Norman stood from his seat. He put a hand to his forehead to rub at its creases. “If so, it’s not as if it hasn’t happened before.”
chapter sixty-one
Ring of Fire
Freddie was in New Haven to deliver the news to Hilly. She met him outside on the steps of the entrance to the freshman-sophomore dorm, a Gothic building that appropriately resembled a castle with its crenellated parapet and four round corner towers—a replica of the famous ring of fire.
His memory had returned and he remembered now the years of longing for Brünnhilde in other incarnations. It was patchy, but he recalled the two other primary suitors, Sigurðr and Gunnar, who attempted to cross the ring of fire in order to wake her from a spell of perpetual sleep. Gunnar, through magic and trickery, had been the one to eventually win her hand, and that marriage had ended messily with a series of wars among the gods. Freddie hoped this time he might succeed in claiming her hand—somehow!—although he feared he had already lost his chance yet again.
The campus lampposts were illuminated, casting a soft light on the lawns around the dorms, still green in early December, scattered with fallen orange and parchment-colored leaves that drifted about. Freddie and Hilly sat on the steps, forehead to forehead, their faces sluiced.
Freddie cupped the crown of Hilly’s head with his palm. “I can still touch you as long as I have not executed clauses (i), (ii), and (iii). A loophole. The contract states nothing about what I can or can’t do before that,” said Freddie, placing his hand on her cheek.
“I’m sorry, Freddie, but Dad must have his reasons. I told you he’s old-fashioned.” She sighed.
Freddie had nothing to say to that. He’d been hoodwinked by Henry Liman, his bastard future father-in-law, and now he had lost the love of his life. A girl rode by on a bike, along the dimly lit path. She rang the bell on her handlebars, which made a cheery sound that made Freddie feel even more dejected and miserable. She stopped and walked the bike over to them.
Hilly looked up.
The girl gave a nonchalant smile, barely registering the fact that Hilly was distressed and crying it seemed. How cold, thought Freddie.
“So,” said the perky girl. “You meeting with us later, Hilly? You better! We have that important matter of business to attend to.” She opened her coat and flashed a gray ΚΚΓ (Kappa Kappa Gamma) sweatshirt underneath it. The university did not officially recognize the Panhellenic systems; they were not allowed to convene openly or set up residency on campus, but such sororities were still alive and well, enrolling around 15 percent of the undergrad student body.
The girl quickly closed her coat and gave Freddie the once-over, lifting her eyebrows at Hilly. Freddie wasn’t sure what this meant. Did she approve and find him handsome enough for Hilly? Was that what she was getting at?
Hilly smiled at her sorority sister. “Absolutely, of course I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it!” They said good-bye, promising to see each other in an hour with the other sisters, and then Hilly apologized to Freddie for the interruption.
“Campus life!” She took his forlorn face in her hands and stared at it. “I want you to know that I’ll always love you, Freddie,” she whispered, “if that’s any consolation.”
He pulled away, feeling frustrated at her passivity. For a warrior goddess she had no fight in her. He sat down and put his head in his arms. Hilly rubbed his back, making a circle with her palm, which irritated him. The gesture seemed somewhat flippant. She just didn’t seem to care that much. He could hear her sigh as if she were antsy to get back to the dorm and be done with it all so she could make her silly sorority meeting—be done with Freddie’s impromptu visit, his failure, his inability to snip her out of her chain mail armor. Perhaps she was just a cold shield maiden at heart. No one ever really changed.
“Listen,” she said. “Gert really isn’t that bad. She goes to school here, too, you know?” He did know that; Liman had mentioned it. He couldn’t even remember what Gert looked like—horsy? With that braying laugh?
Hilly was still talking. “Why don’t you let me text her, and you two can get to know each other. I really have a lot of homework to do and that meeting.”
Freddie wiped his nose. He was irked that she was so ready to pawn him off on Gert—he felt pathetic—and he could already hear Hilly texting her sister even though he hadn’t given her the go-ahead.
Fine, he would meet Gert. He had nothing else to say to Hilly. He didn’t know what he had expected. He’d thought that when she found out the news they would agree on a plan to sidestep the contract, to run away and elope together, something dramatic. Not this pitiless farewell. Had Hilly ever cared for him at all? He was beginning to doubt it. He glanced at her direction. She looked bored.
“There she is,” Hilly said, sounding relieved.
Freddie saw a tall girl sauntering toward them, books clasped to her chest. Her liquid-smooth hair, shining like the sun in the dusky light, fell to her hips, which swayed as she walked. Gert was all woman, voluptuous but solidly athletic. She came straight at them and placed a foot on the steps.
“What’s up, you two?” she asked.
Freddie couldn’t take his reddened eyes off her and felt as if he had just been rescued from a ring of fire, awoken from a deep slumber himself. Why hadn’t he noticed how beautiful Gert was when he’d first met her? Had someone put a spell on him? Had Hilly? Had Mr. Liman? Gert was lovely and solid, and all he could imagine now was a wrestling ring, a match, every bit of fight coming out of both of them, giving way to a thousand gentle caresses and kisses to heal their bruises. It must have been Brünnhilde’s magic that had stopped him from seeing Gert as she really was.
Hilly flipped her hair onto a shoulder. “Dad pulled a little switcheroo on Freddie, so now instead of marrying me, you two are getting hitched. You’ve got a month to work out the details.”
Gert crossed her arms and smirked. “Huh, did he now.” She looked at Freddie up and down. “I guess you’ll do.” She smiled.
Freddie rose to his feet and stretched. He did feel better. It wasn’t Ragnarok. His eyes alighted on Gert’s behind, substantial and shapely, which made him smile. Gert was perhaps slightly older than him—but maybe this was best. He was kind of done with fickle girls. “So will you.” He grinned.
Hilly glared at Freddie, glared at that grin. “But I know you’ll carry a torch for me forever …”
Neither Freddie nor Gert heard her. They were already walking away down the path, chatting, as Hilly swung around on her heels and quickly climbed the stairs, tossing her hair onto the other shoulder.
Freddie took Gert’s books from her and carried them. “So what are you studying here?” he asked.
“Marine biology,” said Gert.
“Really?” said Freddie. “Do you scuba dive?”
Laughter flowed out of Gert like water, bubbly and light. “I’ve worked for my asshole dad just so I can sail somewhere and put on a wetsuit.”
“I think I want to move to the Caribbean,” Freddie said.
She gave him a sidelong glance, then timidly replied, “Me, too!”
Freddie stopped in his tracks. Gert stopped. They faced each other. “I have a secret I’ve never told anyone, not even Hilly, but for some reason I want to tell you. Promise not to tell?”
“Sure.” She shrugged.
He could see Gert better now, the light shining on her from a lamppost. Her mouth looked so kissable, cushiony, and soft. She resembled a mermaid on the prow of a ship. He bit his lip, staring into her eyes, and for a moment couldn’t speak. He saw their color, a deep mesmerizing marine blue, and there was something so pure and guileless about them, not deceptive at all—the latter a quality that seemed to run in the Liman family. He felt comfortable with Gert, as if he could tell her anything, right off the bat. The more he stared at her, the more smitten Freddie became. Perhaps he wasn’t meant for Brünnhilde after all.
“In my pocket,” he told her, “I carry a ship. It can be un
folded and placed on the sea, and with it, we can sail anywhere.”
Gert danced on the path. She twirled around and looked at him full of wonder and surprise. “Really?” she said. “That’s about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard!”
chapter sixty-two
Flight of the Valkyries
Ingrid arrived at the house with Matt and the pixies, who were a little nauseated from being turned into frogs. She found the family gathered in the living room, told them what had happened, and was brought up to speed.
“It’s him,” Freya said. “Of course. It has to be.”
“What do you mean? Who’s ‘him’?” Ingrid asked.
“What Anne said earlier … that Loki was only biding his time. Loki can move between the worlds. He took the power of the Bofrir for himself; he was the one who destroyed the bridge all along, then pretended to discover its destruction with Freddie. He was the one who stole Freddie’s trident. He must have intended for Freddie to take all the blame, but something happened …” She looked at Killian. “Maybe it was because you were there. You stopped him somehow.”
“I remember it now—just a little bit,” Killian said. “I tried to change the timeline, to bring back the bridge, but I couldn’t … But I had enough power to hold him until the Valkyries came. I’m sorry I couldn’t save Freddie, though.”
“Loki? Skinny fellow? That rings a bell,” Val said.
“Loki! That’s right! He the one who made us steal the pretty pitchfork and place it at the Bofrir!” Kelda said.
“We told you he was an ass.” Sven smirked.
Freya nodded. Like Killian back in Asgard, she had been able to hold Loki for a while: as her lover Loki had been temporarily put under her spell, but he was too powerful for her spell to hold. While Odin’s ring had made it easier for him to navigate through the universe, he did not need it to achieve his goal. Even if Freya had ordered him to destroy it while he was under her command, it had only succeeded in slowing him down, not stopping him.
“His power is growing,” Freya said. “And ours are fading.” It was as Jean-Baptiste, the god of memory, had told her—by sending the bridge into the abyss, Loki had weakened the powers of the gods, hoarding them all to himself. After the Restriction was lifted, there was a tremendous surge of magic from the Beauchamps. They had held their magic in check for so long, they had stored up a reserve, but now the well was about to go dry. She had felt her magical powers diminishing for a while—more than one customer claiming that her potions were bland and flavorless. Soon they would all be running on empty. She could especially see it in Killian’s drawn face, how he had become weaker after the time shifts, how his nose had bled.
“Freya’s right.” Ingrid nodded. “The transformation wiped me out,” she said. “I almost couldn’t turn the pixies back to their real form.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Sven muttered.
Anne spoke again. “Loki wanted Fryr and Balder to be forever at war. He was jealous of their friendship, and it was not only the Bofrir that he wanted to destroy that day. He is a serpent in our midst, nibbling at the roots of the Tree of Life, seeding doubt like a poisonous snake.”
“He must have put the trident on the Dragon,” Killian said.
“Of course—so that you would have the mark.” Freya nodded. “And Freddie would be convinced of your guilt.” She shook her head. “What I don’t understand is that I turned the Dragon upside down and never found the trident. Freddie told me it would be there.”
“It wasn’t,” said Killian. “I was wondering what you were searching for, so I searched myself—after you tore my boat apart.”
“Of course it was not there.” Sven smiled. “I remember now. We took it. Loki made us do it. Then he sent us to Midgard to steal it again.”
“So that was you guys!” Freya said. “I heard you!” She remembered waking up one night on the Dragon. She had sensed a presence on the boat, an intruder.
“There was just one problem,” Irdick said. “We dropped it.”
“Into the sea … and it disappeared. We all jumped into the water but couldn’t find it,” Kelda said. “We have no idea where it is.”
Killian pushed himself off the mantel of the fireplace. “We’ve got a lot to do, and I don’t know if I have enough in me to do it, but we need to get Anne back to her rightful time. Maybe if we do it together, it will help push her through the passages.”
Joanna pulled her hair back. She was concerned about her fylgja. Anne had done so much for them. “We need to send her back before this whole witch-hunt began, before Loki even caught sight of her. We’ll give you gold, Anne, and you and John can get away, start a new life somewhere safe, far away from the Isle of Wight. You’ll have your time with him.”
Anne looked up at her, a smile on her lips, the fire’s soft light flickering on her face. “It would be lovely to start again with John …”
They walked to a spot on the beach near where John Barklay’s house had been and formed a circle around Anne and helped her into the portal. After the fylgja—the goddess of present, Verðandi, the healer of the Tree of Life—vanished into the passages, they collapsed in the sand. Freya woke and saw Norman and Joanna coming to, but Killian was still out. She had no idea how long they had been passed out on the beach. It was cold and damp.
She dragged herself to Killian and took him by the shoulders. “Wake up, darling! Please!” She shook him and his head rolled. His eyes wouldn’t open.
Freya’s parents rushed over. Norman felt for Killian’s pulse. “It’s slow,” he said.
“Do something, Mother!” Freya pleaded.
Joanna had begun to rub Killian’s body to warm him, as she said an incantation, and they all frantically did the same.
“We need to get him back to the house,” said Norman.
They began to lift Killian’s limp body, Norman swinging an arm over his shoulder, Freya doing the same at her lover’s other side, as Joanna strained to pull him up.
“Stop right there!” came a voice. They were surrounded by several tall strongly built young women, each wearing a gray ΚΚΓ sweatshirt. One of them looked slightly familiar to Freya, and she wondered where she had seen her before, then she realized. It was Hilly Liman.
Brünnhilde was a Valkyrie, and so were the rest of her sorority sisters.
“We’re here to take him to Limbo,” Hilly said, pointing at Killian. “He bears the mark of the trident. He destroyed the Bofrir. He will be held in Limbo for eternity.”
“No!” Freya yelled, but she was pushed back as if by an invisible force and thrown to the ground.
“You have no right!” Ingrid said. “He deserves a trial. The White Council shall know of this.”
“The White Council is the one who ordered us here,” Hilly said with a smug smile.
“Where’s Freddie?” yelled Joanna.
“Who cares?” said Hilly. “That son of yours is a total dweeb. He’ll never, ever have me. He didn’t even make it into the tales of my last rescue from the ring of fire.”
Joanna was helping poor Killian stand upright, but it was all she could do not to run straight at the girl and rip out her eyes.
Freya crawled over to Killian and clung to him with all the force she had left in her as the Valkyries began to pry him away from her grasp. She was dragged in the sand, holding on to him, screaming at them to leave her and Killian alone, as they pulled at his near-lifeless body, her parents and Ingrid running after them.
Soon Freya was alone, weeping and howling at the sky where they had swept Killian away. She collapsed into her mother’s arms as she gestured to the sky, like an infant trying to grab at something slightly out of reach, as if she could still get a hold of her darling who had been violently torn away from her.
chapter sixty-three
Pocketful of Dreams
Norman paced the living room in the large colonial house. The whole family was present, including Matt Noble, who was comforting Ingrid. The pixies tried
to make themselves useful, offering drinks and food. Freya was pacing furiously. She was no longer heartbroken. She was furious. “What can we do? We’ve got to get him back. He’s innocent. When I get my hands on those girls, I’m going to—”
The knock on the door interrupted her sentence.
“I’ll get it,” Matt said helpfully.
Freddie walked in with a tall blond girl who had a sensible air about her. “Hey, guys, what’s up? This is Gert. Gert, this is everyone.”
“Freddie! Thank gods! You’re all right!” Joanna said, rushing to embrace her boy.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” he asked, looking around.
They told him. Killian had been sentenced to Limbo, but there was no guarantee he had survived the trip, while the Beauchamps were teetering at the edge of their own abyss, their powers fading—their line threatened to extinction.
“There is only one way we can help Killian and end all this,” Ingrid said. “We need to find Loki. He’s out there somewhere; we need to find him and bring him to justice once and for all.”
“The trident—if we can find the trident, it will lead us to the bastard,” Freddie said.
“The pixies said they lost it in the sea, but if they weren’t able to find it, then it must have slipped into something else … like a black hole,” Freya suggested.
“Or something else,” Ingrid said. She began brainstorming, making associations. She looked to her father. “What makes one forget?”
“Well, there’s Lethe, the river in Hades in Greek mythology, which causes its drinkers to forget the past,” Norman said.
“Yes!” said Ingrid, again recalling her dream in the library. It held a portent that made everything appear to coalesce for her. “Water. The silence of forgetfulness. That’s why the pixies forgot everything: they drank from the silence!”
Joanna began reciting the Thomas Hood poem: “There is a silence where hath been no sound / There is a silence where no sound may be / In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea.”