Present Day, Amsterdam

“There you are!”

Flinching as the familiar voice interrupted my thoughts, I turned to see the woman from the ferry sidling up to the counter beside me. She put in an order with the bartender and then squinted at my drink. “What are you having?” she asked, but before I could reply, she said to the bartender, “And I’ll order another of whatever it is he’s drinking.”

“Is that a bribe?” I asked.

She smiled sweetly, but the sparkle in her eyes was all mischief. “Call it what you like, but if you want a free drink, you’ll have to enjoy it with me.”

“You’re bold.”

Laughing, she leaned close enough for me to feel her breath on my cheek as she said, “I suspect you like a little boldness,” before walking away, her dark hair loosely braided now and flipping over her shoulder as she turned. 

I did my best to ignore her, but when the bartender pushed the drinks she’d ordered across the bar to me on a tray, I realized he was expecting me to follow. “Lucky you,” he said with a gruff smirk.

“Why’s that?” I asked, tossing back the rest of my drink and refusing to do as was expected. I was trying to cultivate this behavior, the ability to ignore what others wanted me to do in favor of what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I was still having trouble figuring out what I actually wanted so half the time I ended up just being contrary without purpose.

“Pehtra Varady is quite the woman,” the bartender explained with a wistful twist of his lips. “She blows through here a couple times a year and always picks up a companion or two along the way. Looks like you’re her latest conquest.” Something about the way he said the words made me think he’d been her companion at least once before.

“I’m not conquered yet,” I said firmly.

“That’s what you think,” he retorted as he took my empty glass and nodded at the tray with meaning.

Resigning myself to my fate, I picked up the drinks and walked out onto the patio to the sound of electronic beats and an impressively complex guitar riff. The men on the stage looked at least as weathered and well-traveled as Pehtra and her companion, but they had some real talent at least. 

“Finally,” Pehtra said when I arrived, tapping the table to show me where to place the tray. “My new friend.”

“We aren’t friends,” I said, even though I knew I was only delaying the inevitable.

Resting her chin on a palm, she pursed her lips at me. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

I thought about that, realizing I was somewhat stubborn in my way even if I’d lived most of my life adapting to everyone around me. “Why are you so determined to get to know me?” I asked honestly, deciding to be as direct as she had been.

This time she resisted. Kicking the chair beside her out as an obvious invitation for me to sit, she said, “All in good time.”

Sighing, I sat down and reached for my drink. If I was going to have to endure a lecture, then I wanted more alcohol to soften the blow.

“My name is Pehtra. And this is my friend, Wodan,” Pehtra said, gesturing to the giant sitting beside her. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Once acknowledged, the brick wall of a man blinked at me with one eye and I realized that his other eye was not simply hidden behind his curls but also by an eye patch. 

Pehtra turned to give me a look of expectation, but I remained silent. 

“And you are?” she said finally.

Taking a slow breath and releasing it twice as slowly, I replied, “Sang Kyu.”

“Now, was that so hard?”

“Answer my question,” I insisted. “What do you want from me?”

She chuckled, and her expression actually softened. “Who hurt you so badly that you assume everyone who tries to get to know you wants something?”

I stiffened, her patronizing tone suddenly all too familiar. “Everyone wants something,” I countered.

“Not me,” she replied with a wicked grin. “I have everything I need and then some. All I want is to have a good time, and I know how to accomplish that entirely on my own. You, however, look like a man in desperate need of a good time.”

“So I’m a charity case?”

Reaching for her drink, a flute of something bubbly, she lifted it toward me before taking a sip. “Now you’re catching on.”

“Why me?”

She shrugged. “Why not you? I have an instinct for these things. I saw you on that ferry and just knew you could use a break from your boring life.”

“I’m not bored,” I protested, but the objection sounded weak even to my ears.

“Sure you aren’t, srček.” She chuckled and her hand landed on my thigh near my knee, warm and heavy in a way that should have been unwelcome, but she had a way of moving that made the gesture seem natural. “It’s about time for our show. You can stay here with Wodan and watch, but you’ll have more fun if you come closer to the stage.” She squeezed my leg before releasing it and the pressure sent a spark of desire to a place I had been hoping to keep reined in for a while. “I promise you’ll enjoy it if you do.”

Finishing off her drink, she stood up and opened the patio gate to stride across the courtyard and climb up on stage like a queen arriving at court. A significant crowd had gathered at this point, the setting sun casting exaggerated shadows across the broken concrete. Glancing at Wodan when I noticed he was watching me, I saw something like amusement softening his single-eyed gaze. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him.

He grunted, but didn’t seem convinced.

“Pozdravi, Amsterdam!” Pehtra shouted into the microphone, her voice reverberating off the buildings and sending echoes ricocheting into the night. The first word didn’t sound like Dutch, but I didn’t recognize the language. It sounded almost Russian. Most Unseen stayed close to home and the center of their power and were reluctant to travel beyond the lands where their stories were told, but I got the feeling Pehtra traveled far and wide without fear. “The Wild Hunt is here to spirit you away into another realm!” 

As her cry died into echoes, the lead guitarist let loose a riff that crackled like electricity, followed by a thrum from the bassist strong enough to send vibrations through the ground beneath my feet. The drummer followed up with a wild beat and soon all of the musicians were weaving a cacophony that was as overwhelming as it was beautiful, the sound corporeal in its presence, forcing every object in its path to become a part of its oscillation. The nearby warehouses shook with the rhythm, edifices to a long-dead industry resonating in sympathy with the performance until the entire courtyard was alive with music. 

Then Pehtra began to sing, her voice husky and rich like mulled wine as it cut a melody through the instruments’ dissonance. Even though I couldn’t make much sense of her words, I suspected she was singing in the Slavic language she kept slipping into her speech. I recognized the meaning of her words from the tone of her voice and the reactions of the crowd. She was employing some kind of power in her song, weaving spells over the listeners with every word. 

“The Wild Hunt,” I murmured when the first song had faded to silence, the memory of the music still buzzing in my ears as the crowd shouted for more. “Is that what you are?” I looked at Wodan and he smiled, viciously sharp teeth peeking out from behind his thin lips. I’d read about this folktale in my father’s books, a supernatural group of hunters who rode across the sky. Much of Europe believed in some version of the story, some claiming the force was an omen of war and others that the mythical hunt could capture the unwary and drag them down to the underworld. Suddenly I knew where I’d heard the name Wodan before. It was another name for a well known mythological figure. “Are you Odin?” I asked, using the name I knew.

He chuckled, and the sound seemed to resonate almost as much as the music that interrupted our conversation then, a bass guitar lick filling the night with a hypnotic pattern of notes I felt vibrating in my chest like a magnet being drawn toward its opposite charge. I found myself shifting in my chair, my toes tapping against the table in rhythm. My body wanted to sway, and I could see that the crowd had already given into the urge, undulating in sync as they shifted and writhed to the beat as if possessed. I was so mesmerized that I didn’t notice Wodan leave to order fresh drinks until he returned with another glass of whiskey and pushed it into my hand. 

I threw the drink back in a series of burning swallows and stood up, the spell weaving its way through the air finally taking hold and compelling me to join in the dance. I moved into the crowd and it parted as if anticipating my presence, everyone moving around me like waves over the ocean, their bodies frozen in the strobe lights from the stage as the music soared and fell. I’d gone to concerts a few times in high school, but I’d never been very refined in my tastes, mostly joining my friends in listening to whatever they liked rather than finding something that spoke to me personally. I’d never been to a concert like this, however. This had more in common with the clubs I’d visited after high school, the music more rhythmic and electric than the pop my high school friends had preferred.

I’d never considered myself much of a dancer before, but I found myself falling into step now along with everyone else, the beat simple to follow and the movements of the crowd easy to predict. I didn’t have to think about any of it and simply lost myself in the crush of people, feeling the music inside of me with every beat. We shifted and turned and twisted, a singular organism rather than a group of individuals. 

When the band took a break, I found Pehtra by my side, pulling me through the crowd and back toward her table. “You look like you could use another drink,” she said, pushing me down into the chair I’d thought I wouldn’t leave. She gave Wodan a significant look and he immediately rose to his feet and walked toward the bar. “How do you feel?” she asked me when he was gone.

I tried to clear my thoughts, but the other concert-goers were indulging in more than alcohol now and the air was thick with smoke that made my thoughts difficult to grasp. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Like I’m outside of myself.”

She nodded sagely. “That’s an improvement.”

I squinted at her. “Is it?”

Patting me on the arm, she insisted, “Of course! You’re feeling the connectedness between all people and beginning to understand that none of us are ever truly alone.”

I coughed as another cloud of smoke hit my lungs. “Are you sure it’s not just whatever they’re all smoking?” 

“That’s only a means to an end, srček.” She took the glass of champagne from the tray before Wodan had a chance to set it down. “The connection is there all the time, but we get so caught up in our own lives that we fail to notice it.”

Struggling to focus on her, I ignored the glass of whiskey in front of me and asked, “Are you the leader of the Wild Hunt?” 

Laughing richly, she shook her head and patted my hand where it was gripping the edge of the table to keep myself from sliding to the ground. “For now, yes. We all take turns.”

I nodded as if this made sense but I wasn’t really sure what to think of her explanation. “Are you going to trap us all in the underworld?”

Leaning forward to grin at me, she cupped my chin in one delicate hand and said, “Srček, if I were going to whisk you away somewhere, it wouldn’t be to the underworld.”

This time when she returned to the stage, I followed her without hesitation, joining the throng at her feet and losing myself in the dance once again. Some part of my consciousness was warning me that I was no longer in control, but I hadn’t felt like this in a long time and I was comforted by the feeling of getting lost in something larger than myself. Time and boundaries ceased to have any meaning. I was in this place and also dancing among the stars, drowning beneath the waves and soaring through the skies. I felt bodies moving around me as if they were extensions of my own and as we touched each other I felt as if I were touching myself. 

We were all part of a bigger whole. And I was simply a tiny piece of it all.