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In the early morning hours of Saturday, I zigzagged between the skyscrapers of NYC to meet Roisin at her apartment. Siren speed was still as much fun as it had been the first time, when I was training to run in the forest in Malaysia. Unbelievable that this was over a year ago already, and how much had happened since then. I ran up to the fourteenth floor and rang the bell. When nobody opened, I loudly knocked on the door. Since nothing happened, I checked my phone for a message from her. My inbox was empty. I raced up to the rooftop from where I threw a glance into every cardinal direction listening to the sound of the traffic below. Suddenly, my phone beeped.
Will be there in a sec.
I walked downstairs again and about a minute later, Roisin appeared.
“Sorry about that. I was held back a little.” She smiled as she unlocked the door.
“Does this grin mean that you were on a date?” I asked.
“Yeah, something like that. But I don’t think I will see him again. He only had herbal tea in his kitchen cabinet. One of those guys on a health trip.” She shook her head. “I only drank herbal tea when I was sick. Why would you do that to yourself if you are healthy and can drink anything you want?”
I chuckled. “I’d like to have your problems.”
Then, her face turned serious. “I hope you brought a scarf to cover your face or else your nose will be a Popsicle once we reach France.”
I pulled up my scarf a little more to show her, and also pulled a pair of gloves out of my jacket pocket.
“Great. Let me get mine and we can leave.” Roisin clapped her hands. “Is Munich good for your exploring plans as well?”
“Munich is close to Switzerland. Only four driving hours from where I lived,” I sighed. “I guess however it is in Munich, it will also be in St. Gallen.” If it was so bad that my family needed help, I could still figure something out on the way back. But Roisin must have read something in my eyes.
“Just don’t do any surprise escapes.” Roisin winked. She was referring to the time when I ran to my parents’ house under Melissa and Roisin’s watch, even though they had prohibited me from seeing my family.
“No, if I went to my family, I would do it without having you in tow,” I replied as self-confidently as I could.
“Let’s go, then.” Roisin locked her apartment and took off. I was close on her heels. We reached the coast in Chatham and from there ran out onto the black ocean. Everything in a twenty-meter radius I could see in all its normal detail. Everything farther away in front and to the sides appeared blurry. Our speed helped us to stay above the water, and in these temperatures, I tried to set my feet on the waves as little as possible. Nevertheless, I’d have to change into the other pair of sneakers that I had packed into a small backpack, once we got to the mainland.
“Roisin, how many times in your life have you crossed this ocean already?” I yelled, to compete against the sound of the wind and the rushing of the waves. Roisin changed her course a little, so that we could run next to each other. Our arms swung in a steady jogging movement while our legs worked at a speed in which I only saw a jumble of colors.
“Not so many times, actually. The US is quite enough for me right now. Perhaps two or three times a year I travel somewhere,” she replied.
“I could do this every night,” I stated and let my gaze wander across the horizon. “Look how beautiful it is.” Gradually the sky became lighter. “It makes the world seem like a vast and peaceful space.”
“It’s also rather lonely. I would go mad without society around me.”
We continued in silence and witnessed how the sun transformed the water into a sea of gold until it returned to a deep blue in the bright daylight.
We entered France at Hossegor, where we changed our shoes. Afterward, we continued up the coast. At the top of Rennes, we cut to the right and traversed the inland south of Paris, avoiding the capital. In Strasbourg, we slowed down and saw that all the public places were frequented by armed police officers. A long traffic jam was lining up in front of the German border. The reason for it was that all the vehicles had to drive across what looked like a big sponge mat. Then, the people had to get out of the cars and walk through a metal gate, which also had these sponges on the floor.
“What do you think this is good for?” I asked Roisin.
“I heard on the news that they disinfect all vehicles and all occupants who enter the country, in order to keep the flu from spreading. They even spray the trains before they cross the border.”
I furrowed my brows. “I can’t imagine that this really helps. Germs are in the air as well, and there is no big enough filter.” Then, I remembered what my parents had told me about their honeymoon. Their plane was sprayed with disinfectant when they landed in Australia. Already at that time, I thought it was quite a poor attempt to keep Australia free of foreign germs. “They must be quite desperate if they do that.”
“That’s only the first step. With so many police officers, I wouldn’t be surprised if they put up fences along the borders soon,” Roisin remarked.
“I hope not. That’s exactly what would bring the world further apart. If people fear connecting to each other because something bad might happen, everyone will soon be hiding within their own four walls,” I said, watching how yet another family got out of the car. The parents made sure that their two daughters wiped their shoes well on the disinfectant mat.
When my sister and I were younger, my family and I would drive for forty minutes on weekends to go swimming in a beautiful lake in Austria. Our car was never stopped at the custom border. Perhaps now it wouldn’t be so easy to visit a neighboring country for a few hours, anymore.
Once we had watched enough, Roisin and I wandered to a more secluded area and slipped into Germany unnoticed. In all the bigger cities that followed, we noticed a higher presence of armed police officers than usual. Otherwise, there were no more occurrences that struck us as odd. Finally, in Munich, we slowed down at the Viktualienmarkt.
“Hmm, I see tourists with cameras and old ladies with their baskets full of fresh goods,” Roisin remarked. “I would say people here are still following their usual business.”
I heard people’s chatter and laughter. Indeed, the atmosphere was still relaxed.
“If they were expecting some kind of catastrophe to happen soon, this place would probably be more deserted,” I said and was kind of relieved. “Let me buy some mustard for Alex.”
“Already thinking about shopping again? You can’t be that worried, either.”
Only then did we notice a big screen at the other end of the market. It was continuously showing the same message. I translated the message for Roisin: “If you detect any of the following symptoms: a sore throat, any trouble with breathing, or the slightest temperature, go to a quarantine room at your closest city hospital. Be aware of the health of the people surrounding you and in case of doubt, call this number.”
“Probably the news is making it sound worse than it is,” I said. As if to prove my point, we heard the loud jingle of a German news station. It wasn’t possible to ignore the melody. Therefore, all the people who had been walking or talking stopped. Everyone's eyes were glued to the screen, mine included. The guy on the news desk said how they had finally made a step in the right direction because they had found and captured a suspect who chanted his curses from a cave in Cappadocia. Then, they showed us the inside of a cave, equipped with a few rugs and other basic human necessities. Before I could close my eyes, I watched in disgust as a man was kneeling handcuffed in the corner of a room, and in the next moment, he dropped to his side because somebody had shot him. The news official concluded that this was a necessary statement toward the rest of the Alternatives.
My jaw dropped. How could they show this in a public place where any child could see it? I looked around to see that some people had an angry expression on their face and were already talking again, while others imperceptibly shook their heads, their face a picture of disbelief.
“I’m glad they got one,” the man behind the mustard booth said to an elderly woman. “I hope that intimidates the others. I’m losing business because the tourists are afraid to travel. Normally, there are at least a third more people here.”
“I don’t know. I mean, the man living in a cave is suspicious, but what is their proof that he was cursing the world?” the woman countered.
Only at that point, I noticed Roisin who had a confused shimmer in her eyes and was repeatedly muttering “Oh. My. God,” while pressing a hand in front of her mouth.
“I know. I can’t believe that they show this like a public execution either. It’s as if we live in medieval times.”
Roisin’s eyes were wide with fear. She composed herself and rummaged for her phone, making a few clicks. “I know this guy!” she whispered vehemently and showed me her phone, where there was a thumbnail of the video we had just seen. Roisin took my arm and we strode away from the market. I couldn’t ask any questions and tried to keep pace with her.
We entered a park where we were alone, and I looked at her questioningly. “I would recognize his face out of a thousand. He had a beautiful body,” she sighed.
I tilted my head. “Roisin, you are incredible. You are saying you have been with this man?”
“Yes. He is a Minotaur. Which means he can change from a human body into half human, half bull.”
I breathed out sharply. “There is such a thing?”
“Yes, we met at the Dance of Scheherazade. Normally, people wear a mask or transform themselves into something different, to diminish the risk of any fights taking place. But Minotaurs are a pure race. They don’t have any enemies and since he always has to disguise himself to appear human in public, he came to the dance in his Minotaur form.” She paused. “How did they catch him?”
“Um, I don’t know,” I was speechless.
“You know what I am thinking?” she asked.
“Um, no.”
“This whole thing has to do with something from the underworld. A simple human wouldn’t be able to catch a Minotaur and kill him.”
“And you are sure it’s the same guy?”
“Yes!” she almost yelled. “He even mentioned that they live somewhere in Cappadocia. We could go looking for them, but it would be hard to find one, even for us. It might take us days or weeks.”
“Do you think the people who killed him knew that he was magical?” I wondered.
“They must have. Perhaps not the ones who made the video, but the ones who caught him. But to kill him as if he was a bad sorcerer? Him, one of the most innocent magical races there are? That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“No, it doesn’t. But neither does a mysterious flu against which nobody finds any protection. There must be something bigger behind this.” We looked each other in the eyes.
“Someone in the magical world is overusing his power a bit too much,” Roisin said.
“But why create such a public fuss about it? It would make more sense if the person was human and wanted to expose and eliminate us.”
“No human would have such knowledge.” Roisin waved my words off. “But by creating chaos all over the world, perhaps they are distracting us from their true cause?”
I weighed the pros and cons of her opinion. “I don’t know.” My shoulders sagged. “One thing I am sure of is that once again, this is not a coincidence.”
“I need to go back and talk to Melissa about this.” She threw me an inviting glance.
I lowered my eyes. “How come you don’t want to use every opportunity to go back to Ireland and at least catch a glimpse of your family?” I felt a pang in my heart, knowing that my sister Isa was only twenty minutes of running from here, but I wouldn’t get to see her.
“I went through my big ‘I miss them, and the world is unfair’ phase in the three months that I lived in Ireland with Melissa and Claire.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “But somehow, moving to the US made it a lot easier for me. It’s not possible to juggle too many balls at once.”
“I guess so.” I pressed my lips together.
Roisin placed a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go. It’s already morning in New York as well, and Alex will be waiting for you.”
I returned to Alex’s apartment and I found him eating breakfast with his sister Rachel in the living room. Briefly, the three of us spoke about our weekends. Then Alex and I disappeared into his room.
“I can’t believe you have been to Germany,” he said in bewilderment.
“Yes, took us three hours to get there.” I smiled and shrugged.
“Wow, life for you must be so much easier.”
“Not in every aspect,” I said. “Anyway, we found out something rather alarming today. This whole chaos with the night flu might be of magical source.”
“Does that make it better or worse?” Alex asked.
“We don’t know yet. But if you ask me, magic makes everything even more complicated.”
And then, without a warning, everything went black.