Midnight Eclipse (Paranormal Viking Romance, Completed)

Chapter 15: Mad-Woman

Greenland, Present Day

Walking through the endless polar landscape--reminiscent of the bare lunar surface--I lose track of time and place. Everything looks and feels the same. That the sun hangs high in the sky no matter the hour doesn't help my perception of the passing minutes. Perhaps I've missed my flight home already. But such things seem unimportant in comparison to seeing this saga unfold. As if in trance, I follow the wagging stubby tail of the giant polar bear, which may hide another entity beneath the thick white coat of fur.

Am I crazy? Following a bear into the polar tundra, thinking it's actually a man who died six hundred years ago, certainly sounds like the actions of a mad-woman. Perhaps my colleagues were right to be worried about me.

But yet, I'm not convinced my mind is failing me. Although I suppose most mentally ill people might feel the same. Insanity is in the eye of the beholder, not the holder of the warped mind.

If I was crazy though, would I not already be bear dinner by now? I've walked behind this magnificent beast for who knows how long, and the animal has shown no inclination to strike. It just walks at a leisurely pace, sometimes looking back to make sure I'm keeping up. Not exactly predator behavior.

And those eyes. Light with a dark ring. Those are not the eyes of a beast but of a man. A man I've seen in my dreams for days now.

Eventually, we arrive at a cave in the rugged rock, perched between ice and wilderness. The bear looks back at me, as if begging me to come along, before ducking its huge head to fit through the opening.

I'm really taking a gamble here, walking into an enclosed space with a ferocious predator. But bears aren't prone to luring prey into traps, are they? Not unless they're starring in a silly cartoon.

I touch the beartooth in my pocket, asking it for guidance. The response comes in the form of children laughing. The artifact holds faint memories of this place. Happy memories. Memories I can trust to not lead me into danger, hopefully.

Reasoning that I've come this far--all the way to fucking Greenland, across a frozen wasteland, and to the edge of sanity--I take a deep breath to gather courage before I enter the den of the beast. I shudder as a drop of cold water, melting from the ceiling, hits my neck. The air between the cramped walls chills me to the core, at least the outside is heated by the never-setting sun, but here, the warm rays of summer can't reach.

The bear can no longer be discerned, hidden by the claustrophobic darkness of the cave. Knowing the animal may lurk around a corner, I stumble my way deeper inside, hoping not to fall and injure myself on sharp rocks. I carry my phone but surely the service is non-existent here in the middle of nowhere. No help would be able to locate me. I would be gone forever. Perhaps newspapers and podcasts would cover my mysterious disappearance into the Greenlandic wilderness, never to be seen again. They would chart my last days in detail--my arrival at the island, the bear attack, and my entanglement with a certain whale safari guide--wondering why I left so hastily this morning. Perhaps Stefan would even get to do a tearful interview, telling the world he doesn't know what possessed me to go to Greenland in the first place.

But no one would know the real story. It would be too unbelievable to ever figure out. I would be lost forever.

I guess there are worse things to leave behind than an epic mystery though. Just like the vanishing Vikings of my dreams, my unexplained disappearance would live on in infamy.

But I refuse to give Stefan the satisfaction of getting the last word on my legacy. That just isn't acceptable. So I better survive this adventure.

Luckily, I am not lost yet. No bear has eaten me and no jagged rocks have crippled me. I am alive and prepared to follow this saga, and this bear, to the end. Whatever that end may be.