“What is a Helfwir?” Dad asked, looking down at me. I was bent at the knee, eyes fixed to the mosaic on the floor of the family chapel. I was face to face with some great ancestor or another, immortalized in the moment of his greatest victory; cold-iron tipped spear held high, dipped in the blood of some creepy-crawly that lay dead at his feet.

I was dressed in the ceremonial Helfwir armor: a plain leather vest with a chain mesh woven between the layers of cured hide. On my head, I wore the black mask, woven from dyed silk. It hid my entire face except for my mouth, made me impossible to identify. Turned me into something as faceless and scary to the monsters as they were to everyone else. To regular people. On my back, I wore the leather rack that contained the Helfwir’s arsenal: the retractable stake, the double-hammer (one head silver and the other cold iron), the oaken stave and the snakehide whip and the dozens of concoctions with wolfsbane, nightshade, belladonna and lily gloriosa. On my feet, I wore the elkskin boots that made my steps silent. My clothes were fitted tightly against my skin so they wouldn’t whisper or creack even when I would break into a run.

I had trained in crude imitations of these pieces of equipment. I hadn’t been supposed to wear them until I was eighteen or at least until I had been proven myself a full-blooded Helfwir, tried in the field. Dressed in the battle-dress of my revered ancestors, this was supposed to have been my moment of triumph.

“The hunter in the night. Stalker of the things that Dwell In The Fringes.” I blurted out, methodically. The name of the ancestor and his slain prey surfaced in my mind: he was Ulf Eriksson son of Kitaley Jotunddottir; the giant of Iceland, who had slain Balor of the Freezing Eye and kept his severed head inside the family vaults. He was my great to the third power grandfather on my father’s side.

I removed the black mask from my face, laid it on the floor. It made me feel small and cold, worse than any scolding I had ever gotten. I wasn’t supposed to look up at Dad and I didn’t want to.

“What is the Helfwir’s purpose?” Dad asked.

“To preserve the night. To drive the deathless into the light. To reveal the shifter, pull back the witch’s veil, bleed the demon of its power.” my lip was trembling and I felt weak; my heart thumped in my chest so hard I thought it was about to burst. I sank my nails so hard into my knees that my knuckles turned white. When I flicked off the strap that made the entire rack of weapons clatter down on the floor, the ground gave out from under me. For a moment, I was five years old again and all I wanted to do was hide in the pantry behind a wall built out of cereal boxes and cry my eyes out.

I was scared and ashamed and tired and all I wanted right then was for Dad to forget all about it, to go back to two days ago and take back what I said.

“What defines the Helfwir?” Dad said.

“The purity of her purpose. The iron in her blood. The steel in her heart and the lead in her belly.” I said, my voice loud and clear. To keep my voice from cracking, I bit my lip. I grasped the solid bronze brooch that was the family sigil on my chest (the hand that drove a dagger through a wolf’s paw even as it was crushed). I removed it, set it down on the marble. The way it glinted in the light, it looked as if it was on fire.

“When does the Helfwir’s duty end?” Dad asked. He was leaning so close that I could look up to his eyes if I wanted. I could reach out and hold him and somehow I thought that it would all be over; that he’d give me back my weapons, my mask, my sigil. That everything would stay just the way it was.

Except I didn’t want it to. I stopped wanting this life in that grave in Romania when I had been so mad at him. He hadn’t said a word, of course, the entire way home; but the way he would look at me: so bitter and angry and sad all at the same time, as if I had been the one that had hurt him and abandoned him and used him as a bait. As if I had ever been given a choice on the matter.

“In death. Of the body or the spirit.” I told him, looking Dad straight in the eye. My lip wasn’t trembling and I didn’t feel like crying any more. When I stripped off my armor I felt nothing at all. It had been as if someone had simply pulled the stopper from inside my heart and all the bitterness and the sadness and the loss just drained away. Dad noticed, but tried his best not to show it. He had done this before, after all.

“By declaring your desire to leave your appointed place” he said, rising up too look down at me “by openly declaring that you wish to abandon your responsibilities, you are no longer a Helfwir. If not in mind, then in spirit. You have renounced the mantle of responsibility that was your birthright, with the hardship it entails. In the old days, you would have been faced with a trial and the punishment would have been far more severe. But as things stand, you are hereby exiled for a year and a day, to try yourself in the outside world. You have a week to leave the home of your father.”

I snapped at attention, out of habit. Dad didn’t respond. He seemed much older now, smaller and sad. He waved me away. I walked out of the chapel under the cold stare of my revered ancestors' marble hewn eyes.

***

We had agreed not to let Mom know. Not that she wouldn’t have figured it out eventually. She might not have been born a Helfwir, but she had been married to one long enough to learn their ancient customs and to read their cryptic looks. Those few that remained, anyway. Dad had never talked about it, but there used to be more of us living in Chancel Road. Eleven bloodlines of Helfwir called this place home barely over a century ago. Mom had studied the names of the Lineages in the long intervals between Dad’s comings and goings.

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There had been the Shaohao, who were descended from the hero that was known as Yi, master of the bow and personal spirit-hunter in the service of Yu the Great, first Emperor of the Xia Dynasty. There were the Hagopian, descendants of Vahagn, the demigod. Their weapons of choice were their fists and teeth and feet, their skin as hard as armor. The Red Horns were descended from the First Man and they knew the secret language of all the inanimate things and how to whistle the secret songs of shadows. There were the Savas, the wyrn-hunters, who rode to battle in suits of jet-black armor. The Luac, whose blood was poison and their spit was liquid fire. The Tangaroa the tide-walkers, with their war-songs and their greenstone clubs. The Apannugak, trackers and friends to the animals. The Lovedu, who could make storms and call down the lightning by whirling their strange clay pots over their heads, forever at odds with the Ryang’Ombe who could split the ground merely by stomping their feet. We were the Don; descendants of Ludd the trickster and savior of Wales. We were the last lineage that still remained in Chancel Road.

Chancel Road can't be found on any map. It's a long stretch of road that’s framed by empty fields and the decrepit, creaking places that the other Helfwir lineages used to call home. Early medieval castles and rough, small pagodas and yurts, laid out across the length of Chancel Road, crumbling after decades of being abandoned to the elements. Cobwebs cover the reinforced glass windows and the floorboards are home to the rats and insects. Our house, an old colonial mansion, is the only one that’s still kept in any habitable shape. Dad said that this place was a ‘loan’ and that we were only housekeeping until its rightful owners returned. Mom would never tell me which of these rows upon rows of houses had been our own. When I was still very small and Dad was away and Mom would be asleep, I’d leave my bedroom still dressed in my Major Steele pyjamas and sneak very quietly out the window. I’d climb down the ash tree and walk across Chancel Road. I’d make a game out of pretending that one of the dusty husks had been our home. I’d play at being a princess in the courtyard of a castle, or pound my feet like I was dancing the spirit-dance by a thrifty yurt. Other times, I’d just look at the moonlit sigils carved on a doorway or throw pebbles at the creaking windows to see if any children still lingered inside. But there was no-one there. The other Helfwir were gone and that was that.

The chapel was at the very edge of Chancel Road, its north wall facing the constant shimmer that was the world beyond during Chancel Road's phases. Chancel Road didn’t stick around any place for too long. One day, I would look outside my window and I could see the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro. An antelope would be grazing in our back yard, uprooting Mom’s aloe vera plants. By the time we’d chased it away, Chancel Road would have embedded itself across a nowhere highway in a desert and I’d be running after tumbleweeds. By the time I was four years old, Mom would swear that we’d already gone twice around the world.

When we needed to get somewhere specific, Dad would stomp his foot down twice at the end of Chancel Road, name his destination and we’d be there. Perhaps we’d be squeezed between two neighbourhoods or pop up just outside of a crowded highway. Once, Chancel Road appeared on a sheer mountainside somewhere up in the Himalayas. It scared Mom something fierce. Dad told me, after he was done punishing Chancel Road by forcing it to materialize deep in the jungles of the Amazon and linger in the horrible humidity for two whole days, that the Road required ocassional discipline.

When Dad left the chapel with my Helwir battle-dress tucked under his arm, Chancel Road lingered for a while under the shadow of the great rocks of Monument Valley. I watched through the half-open double doors of the chapel at the sunset seeping through the stained glass windows. The red light slid through the cracks, crept in through the hairline fissures across the roof. It wreathed the faded and cracked mosaics in St. Elmo’s fire. Then Chancel Road moved again and it was nighttime someplace by the sea. Dad had gone away, so I changed to my regular clothes and walked home.

Mom, I’m going away I played out the scene in my mind in my big-girl voice. I wanna go out and see places.

And then Mom-in-my-head would rain a barrage of questions on me until I just blurted out everything and she’d have a fight with Dad and maybe, just maybe, he’d take me back in but I’d never have the guts to try and get out again.

I’ll just be going out. Promise I’ll be back soon I rehearsed in my most casual manner. Like I was going out for a walk, except I’d never really come back. Mom-in-my-head would raise an eyebrow at that; after all, I’d never left home on my own before. She’d wriggle around my excuses, raise herself up on her haunches and then sink her fangs into my lies until I’d break down.

Mom…what if I told you that Dad said it was okay for me to go on a hunt? On my own? Pretty neat, doncha think I rehearsed in my head in my gruff, tough-girl voice. Mom-in-my-head would ruffle my hair, tell me how proud she was and then send me to my room, so she could chew Dad out until he buckled down and told her the truth in the worst manner possible.

Mom, I want out I rehearsed in my head and this time it sounded good and right and angry. I want to go out and be with the rest of the world and go to school and see what it’s like to live in a place where it’s always the same view outside I went on. I love you and I love Dad very much, but I want to see what it’s like out there and that was that. That’s all I had to say.

The Mom-in-my-head wasn’t there to go after me anymore, to hound me with her questions. I was alone, staring at my own two feet as I walked down Chancel Road. My Royal Rumble sneakers were thrifty, caked with dust. There was a roaring lion made out of felt that Mom had sewn on, to patch the hole where my big toe had ripped through the fabric. My hands felt too big, too awkward so I stuck them in my pockets, fidgeted with the loose threads, wriggled my fingers through the holes.

I looked up and the sky was turning, spinning madly just above with the moon dead center like one of those hypnotism devices that supervillains use in comic books. When it stopped, Chancel Road was laid out across some uninhabited island in God-knows-where. A wizened old turtle, as big as a car, looked at me and made a huffing noise.

“You damn kids” I said. “Git off my land!”

The turtle shot into its shell. I laughed at the sight of it, when I suddenly realized that I was already home, sitting outside the rusted iron gate, light seeping in through the windows. I cleared my throat and set my back straight, stamped down on the butterlies in my gut.

It didn’t work, so I just made my way across the paved path to the front porch as slowly as possible. Felt like it took me a hundred years just to cross the distance. But I did it just the same, even though there were ants nesting in my sneakers and my head felt like it had just caught fire. I stopped, lingered too long at the door.

“Mom, I want out.” I whispered and I was whole and safe and scared and angry all over again.