I settle into a chair next to her and resist the urge to grab a pillow of my own. Instead, I cross my legs, fix the lace on my boot. Issie lets go of the pillow and starts trying to fix her own boots. She’s no good at shoe tying. Sad fact, but true.
“Let me help you,” I say, reaching down and taking over. I pause to check out the two people standing at the front door talking in Icelandic. They are tall and happy looking with blondish hair. The man has his arm around the woman’s waist. Issie looks over at them and sighs.
“You miss Devyn?” I ask.
She nods and wiggles her foot. “But I’m glad I’m here.”
“Yeah?”
“Very yeah.” She laughs. “It’s nice to not have to worry about you dying all the time without me. And I miss Devyn but you know … Guys or men or boys or whatever you want to call them are important but girl friends are just as or even more, you know?”
She smiles at me, revealing her tiny white teeth, and her eyes crinkle at the corners.
“I know,” I say, smiling back. “We haven’t had enough time together.”
“Too busy killing off baddies, saving rotten boyfriends, and trying to stop the apocalypse,” she quips. “It’s hard to get in enough us time.”
“So true.” She kisses the side of my head as I say it and I can’t help blurting, “You are the best friend ever, Issie.”
“Ha! You are.”
While we wait for Astley and Nick to finish talking to the Icelandic couple who run the snowcat, I think about stuff.
There are certain things that have to happen in order for the world to end. This is according to Devyn, who has had the dreadful task of trying to collate and make sense of all the different Norse mythology we’ve found in books and online. The problem with all the research is that it doesn’t all correspond. Myths contradict each other. But there are a few things that he thinks are right.
1. Loki has to be free.
2. There will be three winters without a summer, which we totally haven’t had, which is nice. Although Devyn thinks this might only be a metaphor. Devyn is a pessimist.
3. There will be huge battles around the globe, which is no abnormal thing. When have people ever not had huge battles? It makes me sad.
4. There will be natural disasters. This is always happening too, unfortunately.
5. A giant wolf, freed from his bonds, will swallow the sun and then his brother, the moon. I worry that this “sun” refers to my biological father, since Fenrir swallowed him. I mean, he is a son of someone.
6. This huge serpent, Jörmungandr, will break through land and the sea will collapse into the land.
7. A ship made of human nails will set sail.
8. The sky will break into two.
So all in all, it’s almost positive. That’s what I tell everyone now that the snowcat people are gone and we’re grouped together again.
“I mean, none of that has happened except for Fenrir being free, but he’s hardly eaten the moon,” I say to Issie and Astley as we walk through the snow toward an equipment cottage where there’s some cross-country skis for us to use. Amelie said it’s impossible to get where we want without them. The snowcat people gave Astley directions to get them and they are going to come back tomorrow to bring us and our skis up the mountain because we’ve already used up so much daylight.
“It makes it all seem a little less dire, doesn’t it?” Issie asks as we all trundle across the uneven earth toward the green equipment hut.
Astley ushers us to the door as Issie continues, “I mean, it would be if giants hadn’t shown up, if that Hel woman hadn’t told Zara she was being tested, if the prophecy didn’t say that it was Zara who would stop or start it. I’d call that dire.”
I resist the urge to say, “Way to think positive,” and instead hold my breath as Astley says, “Actually in Old Norse, ‘Ragnarok’ is a compound of two different words. Ragna is the genitive plural of regin, which means ‘gods’ or ‘ruling powers.’”
“Fascinating,” I tease, but it actually kind of is.
Astley keeps going on. “The second part of the term, rok, has a multitude of meanings, including ‘development, origin, cause, relation, fate, end.’ This opens it up for interpretation, obviously.”
Issie jumps up in the snow. “He sounds like a Vulcan.”
We’re all standing outside this big metal door that says something in Icelandic and then EQUIPMENT in English.
Astley keeps talking. “However, in the Poetic Edda, a different form twice appears, ragnarök(k)r. Rök(k)r means ‘twilight.’ This makes one wonder, especially since it means ‘renewal of the divine powers.’”
I’ve been reaching for the door, but instead I stop and stare at him, trying to figure out the kernel of worry that’s suddenly lodged inside of my chest. “That would explain it, wouldn’t it?” I finally say, terribly slowly.
“Explain what?” Issie asks.
“Why some pixies want the end to happen,” I start.
Issie finishes for me. “It’s because they think it will make them more powerful, I bet. Or maybe they are sick of hiding who they are, living in a world full of iron.”
“Exactly.” Astley smiles at us all like he’s proud that we have brain cells. Then his expression switches to something deadly serious. “And they obviously do not care who dies or what destruction occurs. Just that they achieve their goal.”
“Sounds like typical pixie behavior to me,” Issie says, and then catches my eye and adds, “You guys excluded, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Astley echoes, bitterness soaking his voice. He grabs the door and pushes it open. The hut is dark, but he steps into it. I follow right behind him. I’m barely inside when the door slams shut behind me, and Issie’s clutching my arm as my pixie senses try to figure out what’s going on.
“Zara,” she whispers, “everything just got very dark and very creepy.”
And then it gets worse.
FBI INTERNAL MEMO
Among the missing: fifteen male juveniles, eight female juveniles. Local cattle have been mutilated. Evidence is scarce. —AGENT WIllis
Uttering an almost-swear, I flip around, grab the doorknob, and try to yank it back open. The air reeks of pixie and anger.
“Issie!” I have to protect her. My hand rushes along the wall, looking for a light switch. There must be a light switch. “Hold on, Issie!”
“It’s a trap,” Astley, aka Captain Obvious, sputters into the darkness.
As soon as he speaks, noises buzz through the air like arrows zipping toward us.
I scream his name, trying to warn him and at the same time trying to figure out what’s happening, which is pretty much impossible to do because it’s so ridiculously dark. I reach for my cell. If I can flip it open it’ll give us a little light, but before I can reach it, Astley slams his body over mine, covering it, protecting it with his own. And that’s when the arrows start hitting, one after another, after another. They slice through his parka and into his skin. I can hear the pain of it, feel it as he shudders from the impact. His body starts falling down, pulled by gravity onto the hard floor, which seems made of some kind of stone. Twisting around, I try to catch him, manage to wrap my arms around him a bit before the first arrow slams into my shoulder. Pain spirals out, but I’m so mad I can ignore it, so scared it seems like nothing. Then another hits, and another, and it’s like I haven’t slept in eight hundred years and I suddenly really, really need to sleep. They must have put something on the arrows, something to cause drowsiness. Just drowsiness, I hope, and not death. I don’t know … I just know the darkness is getting darker and my hands can’t find Astley … anymore … and I’m …
Gone.
It’s the smell of my own burning flesh that wakes me. It’s a nasty smell that can rouse you out of unconsciousness no matter how deep that unconsciousness is. My head is drooping and I’m staring at my feet, which are on a stone floor. There’s some sort of fluorescent lighting coming from above me giv
ing everything a yellowish ugly glow. Only one of my boots is still on. My left sock stretches red and woolly as I cautiously move my toes, trying to regain my orientation, trying to remember what happened. There’s an arrow sticking out of my shoulder. There’s another in my arm.
“She’s waking up already, how quick,” says someone with a high, bell-like voice. It sounds familiar. It sounds like Isla, Astley’s mother. Lovely.
Lifting my head so I can actually see the room confirms it. She’s over by the sprawled-out form of Astley. She’s yanking arrows out of him. He doesn’t move. He’s bloody, unconscious, but I can feel his breath as if it’s my own, so I know that he’s still alive, my king. Thank God. I try to calm my breath as I look at the metal door that slammed behind us.
Issie is over by the door, tied up, with duct tape over her mouth. Anger grows inside of me as I take in the rip in her coat sleeve, her big scared eyes, the dirt on her face. An arrow sticks out of the forearm of her puffy coat. It’s my responsibility to keep her safe, and here I am freaking stuck to a wall, groggy and captured.
I don’t like this.
Okay, that’s an understatement.
I am really hating this.
The rest of the room holds cross-country skiing equipment, big and white hotel towels, bins full of toiletries. It’s a supply building. They lured us into a supply building? Maybe the snowcat people who told Astley about the skis in here were paid off, which is horrible. How can people do this sort of thing for money? And now that the lights are on, I can see that there are three male pixies all dressed in wool sweaters. They crowd around Isla, putting chains on Astley. One more, a brooding ugly giant of a man, is closer to me.
Nick will be trying to get in here once we’ve been gone too long. He’ll try to bash down that door, but it looks pretty strong and who knows how long I’ve been out. He may have already given up. Amelie would think to go find a key. Maybe they’ll be here soon … that is, if they’re still alive. Swallowing hard, I promise myself that they have to still be alive if we are. It’s obvious that Isla wanted us for some reason—I just don’t know the reason yet.
Isla’s tiny, golden-haired self yanks one more arrow out of Astley and then she nods to her pixie henchmen, who drag him even farther away from me and a tiny bit closer to Issie. He doesn’t even grunt. His whole body is defenseless and still.
“You could at least put a towel under his head,” I say, nodding toward the mountains of them. “There are enough.”
She gives me her attention and melodramatically raises an eyebrow. “That’s very sweet, Zara.”
“What can I say?” I spunk back. “I’m a caregiver by nature.”
The larger of the pixie men grabs a thick white towel and shoves it underneath Astley’s head. The entire time he does this, Isla watches me. Occasionally her tongue darts out between her lips, which makes me think of a snake, or Jared Leto during a television interview. And while she watches me, I desperately try to come up with a plan. My cell phone is still in my pocket, which means nothing because there is no signal here. The only weapons I can see other than my own hands and feet are some cross-country skis and poles that hang from the walls. To get them, I’d have to get my wrists free in order to remove the ankle chains. Struggling against the binds, which are simple iron chains, sears my skin even more. Gasping from the pain, I try to think of another way. We should have taken extra anti-iron pills this morning. Our stupidity only makes me angrier and more desperate.
Why doesn’t Astley move?
Why doesn’t anyone come help us?
All sorts of horrible scenarios of what’s going to happen to Issie and Astley twist around in my head, which only serves to freak me out when I need to be calm, need to find a way out of this.
Isla wipes her hands on a towel, which she delicately folds back into a perfect square before depositing it on the floor. All that time she took making it perfect was wasted. It crumples and lies there flat and discarded, close to Astley, who still doesn’t move.
Move, I try to order him. Move.
His finger twitches, but that is all.
Issie shuffles an inch closer to him. She makes eyes at me.
Isla’s voice shifts my attention to her, which is good because I don’t want to give Issie away. “You expect me to kill you, don’t you? You think I followed you out here where there would be fewer witnesses?”
She steps on another towel as she flits closer to me. It slips a bit on the floor but she doesn’t lose her balance, just holds my gaze as I don’t answer her.
“I do not need to kill you,” she says, smiling.
Her breath smells of mint and basil. It is beautiful breath and she is a beautiful creature, but beauty doesn’t equal good and it certainly doesn’t equal sane.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asks. Her voice loses its lilt, so she’s losing patience with me. “I said that I do not need to kill you. Are you listening to me? You don’t seem to be paying attention.”
“I heard.” I swallow hard. My thoughts are scattering about like the towels.
“Well, would you like to know why?” she asks.
For a second I’m not sure if she’s asking if I want to know why my thoughts are so scattered, but then I realize that she’s asking whether I want to know why she won’t need to kill me. I force my voice to sound noncommittal and say, “Not really.”
Anger ripples off her, red and full of heat. I try to focus on Astley, give him some of my power somehow, the way he did to me when I fought Frank, the way I did when he was poisoned. If I can make him stronger, then maybe he can move, attack them from behind—
She interrupts my thoughts again. “The point is not to kill you but to make my son weak and to torture him in the process. The poison was a good attempt. But you are too strong together. So the question becomes, how do I make him weak if poison did not accomplish that goal? I take away his queen. I’ve done it before.” She smiles. “But that way was too easy … killing her like that. Instead, I have watched how his heart aches because he cannot attain you—not for real—because of your foolish pining for that wolf. Silly girl. It will be even harder for Astley’s fragile little emotions if you are not his kind. He will lose you a little more. Love is his weakness.”
Guilt pushes into my heart as she takes a fingernail and taps my chest. The tiny crescent of it hits just below my collarbone. She’s right. I hurt Astley constantly because I hadn’t loved him back the way he needed me to. And why? It’s Astley’s face I see now when I close my eyes. It’s Astley I hope for right now, right at this scary moment. Not Issie, not Nick or Amelie on the other side of the door somewhere. It’s Astley I worry about the most. Now that it’s too late, my feelings are suddenly, completely clear. I love Astley.
“Don’t you hurt him,” I say like I’m in a position to demand anything, tied to a wall, wrists sizzling.
She lifts an eyebrow as if to say I am too silly for words. And I have to admit that it’s nice she’s stopped talking, but then she starts again. And the eyebrow lifting is a little overdone, anyway, and …
She says, “Do you know what I shall do?”
“Talk me to death?”
“Snippy. Nice. You always are spunky, so unlike my son.” She spits out the word “son” as she trails her fingernail up to my chin and then grabs my face violently in her hand. “I shall make you human again.”
I stutter, trying to turn my head out of her grasp, but I’m weak. The pain from my wrists, the iron in my system, has made me vulnerable. “Human?”
“You did not know I could do that, did you?” She flings my head to the side as she lets go of me. My ear pounds against the wall. Pain spirals through my head and it makes it hard to focus, but I manage to keep listening, and she, of course, keeps talking. “Let me inform you of something, Zara of the White, Zara of the stars. I collect clocks because that is where people of our race have always hid our secrets. We hide papers, spells, inside the mechanisms of time. It’s fitting, I think, to
hide the secrets of the past inside the machines that count us into the future. Tick-tock.”
I slowly move my head back to look at her. She’s smiling. Her lipstick has smeared just the tiniest bit and left a dot of pink on one of her front teeth.
“And I just thought it was because you were crazy,” I sputter through the pain. “Maybe had some weird clock fetish.”
“Never underestimate the people you think are crazy. They are the ones who see things you fail to see.” She cocks her head and switches gears. “The point is that in one of those clocks I found out a secret. Any pixie can make a pixie if they kiss them with intent, but only queens can take a pixie and turn them back into a feeble nothing.”
“Back?” I don’t follow her.
“Back to human.”
I must stare at her blankly for a second, because she smiles and taps my cheek gently. “You’re in shock, dear. Close your mouth. You’re gaping. It is unattractive.”
“So …” I try to wrap my head around it. “You’re going to unpixie me?”
She reaches up a long, delicate arm and pets me on the head. “Exactly.”
I have a tiny and quick internal debate about whether or not I should ask her how this process happens, and as I do the wind rushes through a window that I hadn’t noticed, blowing dust from the outside and pieces of dead grass across the floor. A mouse scuttles in the wall, probably looking for a safe place to hide from the cold or maybe to hide from us.
“Won’t that keep me from starting the apocalypse?” I blurt.
She giggles. “So very stupid and so very wrong.”
Issie scoots even closer to Astley. The pixie henchmen ignore her. She’s human. She’s obviously not a threat and Astley is unconscious, so even if she somehow manages to free him, what difference will that make? Still, I love her for trying. I just want her to be careful.
Isla’s full focus is on me. A watch on her wrist ticks away seconds and then she asks, “Would you like to know what I have to do?”
I don’t answer.