Midnight Eclipse (Paranormal Viking Romance, Completed)

Chapter 31: Bearslayer

The hour is close to midnight but, as I've come to experience during my stay here, the night of Greenlandic summer is never dark. Golden sunlight illuminates our steps as Mikk and I trod toward the place where we will play our parts as a journey of six-hundred years reaches its final destination.

Scattered rocks can be hinted beneath the grass. The symbols risen for the long-ago departed are still here, hundreds of years later, although hidden under layers of time. The chapel--which is marked by a rain-damaged sign to show tourists the way--is the only structure still somewhat standing from the era of the Vikings. The roof has caved in and the walls have fallen but the outline is still there, in the form of uneven rocks covered in moss.

This is where Gudrun left Björn six-hundred years ago and this is the place where I need to perform the ceremony which she failed at that time.

My confidence in succeeding where she--the expert at magical matters--failed, isn't super high. I'm a software developer after all, not a mysterious Viking witch.

Hopefully, Gudrun can somehow guide me through it. Björn has told me her voice should be able to reach me easier in here, where she once stood, so that's why Mikk and I have climbed high on this rocky hill, which overlooks the endless polar sea below. It's so blue it seems impossible as if the saturation of the landscape has been turned up beyond max.

On the way here--after a detour to Mikk's place to eat, shower and dress in were-bear curse-breaking appropriate gear, which is apparently hiking pants and a fleece hoodie--we drove through downtown Nuuk, which was abuzz with people gathering for the oncoming eclipse. At least that's what Mikk told me, as buzzing downtown Nuuk looked like a regular day crowd on Drottninggatan in Stockholm to me.

Little do any of the visitors drawn here by the eclipse suspect that the phenomena is tied to a love story six-hundred years in the making.

They probably wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell them anyway. I don't blame them. Mere days ago, I would have laughed in my own face as well.

Mere days ago I knew nothing of Björn and his centuries of struggles. Mere days ago I hadn't met Mikk. Mere days ago I couldn't see my own future clearly as Stefan's infidelity had me questioning everything.

Now, I see both the past and the future as I currently stand right in the intersection.

Taking Mikk's hand in mine, I enter the field filled with bones from those who were. Some of them are his ancestors, we know that now, and some may be mine as well. Because who knows the ways of time and space? Perhaps someone made it back to the old lands eventually.

"I guess we wait now," Mikk says, sitting down on a fallen rock and patting for me to sit beside him.

"I guess that's all we can do," I respond, feeling the weight of the dagger in my pocket as I curl up beside Mikk's warm frame. He wraps his arms around me to protect me from the Greenlandic winds, which blow chilly even in the height of summer, and presses his lips playfully to my cheek.

I turn slightly, catching his lips with mine in a full-on kiss. "You believe I can do it?" I ask, articulating the question that has been plaguing my mind. "Do you believe I can save Björn?"

"Of course," Mikk replies, without hesitation. "It's what you came here for. It's meant to be."

"Maybe it is..." I mumble into the fabric of my jacket. "Or maybe I came here for you?"

"You didn't know me when you traveled here."

"I didn't know there was a six-hundred-year-old were-bear waiting in a cave for me to save him from a curse either," I retort.