Ari’s skin was icy pale. How could he be so cold? I barely remembered what cold felt like. “Your arm,” he said.
My arm stung, but when I looked down, I saw only the fading imprints of my fingernails—no broken skin, no blood. I pulled my sleeve down to cover it. My palms had bled, just a little, but the wounds were already clotted over. Had I really seen smoke there? What did it mean to take fire into your blood? “I’m fine,” I said.
Ari drew his hand from his pocket and reached for mine. His palm was still red. I’d burned him without half trying—that’s what taking fire into your blood meant. I didn’t take his hand.
Soft waves lapped at the shore. Ari stared at me, teeth chattering, body trembling. Whatever he was looking for—reassurance?—I couldn’t give it to him. I couldn’t even promise I wouldn’t burn him again. I still felt warm coals somewhere deep inside me.
At last Ari pointed into the distance. “I think maybe—the sorcerer—has started—a fire.” I followed his gaze. A faint orange glow shone against the gray hills.
Like I needed a fire. I had all the fire I needed within me. Would that fire consume me as it had consumed Mom? Would that be such a bad thing? my treacherous thoughts asked me.
Hell yes. If the fire destroyed me, there’d be no one left to make Hallgerd pay. Somehow she had to pay for this.
Wind picked up, cutting right through my jacket. I barely noticed, but Ari shuddered. “Please, Haley. It’s cold—out here. Let’s go—to—the fire.” He started toward it, and I followed. Where were we, anyway? Not Thingvellir, though the gray hills and black sand did look volcanic. Back in Iceland, at least?
The sand gave way to the dirt-and-gravel road, which was slick with water. The rain fell harder. The wind grew stronger. We bent our heads into it. Water streamed from Ari’s white hair and black leather jacket.
The wind began to moan. The fire turned to a faint orange smudge through the blowing water. Ari stumbled and fell.
I helped him up. “I’m all right,” he said, but his breath came out in gasps. I felt a ripple of fear. He’ll be fine. I just need to get him to the fire. He leaned on my shoulders as he staggered on.
The road gave way to sucking mud. We climbed a short slope, ducked beneath a craggy overhang, and then we were beside the fire. Svan was sitting there, staring into the flames—ordinary flames that couldn’t speak. “Took you long enough,” he said, not looking up.
Ari made a rude gesture as he sank down beside the fire. His shudders turned violent as his rain-soaked jeans began to sizzle and dry. With shaking hands he unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, moving closer to the flames to let them dry his wet skin and clothes.
I shrugged off my sodden backpack, pulled off my jacket—the hood had burned away along with my hair—and drew Ari close, rubbing my hands along his bare arms to warm them. Svan winked, as if my not wanting to see Ari die of hypothermia meant I was ready to jump into bed with Ari. Which of course I wasn’t, because I was dating Jared—I pushed that thought aside. One thing at a time. I hadn’t gotten us out of the fire realm only to have Ari freeze to death in this one.
“You’re warm, Haley.” Ari moved closer to me, even as he kicked off his muddy shoes, pulled off his socks, and set them by the fire to dry. “How can you be so warm?” His shivering subsided. “Some rescuer I am, yeah?”
“Couldn’t have made it without you, Luke.”
Ari laughed at that. Beyond the overhang, I heard a clattering sound. Hail, pounding the gravel and mud. Wherever we were, we weren’t leaving anytime soon.
Even if we were back in Iceland, where would I go, anyway? Back to Dad? What happened to Mom—it was Dad’s fault, too. I shivered, not because of the cold. Ari’s arms tightened around me.
Svan chuckled. “I’m sure your father will find a good match for you when you’re ready for a real man. Until then, there’s no harm in playing.”
I nearly told the sorcerer what he could do with himself, but it wasn’t like I wanted to go back into that storm.
Svan handed us a couple of strips of dried meat from his bag. I bit fiercely into mine. It tasted like old cardboard—rubbery old cardboard—but I kept chewing. So did Ari. Had he had anything to eat in Muninn’s cave?
“I don’t suppose you brought any drink?” Svan asked as he finished a strip of meat of his own.
Like I wanted him drunk. A gust blew beneath the overhang. The fire flickered, but Svan made a quick hand gesture over the flames, and they steadied and burned on. I felt some spark deep within me yearn toward those flames.
Svan looked sharply up. Did he feel the spark as well? He reached toward my singed hair. I jerked away. No way was I letting him touch me. Ari stiffened beside me.
“A bit close,” Svan said. “You should have walked faster. The realm must have begun to change to fire as you jumped.”
No begun about it, but I didn’t tell Svan that. I still didn’t trust him.
He fed a piece of damp driftwood to the fire. It hissed, but then the wood caught. Flames leaped toward the stone above us. “Do you still have Hallgerd’s coin?”
I’d dropped it—but I drew away from Ari and reached into my pocket. The coin was there, warm against my fingers. Would I ever be free of it? No matter what I did—dropped it, threw it away—the thing always found me, just as it must have found Mom.
The coin—Hallgerd’s spell—had killed Mom. I clenched my hand around the silver.
“We must destroy it,” Svan said. “Only by destroying the coin can the fires Hallgerd called on be contained.”
Muninn had thought it best to hide Hallgerd’s coin away in his cave, because destroying it might only make things worse. Katrin thought we needed to bring the coin to Hallgerd’s home and return it, but I didn’t exactly trust her anymore, either.
And I didn’t want to give anything back to Hallgerd. “Will it hurt her much, if we destroy the coin?” Hallgerd said she’d released her claim on it—maybe that didn’t make any difference. She was still the one who’d cast the spell.
Svan wouldn’t meet my eyes. “What matter that, if it keep Hallgerd’s fire from burning the world?”
You don’t understand. “Will it hurt her a lot?” Because right now, I’m more than okay with that.
“It might,” Svan admitted, his gaze on the fire.
“Good,” I said.
Ari and Svan both looked at me. “Truly, you are Hallgerd’s kin,” Svan said.
Ari scowled, showing what he thought of that. He didn’t understand, either. A stray raindrop landed in his hair. “If destroying the coin will hurt Hallgerd, what will it do to Haley?”
Svan loosened his cloak. “Hallgerd altered my teachings in ways I did not anticipate. She always thought she understood more than she did. I cannot say for certain what will happen. Destroying the coin could destroy all those bound to it.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I’d risk myself a hundred times if only I could make Hallgerd suffer.
“The hell it doesn’t.” Ari pressed his lips into an angry line. Outside, the wind began to blow the rain sideways.
Svan raised his voice to be heard over it. “I believe Haley makes this choice willingly.”
“No,” Ari said. “Don’t, Haley.”
Easy for him to say. “Your mother’s still alive.”
Ari flinched, then looked right at me, his green eyes sharp.
Ari and his mom were Hallgerd’s kin, too. Why should my mom be dead, while his mom was just fine? Especially since Katrin was the one who had—what? Slept with Dad? Only messed around a little? I didn’t want to know. It was easier when I didn’t remember.
How could Dad have even thought of cheating on Mom? What sort of jerk was he? I thought of how lost he’d looked when he came home last summer. Funny how you left out the part about how it was your fault, Dad.
“We’ll take what precautions we can,” Svan said, “but given the liberties Hallgerd took with her spell, I can make no promises.”
Ari
drew his jacket back on, staring at me all the while. “If you need someone to blame, Haley, blame me and be done with it.”
“You didn’t—”
Ari picked up a gray rock and turned it in his hands. Outside, the wind and rain continued. “I came home early, okay? From my summer job. I opened the door, and there they were together. It’s not like Mom hasn’t had other boyfriends, but none of them were married. The worst part was how Gabe and Mom kept saying it was none of my business. The hell it wasn’t. I was so angry.” Ari drew a breath. “One day I’ll learn to keep my big mouth shut.”
“So you walked in on them.” I quickly pushed the images that brought up out of my mind. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”
Ari flung the rock out into the storm. “Who do you think told your mother? Do you think my mom and your dad just walked up to her and confessed?” Sparks flew up from the fire. Svan shut his eyes, but his shoulders remained stiff, watchful. “I thought Amanda had a right to know,” Ari said, quieter now. “I am such an idiot.”
“She did have a right to know.” My voice was low, too, almost too low to hear over the wind.
Ari shook his head. “You don’t understand. She got so angry. She just couldn’t stop yelling, while your dad—”
“Got really quiet.” My throat felt suddenly tight. “I know.”
“Who could blame your mom for running?” Ari said.
I can. Smoke stung my eyes. Because she ran from me, too.
“Your dad thought she just needed time to think, only she never came back. And then my mom, she started looking at the earthquake patterns—there was a decent-sized quake, you know, the day Amanda disappeared—then went down by the waterfall, found a place where some footsteps ended—and began going on and on about Hallgerd and sorcery. I thought it was just another excuse. Mom had all sorts of excuses, like when she told me your parents were thinking about getting divorced, anyway—”
“What?”
Ari scowled and threw another rock out into the rain. “See? I never know when to shut up. I thought you knew.”
“No.” Mom and Dad fought, sure, I knew that—but they weren’t getting-a-divorce fights. They’d never talked about getting a divorce.
How could I not have realized, anyway? “I am so stupid.”
Ari’s mouth pulled into a rueful smile. “So you see, we have something in common.”
It doesn’t matter, I told myself again. All that mattered was that Mom was gone. That was Dad’s fault, and Katrin’s, but most of all it was Hallgerd’s.
I looked at Svan. “Do you have any spells to bring back the dead?”
Svan opened his eyes, and I knew he’d heard our every word. “You need a body to bring back the dead.”
Hallgerd hadn’t even left me that much. I glared down at the coin I held. The fire in me rose toward it. Funny how I could feel so much heat, when every time I thought about Mom, everything in me felt like cold ashes.
The ground trembled a little, as if in response to the fire—my fire or the coin’s fire, I couldn’t tell.
Svan raised an eyebrow. “So you see, Hallgerd’s spell remains active.”
Ari scowled. I ignored him and shoved the coin toward Svan. “Hell yes, I want to destroy it.”
Svan nodded. “As soon as the storm ends, I’ll gather the necessary supplies. We shouldn’t waste any time. There’s no knowing what my niece’s magic will do.”
What about my magic? I kept the thought to myself. “The sooner the better,” I told Svan. I’d cast any spell, if there was a chance that Hallgerd might feel it. If there was some chance I could hurt her as much as she’d hurt me.
Nothing matters as much as that, I told myself. Nothing.
Chapter 9
I dreamed I held a bow made of fire. I dreamed I drew back the bowstring and released an arrow.
Flames leaped from the string, catching my skin, my hair. Fire roared through me. I knew then that I was the bow, the string, the arrow. Fire consumed me as I flew through the air. So much fire—but I also knew better than to scream—
I woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat. The air was calm, the storm gone. I heard water lapping at sand and saw the overhang above me.
I didn’t remember falling asleep. Ari’s leather jacket was draped over me; he lay curled by my side, shivering in his Star Wars T-shirt. In the thin light, his hair and face both seemed very pale. Svan was nowhere in sight.
Ari muttered something about ravens and dawn’s light in his sleep. It sort of rhymed and sort of didn’t. I sat up and moved to drape the jacket over him. I still couldn’t feel the cold.
Ari jerked awake, looked up at me, and frowned. “Don’t do this,” he said.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Hallgerd killed her. I can’t just let her get away with that.”
“Hallgerd’s been dead a thousand years. For all that time, everyone’s remembered how horrible she was. Isn’t that punishment enough?”
“No.” Nowhere near enough. And she wasn’t dead for me, not when I’d only just spoken with her.
Svan’s fire had died to embers. The sky beyond the overhang was gray with patches of blue shining through. A few yards away, across the road, I saw black sand and a gray bay. A bit of sun reflected off Ari’s pale hair. I wanted to draw him close, to warm his bare arms.
But I had my memories now. I knew who the dark-haired boy in the photo was. Jared and I had only started dating in the middle of the past year, but even before then, he was my best friend. He went to every one of my track meets. I went to all of his soccer games. He’d been there for me when I got the phone call about Mom. He’d always been there, whenever I’d needed him.
Until I decided to go to Iceland to find my mother, instead of following him to study wildlife biology in San Diego. Jared and San Diego both seemed very far away now.
Even so, I wasn’t Dad. I wasn’t about to let Jared find out I’d gone away and forgotten him. I handed Ari his jacket. “Here. It’s cold.” Hadn’t he almost frozen to death once already?
“I live here. I’m used to the cold.” Ari drew the jacket on and looked at me. The red welts on his palms had mostly faded.
“Where’s Svan?” I asked.
“He went to gather some things. For the spell, he said. We could leave now. If we get a head start, maybe he won’t catch up—”
“No.”
“Haley—”
I left the overhang and walked across the road. Ari followed me. The puddles were beginning to ice over, and their thin crusts crunched beneath my feet. That made no sense—it’d been summer when we left Thingvellir. Not that I could even feel the cold. I unzipped my jacket; the wind brushed my ears and bare neck. “Ari, where are we?”
Ari shrugged uneasily. “I’m not sure. Somewhere in Iceland, I think.”
I glanced at the hills with their red and orange mosses. Autumn colors, though we didn’t get them in Tucson. “How long have we been gone?”
“I don’t know.” Wind tugged at Ari’s hair. “If we’re lucky three, maybe four months?”
From above the hills the sun cast long shadows toward the bay. In Iceland the sun didn’t set in summer, either, not for long. “And if we’re not lucky?”
Ari jammed his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been trying not to think about that.”
Thorvald has been dead many years. Warm as I was, I shivered. Muninn said time was fluid in his cave. What did that mean? How long had Dad been waiting for me? I scowled and dug my sneaker into the sand. Dad could wait forever, for all that I cared.
A gull flew low over the water. Behind it I saw two smaller birds, white-and-black arctic terns. If it wasn’t summer, shouldn’t they have migrated south? All three birds quickly flew on. “Do you know that ever since I met Hallgerd, all I dream about is fire?” I looked at the water, not Ari, as I spoke. “And about going up in flames?”
“So you want to cast a spell that could speed things along? No offense, Haley, but that doesn’t seem very
smart.”
The worst part of the dream hadn’t been the burning, though. It had been knowing that when I fell to earth, the world would burn with me. Svan’s spell might take care of Hallgerd’s fire, but what about mine?
Ari shook his hair out of his eyes. “We could bring the coin to Hlidarendi with my mom, like she wanted. We don’t have to destroy it.”
“No!” My voice came out too loud. I didn’t want to even look at Katrin again.
“Haley. I’m angry with them, too, and believe me, I know all about doing stupid things because you’re angry. But this—”
“You were right to tell me about my dad and your mom. That wasn’t stupid.”
“Oh yeah, because if I hadn’t told you, you might never have run and climbed the rocks and fallen. I was so right to make that happen. To get us into this mess.”
“You didn’t make this mess. She did.” Not Katrin. Hallgerd. Ari’s mom and my dad had made it worse, though.
Ari kicked the damp sand. “I’d just like to see us both get out of it alive. Call me selfish, but I’d rather not have to explain to your father that Hallgerd’s spell consumed you, too.”
“About time this spell hurt someone besides me.”
“Haley!” Ari’s jaw fell open. It was several heartbeats before he spoke. “You don’t mean that.”
My stomach clenched. Why did I still care how Dad felt?
“Your dad was a wreck when your mom disappeared. You know that, don’t you?”
The awful thing was, I did know. I’d seen how lost Dad looked when he came off that plane last summer—how lost he’d looked all this past year. “Why’d he mess around, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why the hell did he talk about getting a divorce?”
“I don’t know. Maybe your dad and my mom both just screwed up. Maybe that’s how people are.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“I know.” Ari reached for my hand. I drew mine away. He muttered something that might have been “sorry”—about Dad or about holding my hand, I couldn’t tell. “Svan’s part of the same saga as Hallgerd, you know. We study Njal’s Saga next year in school, but of course Mom made me read it early. The sorcerer caused all sorts of trouble. It’s not like he can be trusted.”