t thinking you would be some young kid.”

He released Freya from his grasp and she stumbled on the loose rocks, her knees buckling under her. She caught herself, regaining her balance enough to collect herself in a low crouch. She thought about standing up but decided it might be better to give her shocked joints and muscles a few moments to adjust before trusting her weight to them again. From her vantage point on the ground the man’s physique looked even more monumental. She stared up at him, trying to steady her ragged breathing. She wasn’t sure what he had said or why he had released her but his demeanor was more relaxed now and it didn’t seem like she was mere moments from being obliterated by one fierce backhand.

“Come with me.” His voice was quiet now but there was still an edge to it.

Freya didn’t have a chance to reply before the man had turned his back on her and began striding down the path with a speed and nimbleness that were surprising given his great bulk. She scrambled to her feet, glad that her legs seemed to be functioning once again, and hurried after him, tripping on the rocks and nearly taking another tumble when her ankle hit a pothole she hadn’t noticed in the gathering gloom. Damn the early autumn sunsets anyway. It wasn’t even five yet but the sun had long since been hidden behind the precipitous rock face that rose in ominous majesty just beyond the tree line to their left.

By merit of her strong legs and a streak of dumb luck allowing her to miss most of the dangerous obstacles in her path, Freya managed to catch up with the man just as the dirt track began opening out into a grassy clearing. There, in a natural hollow in the foot of the pinnacle, nestled an impressive stone cabin. The walls of the sturdy building were crafted of rough-hewn boulders that disappeared under a particularly steep roof. Soft light shown from a few of the windows and smoke curled lazily out of its crooked chimney, blowing against the curved walls of a stout turret in the brisk autumn breeze.

Freya shivered, as much from the cold as from the sight of the incongruous cabin. It was striking, beautiful even, but threatening. And if she had learned anything from the horror movies she’d watched as a teenager, nothing good ever happens in a cabin in the woods.

Freya was reconsidering the prudence of her decision to follow a huge man with a pickaxe into a fortress miles from the nearest town as they stepped from the rutted track and onto a path made of flat flagstones leading to the massive door. If she bolted now and ran for all she was worth, she might be able to get enough of a head start to make it back to her car, but given the startling speed and efficiency with which her one-man greeting party had navigated the treacherous drive she didn’t think she’d best him in a race to the old Caddy.

“I’m not a serial killer, I just don’t like strangers.”

The man spoke in a low grumble that Freya had to strain to hear above the brisk breeze and layers of wool muffling it.

“Okay,” Freya said. She wondered if the man happened to be a psychic as well as a psychopath.

“You can just get your color and then you can be on your way, got it?”

“Sure.” Oh well, she thought, she could die today at the hands of a truculent mountain man or in a few days when a psychotic recluse turned her into a photography project from hell. Either way she was screwed.

They stepped quickly over the smooth stones of the path, Freya taking two steps for every one of the man’s. On either side of the path was a soft green ground covering dotted here and there with pretty white flowers and sprinkled with pine needles. This, in turn, gave way to a series of roughly hewn rocks, set into the ground so that they resembled a kind of deconstructed Stonehenge, or, more sinisterly, the crooked teeth defining the edges of a particularly long and thin jaw. They were nearly to the front door however when Freya was greeted by the strangest sight yet. On either side of the roughly hewn stair leading up to the porch was the tallest set of garden gnomes Freya had ever seen. They were painted in bright colors and wore a jolly expression on their elfin faces. Each one held a carved basket of cheery yellow that overflowed with orange marigolds.

“Don’t touch the gnomes,” the man said without turning.

“Why not?” asked Freya.

“Just don’t.”

Freya passed by the kitschy pair with her hands securely in her pockets. No sense angering the mountain man over a bit of unnecessary gnome fondling.

The man took a thick brass key from his pocket. It was the old fashioned kind with ornate filigree capping the handle and an intricate series of notches at the other end. He placed it into the keyhole of the substantial door, and it swung open soundlessly on its hinges. The silence of the ingress somehow unnerved Freya more than if it had creaked ominously like the door of a stereotypical haunted house.

The man crossed the threshold and continued into the space without so much as a backward glance. Freya hesitated a split second before entering, then exhaled, set her shoulders, took her hands out of her pockets and stepped inside.

The space inside was huge and reminded Freya of what she imagined a medieval German castle hall looked like. Giant cedar beams supported the ceiling, their rustic metal bolts and bands shining dully in the light of the roaring flames of the bonfire-sized blaze in the hearth at the far end of the hall. Freya stepped awkwardly to the middle of the room, not sure what to do with herself. The wide floorboards were a beautiful reddish-brown and they, like the door, were eerily soundless, supporting Freya’s weight and that of the man’s without so much as a creak or scrape.

To Freya’s great relief the man leaned his pickaxe against the wall and hung his woolen overcoat on a stout metal hook anchored in the wooden door frame. Without this protective covering he seemed more human. Freya still hadn’t seen his face though as he remained turned away from her, his broad shoulders straining against the weave of his coarse sweater.

“My name is Freya.”

She paused, waiting for the man to give his name in return. He had now taken an oversized poker from the stand next to the hearth and was prodding determinedly at the sizeable logs at the base of the pyre. When nothing happened she continued.

“I’m looking for Rusty Berger of Stone Lodge Quarry.”

The man replaced the poker and turned toward Freya. It was the first time she had seen his face and she was startled by the twisted visage. It seemed to Freya that someone had taken a handsome face and cruelly melted it, causing the eyes to droop asymmetrically and the nose to skew to one side, one nostril grotesquely bigger than the other. His lips twisted violently up on one side and down on the other so that half his face appeared forever smiling while the other side frowned like an exaggerated version of a tragedy mask. Though disfigured he was oddly compelling; there was beauty there in the twisted countenance, a depth of character written in the extraordinary contours of his face.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Freya was much less afraid now that he had removed his cloak. It was a cliché, and more than likely a misguided one, but she believed in the old adage that the eyes were the windows to the soul. His revealed a melancholic landscape, but they held no malice.

“I’m Rusty.” His voice was solemn, almost gentle.

“Oh, good. I thought you might be.” Freya was slightly embarrassed by the chirpiness of her voice. She was overcompensating for the strangeness of the situation and the shock of Rusty’s deformity. Be authentic. It was one of her guiding principles, the one that she held most dear.

He turned his back to Freya again and leaned a forearm on the substantial mantelpiece. Freya couldn’t help but admire his muscular form. Even from across the large room she could see the hardness of his body underneath his thick sweater and rugged canvas pants. She felt her cheeks grow hot and she looked away.

His deep voice broke her reverie. “I am the keeper of the color here. I can take you to where it is, if that is what you wish.”

Rusty didn’t turn around but Freya noticed an almost imperceptible tightening of his shoulders as he spoke.

“Yes, that’s why I’m here. I need that color. My life depends on it actually.”

Freya tried to sound brave, but she was nervous. In truth, she wished that she could be just about anywhere but in that echoing hall with a strange man in the middle of nowhere, but she also wasn’t about to become the latest subject for an art collection featuring dead people. The truth was she wasn’t sure that Beldame wouldn’t try and turn her into one of her lifeless models regardless of whether she delivered the colors or not. In fact, as far as Freya could see, killing her was probably Beldame’s most logical course of action. She simply knew too much about the twisted collector now, and she very much doubted that she’d be permitted to go free upon delivery of the coveted colors.

Freya hadn’t figured out a plan yet, but for now she’d determined that collecting the colors was the best way to remedy her predicament. They gave her bargaining power. So she steeled her nerves and set her jaw. She wasn’t leaving this place without that blue.

Rusty turned his head just enough so that Freya could see his shadowy profile.

“What do you know of cobalt blue?” he asked her.

His voice was steady but the tension lingered in his posture.

“Nothing except for its vividness.”

Rusty pushed his leaning form away from the fireplace and, placing his hands behind his back, turned fully towards Freya again, although he kept his eyes cast down to the ground.

“The word cobalt comes from German. It’s derived from their word, kobold, meaning goblin. That was the name the old Germans gave to the ore they worked in mines dating from the Middle Ages. Nowadays people think they gave it such a ghoulish name because the arsenic in the cobalt ore poisoned the miners, but the real reason is because in those first mines there actually were mischievous imps from the Verge that inhabited the tunnels where the workers toiled, often making their jobs more difficult with the tricks they played.”

Rusty paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts, and then continued.

“There were more from the Verge walking this world back then when it was easier to believe in fairytales. As the old beliefs began to fade, so did the magical creatures, but the tales of the kobold, and therefore the imps themselves, lingered longer than might be expected among the people of old Bavaria. However, even they eventually gave way to the cold logic of industry and technology. The forward march of science rendered them extinct along with many of their fantastic brethren.”

Freya sighed. Her hackles had instantly gone up when she’d heard Rusty name the Verge. So this was why Beldame thought she needed the extra motivation.

Rusty had glanced up when Freya sighed. A look of distress passed quickly over his peculiar countenance, replaced just as rapidly by annoyance.

“I assume you know about the Verge,” Rusty said.

Freya cleared her throat. “I know a little about it. I’ve only very recently been introduced to the Verge and its ever-expanding cast of characters. It’s all just a little overwhelming. Please continue. How can there still be cobalt if the kobold are extinct?”

Rusty turned slightly away from her again and continued, quieter than before.

“The natural world supersedes the Verge. Cobalt would exist whether the kobold are here or not. Human belief gives life to the Verge, but it has no effect on the content of the land, the sea, or the stars. The thing that disappeared along with the kobold was not ordinary cobalt but that special cobalt touched by the Verge. That, if I am not mistaken, is the color you came here for.”

“I believe it is. But if the kobold are extinct, where will I be able to find it?”

“Here,” said Rusty. “You see, they are not entirely gone. Stone Lodge is the last stronghold of the kobold, a sanctuary of sorts for the few remaining specimens of an archaic species.”

“You live with goblins?” Freya asked dubiously.

“Not exactly. They live in this rock behind and above us. Surly Peak the locals call it. I’m their caretaker. Without me they would cease to exist in this world and with them would go the last of the goblin cobalt, the only kind with the magic of the Verge in it.”

“So there are German goblins living in this mountain?”

Freya tried to make the question sound sincere but it was difficult to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Her life was turning into some kind of demented fantasy.

“Yes.”

Rusty still had his back to her, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t mocking her. She’d only known him for a few minutes, but mockery didn’t seem to be in this serious man’s emotional vocabulary.

“Then how did they make it from the mines of eighteenth century Bavaria to some backwater peak outside of modern day Cle Elum?”

“My family were originally miners from Germany. When they finally closed the old mine where my great-grandfather worked, he decided to take his chances in the New World. His father and his father’s father had been great believers in the kobold and he carried the tradition with him, across an ocean and a continent until he finally settled at the foot of this pinnacle. Then he called the kobold into existence here when he began to explore the natural caverns and they took to their new home easily. The legend of the kobold was passed down to each succeeding generation and we Bergers have become the stewards for the creatures. We believe in them and they exist. It’s as simple as that.”

It didn’t really seem that simple to Freya. In fact it seemed a little insane, but she was willing to put her disbelief aside for now. After all that she had seen in the last several days, she was more willing than usual to accept without too much hesitation the farfetched story of this strange mountain man.

“So these kobold make the cobalt blue I need?” Freya asked.

“They don’t make it. They are it.”

Rusty had left the fireside and settled himself a good distance from Freya on a rough-hewn bench directly in front of the blaze. At least he was facing toward her again even if he was concentrating on something unseen on the expanse of floor between them.