by C. R. Jane
Notches had been carved into the stone walls, holding a few metal dishes and cutlery, some bundles of fabric, slabs of what looked and smelled like cured meat. At the back of one shallow alcove, water trickled in a thin stream over the pock-marked rock.
My throat screamed with need. Without a second thought, I threw myself at the trickle and lapped it from the rock until the dryness inside stopped burning. The water had a faintly metallic taste, not exactly enjoyable, but not awful either.
It hadn’t done anything for the agony in my back, though. I pressed onward, peering into a chamber I took to be a bedroom with a few blankets in a tangle on the floor, and another with a narrow crevice I gathered served as the lavatory from the stomach-turning whiff that reached my nose. I hurried past that one.
The cave narrowed under one of those gleaming crystals. The floor felt even rougher there. I hesitated, not sure whether I should go on.
A man’s wryly lilting voice carried from somewhere behind me. “Just invited yourself right in, did you?”
I whirled around and gasped at the pain that lanced through me at the sudden movement. A tall figure stood between two streaks of ruddy light, his face mostly hidden in shadow. He had his arms crossed over his lean chest and his head cocked to one side. His eyes, the glint of them that I could see, were fixed on me.
I found my voice through the pain. “I’m sorry. I called out to see if anyone was here… I was just looking for somewhere to rest.”
The young man took a step forward, and the light caught his features. Features that I could imagine the human girls I’d watched from time to time in Midgard swooning over—smooth tan skin, clear sky-blue eyes, golden-blond hair pulled back at the base of his neck. Except for the scar. A ragged maroon slash wrenched across the left side of his face from the tip of his eyebrow across his high cheekbone down to the thin lips that were currently pressed in a flat unreadable line.
He wasn’t a being of Midgard anyway. His coloring, the angles of his face, and the slight point to his ears told me he was a light elf, one of the ljosalfar from the realm of Alfheim.
Memories stirred in the air between us. A wonderland of a forest, crystal spires jutting up between the pale-barked trees. A group of teenaged elves stopping to picnic beneath one. A couple of them scrambling up the spire. A horrible crack, the splintered peak plummeting to gouge this man’s, then boy’s, youthful face. The pain radiated out of the past in a yawning chasm of agony.
Bright tan faces and shining flaxen hair all around. Eyes averting from the wreckage of his face. Murmurs that quieted as soon as he got near. Bitterness collecting on his tongue.
A cluster of elders at a doorway, stern-faced and stiff-shouldered. The man before me gave them a little wave, however long ago that was, and ducked through the passage into darkness and heat.
The pieces connected in my mind. He’d been banished. My tongue flew before I thought better of it. I wasn’t used to speaking to anyone but Odin, and I’d never held back from the Allfather.
“Cut by a rock, and they sent you away to a land of rocks,” I said. “Not the most sensitive people, are they?”
The man’s jaw twitched. His arms tensed where they were still folded in front of him. “Who are you?” he demanded, dropping his hands to his sides in fists. “You’re not from Alfheim. How do you know me?”
“I’m Odin’s raven,” I said automatically. Maybe it would have been better to keep that to myself too. This human tongue obviously needed more practice at holding itself.
The statement drew the light elf up short. “You don’t look much like a raven,” he said, a little of that dry tone returning. His gaze slid over me, and for the first time I recognized something else in his expression. He was looking at me like I’d seen men look at women in the towns and the cities of Midgard, with a hint of that heated sort of hunger.
Was this human body attractive by those standards? I found it difficult to judge. I wasn’t even sure what my face looked like. But despite the dulling pain in my back, his attention tugged an echo of the same heat to the surface of my skin.
I didn’t know what to make of that alien sensation, so I did my best to ignore it. “I can assure you this is not my better form,” I said, matching his dryness. “Muninn, the raven of memory, pleased to make your acquaintance.”
I plucked the corners of my dress and dipped in a mockery of the courtesy I’d witnessed from women with airs. That was the wrong move. At the motion, my wounds flared back into full agony. My balance wavered, and the air hissed as I sucked it through my clenched teeth.
“What—” The light elf stepped closer. His face turned sallow. “You’ve been cut up. Come on. I’m not going to leave you bleeding all over my house. Sit down and tell me what in Hel’s name you’re doing here.”
He took my arm, lithe fingers closing around my wrist, and a giddy quiver shot through my nerves at the contact. Odin and Huginn hadn’t touched me in my human body. I hadn’t known the simple act of placing skin against skin could have quite that much effect. Although maybe it didn’t usually when you had a body that’d been properly broken in.
“I’m Jerrik,” the elf said as he guided me back to the fore-room where I’d entered. “If your magic didn’t already tell you that. And I’d appreciate you staying out of my memories, Miss Raven.”
It wasn’t that I went into them. They came to me, like flitting fish. But it was easier to tune them out in this form, with this pain distracting me. I didn’t bother to correct his phrasing.
Jerrik eased me down on the bench in the fore-room and stood over me, his expression such a mix of emotions I couldn’t pick any of them apart. He rubbed his mouth. The bottom of his scar shifted with his lips. I had the urge to trace my fingers over it, to find out what that mottled tissue would feel like. To see what expression he’d make then.
“What in this realm ripped you up like that?” he asked, nodding to my shoulder. He pressed a wad of fabric he’d grabbed from one of his nooks against my back to staunch the bleeding.
“A dragon that looked as if it were made out of rock,” I said. “Like apparently everything in this wretched place. It happened to be lurking around right where I entered, and I couldn’t find my way out again. So I got away as quickly as I could and ended up here.”
“What are you doing here at all, if you’re one of Odin’s prized birds?”
The way he said that last bit, as if I’d been a pet—or worse, an ornament—made my hackles rise. “I serve the Allfather by being his eyes and ears where he can’t be. And whatever my usual physical nature might be, I’m far from bird-brained, so I’d appreciate the same respect you’d offer any other person. Odin wanted to know the current state of Muspelheim. From what I’ve seen, I’m quite prepared to declare it a horrid wasteland to which we should never again venture. I just have to return to the gate to Asgard to tell him so.”
“To the gate?” Jerrik said. “That might not be as easy as you’re talking about it.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter, so I’ll make it work one way or another. If you could simply point me in the right direction…”
The light elf sounded as if he’d swallowed a guffaw. “In your condition? You won’t make it past the first river. I can do a half-assed job of bandaging you up, but this isn’t my forte. I’d better take you to Gunnar.”
“Gunnar?” I repeated.
Jerrik’s hand tucked around my elbow to help me up—a solid but gentle grip that sent a pleasant shiver up my arm. Damned human body. Surely the inhabitants of Midgard didn’t go around responding like this to every casual contact between them?
“Gunnar’s a—an acquaintance of mine,” he said. “He’s more the healing sort. If anyone around here can patch you up properly, it’s him.”
“And how far away is this Gunnar?”
“It’s a short walk. At least when no one involved is bleeding to death. Are you really going to argue about this? He might know more
about the gates, besides.”
I couldn’t say I was really in any shape to face that dragon or its kin again, if they happened to be lurking around the gate to Asgard—or Midgard, I’d take that too. Gathering more information was hardly ever a bad idea. Odin had been right about that much.
“All right. Let’s get on with it then.” I followed Jerrik to the door.
My agreement definitely had nothing to do with the fact that every nerve in me protested at the idea of moving away from that firm but gentle touch. I wasn’t here to mix with mortals. I needed to get home.
If this was the way to do it, then I’d do it.
Chapter 3
I tried to keep my posture straight as we walked farther along the terrain beside the cliff, but the pain was starting to stiffen the muscles around my wounds. My feet stayed steady, but my shoulders hunched against the sensation.
The memories that drifted around Jerrik trailed with us. I didn’t reach out on purpose, since he’d expressed discomfort at the idea, but it was impossible not to catch glimpses. Mostly of that bright green-and-golden world he’d obviously spent his formative years in.
“Is this something they do a lot—the light elves?” I asked. “Tossing people into Muspelheim?”
Jerrik grimaced. “You haven’t been seeing or hearing very much if you don’t know that, Miss Raven. It’s not just the light elves. All the unearthly realms have been using this place as a dumping ground for centuries.”
Oh. I glanced around me. The place hardly appeared to be all that inhabited.
“Most of the discards don’t survive past the first few weeks,” the light elf added.
A different sort of shiver crawled over my skin. “We’ve mostly traveled in Midgard when we’re not at home,” I said. In recent centuries, anyway. It seemed Odin really had left the other realms to fend for themselves far too long.
Of course, I wasn’t sure he’d have intervened either way. He preferred to observe and consider. What the beings of all the realms did, he left up to them, for the most part.
“Lucky for you,” Jerrik said.
I licked my lips. They were getting dry again after just a few minutes in the hot breeze that never seemed to let up over this barren rocky landscape. “I didn’t realize light elves were quite that superficial. A face is still a face.”
“Even one that’s horrifying to look upon?” Jerrik said, but his lilting voice sounded more pained than playful in that moment. “I’ll admit my attitude may have been at least as much of the problem, at the point when they told me I’d better get out.”
He glanced at me sideways. Wondering exactly how much I’d seen? I had the feeling he was looking forward to being rid of me and going back to… whatever one did to pass the time in a place like this.
“Hmm,” I said, remembering Odin’s change in tune when I’d heckled him about his interest in Midgard. That might very well be what had gotten me sent here. “Some simply don’t appreciate what an acerbic attitude can bring to the table, do they?”
The light elf’s expression softened just slightly with a hint of amusement. “Had a lot of trouble with that yourself, have you?”
“As I said, I’m not bird-brained. I express myself quite thoroughly regardless of my current form.”
“And what a joy you are to be around.”
I looked at him sharply, but his voice had been amused too, not as cutting as I suspected it could have been. Almost as if he were making a joke with me, not at me.
“Here we are,” he said, before I could think of what to best say next. A hovel a lot like his own stood against the cliff up ahead.
This one also had a beat-up curtain in the doorway, although Gunnar’s was pulled to the side to let in the dull glow that emanated from the magma streams and fire pits. A tapping sound carried through it. As we approached, I made out a figure sitting just inside the doorway, big with a fall of wavy brown hair that just brushed his eyebrows.
“Gunnar!” Jerrik called out. “I’ve got a project for you.”
I might have bristled at being referred to as a project if Gunnar hadn’t stood up and ducked through the doorway then, with a wide and welcoming smile lighting his face. He was nearly as tall as Jerrik and much broader, muscles flexing in his bulky arms beneath the ragged sleeves of his shirt, but there was a softness to the slope of those muscles, to his movements, to that smile. Even his eyes were soft, despite being as gray as the rocks around us. The only part of him that didn’t fit was the hard angles of his square jaw.
The tapping must have come from the chisel he was holding in one hand. In his other, he gripped an object that looked halfway to becoming a bowl. I guessed I knew one way people passed the time in this dreadful realm.
“What do we have here?” he said in a warm rumble of a voice. Memories trickled from him as they had from Jerrik. I could tell without even peering at them too closely that he was a jotun—a giant. Jotunheim was one of the realms I had flown through now and then in more recent years. I knew those darkly forested hills, that sharp tang of pine.
“Odin’s raven, she says.” Jerrik nudged me forward with a light hand on my undamaged shoulder. “Guardian of memory. Unfortunately a dragon of the very real present attempted to turn her into dinner.”
I shot him a glare and bobbed my head to Gunnar. “The light elf said you might be able to encourage the wounds to heal faster.”
The giant’s eyes widened as he took in my bloody bandage. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t have proper training, but I’ve studied every healing text I could get my hands on.”
A giant who studied medicine? There wasn’t anything physically off to look at him, not like Jerrik’s scar, but he clearly wasn’t a typical example of his race.
He ushered us in and had me lie on a stone bench with a thin blanket as its only cushioning. At least it warmed the hard surface a little. I sprawled on it on my belly and winced as Gunnar pulled off the now-tacky makeshift bandage.
“You did a decent job stopping the bleeding,” he said to Jerrik, who’d propped himself against the wall.
The light elf made a noncommittal sound. “She was on the verge of dripping all over my pristine floors.” He didn’t look completely comfortable in the giant’s home, but he seemed hesitant to leave.
Gunnar shook his head as if bemused by Jerrik’s attitude and grabbed a bowl off a shelf. “This mineral paste should seal the cuts, numb the pain, and encourage the wounds to scab over faster,” he said. “It might sting a little going on.”
“Go at it,” I said. “It can’t possibly hurt worse than I’ve already felt in the last hour.”
He chuckled, but when he started to slather the stuff over the tears in my skin, it was with a touch as soft as the rest of him.
The paste did sting at first, a prickling itch that shot through my flesh, but after the first few passes all sensation in that area dulled. I became more conscious of the lean of Gunnar’s body next to mine, the undamaged skin his fingers brushed here and there. The warmth of his presence, so much more appealing than the heat outside.
A tingle raced through me and settled between my thighs, a spot I’d never needed to be aware of until now. Why did this damned body have to be so sensitive?
“There,” Gunnar said, straightening up. The low dip of his voice sent another tingle through me. He cleared his throat as I rolled onto my side. A faint flush had colored his cheeks. Then he averted his gaze, turning to rinse his hands in a bowl of water.
The fact that I wasn’t the only one affected by our brief intimacy relaxed me a little. He could hardly think it odd that I was feeling a little flushed when he was clearly experiencing the same thing.
I didn’t want to dwell on that aspect of this moment, though. My attention snagged on the memories stirring around us. Gunnar’s and Jerrik’s were mingling, but I could tell one from the other on a level below consciousness, like a taste in the back of my throat. Jerrik’s were sharp-edged and faintly bitter. Gunnar’s were foggily
sweet with a hint of melancholy.
I pushed myself into a sitting position. The sensations of one and then another memory slipped past me. A group of giants surrounding Gunnar, shouting at him as if egging him on. Him cringing and covering his head. One of them thrusting a sword at him that he backed away from.
Another time, meandering through the woods, gathering plants—herbs—in a basket. One of his neighbors kicking the basket from his arm on his way back into town.
The comment popped out of my mouth unbidden: “You weren’t much of a giant, were you?”
Gunnar blinked at me, but he didn’t appear to be offended. “The raven of memory, is it?” he said. “Do you see my whole history just looking at me?”
“No,” I said. “It sloughs off you in little bits and pieces. But the most fraught moments are the heaviest. They tend to fall first.”
“I wasn’t much of a giant,” he agreed. “No taste for bloodshed. No interest in waging any wars against our kind or any other. No use to my people. So they tired of me. It’s all right. There are plenty I can help here.”
“Try to help,” Jerrik said.
“Better than not trying,” Gunnar said mildly, and Jerrik looked as if he’d swallowed a stone.
“So, you teach yourself healing and patch up random strangers.” I cocked my head. “I’ve seen plenty of people who make much worse use of their time. It’s a shame so many of them are out there while you’re stuck in this awful place.”
That last thought tumbled out before I’d even realized I was thinking it. But it was true. I didn’t have quite Odin’s skill at gleaning motives and morality, but the man before me was clearly a lot better than this realm deserved.
A little of Gunnar’s earlier flush came back. “I’ve made the best of what I have.”
Which was really the most un-giant-like thing he could have said. Modest, timid, and compassionate. How bizarre. “Your parents could have done better naming you,” I remarked.
