Of course, he could be lying. He could be the one the Wind Hag had been afraid would harm her. He’d certainly just had a good try.
Astrid willed her air platform over, and stepped onto the rocky ledge. Looked the West Wind straight in the eyes, feeling the sparks of anger flying from her own. “You do not attack each other again, or you deal with me.”
The West Wind bowed. “I have no need to fight him if you are back.”
Astrid gave him a cool look.
“I’m back.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“I have never heard of a place east of the sun and west of the moon.” The West Wind shrugged.
“I had hoped you would know it.” Fear closed up Astrid’s throat, and she could barely speak. But she couldn’t let the fear control her. Then she would never win. “We will have to ask one of the other winds. Between the four of you, there is surely no place on this earth you do not go.”
“I’ll take you,” the West Wind said.
She flicked her eyes to his face, distrustful of his eagerness. The East Wind was tired, slower than the West Wind would be, but trustworthy and safe.
“Try the South Wind first.” The East Wind looked north thoughtfully.
“You think the North Wind is the one?” Astrid turned north herself.
“What one?” West looked between them.
“The Wind Hag suspected her death was no accident.” Heat radiated off East again, and Astrid saw how deeply hurt and insulted he was, still. “She thought one of us . . . “ He could not even say it. “She set some air sprites to guard our new mistress and keep her hidden from us.”
She saw West half disappear in shock, then he drew himself up to double his size, his dry air sucking up East’s humidity. “That is . . . “ He seemed speechless.
Her reservations toward him evaporated like the moisture from East’s breath. She would accept his offer of a ride.
“To the South Wind then.” She bowed to East, and he blew a kiss to her cheek. The West Wind extended his hand for her to climb upon and as soon as she knelt in his palm, he flew straight up in the air.
When they were so high Astrid felt she could reach out and touch the stars appearing in the deep-dusk blue of the sky, he turned south. Racing against time.
* * *
“Who is stronger? You or the South Wind?” Astrid’s voice was thick with sleep. She’d closed her eyes shortly after the West Wind began the journey, and she was not sure how many hours had passed.
“The South.” West’s answer was short. “But you’ll see that soon enough.”
While she was sleeping he’d flown lower, and the full moon shone an eerie silver light over the red dunes of the desert below them.
“Waves of sand,” she said, wonder-struck.
“We are close to where the South Wind lives.” West dropped lower still, and like the East Wind had done, gripped her tighter. “Be ready.”
“What do you expect?”
“Dust devils, for a start. Are you afraid?”
“No, I’m not.”
Ahead, she saw a swirl of sand on the horizon, twisting in tiny whirlwinds that raced toward them.
“Dust devils?” she asked, and West nodded, his sharp face tense. He looked as if he were braced for impact, and Astrid focused ahead of her.
These air sprites were messier than West’s fore-guard. Less controlled as they spun in their blasting sand spirals.
“Throw me into the middle of them,” she said to West.
He jerked his head to look at her, his mouth open.
“I have a plan.” She kept her tone mild.
The old Wind Hag would perhaps have spoken sharply, angrily, but Astrid was too new to her power to blame him for doubting her.
“Get ready . . . now!”
“As you command.” His voice was skeptical, dry as the air he blew across the earth. But he threw her. Perfectly into the middle of the advancing dust devils.
As she hoped, they were confused. Expecting only the West Wind, they did not know what to make of the woman hurtling through the air at them. She saw their slim, narrow faces and bodies where the sand blew against them, creating shifting glimpses, making their movements seem jerky.
She formed her platform just before she touched the sand, then spun it up like she’d done on the mountain, this time sucking all the air with her as she went. Creating her own whirlwind. Creating chaos within chaos.
The strength of her tornado far outweighed the power of the sprites, and they shrieked in rage as they were sucked into the vortex. She rose up through the eye, passed the screaming sprites caught in their whirling prison and found the West Wind waiting for her at the top.
He met her gaze with respect. “Let us find the South Wind.”
She stepped from her platform back into his palm and they drifted slowly forward, toward a rocky outcrop standing alone in the vast desert, glimmering silver-gray and orange in the moonlight.
“I bring the Wind Hag,” West called out, his shout a high whistle against the rocks.
“You lie.” The answering cry engulfed them in hot, dry air that sucked the moisture from Astrid’s lungs. And then it seemed the desert sands rose up around them, and every tiny grain bombarded them.
Shocked, Astrid widened the layer of air she’d had around herself since she’d traveled with East, bringing West under its protection, and looked in astonishment at the sand storm assaulting them.
An attack?
Anger sparked within. She could lose Bjorn. This discord could cost her everything.
She sent the sand flying at them back with equal force.
She knew the South Wind started feeling the sting of his own attack when the bombardment slacked off. Then slowly came to a stop.
At last. Relief coursed through her.
“Wind Hag?”
“Enough proof for you?” Astrid unclenched her fists. Saw the hazy red cloud of the South Wind shimmer into view. Like his sprites, he was lean and sinewy, with high cheeks and a thin, patrician nose. He bowed.
“Mistress, I apologize, I thought . . .”
“I was gone forever?” Could he have been the one who set Norga on the Wind Hag?
“I thought our old Mistress had not passed her power on. I cannot believe . . . Where have you been all this time?”
There was a note of relief, of joy, even, in his tone.
“You are happy to see me?” Astrid watched him carefully.
He looked astounded at the question. His mouth worked as if as he were at a loss. “Yes.”
She believed him.
“Can you tell me where the place is that is east of the sun, and west of the moon?”
South frowned. Shook his head.
“I have never heard of it.”
* * *
The South Wind flew low, and Astrid, tucked safely in the crook of his arm, could see by the way he threw his head back, how he closed his eyes, that he loved twisting through the mountains and swooping over the plateaus.
But he was tense, his brows drawn together, and Astrid sensed his deep unease.
She shared it.
The North Wind was the most powerful of the four. And the only chance she had left to find Bjorn.
They were flying slower now over the quiet forests, the snow sliding off the trees they passed over, melted by the touch of South’s hot air.
The ground no longer flashed beneath them as they made for the mountain tops in the distance, glistening white in the sun.
“We are long past the midway point where the North and I usually clash.” South slowed even more. “I will be too tired to help you against him if I don’t rest. The cold drains me.”
“Just get me there as fast as you can. If I’m not strong enough to take him on alone, we are lost anyway.”
South struggled up and over the high peaks, leaving a groove of melted snow behind him, and at last let the cold air drag him down the other side of the mountain range, unresisting.
&n
bsp; They were both dumbstuck by the endless fields of ice stretching before them. Dunes of snow piled high on an open plain, the glare so bright, Astrid had to turn her head and look down in subjugation.
There was no cover, nothing to hold the cold back across the icy wasteland, and it battered against Astrid’s protective layer of air as they sank down the mountain side, so insidious it seeped through. Its strength was a shock, and she flinched as its fingers reached out to claw at her face. South slid down the slope, coming to rest in a slushy puddle, his smoky red barely visible, even against the bright white of the snow.
“I need to rest.” The heat of his voice was greedily absorbed by the cold.
“Get back your strength, I’ll go on alone.” Astrid jumped from his hand, the snow crunching under her old leather boots. The bite of cold was immediate, as if she’d dipped her feet into a frozen fjord. She created a platform of air at ground level, stepped onto it to keep her feet from freezing.
She placed her sack of treasures next to South. “Watch this for me.”
The time had come to face her strongest enemy. And perhaps her strongest ally.
“Forward,” she whispered, and her platform skated across the snow smooth as a skier down a mountain. She widened her bubble of air and the extra layer against the cold brought relief.
She looked back and saw South huddled a good distance away. He would hopefully go unnoticed where he lay. There was no more reason to delay calling her last hope.
She threw back her head. “North Wind.”
The absorbent silence of the snow plains swallowed her shout, and it seemed to have been muffled and killed.
She tried again. “North Wind.”
Behind her, a rumble began. The air trembled and she spun her air platform in the direction of the sound as a boom echoed against the steep cliffs. An avalanche of snow slid down the mountain, throwing up a plume before it like foam on a massive wave.
Her eyes wide, Astrid saw South lying directly in the path of the avalanche. Astrid shot her platform forward, swooping toward him and her precious sack, dived to grab them up just as the snow engulfed them all.
For a moment, the world was white and mad. She tumbled through the loose snow, and felt the touch of an icy hand on her arm.
Immediately, it was as if she were floating in calm shallows. She jerked her head and looked straight into the silver-blue eyes of a snow sprite as large as South.
“My mistress gives me leave to aid you.” The sound of the sprite’s voice was like the hiss of snow sliding over snow. And her hands were carrying Astrid safely through the maelstrom. “What would you have me do?”
Frozen water. Dame Elv to the rescue. Astrid felt her heart sing. This was no mere sprite. This must be Dame Elv’s equivalent of one of Astrid’s Winds. She owed the dame another favor, and she didn’t care.
“Find the South Wind and my sack. Lift them out of the snow and keep them safe, please.”
The Snow Sprite looked curious, as if she would like to ask a question, but she nodded and released Astrid, diving to the right, away through the fast-flowing snow.
The moment she let go, Astrid began to tumble again. She relaxed, stopped fighting it.
Somewhere above, North hovered, watching. Astrid could think here in this chaos of white, despite the cold and the somersaults.
Was this North’s test of her strength or a show of deadly force?
Whatever his motivation, he would expect her to come straight up, she was sure. Expect her to fight her way to the surface, panicked.
Ah, the dames had taught her well.
She would not do the obvious. She looked sideways, to the edge of the avalanche. She could escape from the side, and fly upward, against the flow. Hopefully come up behind the North Wind. The last of her subjects to be chastened.
She created a tunnel of air through the snow, curving to the left, and shot along it fast as a bobsleigh. The avalanche spat her out into air even icier than it had been before and to keep low, she formed the platform beneath her stomach, sliding uphill through the air just as she’d once slid downhill on a plank as a child. She kept close to the roaring avalanche, tucked under its left shadow, out of sight, as she sped up the mountain.
When she reached the top, she stood, her eyes screwed against the glare, searching the slopes.
Where was he . . . there!
A shimmer of white, almost invisible, half way down the mountain.
He would respect and obey her only if she could outwit and outmaneuver him. Ruthless as he was himself.
Ruthless.
Astrid took a deep breath of thin, cold air, and dove down the mountain.
Chapter Twenty-nine
As the air whistled past her in her free fall, she snagged a ribbon of it in her mind, made a taut, strong rope of it, gave it a loop. Her hand opened and closed, as if to hold the invisible lasso, and it was there. Cold and strangely alive against her palm.
There he was, just a little way below her, looking for her, waiting to see if he’d buried her for good or whether she would try to fight her way out.
She drew back her arm and threw the rope. Willed it to catch him in its noose and then pulled it tight. Shot herself past him and swung up the other way, looping the air rope a second time around him.
She risked a look at his face and she was glad she hadn’t seen it before.
Cold as frost, sharp as an edge of ice, dangerous as a snow storm. The look he sent her was fury and hatred combined.
Yet she had him tied.
Just as the thought formed, he spun upward, arms pinned to his side, but still free to fly.
She hung on to the rope. Was pulled up with him.
“Was it you who arranged for the old Wind Hag’s death?” she called.
She felt a jerk on the rope as he stopped dead, mid-air.
“No.” His shout was loud enough to cause another, smaller avalanche on the lower slopes.
“What then? Why did she try to hide me from you?”
He didn’t answer, instead he spun, higher and higher. Astrid looked down and saw the earth falling away from her, the heavens coming closer, no longer blue, but black.
The time had come to end this. He was strong and rested, and he could drag her around for days. But up here, she had the bubble of air around her, and he had nothing. He was running out of raw material.
Astrid could feel from the way she moved through it that the air was thin here. Very thin.
Then North brought them up against the very edge of sky, and for the first time, Astrid felt a real, deep fear. North’s flight hadn’t been unthinking instinct. It had been ruthless calculation.
There would be no coming back if he pushed her out beyond the thin membrane that held back the universe.
If he used his body as a battering ram, if she wasn’t quick enough in this slippery, thin air, it could happen.
“The others said you weren’t capable of this.” She allowed none of the fear to show in her face, or her voice. She was only too aware the air in her bubble would not last forever. “They said you were strong, you had reason to feel aggrieved, but you would never harm the Wind Hag.”
Something flickered across his face. But so high up, in the strange light, she could not decipher it.
“What is the Mountain Prince to you?”
“Bjorn?” She frowned, confused. “My lover. My love.”
“Again,” he breathed, a sharp blast of icy air. “After all this time, he comes back again, and will not die.”
“Die?” Her mouth snapped shut, and she stared at him, at his face, his eyes. “The yggren.” Her voice seemed small and insignificant up here. Tinny.
It was as if one of the stars above focused its light on her, and she could see clearly at last. Wind and wood. Their ties were deep, their relationship forged at the beginning of time with the old tree itself. Far more powerful than Norga. Norga was insignificant against something this strong.
“The yggren were after Bjorn,
not me. Trying to kill him. For you. At your request.” Her voice caught on the last sentence, and she realized the air in her bubble was nearly gone. She glanced below, a quick flick of her eyes, and she saw the earth curve away to the right.
Her heart jerked.
She was bobbing like a fish just under the thin skin of ice on the water’s surface, at the very, very top. She would be just as out of her element as a fish if she broke through to the unknown beyond.
The scale of it hit her, and she wanted to gasp in a huge breath, had to content herself with a quarter of that.
She needed to get down. But even more, she needed North to bow to her. She would never have his allegiance if she ran now.
Again, as she lifted her eyes back to his, she saw the flicker of something across his features, saw he was weakening. He’d taken her to his outer limit and he was feeling the effects.
“I am not the old Wind Hag.”
He made a movement, a furious dismissal.
“No.” Her voice could be as sharp as his. “Bjorn is my lover, not my everything. I love him, I don’t worship him. And he has his own obligations, his own principality. You would not have two masters.”
“Why always him?” The words were wrenched out, in pain.
“Because of you. He was in the forest near my house because of you.”
She expected defiance, or anger, but instead she saw sadness and shame settle on his face.
“I told the troll the boy had been stolen, but I didn’t think she would kill my mistress in the fight over him.” He spoke so quietly, she barely heard him. “I didn’t think anything could kill her. I just wanted the boy gone. Taken away so the Wind Hag would forget him.”
“Make amends. Tell me where the place is that is east of the sun and west of the moon.”
He drifted closer, and she did not flinch as he reached out an icy hand, sprinkled dancing stars of frost across her bubble.
“I know where it is only because I followed the troll there. It is like this place.” He looked around them. “The outer reaches of everything. I only just had enough strength to get there the first time. But I know where it is.”
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