Between Two Worlds

Sunlight fingers through tall pines, casting shifting lace onto mossy stones. The sanctuary courtyard smells of woodsmoke, crushed grass, damp earth. Children crouch by the stone gutter, daring each other to touch the cold water. Older women in braided red sashes gather by the spring, their laughter spilling into the mountain air.

The sanctuary sits between worlds—not quite past, not quite future. A clearing in the world’s argument.

They’d set up the negotiation in the shaded courtyard beneath woven banners and carved wolf-sentinels. An absurd tableau: Professor Ionescu from Cluj University, crisp and officious, insisting on “open channels for further research” and “honouring national patrimony.” Mrs H’s voice crackling through someone’s laptop propped on a stump—solar panels rigged to a car battery, because apparently even Bronze Age sanctuaries have wifi now—cutting through his pomposity with her steely smile.

“Professor, Dr Delange’s freedom is not a research commodity. CYcrds does not barter lives. This is a handover, not a sale.”

Hasna, dry as dust: “If the Cluj archives want cooperation, perhaps they’ll refrain from labelling survivors as ‘untraceable variables’ in next quarter’s report?”

The tribal elder, Dacian-tinged Romanian rasping from the shadows: “You all wish to write stories of what you do not let yourselves become. We offer our word and our truth. The rest is with her and the gods.”

Tarmo, dialling in from rain-streaked Zurich, summoning whatever energy he had left: “Elena goes free. Non-negotiable. And if you want foundation funding for site preservation, you’ll sign the confidentiality agreement as written.”

I’d stood apart, wind ruffling my hair, watching papers rustle and digital signatures exchange. Ink and code mingling under banners of two worlds: one made of law, the other of memory.

Gods below, I’d thought. They’re bartering me like a manuscript with publishing rights.

But they’d done it. I was free to go.

---

I found Asdar waiting where morning sun bent through the cave entrance, lighting his hair with a lion’s shimmer. He stood alone, hands clasped, the wolf-tattoo leaping as he flexed his fingers. Behind him, forests fell away into mist.

He met my eyes, silent for a moment that held all the words he hadn’t dared to say in public.

“I thought—” he began, then faltered. “I thought if I let you go, I might lose the wolf too.”

I placed a palm flat on his chest. His heart leapt, alive and frantic.

“You’ll never lose the wolf,” I said gently. “I saw him before I saw you. Maybe I always will.”

He looked away, jaw clenched against everything sanctuary ritual couldn’t teach him to say.

“I will watch for you,” he said. “Wherever you walk. Even in the place with rivers of stone and lights you cannot name—I will watch. They say if you call for the wolf, he will come, even if only in dreams.”

I tried for bravado, but it wouldn’t come. My humour softened into something dangerously close to tears.

“I’m not much for howling, Asdar. But you might hear the clatter of my old boots on marble. Don’t laugh if the legend gets a little… Londoner.”

He pressed my battered notebook—carefully bound with a strip of red cloth—back into my hands.

“So you remember: stories are not for keeping. They are for walking.”

I nodded, unable to speak. The wind carried the scent of resin and wet grass, the clang of a bell from somewhere down the valley, and the faint, wild hush that had followed me since the night I’d crossed into this place.

I took a last, long look: the cave’s shadow broken by sunlight, the ring of wolf carvings, the figure of Asdar, tall and solitary beside the threshold.

“Goodbye,” I murmured, almost an invocation.

---

As I turned and walked toward the waiting car, Mikael offered me a flask of strong “tea” and muttered, “We’ll debrief you in London. But for today—welcome home, Elena. You did it.”

Tarmo’s voice, tinny on my phone as the line found signal in the upper valley: “You okay?”

I smiled. “Define okay. I’m bringing back twice as much data, and maybe three new gods.”

He exhaled, relief and heartbreak tangled together. “Good. We need you. And… I’m sorry for all the chaos.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “It’s what I do best.”

The car door thudded shut. Trees blurred past. Valleys widened. Roads became familiar again. I watched the sanctuary disappear in the rear-view mirror—a tiny kingdom of myth, love, and fleeting wildness—knowing that some part of myself would always remain. And in future, I would feel wolf-shadow at my heels.

I.Ph.