Verena's Whistle: Varangian Descendants Book I

took another breath. “About six months ago, Theo called me. He’d had a dream and wanted to send me something. He asked me to keep it close by and not to open it until he told me. I talked to him last night and he said to bring it here. Do you know what’s in the bag?”
My parents and Grandpa Basil looked at each other and shook their heads.
I changed the subject with a sigh. “Okay. So, what’s your news? Why am I here?”
Grandpa Basil leaned forward again and said, “How much of our family history do you remember?”
“Everything you’ve told me, I think. The great great uncles and aunts, Alex, Roman, Agatha, and Irene, and Great Grandma Joanna, lived in the Russian Empire in the beginning of the 20th century. They were in some sort of military group, maybe? I forget. They had to leave in a hurry, something with the revolution, and came across to the Alaska Territory. They built this house and cleared the land, but not everyone wanted to farm. Great Grandma Joanna stayed and the others went Outside. Aunt Irene vanished off and on and then died, but everyone else built homes and some had kids, and then grandkids. All of us in the family have some sort of magical ability that is genetic, but we have to keep it a secret.”
Grandpa Basil nodded and shrugged. “Yes, that’s basically what we told you. However, there are things that we haven’t told you.”
I felt a flash of anticipation at first, but then growing disquiet as Grandpa Basil told his story.
“In the 11th century, the Roman Empire was no more, but in the east, Constantinople was the capitol of what historians now call Byzantium. Its citizens called themselves Romans still and its armies were highly effective. Emperor Alexios sent one of his Varangian Guard units into Rus to protect the Volga trade route and once there, the unit vanished. Historians don’t know what happened to those people. At the same time, scholars noted a great beacon traversing the heavens and a giant earthquake that caused a terrible fire in the city of Ladoga.”
Grandpa Basil’s hands blurred as he weaved them together and then apart, and an illusion appeared on the table in front of us. I saw a camp with tents of white, red, and yellow in the middle of an ocean of tall grass. Shaggy horses stood in a wooden corral and people walked through the camp, some in chain mail with swords and spears and helmets, and some in long tunics, carrying bundles or talking. There were women near the fires and sitting in front of the tents. A few small children darted in and around, chasing chickens and dogs. Suddenly a bolt of orange streaked across the sky, heading straight for the camp. The people looked up with fear in their faces and then everything vanished in a flash of bright white.
“That great beacon was a meteor. It struck the center of the Varangian camp and catapulted it into another world. All of the soldiers and their retinues, their wives, children, and servants, vanished, never to be seen again.
“In that other world they found monsters and great magic. They learned, they adapted, and some died. Many lived, however, and they built a great citadel to guard their people, with an eastern tower to watch for encroaching monsters. Centuries passed and the Varangians, blessed by the benevolent gods, grew to possess great magic. They began to beat back the monsters. They lost the knowledge of their home world except as passed down through stories, and soon even those memories grew hazy.”
Now Grandpa Basil’s hands sketched a great stone citadel. On the western side a wide, brown river curved and I could see small boats and men and women casting nets and pulling in fish. There were fields with green rows and children hoeing and carrying packs. On the tower a woman in a white tunic stood watching the shadowed lands to the east, a staff in her hands.
Soldiers in mail coats with bows stood on the battlements and in the bailey, more soldiers practiced swordplay. A few sent energy bolts of blue and yellow fire at dummies shaped like giants with three heads. In another part of the bailey a small group of people gathered around a large pot full of boiling, black liquid, stirring the contents and gesturing quickly with their hands. I could smell a nauseating blend of sulfur and pine needles.
I looked from the illusion to my father and asked him silently with my eyes, “Did you know this?” He nodded carefully back at me and patted Mom’s hand.
“Then one day, a small scout party left the citadel to track rumors of a bauk, or an ogre, in the area. The party traveled a day and a night and on the second night, they found and fought the bauk. They wounded it and then, suddenly, the sky exploded once more. When they opened their eyes, they found themselves in a different place. Once more a meteor strike opened a portal between the worlds and this group of five, plus the unfortunate bauk, were now far from their home.
“The five people who are the heads of your family were on the soil of their ancestors once more.”
I saw in the five figures faces I knew. Uncle Alex, looking young and handsome, carrying a bow; Aunt Irene with a sword, issuing commands; Great Grandma Joanna, so little and with great fear on her face. I peered closer at the bauk and saw its sharp claws and large spiral horns, like a ram. It lay in a pool of blood and its fangs were bared in an open grimace. Its fur was long and tangled and appeared to be mostly brown and gray, camouflaging with the earth. The group stood in the center of an open clearing of brown dirt and beyond were thousands of blown-down trees, stripped of their leaves and in laying in