My father crumbles into ash.
The fire blows out.
Astrid stops breathing.
My knees slam into the ground when I fling myself down at Astrid’s side. “Astrid?” I slide my arm under her neck so her head tilts back. Digging my fingers under her jaw, I find a pulse. It’s slow and erratic.
I’m supposed to be counting. To twenty-seven. How long’s it been? When should I use the ointment? Reaching over her supine body, I slide my hand over the bumps of the seething kit. Without the fire, it is so dark I can barely make out which shadows are the darkest.
The ointment jar pokes out of its pocket, the way she left it. I think. It must be the right one, and it’s surely been thirty seconds now. Popping the tiny cork, I dump the viscous contents onto my fingers. The liquid glints darkly, coating my skin. “Astrid, please breathe,” I whisper as I lean down and carefully spread the oil over her lips.
Everything smells of mint. The cold scent clears my head, mingling with the acrid fire fumes and the smell of wet earth.
Astrid’s throat quivers under my hand, and she shudders as she sucks in a huge gasp of breath.
“Thank Freya!” I gather her up so she’s half in my lap. “Astrid.”
Pressing her forehead to my chest, she mutters my name. Her hands weakly clutch at the collar of my T-shirt. Her back is soggy and her curls tickle my nose and chin. She shivers.
“We have to get you inside,” I say.
“Did it work? It worked.” Her voice is hushed with awe.
My heartbeat picks up again, running fast. “Yes. It worked.”
Astrid rolls her head back so she’s staring up at the small scrap of stars visible through the clouds. “They’re so far away,” she says. “Can you believe I was flying past them? Through chaos and into death?”
I don’t know what I believe about death anymore. It seemed and spoke like my father, but I don’t want it to have been. Not with his words still ringing in my ears. The commit will break. She is not long for this world. But what I say is, “You did.”
I carry Astrid back to the barn and help her down onto the pile of hay beside Baldur. A rafter high overhead creaks in the wind, and a low howl reminds me of Vider, trapped in that house where she plays catch with trolls.
The commit will break.
Was it worth it? Risking Astrid, letting Vider stay the night with monsters, just to hear him tell me we would fail and Astrid would die?
I know where to begin looking for the orchard now, but does it matter?
Astrid has already passed out from the effort of seething. I stand over her as everything falls quiet except for her soft breath, and all I can think of is the long space when she did not breathe. The idea of her never breathing again cuts so sharply, my breath turns into ragged little coughs.
Now there’s nothing but darkness around us, not even thin silver moonlight or a single candle flame to chase the gloom away. I feel my chest will crack if I don’t stop thinking about that moment.
“Astrid,” I whisper. She doesn’t move. I crouch and stroke two fingers down her cheek, even though I can barely see her face. When I reach the corner of her mouth, I pause and close my eyes. I remember the feel of the ointment between my fingers and her lips, still smell the fading scent of mint. With my eyes shut, I breathe her in. I breathe in mint, and faint honey, evergreen and cold wind. I breathe in smoke and sharp corrberry off her tongue, the memory of seething. I breathe in starlight.
Standing, I pace in tight circles, fingers curling in and out of fists. I want to tear the barn apart. To get into the Spark and drive as far away as I can. If I go, the commit will break early, and no one will die.
But I don’t leave.
Astrid and Baldur need me. I must tell them what my father said.
And Vider is alone with the trolls. I must be there at dawn.
I spend the night pacing, listening to Astrid breathe because I’m terrified she’ll stop again.
SIXTEEN
I HAVEN’T SLEPT at all by the time dawn begins to overcome the stars.
Astrid rustles the hay and I’m there immediately, kneeling at her side. “Astrid?” I whisper.
“Soren.” My name becomes a wide yawn as she stretches.
“You’re well?”
Her eyes pop open and she peers at me. It’s still too dark to see easily, but soon the sun will rise. Soon Baldur will wake. “You’re upset.”
“Just—just awake. I have to go meet Vider.”
Sitting up, she grasps my hand. “You’re avoiding my eyes. What happened?” Her grip tightens. “Did he tell you where the orchard is?”
I spin away, go to the wall where a decrepit old scythe hangs. “He did. Near enough.”
Her footfall is a soft shuffle through the dusty barn. When she touches my back I jerk from the coldness. My skin is alive with fire and fear. “Soren. Turn around. Tell me.”
Unable to disobey, I slowly shift around. My eyes press closed and her cool finger traces down my spear tattoo. It sends shivers dancing up and down my spine.
“What did he say?”
All my father’s words tear through my head and I try to form them into coherence. “He said Leavenworth, near the Cascades, is where he met Mom.” I still don’t look at her. “He said—he said that only someone called by Idun can find it, but that she’s expecting us.”
“Soren.”
The coaxing tone pries open my eyes. Astrid’s frown is gentle, and in the dim light her pupils are wide as holes to Hel. I whisper, “He said she’s expecting three of us. The bear, the sun, the seether. And that …”
I can’t say it.
“What, Soren?” She clasps my face. “Tell me.”
“That our commit will break.”
Astrid shakes her head. “It won’t. It can’t.”
“It can, if—” The words strangle, and I pull away from her. My shoulders press into the wall, and the old rusting scythe swings on its hook.
“If what?” She doesn’t touch me again, but waits with her eyebrows raised.
“If you die.”
Amazingly, Astrid laughs. “Soren, I’m not going to die.”
I jump forward and take her shoulders so fast, she hardly has time to gasp before I’ve lifted her onto her toes. “She is not long for this world,” I whisper. “That’s what he said, and he pointed at you.”
Everything about her stills, as though she’s become nothing but a hanging corpse already, and her eyes flutter shut. “No wonder I’m not in your bones.”
“Astrid!” I release her with an abrupt little shove.
She only glances toward Baldur, who still lies dreaming, because the sun has not yet found his face. “It doesn’t matter, for his sake.”
I whirl and tear the creaking scythe off the wall. “We should never have raised him! We shouldn’t have asked him anything, Astrid!” So great is my frustration, I throw the tool in a huge arc across the barn. It spins over itself and the blade buries a hand-span deep into the far-side wall. The long wooden handle quivers with energy. Little gray doves leap out of the rafters and fly out through the hole in the roof in a flurry of feathers. “It won’t be worth it,” I say, my breath heaving.
Astrid is there in front of me, and she slaps her palms flat against my chest. “Stop, Soren. Stop.”
I lean into her cool touch, because it soothes the wild, ripping fury of the frenzy inside me. I want it out. I want to let it loose so that the fever consumes me, makes me forget about this rabid fear.
She points at Baldur. “We had to do this. It’s for him, and there isn’t any choice. Revenants are notoriously confusing and confused. Your father’s warnings may not be literal ones. You have got to calm down.”
“I can’t. Not when I think about everything breaking.”
“We won’t break.”
I grip her shoulders again. “You should stay here. If we end the commit early, you won’t be in danger.”
“No.” She takes my hands off, puts
them between us. “I will not willingly leave you.”
“But—”
“No, you big troll. This is why prophecy is so dangerous. This is why we must be careful what we say to people, those of us who read the strands of fate.” She shakes her head. “We don’t know how what we say may bring prophecy into being.”
“You were terrified of what you yourself read in my bones.”
She twists up her mouth. “That was me. And I’ve read for you before. Looked into your fate.” Her eyes wander away, avoiding mine.
“You have?” I say, my anger softening.
Astrid waves a hand, dismissing it. “Listen, seers can rarely see the entire path, but only little strands of it. Take Vider. Your father didn’t mention her, did he? And yet Vider travels with us. You should go get her, and the four of us, a bear, a sun, a seether, and a—a little dragon, will travel to the gate of Idun’s orchard.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t trust it.”
“You only have to trust yourself.” She peers up at my eyes. “If he had told you that you would die bringing Baldur to Bright Home, would you leave Baldur? Would you leave us alone?”
My face crumples. I want to lie to her. Who is Baldur to me? What is he worth to the world? I think of her smile the first moment she saw him, and I think of him holding the spear point at the hollow of my throat. “No.”
“So. Go fetch Vider. She’s sacrificed for this, too. Baldur will wake, we’ll pack the Spark and be ready to go when you return.” Her mouth is relaxed now, her expression cajoling. Like I’m a child to be won to her side by charm.
I pull my hands from Astrid’s as if they’re burning. I turn my back to her. It’s impossible to look at her face for long without seeing it the way it was last night: slack, choking, breathless.
She is not long for this world.
I gather up Dad’s sword and stalk out of the barn.
The first rays of sun spread a path for me through the tall grass toward the farmhouse.
As I approach, the house begins to glow in the soft morning light. The broken porch swing creaks, though there isn’t enough wind. Something must have waited in it, watching for me from the shelter of shadows.
I draw Father’s sword, letting it catch the sun and send a shock of light like an arrow to the gaping doorway.
A shriek sounds, and then laughter titters from all the windows, from the wood of the house itself.
I don’t wait, but charge up the stairs, panic pinching at my shoulder blades. Vider appears—a white ghost against the darkness—and is thrust forward. She stumbles and I catch her with one arm, dragging us back down the porch steps and into the sun.
She’s deadweight in my arm, and I fumble to sheathe my sword. “Vider?” I take her shoulders and her head lolls back. She winces from the sunlight.
“Soren,” she says, making one side of her mouth smile.
I heft her up into my arms. She’s cold and I smell blood. But as I carry her, she doesn’t tense or cry out in injury. When we’re a good distance from the house, surrounded by fifty paces of sunlight on all sides, I crouch.
Vider’s hair is free from its binding, and it trails down to the grass. A bruise forms red and brown on her left cheek and blood has dried just under one nostril. She opens her eyes and I am loose with relief to see all of her present there, aware of me and awake. She pushes away, twisting around to look back at the house. One of her hands is fisted around something.
“Are you all right?” I ask quietly.
“Rough play, that’s all.” Vider rubs her shoulder. Then she glances at her feet. Tiny round dots of red decorate the tops of them, as if blood dripped down and splattered there. The nosebleed, I suspect. There’s more blood, edging tears in her pants and tank top. A hundred tiny claws; a hundred tiny wounds.
But I help her up and she breathes deeply. No shaking, and her grip on my elbow is strong. “Did you speak with him?” she asks me, holding her other fist against her heart.
“Yes. Vider …”
“I’m fine. Hardly worse than I’m used to.” She rolls her eyes and shrugs away from me, about to hurry past and force me to ignore the implications of that statement. I touch her back as she goes, in the center where I can always feel my frenzy burn. Vider stops. Her chin is lowered, and she shivers. Silver-blond hair hides her face. I step so that I’m just behind her, and see that she gazes at her cupped palms.
In the center of them is a round stone the size of a cherry.
A slit pupil mars the face of it, and I imagine the eye glinting yellow out of a cat-wight’s skull.
Vider snaps her fingers shut around it and walks on. This time I do not rush to catch up.
SEVENTEEN
WE DRIVE ALL day.
Astrid tells the others the basics of what my father said: Leavenworth. We’re expected. She says nothing of the commit breaking, nothing of death. There’s only one likely Leavenworth we can find on the map we buy with gas and breakfast. It’s in the foothills of the Cascades, and we should be there by tomorrow afternoon.
I’m glad to use driving as an excuse not to speak. I don’t have to look at anyone, but can focus on the road pulling us closer and closer to an end I don’t want to reach.
Vider sleeps most of the morning away, curled on the backseat with her head on Baldur’s thigh. Astrid dozes fitfully. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel to keep from nudging her awake every time her brow furrows or I hear her mutter in her dreams. Any touch might weaken my resolve, and I am determined to keep myself distant enough to see what’s coming with open eyes.
Although Baldur remains awake with me, he doesn’t roll down his window to catch sunlight in his fingers as he did before. I turn the radio to a low murmur, and listen to a string of supposed Baldur-sightings across the country. In Cheyenne, where we were, they say he was seen with a berserker and a young seethkona, but there are also reports from Nordakota, Ohiyo, and even Laflorida. It’s a relief that our rather loud encounter at the caravan two days ago doesn’t seem to have put everyone right on our tail.
The gate to Bright Home remains shut, but there haven’t been any more major troll attacks. A joint task force of berserkers and congressional soldiers caught up with the herd in Vinland, and slaughtered them.
Out here there’s a lot of static over the radio waves, and there isn’t much to listen to, other than the news station. I land on a replay of Ardo Vassing’s cliché-laden sermon from the other night. He talks in powerful tones about waiting through darkness for the dawn and about the hidden roots of wealth that we see only when new shoots push up through the soil in the springtime. “If we only love our brothers and sisters, if we only bring out the light within ourselves,” he says, “then Baldur the Beautiful will return to us.”
In the rearview, I catch Baldur staring intently at the dial of the radio. I click it off. His startled glance turns into a frown, and instead of engaging me, he looks out the window.
For lunch we stop in an Idahow town called Peccadillo. The welcome sign proclaims it the Smile Capital of the World, but the Spark is so full of tension none of us is laughing. I know it’s my fault. I’m feeling wound tight and the sparks I’m used to holding under my skin are flaring up.
Astrid will go into the gas stop for food while Baldur remains hidden in the car. I don’t think I should go anywhere, either, because of my tattoo, but when Vider jerks open the driver’s side door and says “I need shoes,” I share a quick look with Astrid and follow after.
We walk through the downtown with its red brick buildings, its striped awnings and green streetlamps. I stand glowering against the brick wall of a pawnshop as Vider darts in to trade a small copper medallion I think she may have pulled out of the air for boots and a pair of jeans.
As we return to the gas stop, the sun is behind us, casting our shadows ahead. We’ve been silent the whole time, but finally Vider says, “What’s your problem?”
I grind my teeth and don’t answer.
“Was it
your father?” She flicks a glance at me. “I’d be upset if I had to see mine again.”
As we walk, Vider skims through the crowd quickly, never touching, always avoiding notice. She pulls me along in her wake, so that even a bear of a man like me can slip through. I watch the side of her face as I consider my answer. The bruise has darkened. Did her father have something to do with giving her the crazed bravery to spend the night in a den of trolls and steal one of their eyes?
“Yeah,” I admit. “I didn’t really want to talk to him. And what he said was … bad.”
Her eyebrows wing up. “If they’re nacks in life, they’re nacks in death.”
“My dad wasn’t like that.… I loved him.”
“Lucky. Mine was.”
“Is that how you ended up with the caravan?”
“Nope.” Vider rubs the heel of her hand against her ribs. “I was born into that, but Dad wasn’t. He was opposed to the whole caravan philosophy and took me away. Several times. You remember Sam? It was his mom who took me back, though she wasn’t responsible for me.”
In the caravans, Vider would have been raised by an extended family. Mother, father, aunts and uncles, anyone in the family by blood or bond. It’s a wide-thrown support system, and it’s one of the reasons the caravans have survived economically even into this century. “It must have been good then, having the Lokiskin to rely on.”
She slides a look at me, her eyelashes low. “Sometimes, Soren, having more people watching out for you only means more chances to get hurt.”
There isn’t anything I can say to that.
We find Astrid and Baldur seated together at a wooden picnic table in the yard behind the gas stop. Snow-capped mountains rise in the distance behind them, the tips shining like glass as the sun heats the sky. A bucket of chicken waits, and bottles of honey soda weigh down napkins and paper plates. Baldur talks, using his hands to describe something. His fingers fan out like sunbeams.
I hold back to watch them, my friends.