Every good fairy tale starts with Once Upon a Time.
Once upon a time there was an island surrounded by smaller islands where an abundance of rainfall produced forests, fens, grasslands, crags, marshes, and moors. On this island the predator had turned prey, lured into the chalked circle at the top of the cliffs. Below, the sea viciously sprayed salt water on the rocks and lapped at a beach filled with wooden boats. Men and women of strong fighter strength came from their hiding places, swords in their hands, to view the slight woman. She had amber and tin beads around her upper arms that reflected the northern sunset behind them, a black stone necklace of properties they couldn’t determine, and a dress woven of what they would later describe as shimmering spider threads. Surrounded and outnumbered, her chin tilted, her head held high, her hair was both brown and blonde, as if designed by the gods of these islands to camouflage her in the forests. It shimmered in the late daylight. She raised her hands, palms out, to show them she didn’t intend to hurt.
‘It doesn’t need to be this way,’ she told them, in their native language rather than her own.
‘The Order of Vidar is committed to wiping out those who intend to hurt others.’
‘Isn’t that what you’re doing to me? Hurting me?’
‘You come from the Isles, the place of magic and monsters. You weld powers and traditions from all over into the very fabric of your green lands until it feeds you as food.’
‘And yet, still you come here in your anger to conquer and oppress, and when you cannot, you vanquish us.’
‘You can renounce your power and live.’ A man with summer blue eyes stepped forward, his grip on his sword so tight his knuckles were white, a freshly inked symbolic axe visible on his arm.
‘As a slave to you, Eric’s son? Or worse, a gift to your father who tried to get me himself only this summer? I’d rather die. But I’ll die knowing this; our descendants will be together and will raise a family, Anders, son of Eric. Your blood and mine will forever be mixed from that point forward. Your descendants will wield the magic of these lands as their fate.’
His jaw tightened and he raised a strong muscle-bound arm that held his sword as he lunged forward into the circle. Around them, on the wind, came the sound of childish, playful, ethereal laughter. His sword sliced through the air. The woman was gone.