Is this how Ragnarok would come, not as a massive war that pitted god against god but in the slow and quiet drain of resources and personnel?
Heimdall’s thoughts were spiraling. He was exhausted and couldn’t seem to keep his thoughts straight. But that also seemed to be part of the new reality. Not a single one of them was up to the challenge of filling the holes Odin and Frigga had left behind.
“If we’re going to have two houses, why not three?” Saga pinched off a piece of cinnamon bun and shoved it into her mouth. “If we’re assigning seats of power, my apartment should be on that list, too.”
Heimdall shrugged in acceptance, and the ensuing discussion was short. Until the next upheaval forced a decision, the Lodge would be the ceremonial homestead. Bonnie’s Portland house could serve as the stronghold for Thor’s weaponry. And Saga’s apartment would be, what? The place where they gathered to watch Netflix? It was a dangerous compromise, but Heimdall didn’t have the energy or mental capacity for further debate.
“What about Zach?” Sally asked. “You really think Frigga’s teas and some counseling from Freya is going to be enough?”
Heimdall felt a throbbing new pain behind his eyes. There was always another problem, one more thread that had to be woven in while threatening to unravel the entire tapestry. How had Odin done it?
“He’s no wielder of magick,” Loki said.
“Hasn’t been battle-tested, either,” Thor added. “But I’d wager the lad has seen just enough to land himself in a psychiatric hospital, and that’s not a fate I’d wish on any innocent.”
“So, ideas?” Heimdall pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Odin had managed with Frigga at his side, while Heimdall remained in a battle of wills with Maggie. But was he stuck? Maggie might always be trapped by lingering anger and resentment. Her mantle of power had come to her first by accident and then by forced bequeath. If she couldn’t heal that trauma, was Heimdall honor-bound to be Maggie’s partner even in the face of her contempt, or was there another solution that would be a greater mercy to them both?
“Let me try,” Rod offered, and for a startling few seconds Heimdall forgot they were talking about Sally’s boyfriend.
“I know something about being a regular guy caught up in the action and intrigue of all of the rest of you,” Rod continued. “It’s not easy, but it gets . . . better? Less hard. I’ll spend some time with Zach. Maybe there’s a role for him to play here, too.”
Heimdall nodded his appreciation. It wasn’t the first time Rod had stepped up to smooth the way for the Lodge, and Heimdall wondered what sacrifices he’d made in his personal life, forgoing would-be friends and lovers, to make that happen.
Maggie reappeared and put a plate of deviled eggs down on a low table with an irritated thunk, then stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “If we’re making changes around here, I want Opal as the Lodge Witch.”
Heimdall’s gaze went immediately to Sally. Maggie was making up titles now, just as Frigga had done when she installed Opal as the Assistant Rune Witch. He expected Sally to protest or at least look stricken. Instead, she kept quiet and sipped her coffee. She looked unsurprised and unimpressed.
Thor scooted to the edge of his seat. “Then I claim Sally and her services. She will be our household witch.”
Sally put down her coffee. Heimdall felt a twinge of sympathy when she got up and left the room without a word.
“Well, then who will be my witch?” Saga asked. “I should get my own witch, too, right? Because the only thing I’ve got going on at my apartment right now is a lot of furniture assembly. But the place is swanky. You should all come over for pizza.”
Maggie turned to Heimdall. Even with the houses split, it seemed he remained the arbiter for family bickering.
“We can’t all have our own witches, can we?” Maggie asked. “Or maybe they could get together and have a little rune coven? To share spells and stuff? Three heads are better than one.”
“Mortals with magick are not our servants,” Heimdall said. “We owe it to them to let them make their own choices.”
Heimdall heard Sally open the front door and close it behind her. The Rune Witch would follow her own path, regardless of what anyone else wanted for or from her.
Sally stood on the front porch of the Lodge and listened to the sounds of the forest at night. Samhain was over. Winter Nights, too. Halloween was gone for another year. It would be a long time before she forgot this particular turning.
The black sky was clear and full of twinkling stars. The rain clouds had moved off and wisps of white skirted low along the horizon. Sally felt the stinging prick of tears and had to wonder why she was starting to cry.
It had been months since her misadventure in the woods, but so much had changed since then. The Lodge was spread across two households—or maybe it would be three now. Freyr was gone, possibly for good, and Freya would be absent a good while longer. Sally was nearly halfway through college and no longer under her parents’ roof.
She wiped at the tears that rolled down her cheeks and chilled her skin. Odin and Frigga were never coming back. Loki had crafted his spell for their return, but hadn’t she been hoping for the same thing? The question remained about how they’d gotten to Valhalla without one of the Valkyries escorting them in a dream, but Hel herself had confirmed their final destination.
That was a problem for another time. Sally had had quite enough of the underworld for this or any other lifetime. But she got the feeling that her walking between worlds was only beginning.
Sally reached into her pocket and felt the silver and enamel beads of Frigga’s bracelet. It was all she had left of the goddess who had ruled the hearth and taken charge of the Rune Witch’s early training. She’d have to ask for Rod’s help to repair the clasp. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day.
She descended the wide staircase and leapt over the broken steps at the bottom. She turned toward the grassy slope that pitched steeply downward to the Yggdrasil.
She wanted to see for herself what damage the draugar had done to the World Tree and if there was anything she could do about it. Freya would know best, but she wouldn’t arrive until some time after dawn. The immortal members of the Lodge were dropping like flies, and Sally was learning to act on her own without looking for or even expecting guidance. She wondered what it would feel like to finally be out from under anyone’s protection or authority. To be out from under Loki’s shadow.
Mostly, though, she headed toward the Tree for some time alone with her thoughts, far away from the squabbling by the hearth.
She made it barely ten yards from the Lodge before someone called her back.
“Sally!” Maggie appeared on the porch. She motioned toward Sally with one hand and held a bulging pouch in the other. She came down the broken staircase and thrust the bag into Sally’s hands. “Here.”
The contents of the leather pouch shifted in Sally’s palms. She knew without asking what lay inside. These were the Yggdrasil Runes, created from the wood of the living World Tree and carved with intention and purpose by Freya. They had been first gifted to Sally after the Battle of the White Oak Yggdrasil, but then taken back for safekeeping after Sally secreted herself to Norway and later conducted additional experiments with Køjer Devil scales at home.
“She kept them for you.” Maggie’s voice was flat, and it took visible effort for her to meet Sally’s gaze. “She always intended to give them back to you, once your magick was more fully developed.”
There was no way for Maggie to gauge whether or not Sally was ready for the responsibility that had just been placed in her hands. Sally felt the rounds of wood slide against one another inside the pouch. The runes crackled with power.
“You want them out of your house,” Sally said. Her voice was raw in her throat. Frigga’s teas had helped to heal the injuries she’d sustained in Helheim, but it still hurt to speak, and even to breathe.
“I don’t dislike you, Sally.”
&nb
sp; “But you don’t like what I am.” At this point, Sally knew there was no separating the two, and at least for tonight she didn’t take it personally.
Maggie gave her a sharp nod. “I need to protect my home, and my family.”
Sally was part of that family, too, and she wanted to argue the point. Maggie might be a goddess, but she hadn’t invested the years of study and practice the way Sally had. Maggie hadn’t put herself on the line as often or as severely, all for the protection of the same Lodge, its members, and the world and realms beyond.
But Sally held her tongue.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry for the way I’ve treated you,” Maggie said. “I could’ve handled things better. I’m trying hard for some kind of normalcy in the midst of upheaval. Whatever normal even means anymore.”
Maggie attempted a laugh, but Sally understood her deeper meaning. Maggie would not encourage chaos, even if that same chaos was the crux of the Lodge itself. She was setting herself up for all kinds of heartache.
Sally bounced the bag of runes in her hands and adopted a gracious smile. Maybe Maggie deserved better, or maybe she didn’t. Sally wouldn’t be her judge.
“Thanks.” Sally turned and headed toward the Tree.
She swung the bag by its leather cord as she walked. She listened to the shuffling of the wood pieces inside. She felt the weight and magick of the runes as the bag thumped against her leg with every other step.
Her gait slowed as she approached the White Oak Yggdrasil. There, in the shadows of the massive branches, Loki waited for her. Sally almost turned and headed back to the Lodge.
How had he gotten to the Tree before her? He’d been resting by the fire when she’d left the hearth, but then she’d been waylaid by Maggie. Still, that was awfully fast for someone who looked so depleted, and Sally knew his appearance wasn’t a deception.
And Loki was the very last person Sally wanted to encounter alone.
“You are owed an explanation,” he said by way of greeting. He motioned for her to come beneath the great Tree’s branches and stand with him by the thick and sturdy trunk, but she stood her ground. So Loki came to her.
She bristled at his approach. She bore him no true animosity, but he had a long habit of springing large and unpleasant surprises.
“You shouldn’t indulge or be allowed the time and space to become anxious or to overthink any impending disaster,” he said.
Sally didn’t think Loki was actually reading her thoughts, but he had an uncanny ability to answer whatever question was on her mind.
“Or to trouble yourself over any distant potentiality, either,” Loki continued.
Sally smirked. “I thought you were all about the longer game. The bigger picture.”
“To do this work, to truly be who you are, you must be wholly present in the moment,” he replied. He acknowledged her bag of runes with a dip of his chin. “Clear in focus. Clear in intention and purpose. Absent of worry.”
He explained how his lessons were teaching her to act calmly in the midst of crisis. He told her what great strides she’d made in keeping her wits about her and trusting her own cleverness. A part of her wanted to punch him in the nose again for everything he’d put her and everyone else through—not just these past few days, but over the length of her acquaintance with him. But she also understood the value and wisdom of his tutelage.
“So I can be prepared for anything and everything,” she said. “And not be hampered or prejudiced by anticipation and fear.”
“I know you see what is happening to me,” he replied. “Even if the others try to ignore what is plain before their eyes.”
“You’re dying, Loki.” Sally’s voice caught. She took a moment to compose herself and lifted her chin. “And I’m the cause of it.”
“No! No, never.” He reached for her free hand and squeezed her fingers. “My days have always been numbered. It’s the same for all of us. There is no true immortality, just a rather long delay of the inevitable.”
“But you’re still dying.”
He nodded and released her hand. “Declining at an accelerated rate, I’m afraid. Which is why I’ve had to work you so hard and so quickly. And there is still so much left to explore, and so little time.”
Loki looked into the sky. Sally watched as his gaze flitted from one star pattern to the next. He breathed easily and looked almost serene.
“Sally, you must ready yourself for what’s coming.” His face tightened. “I’m afraid I’ve made a tangled knot of it, trying to guide you into knowing and understanding this power before I fade completely from this world.”
As far as apologies were concerned, this was a weak one. But Loki wasn’t actually apologizing to her. He was asking her to make an even deeper commitment. As if she had any real choice.
She thought about Zach and all of the questions he’d have for her once the initial shock of his experience wore off and the gravity of this new reality pressed down on him. Could he still be her boyfriend? More likely, he’d want to get as far away from her as possible.
She’d been foolish to daydream about having a normal boyfriend or a normal college experience. Or a normal life.
The weight of the leather pouch tugged her fingers downward. The magick of the runes sang to her and tickled her skin with electric sparks that excited instead of stung.
Sally had defeated Hel in her own hall. Thor helped, and Loki was there, too. But Sally stood up to the desperate goddess on her own, and her magick had worked. Her magick didn’t backfire, and for the time being it didn’t appear to be having any unintended consequences.
She offered Loki a smile and felt a pang at the relief she saw in his face.
“I am the Chaos Witch,” she said to the great World Tree and to the stars overhead. And I am more powerful than Loki.
Wait!
Before you go . . .
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In the meantime, turn the page for a preview of Twilight Magic, volume 6 and last book in the Rune Witch series, coming summer 2018.
PREVIEW: Twilight Magic
Rune Witch, Volume 6
Sally stood in front of the bark-covered corpse and checked her watch. It was just past midnight. A light, pleasantly cold sprinkling of rain gave the air a misty quality. The Rune Witch breathed in and gazed up at the ruin of what had been the mighty Sitka Spruce.
The Klootchy Creek Giant. The Old Yggdrasil.
Few people came to see the massive stump anymore, even though the base was still as big around as a bus and towered over the surrounding shrubs and crumbling parking lot like a jagged and not-quite-abandoned haunted house. As far as Sally knew, the only ones who continued to make the occasional pilgrimage to this site were Freya and, even less frequently, Heimdall. They had their own reasons for their visits. Maybe it was sentimentality after centuries of guarding the living World Tree, only to watch it wither and die and spring up anew as it had so many times in the long history of Odin’s Lodge.
Sally felt a painful tug at her heart. It wasn’t Odin’s Lodge anymore, and hadn’t been for almost two years. The one-eyed god rested in Valhalla now. With Bragi. Iduna. Maybe Geirrod. Even Frigga.
She wasn’t quite sure about the status of Freyr, the new lava god of Mt. Bachelor. Was he happy? Was he lonely? Was he actually alive?
Sally pushed the thought out of her mind. She hadn’t come all this way to dwell on the past, though she had to admit that visiting the lifeless shell of the old Yggdrasil in the middle of the night was an odd way to go about feeling her way along this new, darker path that stretched out before her.
“I am the Rune Witch,” Sally whispered to the ragged silhoue
tte that loomed over her. “I am the Chaos Witch, and I have come for . . .”
She’d come for what, exactly? Answers? She wasn’t even sure what questions to ask. She’d come for a connection to the past and an anchor point to provide stability as she tried to navigate this new reality. The White Oak Yggdrasil was stronger and had the benefit of being an actual living Tree, but it was firmly rooted on Lodge property in Pierce Forest. Heading out there was a longer trek from Portland, and it meant the inevitability of dealing with the Lodge inhabitants. Heimdall and Rod were okay, but Maggie was still insufferable. And Sally already had enough stress in her life without going where she was clearly unwanted.
So she started making her dark moon treks to the old Yggdrasil. There was still magick in its old bones. She wasn’t sure why she’d never come here before the trouble in Norway and Ireland or the mayhem in the Three Sisters Wilderness and then in Helheim. As the magickal human helpmate of the Norse pantheon, it would have been natural for her to at least pay her respects to the last incarnation of the World Tree, even as the new Yggdrasil grew tall and strong.
But even with all of her training in spellwork and divination with Frigga and Freya, no one had thought to bring her here. So Sally had finally brought herself.
Sally’s boots crunched on loose bits of gravel in the grass and dirt path that led to what remained of the old Yggdrasil. Now surrounded by an overgrown thicket, the ancient Tree had been ravaged by winds in its final months before succumbing at last to the elements and old age. Then the work crews had bitten into the sacred bark with their tools, trying to make the towering stump safe for human visitors again. Finally, Managarm—cursed Moon Dog—had performed his own surgery on the Tree.
Chaos Magic (Rune Witch Book 5) Page 23
