World Wound

Our two worlds, Earth and Fyrsta Heim are connected in places by blood and death. Psychic wounds that correspond on each side of very different dimensions in time and space. The Chronicles of Liv Rowan will explore and expand upon this concept as the books unfold. And at some appropriate time and place, this short story will find itself expanded upon and become a chapter in a future book. For now, this is simply the snippet in my mind of how the Rowan matrilineal line came to be keyed to the Missouri portal to Fyrsta Heim. Enjoy!

World Wound

October 23, 1874
Banks of Brush Creek, Missouri

Overnight, the campfire had burned down to a bed of sullen orange embers that glowed in the dim morning light. Diana Rowan pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders, though the chill she felt wasn’t entirely from the fall air. It was a deeper cold, rising through the soles of her boots, seeping from the limestone bedrock of the creek bank. There was also this creeping unease worming its way into her heart. A feeling of… wrongness.

The journey had taken far longer than they could have imagined, and there was no way they would make it to their final destination before winter set in. There were William’s people, a branch of the Oriole family, at the far edge of Kansas, and William had assured her they would take them in for the winter. Diana knew they were racing the onset of far colder days to get to the tiny town before it was too cold to travel with two young children.

“William,” she called softly, careful not to wake the girls still asleep in the back of the wagon. Mabel’s hand had strayed from under the thick quilt, and two-year-old Martha was curled up tight as a pill bug beside her.

“Just checking the axle grease, Di,” William Oriole’s voice drifted from the shadows of the wagon, steady and warm. “We’ve got a long climb out of this valley today if we want to make it well past the Kansas line by nightfall.”

Diana nodded, though he couldn’t see her. California. That was the dream. A land of gold and sunshine, far away from the gray ghosts of the East and the scorched scars of the War. But this morning, just as it had last night when they prepared the campfire and a meager meal, the air here felt heavy. Thick.

She picked up the tin bucket and walked toward the creek to douse the fire. The water of Brush Creek was black as ink, sliding silently over the rocks.

It had been ten years to the day; a local shopkeeper had told them when they bought flour in Independence. Ten years since the Union and Confederate armies had collided here in a storm of lead and iron. The Battle of Westport. The shopkeeper had called it a slaughter.

“Creek ran red for days,” he said as he packaged the last of their provisions in brown paper and tied it securely with string.

Diana could still feel the tension hanging in the air. Two factions, neighbor against neighbor, still seethed with hurt and resentment. It practically pulsed in the air. Even here, far from the shops. The nation was still licking its wounds, still healing.

She had seen enough death, lived through it, watched her own people bleed and die amid a conflict they wanted no part of.

She paused then, still at the water’s edge. The shopkeeper’s words came back to her, and she couldn’t help wondering if the creek still held the blood of the dead. Shadows obscured everything, yet she sensed an odd pressure. It started as a hum in her teeth, a vibration that made her vision blur. The nearby birds in the trees, tweeting rhythmically only moments ago, went dead silent.

Thrum.

The bucket slipped from her fingers, clattering against the stones.

The air in front of her didn’t just shimmer; it became blindingly bright. Brighter than the sun on a cloudless summer day. A sound, not unlike fabric being ripped by invisible hands, came next. The air itself smelled of ozone and copper.

“William!” she tried to scream, but it was far too late for that.

Diana felt a hook in her chest, not physical, but undeniable. A call, ancient and desperate, vibrating with the same frequency as the blood that had once soaked this soil.

"Blood calls to blood." Her maternal grandmother's words rang in her mind. "You will know when you find a place where the world walls are thin. The passage between them is primed with bloodshed and death on both sides.

The echo of the great conflict here had found its twin resonance on the other side.

She scrambled backward, her boots slipping on the wet clay. “Wait,” she gasped.

The portal didn’t wait. The air shimmered, and there was a smell of ozone and copper.

With a sensation not unlike being pulled through a straw, Diana felt a change in atmosphere, a change in worlds. The darkness of the Missouri night twisted inside out, and she felt as if she were falling.

She landed hard on a stone outcropping.

The air here was heavy, moist, and warm.

Everything she had ever learned about her people, their home world, flew in all directions in her mind. She felt a deep and terrible panic for William, her children, now impossibly far away from her.

A world wound. Blood calls to blood.

“Greetings, Mistress.” A creature hovered in the air beside her, with enormous dark eyes, tiny gossamer wings, and a deep shade of orange that suffused its skin and rudimentary fur. Had she not seen the sketches and read about the creature and its ilk, she would have had a far more panicked reaction. As it was, it took her breath away.

I’m here. In Fyrsta Heim. This can be no other place.

She scrambled to her knees, inhaling the air from a world she had only heard of or dreamed of visiting. The place her people had once called home.

The creek bank was gone. She stood on a precipice of gray rock that seemed to float above a churning abyss of river made monstrous by tumbling through sharp rocks, boulders larger than a house. Above, the sky was now colored in slate and indigo. As if a mad painter had been hard at work. She realized now, as she turned, that there was a large, dense forest. She could hear screeches emanating from it. Rustling. Movement.

She turned to the creature and met its eyes. “Welcome, Magjistare, to the World. I am Pert Pernicious, your Dragoman and escort while you are here in the World. It has called you in its time of need. Please, if you will, we must cross the Steen Tail River and make haste for the Village of Glass.”

Diana’s fear subsided, and she felt a rush of pride and excitement. The World had called her, Diana Rowan, the first of the Rowan line to serve as Magjistare in centuries. Her training, as with any young woman born on the solstice, had been mandatory, yet seemingly irrelevant. There hadn’t been any new portals between Earth and Fyrsta Heim in more than a century. And yet, here she was.

She nodded to the creature. “Lead on.”

Days later, her body aching, her magic empty, and her heart yearning for her family, she returned.

The release was as sudden as the capture. The gray rock dissolved into mist, and the sensation of falling returned.

Diana hit the mud of Brush Creek with a wet thud, gasping for air. The tin bucket was still rolling on the stones, its clatter finally reaching her ears as if time had paused for a mere moment, then resumed.

“Diana!” William was running toward her, a lantern swinging wildly in his hand. “I heard—I saw a bright light. Are you hurt?”

He dropped to his knees, his hands frantic as he checked her for injuries. She was soaked, shivering violently, her dress smeared with clay.

Diana looked past him. The tear in the air was gone, but the spot remained. She could see it, a faint distortion in the world’s weave, like heat rising off a road. She could feel a thread—a taut, silver wire connecting her heart directly to that invisible scar.

She grabbed William’s wrist, her grip bruising.

“Diana?” he asked, seeing the terror and the steel in her eyes. “What happened? What was that?”

She looked at the sleeping shapes of their daughters in the wagon, then back at the invisible wound over the creek. The California dream died in that silence, replaced by a burden she hadn’t asked for but couldn’t put down.

“We can’t go, William,” she said, her voice raspy but steady. “We can’t go to California.”

“What? Why? The wagon wheels are fine, we—”

“The wagon stops here,” she said, pulling him close, anchoring herself to his warmth. “We stay here. There is a portal. Because of the war. Because of the blood.” She touched her chest, feeling the hum of the portal deep inside. It would call her again; she was sure of it. Plague and famine had felled the Village of Glass, but thanks to her magic, the negotiations she had facilitated between the Three Peoples would hold for a while. For how long she couldn’t be sure. “I was there for three days, William. I fixed what the World called for me to do, but I’m keyed to it, and it will call to me again. We have no choice but to stay.”

William looked at the empty air, then back at his wife. He could see the truth in her shaking hands. When the World called, the Njerez obeyed. It was what it was.

“We stay,” Diana repeated, the first decree of the new Magjistare. “I am bound by duty to heed the call.”

“The girls as well.” William added quietly, a small frown on his face. “Mabel, perhaps even little Martha someday.” He met her eyes. “How close do we need to stay? Could we go north some miles? Possibly to Parkville? There is a large steamboat dock there that needs hands to help with loading and unloading. The store owner asked, said his cousin was looking for extra hands if we were planning on staying in the area. I told him I wasn’t interested, but it could get us through the winter. Until we can get our feet underneath us.”

Diana nodded, feeling the connection to the portal pulse in her blood. “Yes. I think so. How far?”

“Ten miles. A day’s journey from here.”

She nodded again, met his eyes, and tucked her face into his broad chest. “It would have been nice to go to California.” William chuckled ruefully.

“What is it the humans say, ‘Man makes plans and God laughs.’” He smiled down at her. “We make plans, and the World laughs.” He kissed her, then pulled away, eyes sparkling with curiosity. “And you were there for three days? What was it like? You must tell me everything. Every moment. I want to hear about every detail.”

“Oh, William, it was everything the instructors said it was. It was home! I was there for nearly four days and I helped heal the village. I saved lives!”

As the dawn tossed rays of light higher into the sky, the children huddled close behind them, listening intently. The wagon wheels groaning along the dirt track, Diana began her tale. “It was summer there, so warm and damp. It was so beautiful…”