“I did no handling of the sort. I was quite young at the time,” Anya said to Rina. “Mum, however, ruled him and the boys with an iron fist. I remember Da complaining of how his head ached after a night of drinking and her freezing his hair to his head.”
I shuddered, remembering when Anya had almost frozen me to death. It had been an accident, and I had fully recovered, but it was a horrible experience. “Did he get frozen often?”
“Not often enough to teach him a lesson,” Anya replied. “And Mum never froze any of my brothers. Instead she would lay smooth ice onto the floor and watch their drunk arses slide all over the place.”
Rina laughed. “I might need you to do that once Faith’s a teenager.”
AFTER WE FINISHED BREAKFAST, Rina portaled herself, Faith, and me from the Winter Palace’s dining room to a forest filled with tall, slender evergreens. The air was humid but not uncomfortable, and the ground was thick with ferns and mosses, and a gentle fog lent the scene just the right amount of spooky. Golden sunlight slanted down through the branches, making the forest seem more otherworldly than any part of Elphame I’d ever seen.
“I thought it would be colder.”
“This region’s technically a temperate rainforest,” Rina replied. I took that to mean the weather in this area tended toward warm and moist, and left it at that. I could have asked for clarification, but knowing Rina that would have started a two-hour lecture on dendrology and microclimates.
“Which way is Yggsdrasil?” I asked, since all I saw were trees in all directions.
Rina cocked her head to the side, then pointed to her right. “That way, maybe a quarter of a kilometer. East, I think?”
I turned my face upward. The canopy was too dense for me to know where the sun was. “Why didn’t you portal us directly to the tree?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know if the Norns like surprises, and I’d rather not find out the hard way.”
“Can they still be surprised if they can see the future?”
“Maybe. Who knows.”
We set off through the eerily quiet forest, Rina leading the way. Throughout it all Faith slept in her carrier, and I didn’t know if that was for best, or of something was keeping her asleep. Images of the Pied Piper rose in the back of my head.
“Are you sure it’s okay for Faith to be here?”
“If anything goes sideways I’ll portal us away in a hot second.” She smiled over her shoulder, and added, “You, too.”
A bird screeched overhead. “Thanks.” I heard a flapping sound, but I couldn’t see the bird, if it even was a bird I was hearing and not a product of my overactive imagination. “Is that bird supposed to be following us?”
Rina held up Mom’s cane as if it was a sword. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from the mean forest creatures.”
“What if they’re guarding the tree?” I asked. “What if their purpose is to stop us, or trick us, or—”
I stopped talking. Rina was laughing so hard she couldn’t hear me, anyway.
The trees thinned out, and I could finally see the bird circling above the branches. It seemed to be an eagle, though at that distance I couldn’t be sure. At least it wasn’t a vulture. The ferns and other plants thinned out, too, and the ground became uneven. I looked down and realized we were no longer walking across the pine needle-carpeted forest floor. Instead, we were on top of a vast network of tree roots.
Rina paused, then said over her shoulder, “We’re almost there.”
“How do you know?”
“Whenever I decide to portal to a location, I can sense where it is. It’s like I have built in GPS.”
She had never mentioned that before. “Have you always been able to do that?”
“No. This walker gig is constantly changing the rules.”
The roots swelled in size, getting wider and more robust until Rina and I could walk along the top of one with relative surefootedness. We followed the root’s curve, and it led us to a tree so massive I couldn’t see around the trunk.
“Is this Yggsdrasil?” I asked.
“I guess.” Rina approached the trunk and laid her hand against the bark. “It’s warm. Come say hello.”
At any other time I would have thought Rina was nuts for asking me to say hello to a tree, but if this was indeed Yggsdrasil respect was due. I placed my hand next to hers on the rough bark. She was right, it was warm.
“Does the warmth mean it likes us?”
“Let’s hope so.” Rina nodded toward the base of the tree. Below us was a spring bubbling up through the smaller roots, and it was surrounded by three women.
“They must be the Norns,” I said. “Why don’t you do the honors?”
“Sure thing. Hello,” Rina called. The women looked up as one. “Would you mind if we came down to talk to you?”
“Not at all,” replied the central woman.
Rina touched my elbow, and a moment later we were standing next to the spring. Up close I saw that the women were similar, but appeared to be different ages. One appeared to be a teenager, the central woman who’d hailed us was about my age, and the third woman was more mature. They all wore similar cream-colored robes, elegant n their simplicity, and were barefoot. Since the tree’s roots were as warm as its trunk, shoes were unnecessary.
Rina put on her thousand-watt smile and began the introductions.
“Thank you. I’m Karina Stewart, this is my brother, Chris,” I waved hello, “and this little one is my daughter, Faith. Chris and I believe you knew our mother.”
“Oh?” said the middle woman. The other two Norns remained silent, but observant. “How would an American woman have crossed our paths?”
“She wasn’t American,” I said. “She was Icelandic, and her name was Elisabét Lund.”
Rina held out Mom’s cane. “This was hers. Do you recognize it?” Rina’s voice cracked, then she asked, “Do you remember her?”
The women stilled, and while their mouths didn’t move I heard whispering. “We remember Elisabét,” the central woman admitted.
“She lives no longer,” the eldest said. “I cut her thread long ago.”
I blinked away the sudden pressure behind my eyes. “That’s true. Both of our parents are dead.”
“They died together,” Rina added. “We know our mother was a volva. I think I inherited some of her abilities.”
The youngest Norn approached Rina and peered into her face. “No, you didn’t. You, however,” she rounded on me, “did.”
“What? No.” I held up my hands and backed away from her. “That’s not right. Rina’s a walker. I-I’m just an English teacher.”
“So?” she countered. “As a rule, volvas don’t create portals.”
“But I can’t see the future,” I protested.
The Norn laughed. “Do you think that foresight is the only trait a volva possesses?”
I looked at Rina. She shook her head slightly. “I... I guess I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Our mother saw the future,” Rina said. “She wrote her visons down in a diary. The last one said that a woman was going to kill Chris.” Faith squirmed in her carrier, and Rina paused to soothe her. “Is there any way you can help us figure out what or who she meant? We’ve already lost most of our family. I don’t want to lose my brother, too.”
“You will risk angering Fortune to do so?” the eldest asked. “Altering the path of time is not wise.”
“Wait, we could mess things up if we play with time?” I asked, and she nodded. “Is that what happened to our mother? Was she punished for having foresight?”
“She was not,” she replied. “Elisabét was born with foresight, therefore the gift was hers to use as she saw fit. You, however,” she continued, fixing Rina in her gaze, “give me the impression you want to know the future so you may alter it.”
“If I can change it so no one murders my brother, I will,” Rina said.
“Think of the family you’re making,” the elder said,
gesturing toward Faith. “You would take such a risk?”
“Yes,” Rina replied, adamant. “It won’t be much of a family without Chris.”
The Norns huddled together, and his time I could hear them whispering to each other along with the whispers in the leaves. I got the feeling that there was far more to the Norns than the three women in front of me.
“Very well,” the elder announced. “You both seek us, but for very different reasons, and yet none of the questions you raise are the questions you should be asking. We are amenable to offering help, but until you understand what it is you seek, you must find answers on your own.
“You,” she continued, facing me. “You want to know about your mother, which requires looking behind. However, instead of seeking answers from a woman long dead, should you not be seeking a woman that still lives?”
I blinked, the realization of whom they were referring to hitting me hard. “Are you saying Nicnevin’s alive, and I should concentrate on finding her instead of the woman who’s going to kill me?” The Norn raised an eyebrow, and remained silent. As she said, these answers were for me to discover.
“And you, young one,” she continued as she faced Rina. “You learned your mother was volva, and you sought to learn more about your heritage, which is admirable. Elisabét was strong, and intelligent, and fierce. I see much of her in you, but your gift for traveling comes from elsewhere. Perhaps you should consider where this gift will take you, and your child.”
Rina nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Okay. I will. Thank you.”
“We have gifts to help you on your journeys,” the youngest said. She withdrew two glass bottles from the folds of her dress. “These bottles contain water from our well, the Urdabrunnr. When you drink the water touch one of these stones.” She indicated three stones circling the neck of each bottle. “Blue is past, yellow is today, and purple is what’s yet to be.”
“The water will give us foresight?” I asked. “Or hindsight?”
She smiled. “It will, but you must be careful. You already have a touch of the sight, though it doesn’t normally point toward tomorrow. Drink too much at once and there’s no telling what you might see.”
I closed my hand around the bottle. “I’ll be careful.”
She nodded, and handed Rina an identical bottle. “As for you, I don’t know of a walker ever drinking from the well. If you decide to partake, will you come back and tell us what happened?”
Rina’s hand trembled as she accepted the bottle. “Won’t you already know?”
She smiled. “Eventually, yes, but thousands of threads are woven and cut every day. It will be faster if you tell us yourself.”
“Okay.” Rina tucked the bottle into the carrier next to Faith. “I promise I’ll tell you all about it.”
“So it is agreed,” the central Norn said. “We will speak soon.”
A heartbeat later and we were inside our Glaswegian flat. “Did you do that?” I asked.
“No.”
Rina sat on the couch, then she undid the carrier that held Faith. “Here, I’ll take her,” I said when I saw Rina’s hands were still trembling. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.”
“Every time I try to get closer to Mom, I end up farther away.” She covered her face with her hands and hunched down over her knees. “I’ve always, always wanted to be like Mom. I tried drawing like she used to, but I can’t do that. I tried dressing like her, but I’m not elegant and well put together like she was. When I found out she was a volva, I figured that since I’m a walker I finally had something in common with her. That I was a volva like her.” Rina snuffled and grabbed a box of tissues from the coffee table. “And now I’m not even that.”
“You are so much like Mom,” I said. “You talk like her, you think fast like she did, and you would do anything for your family. Even your questionable sibling,” I added.
“Yeah, well.” She put her bottle of Urdabrunnr water on the table. “What should we do with our magic water?”
“Right now? Nothing.” I felt warmth against my chest. I checked Faith, but the warmth wasn’t due to anything she’d done. “Let’s have a good, long think before we do anything with it. I’d hate for us to end up as a Nordic cautionary tale.”
“Good idea.” Rina’s brows pinched. “Your chest is wiggling.”
“What?” I handed off Faith and reached inside my coat pocket. I’d stashed the miniaturized version of the Ninth Legion’s aquila there. Now it was heating up and vibrating.
“I... I think Lucius is trying to get my attention.”
Rina blew out a breath. “That can’t be good.”
Chapter Nine
Anya
AFTER CHRISTOPHER AND Karina left to meet with the Norns at Yggsdrasil—gods below, that was an amazing situation to be involved with, even for me—I spent some time in the dining hall alone with my thoughts. The hall was a beautiful room, with the shining ice white walls bedecked with red and gold tapestries, and the ceiling painted in the pale blues and yellows of a cold winter sunrise. It was a room I could see myself spending much time in over the coming weeks and months as I considered winter and all of her cold glory. But before I could settle in to the dining hall or any other part of the palace, there was the matter of the land to attend to. Or rather, the land’s weather.
I blinked from my seat in front of the breakfast dishes to the stony, snowy peak of Beinn na Caillich. Mum had many thrones scattered across Scotland, but this one had always been her favorite. Now it was my favorite, as well. Perhaps it was because it was on the Isle of Skye and therefore near to our summer cottage, or perhaps it was due to the fine views to be had in all directions. Of course, Mum hadn’t set foot in our summer cottage since before Da and my brothers were imprisoned. Now that she was hiding at the Unseelie Court I didn’t see any family vacations happening in my future. I suppose the views were what had drawn me here after all.
With a wave of my hand the Winter Queen’s throne rose from the ground. It was an ancient seat, made of stacked stone and held together by Mum’s—and now my—will. I settled onto the frosted seat, glad I’d worn jeans and a sweater instead of the filmy gowns Mum had always favored, and surveyed the land spread below me.
It was still early in the season, so there was no need for Scotland to be too cold as of yet. At least, I didn’t think it needed to be any colder than it already was. Mum could remember the weather patterns from every winter since her reign commenced, right down to the number of snowflakes that had fallen in Dumfries a decade ago, and the average wind gusts in Galloway over the past century, but I’d yet to build such a store of knowledge. What I did have was an almanac that had been given to me by Christopher’s brilliant scientist of a sister, Karina.
“What’s this?” I’d asked when she handed it to me.
“It’s an almanac,” she’d replied. “It gives you phases of the moon, planting calendars, and it has historical weather patterns. Scientists often use them when planning the right time for field work. Don’t want to set up a dig and end up fighting a blizzard,” she added.
“No, I imagine not.” I flipped through the pages, noted the average temperature per day on the calendar, along with the times for sunrise and sunset. “Mum never used anything like this.”
“Maybe she should have. Tolls are there to make our work easier, you know?”
She was right, and I had found the almanac quite useful. Now, I opened the book and flipped to the weather for this date last year, and made certain the exact same conditions were in effect. Were they the ideal conditions for this date? I didn’t know the answer to that, either, but I was keeping a close eye on things. If anything untoward occurred I could fix it in a trice. I hoped.
The weather was behaving as planed across the island, until I noticed a pocket of warmer air hovering over the eastern coast of Fife. Assuming I’d made an error, I pushed the cold toward Fife. When nothing changed, I pushed a bit harder. The warmth not onl
y remained, it resisted me.
“Hmm.”
I thought about Fife, and what sort of anomalies that region may contain. It was an ancient kingdom, bound by the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth’s watery borders, but historically its weather wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Of course, nestled within Fife was Crail, where the gallowglass and the walker owned a home that had been fair created from Elphame’s magic. As Christopher would say, almost nothing good ever came out of Elphame.
Neither Robert nor Karina had ever mentioned the cottage having any magic associated with it, weather-based or otherwise. What’s more I’d been inside the cottage several times and had never detected anything remarkable about it. Whatever was happening in Fife was either a new event, possibly a spell Fionnlagh had cast and designed to appear at a later time, or the region was a bit warmer than the surrounding area for perfectly natural reasons. I’d just made up my mind to ask Mum if she’d ever noticed a similar anomaly when Angus appeared at my elbow.
“Gods below, you scared the life out of me,” I said. “Is that what it’s like when I blink into a room?”
“Oh, no. When you do it it’s much worse.” Angus kicked over a sizeable boulder and sat on it.
“Can the rest of our brothers blink?” I asked, imagining the entire hoard of them turning up in the midst of a pub or football game and causing a ruckus.
“Not sure,” he replied. “You and I are the only ones that ever go off on our own. The rest are like a pack of wolves, and only follow the leader.”
I recalled the wolves that flocked to Mum’s side whenever she set foot outside the palace. “Then we all inherited the trait from Mum.”
“Who else would we have gotten it from?” When I didn’t respond, Angus said, “I take it the cat’s out of the bag about Maelgwyn.”
“Aye. That it is. And would you like to know the oddest part about it? Just as I didn’t know who he was to me, neither did he. We found out about each other at the same time.”
“That must have been quite the revelation.”
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