Forecast

by Rinda Elliott

  “But how?”

  One white eyebrow lifted, followed by the pointy corner of his wide lips. “My first real act as a father is to explain how babies are made?”

  The redheaded elf stepped forward, and moonlight spilled onto his face, showing the fierce scowl that made him look like a monster from the worst sort of nightmares.

  “I know my mother. She wouldn’t have. She wouldn’t.”

  “You with the red ponytail—” Taran raised his voice “—you’d better stop coming closer.”

  The elf tilted its head, then chuckled. He said something that made the others laugh. All except for the one calling himself my father.

  “Tell the god boy the others can’t understand him. But you, you saw my glamour before. It’s very handsome to your species. It wasn’t hard to lure your mother into the magic grove. Keeping her there once she saw my face?” He grinned. “That was harder.”

  “Oh gods,” I choked out. This rancid mix of disgust, horror and grief washed through me as I understood then what had happened to my mother. “That explains so much,” I whispered. My norn began to writhe, her fury so suddenly strong, it tasted of rust on my tongue.

  One of the other elves hissed and boots crunched near the water. A tremor crept up my spine.

  Verthandi had had enough. She threw me into my rune tempus so hard and fast, Taran yelled and grabbed me, putting me in front of him—both of us facing the elves. Vrunlin’s mouth fell open before he swirled into the world spin. Like the time in front of my house the night before, it went so fast, nausea slammed into me, forced me to close my eyes. I groaned, sagged, and Taran caught me up against him with one arm around me and the other still brandishing the hammer.

  Everything jerked to a halt, and I was so happy to see the elves weren’t moving, I looked up at Taran, but he was squinting into the darkness, where we’d heard someone walking. Now there was silence. “Come on,” he said. He pulled me toward the pier. “Let’s get Josh and Grim.”

  I kept glancing back toward that spill of crates from the barge, sure I’d seen movement. My stomach heaved and I cried out when we were halfway down the pier. I tried to grab a handrail, but there wasn’t one. Falling to my knees, I tried to focus on the wooden slats as I sucked in gasps of painfully cold air.

  “Coral?” Taran dropped beside me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sick. It’s making me sick. Can you see if that’s them?”

  “I think it is—looks like they were tied sitting back-to-back.”

  I closed my eyes. Tied meant alive. “Hurry, go untie them.”

  “Good idea.” He left me and I sagged, held my breath and tried to get control over my body. Between my norn’s upset and the nausea from the rune tempus, everything wanted to shut down. Instead, I focused, on the world around me, the way the moonlight glittered on the snow and reflected off the still water. I’d been to this bridge many times but it had never been this quiet. The eerie silence made my ears feel somehow hollow...made me hypersensitive to the magic rippling in the air because now that I was starting to focus, I could feel it. It flowed over the water like fog.

  A sound trickled through and my eyes flew open as my mother’s laughter sounded and grew louder. Dread filled my limbs with weights as I turned toward the noise and watched her walk slowly toward us. She strolled, as if she was out for a Sunday jaunt. But she looked like she’d been running with wild dogs.

  “Why must you girls do this so many times a day? You keep throwing me off and I don’t like it. You didn’t get this magic from your father. Did you enjoy meeting him? I told them he couldn’t come. Upsets your mama and that makes her belly hurt.” She stopped, braced her booted feet and crossed her arms over the ugly, black-feathered coat. “You didn’t get this magic from your mother, either. Have anything to write with, Coral?”

  “Of course.” I laid my hand on my bag.

  She threw her head back, much like the elf had earlier, and laughed.

  I frowned, then felt horror flood through me. My purple coat at her feet earlier came back to my mind. She’d been in Taran’s house. Swallowing the whimper gathering force in my throat, I dropped the bag on the pier and frantically pawed through it.

  Taran squatted next to me. “This is bad, isn’t it?” he whispered. “What about the ribbon? Could you cut it into shapes?”

  I shook my head, panic tearing into my chest. “Too small!”

  “Can you sprinkle herbs?” He pulled out a vial.

  “I could try.” I looked around. “Snow could work.” But there wasn’t as much on the pier. I touched the wood, realized the water had started to swish over the slats. But only on the right side. I glanced down the pier again, seeing that it had tilted. “The water is starting to move. Oh gods, see if the elves are!”

  “I’m not taking my eyes off your mother. That’s who that is, right? It’s the woman who shot that arrow at me.”

  “It’s her body, but it sure as hells isn’t her.”

  “Such an interesting power you have.” My mother took a few steps closer, her boots clacking hard on the wood. “I took your notebook and all your pens. I wanted to see if you would burn the runes as your sister did. Your mother has the memories. I’m fascinated.”

  As if my norn realized I could write any other way, my fingers began to warm. I looked up at Taran, my heart in my throat.

  “What does she mean burn the runes, Coral?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  “My fingers will catch fire, burn the message into the wood.”

  “‘On the wood, they scored,’” my mother quoted. “That is how it’s supposed to be done.”

  “They carved the runes and you know it.” I opened up my bag again. “I have the boline—it was in my hands.” I scrambled around, spotted it a foot away and snatched it. “I keep it sharp so it can cut—” I broke off, gasped as my fingers began to burn. I put the tip of the knife to the wood slats. The first rune started to take shape but the wood was so wet, and water washed over the surface so many times, my norn grew frustrated—her annoyance bled through me like poison through my veins. “Blood,” I whispered.

  “What?” Taran asked. “Why aren’t you carving?”

  Before I could lose my nerve, I spread my bag out on my lap—glad I’d brought the beige one—and hurriedly slashed the knife across my palm.

  “What the hell, Coral?” Alarm made Taran’s voice gritty.

  “She wants me to write faster,” was all I got out before I started writing the runes with my blood.

  “What does it say?” Taran whispered.

  I looked up at my mother, my tongue tied in knots, my hand stinging from the deep cut.

  She started to walk closer, but Taran stood, gripping his hammer. She actually eyed the weapon with fear briefly, then let her lips stretch into a smirk—the one that looked nothing like my mother.

  “I’ve had such fun playing with that, Thor.” She said the god’s name with a sneer. “All that time we spent together in the past, all the tricks I used to play on you and you still didn’t figure out what was going on.” She pointed to her head, tapped her temple. “Always were as thick as a half-wit giant.”

  “I was right.” I stood, curled my aching hand into a fist and faced her. No...him. “You aren’t my mother. It makes so much sense now. Her fall off the ladder, how ill she was. All those damned snakes! You’re Loki, and you’re using my mother’s body—possessed her somehow when she fell, right?”

  “Score one for the norn.” With each word, her voice grew deeper until it didn’t sound like my mother anymore at all.

  “How dare you use my mom like that?” I yelled, shaking with fury. And fear. Taran and I were standing on a rickety pier, facing the powerful god of mischief. The trickster god. One who had apparently instigated all this horror surrounding us. And there was the fear for my mother
. She was not out there killing people, she was trapped in there with a lunatic.

  “Use her?” Loki scoffed. “I’ve been used in all manner of things by my people. Told to do this and that, then forced to fix problems—other gods’ problems. One of those fixes involved me giving birth of all things. To a horse!” My mother’s mouth curled. “And then there’s this one. My supposed friend.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “If you hate Thor so much, why not just kill him then? Why hurt the other kids? Why all the stupid games? You killed someone in Oklahoma, too, didn’t you?”

  “Some of those kids had to die. A couple were accidents.” He shrugged my mother’s shoulders. “After years locked in a cave, wouldn’t you want to have a little fun?”

  “Your idea of fun and mine are pretty different.”

  My mother’s head nodded. “True. There are some memories in here that prove that—like the one of you sticking your tongue on some poster of a shirtless boy.”

  Heat scorched my cheeks as I peeked at Taran. “I didn’t do that.”

  He wasn’t paying attention to me. He was looking at the runes. “Tell me what they say, Coral.”

  I didn’t answer. I hadn’t told him about the prophecy of my death.

  My mother’s laugh spilled out from the shadows, then deepened until the voice sounded nothing like her. “Aw, Coral, you didn’t tell the warrior that you’re supposed to die. That he’s supposed to kill you.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Taran growled. “No, you said your mother believed I was going to kill you. Do you mean you’ve thought I would, too? This entire time?”

  I shook my head, frantic. “No, not really. There was always the chance, but—”

  He interrupted. “What do those runes say, Coral?”

  “Darkling blood to spill.”

  “Figured out the darkling part yet, little girl?” Loki stroked toward us, then abruptly stopped. My mother’s face frowned as water sloshed over her boots.

  Opening my throbbing hand, I stared down at the pool of blood in my hand. I’d spilled my blood, but somehow, I don’t think Verthandi’s anxious warning meant this little bit in my hand.

  I was a darkling. Me. Apparently the child of a human and a dark elf.

  Then it hit me. All the runes altogether.

  Valkyries shadow.

  Warriors’ fates to fulfill.

  Jotnar on the march.

  Darkling blood to spill.

  The Valkyries were taking the warriors to the final battle where warriors were to meet their fates and the giants were marching there to fight as well. Only, this read like they were going there to kill me and my sisters.

  They were supposed to spill darkling blood.

  Loki was using my mother’s research and knowledge to take out the gods before they could get there, which led me to believe they needed to get there just as my sisters and I had thought.

  But we were supposed to be there, too. Together. I felt it in my soul.

  Loki’s voice, so loud and odd coming from my mom’s body, broke into my thoughts. “I’ve had enough of these games tonight. Odin may have gotten his power before I could take him out, but you’re still teetering on the edge of yours, Thor. So sorry.” Loki lifted my mother’s arm, and moonlight reflected off the ice arrow in the crossbow. She released it and I screamed and tried to yank Taran down. But he stood strong and swung his hammer, deflecting the arrow with a small pinging noise that didn’t go with the horror of what I knew was on that arrow.

  “Black salt,” I murmured as my own knowledge of magic came to me. “My blood.” I shoved my good hand into my pocket and pulled out the vial of black salt. He hadn’t used it all. I opened it and poured the salt into the blood on my hand. The sting made me suck in a breath, but I turned and rubbed the mixture on Taran. He ignored me, swinging again as another arrow came at us.

  “I can do this all day, Loki,” he said, and something in his voice made my gaze fly up to his face. His eyes glowed as he glanced down at me. “Start the world back up, Coral.”

  Good idea. I shut my eyes, concentrated and asked for Verthandi’s help because I still had no knowledge of how to start and stop things on my own. But as the feeling began to swirl in my throat, I knew I’d figure it out, that eventually, I’d be in complete control of this power. The spin hit fast and hard and was so startling, I flung black salt all over Taran as I flailed on the pier. He grabbed the sleeve of his red coat I still wore and stopped me from falling in. He held my arm hard, but didn’t let go as everything came to a shuddering stop.

  He smoothed my hair back from my face. “You okay?” he asked as Josh and Grim began yelling and running toward us.

  And that was all it took. Taran’s attention on them as Loki fired another arrow at him. The ice struck his shoulder so hard, it flung him back.

  He tumbled into the water.

  And took me with him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The cold sucked all thought from me instantly, froze my limbs. Then, as my head broke the surface, I heard a cry and looked up to see my mother falling to her knees where I’d been standing. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she seemed to be struggling, then she stopped, looked at the pier and reached down. “You gave him black salt?” And it was her voice again. “Clever girl.”

  Something rushed past her, something moving so fast, I couldn’t make out what—not until elves grabbed Josh and Grim. Grim struggled against one’s hold but looked at me in the water. “Taran went under!”

  Taran had let go of me after we hit the water. I frantically trod water, looking for him. When I didn’t see him, I sucked in a deep breath and dived, hardly able to move in my thick coat in the frigid water. The darkness here was absolute—I couldn’t see a thing.

  I swam to the surface, took another deep breath and went back under. I had never imagined how cold water could become. It seemed to invade every pore, making my bones and muscles ache. Still, I pushed away from the pier and swam around, and when I came up again, I slammed into a piece of debris—probably part of a boat. Stars blinked behind my eyelids as I grabbed onto the floating wood and took a couple of precious seconds—seconds Taran might not have—to chase off the dizziness. Then I ignored my mother’s voice as she yelled for me, took another deep breath and was about to go back under when magic rippled along the top of the water, creeping over me in prickles, like sensation returning to a numb limb.

  My eyes flew open wide as a faint light showed on top of the water, then another and another. I counted nine before the lights began to take shape as they drew closer. White spirit wolves loped over the water, running toward me, and as they neared, they suddenly veered to my left and slowed. Everything about them glowed, from the long, elegant legs to the tips of their silvery fur. Their light shone on the water as the harsh squawks of ravens filled the night air, and I saw Taran’s hand splash on the surface of the water.

  I swam that direction and as I reached him, his hand grabbed my coat and he started sinking. Panic hit me hard. I flailed and tried to tug free, struggled as his weight pulled me deeper and deeper under the water. My lungs started to feel like they’d burst. I began to feel light-headed and dizzy. I couldn’t pull away. He was too strong.

  His hand to the death of a norn.

  The prophecy was coming true and he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing.

  When the water rushed into my throat, it burned and burned...until it stopped burning altogether. I quit struggling because I couldn’t—couldn’t force my limbs to move. I stared into the pitch black feeling as if I suddenly floated on air.

  When Taran started thrashing and let go, I still couldn’t fight—could only feel myself sinking. But he grabbed me and pulled me to the surface. He came out of the water and somewhere far off, I heard him yelling, felt him trying to breathe in
to my mouth.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” His voice, tinny yet loud seemed to be coming closer. “I’m not letting you go!”

  He cursed as he fought the water and the weight of my body. The rush of liquid from my lungs seared. I choked, gagged, tried to suck in air, and it hurt so badly, I felt myself losing consciousness.

  “That’s good,” Taran said. “Breathe. I won’t let you die.” Something in his voice was off. He slurred. As he started swimming toward shore, it seemed that his grip grew looser. One stroke, I thought. Two strokes. The silly giddiness made me feel like I was floating on something soft again, made me not care so much about the pain of trying to breathe. But something still wasn’t right. Five strokes, six, seven, eight.

  Taran stretched, groaning as he took a last, ninth stroke. He shoved me in front of him, and my knee touched bottom, touched land. Water rushed out of my throat as I crawled, threw up and kept crawling. Light surrounded me and I blinked my gritty eyes at the spirit wolf standing over me. It turned its head, snout down, and I saw that Taran was sinking again.

  I tried to yell, gurgled on the water still working its way out of my body and crawled back toward him, but someone grabbed me. I struggled, my horrified gaze on Taran as he disappeared.

  “How interesting,” Vrunlin said as he lifted me completely free of the water. “In the prophecies, Thor is bitten by the serpent, takes nine steps and dies. But in reality, it was poison and nine swimming strokes.”

  “He’s not dead. Let me go!” I thrashed, which sent more water up out of my throat and all over him.

  “Charming,” he muttered as he slung me over his shoulder and carried me farther from Taran. Absolute fear for Taran kept me kicking and screaming, but nothing I did fazed the elf. He patted me on the back of the knee as he joined his group of elves, who laughed at the sight of me squirming and trying to kick this...this thing I refused to accept was my father.

  The redheaded elf wasn’t laughing. He let go of Grim to try to snatch me. I tumbled off Vrunlin’s shoulder as he hissed and slashed out with his long, scary fingers. “Mine,” he growled. Red slashes appeared on the other elf’s cheek. He dropped me and I hit the ground hard as they started arguing in their language again. Apparently the red elf wanted my...wanted Vrunlin to kill me.