Foresworn

by Rinda Elliott

  Something moved, and my heart stuttered to a stop. I slowly looked around, eyeing the people in front and behind the counter, but everyone was frozen like a statue. If I were to go outside, even the wind wouldn’t be moving. I’d always wondered why I just didn’t walk into it. I mean, wind is a thing, right? So why only feel it when it moves?

  Shaking my head at my own silliness, I told myself to stop channeling Coral. That was just the sort of thing she would think. My heart tightened. I missed her. Missed her and Raven both.

  My hand started to tingle, and I reached into my pocket for the small notebook I kept in it. It wasn’t there. Panicked, I stood to scan the shelves for a notebook and a pen, but before I could move, my norn forced my hand. I grabbed the ketchup bottle and began to squirt it onto the table in thin, long lines.

  Music on the lake.

  This is what our norns did—the Norse goddesses my sisters and I carried inside us. They gave us stupid cryptic messages in ways that disrupted our lives, caused our mother to pull us from school and made keeping a job ridiculously hard. Though Raven managed to keep two most of the time. I’d actually been fired from my last one. I hadn’t told my family. Hadn’t told them that my boss had been totally freaked over talking to me one moment and seeing me trying to wipe permanent marker off a nice new white refrigerator the next.

  My table didn’t have napkins and neither did the next few. I finally went into the bathroom in the back, realized I was glad I’d decided not to eat here when I saw the condition of the sink and grabbed a handful of paper towels. I was back in my seat, ready to clean up the ketchup runes, when the norn spun the world again.

  Gods! She usually gave me a bit more breathing room.

  Groaning, I held on to the edge of the table with one hand and tried to wipe at the runes with the other. But the spin always threw me off if I kept my eyes open and all I got were the last two runes before everything stopped spinning.

  To everyone else in the truck stop, nothing had happened. They all continued their movements, their conversations. The man in the next booth held up the hair he’d pulled from the onion rings. I hurriedly swiped the ketchup runes into a smeared mess and flinched when someone cleared his throat next to me.

  I looked up into the most fascinating face on a boy I’d ever seen. He had a charcoal-colored beanie pulled so far down his head, I couldn’t tell his hair color, but his narrow features looked like they belonged on a magazine. Sleepy, slightly slanted eyes that were a dark, dark brown stared down at my table in amusement. They were like the seal brown on a color wheel—that last shade before black. With eyes that dark, he should have had black hair under that hat, but his eyebrows were blond. He had thin, elegant, wide lips over a square jaw and sharp cheekbones. All that too-pretty sat atop broad shoulders and a long, rangy body. I guessed him to be about six feet tall.

  “Hi.” His voice surprised me. It was deep and warm when I’d been expecting something higher, with clipped accents. I’d been expecting British...in Wyoming.

  Okay, I really, really needed some sleep.

  “Hi,” I replied, drawing the word out because he just stood there, staring down at me. My norn sort of moved. She didn’t have a physical body—gods, I was pretty hopeful on that one because I had no desire to physically experience a reenactment of Alien—but her essence could sometimes feel physical. This boy agitated her. Not in a bad way, either. Not like the guy in the parking lot earlier. No, this was warmer...like interest. Sheesh, does she think he’s hot or something?

  I studied him, thinking maybe he was the boy I’d come here to find, but wouldn’t that be a coincidence? And he looked nothing like the goofy one in the tabloid picture I had.

  His gaze flicked back to the runes. “Saw you sitting by yourself and wondered if you wanted company for lunch. Looks like you already started.” He picked up the bottle. “I usually prefer mustard on my table. The occasional zip of extra Italian dressing can help even out the Formica flavor, too.”

  “Funny.”

  “Not going to eat?” He held out the ketchup bottle.

  I took it as I shook my head. Not after seeing that bathroom. “Do you work here or something? Are you really here to take my order?”

  He chuckled. “No. I stopped in for a pop, saw you and thought you might like some company. Though, I was going to try to talk you into eating somewhere else. Now that I’m closer, I can tell you’re probably too tired to go anywhere else.”

  “Thanks,” I snapped, then swallowed a groan.

  “I didn’t mean you looked bad.”

  “Being told you look tired is the same as being told you look like crap.” I swiped at the ketchup again, frowning over the mess I was making. “It’s a fact.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. You certainly don’t look like crap—just like you’ve come a long way. You don’t live here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I would have noticed you before.”

  Something in his tone made my stomach feel kind of weird and fluttery. I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling, so I frowned at him.

  He lifted a blond eyebrow. “Are you some kind of artist?”

  “No,” I drawled out this word, too, completely startled by his rapid change of subject. “Why would you ask that?”

  He pointed to the smears of ketchup.

  My face heated. “Really? You’d call that art?” I noticed one of the runes was still intact and hurriedly wiped it. “Looks like something a toddler would do.”

  “True. I’ve only seen babies do this sort of art before. Doesn’t mean they weren’t proud of it. Could mean you’re trying for that whole abstract genius sort of vibe.”

  Weirdo. Too bad. He was ridiculously pretty, but I didn’t do weirdo.

  Not that I did anyone. Trust issues tend to slow down even the hint of a possible connection. Trust issues and a bloodsucker of a Norse goddess who could turn a kiss into someone else’s bad dream. I sat straighter, cleared my throat. “Look, your invitation was nice and all that, but I’m getting ready to leave town in a couple of minutes. I’m not worth your time.”

  “I very much doubt that,” he said, half under his breath, before giving me a brilliantly white smile. “Take care then.”

  Surprised he’d given up so easily, I watched him walk off—couldn’t help it. He moved in long bold strides, wearing his confidence like an invisible cloak. He looked at me once, over his shoulder, as he was leaving.

  That irritating fluttery sensation in my stomach stuck around after he left.

  “Wonder what music on the lake means,” I said out loud as I cleaned up the ketchup.

  The woman in the booth next to mine turned around in her seat. “Sorry. I couldn’t help but hear. Haven’t you heard of the music on Yellowstone Lake?” She pointed to the man who’d found the hair in his food. “We were camping just before this weird snow started. We camp up there a lot, but something was different this time. It was loud enough to wake us up from a sound sleep, and I swear I heard harps or something.”

  “They weren’t harps,” the man interrupted. “They were like wood flutes or something. And voices. Lots of voices.” He shuddered. “Creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Well, it’s not as creepy as this snow,” the woman snapped. “I mean, I know it can snow early here but not this early.”

  “Dear, it’s snowing everywhere. It’s snowing in Mexico.”

  “I’m sorry.” This time I interrupted. “Did you say that you heard music at Yellowstone Lake?”

  She nodded. “It’s famous for the ghost music on the lake.”

  I shivered and hoped she attributed it to the cold and not the stomping my future grave just took. “Okay, thanks.” I stood, picked up the stuff I still needed to buy and made my way to the cashier.

  I’d driven from Flo
rida to Wyoming, come all this way to find a boy who carried a god’s soul. A possible future warrior who would be a part of the battles of Ragnarok—when I’d never entirely believed in Ragnarok. But between this snow and the message my norn had just given me, it seemed that maybe I was here for something else.

  So one quick stop before the drive to help my sister Raven.

  * * *

  “Can’t miss the greenhouses was right,” I muttered as they came into sight. The cashier had known exactly what I was asking about the second I’d pulled the article out.

  “Another one, eh? Wish you people would leave that poor kid alone. He’s not some kind of Harry Potter wizard, you know.”

  If I’d actually cared what the gum-popping woman thought, I would have been embarrassed about asking about a kid from one of those crazy supermarket tabloid articles. Especially one that said he could make crops appear like magic. But I didn’t. Care what she thought, that was.

  She’d still told me where to find the “compound,” as she called it. Seemed a lot of people in town bought vegetables there year—round, so the place was popular. It was between Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park, off a long bumpy private road.

  I nearly ran off the path twice. Ice was building on the off roads.

  The place was something like twenty plastic-covered domed greenhouses next to a massive old barn and a small cabin. I hated the term compound because it made me think of a cult or a group of scary militia types—not that I’d ever been in a place like that. But then I eyed the row of off-road vehicles, the long trailers that held camouflaged black-and-white snowmobiles, and actually worried a little. Did I just want to walk up, knock on the door and say, “Hey, my mom might want to hurt you” when there could be gun-toting crazy end-timers gathered here?

  And with snow happening all over the world, they were probably a little extra trigger-happy right now.

  There could have been more greenhouses because I couldn’t see them all from the road. I drove around the back and parked behind the barn. The urge to hurry, scout this guy out and get on the road made me slam my scarf in the door when I got out of my car. Of course, the blast of frigid wind that hit me didn’t help. It caught both my scarf and the door, and I nearly lost fingers trying to stop it.

  Glancing around as I freed the material, I waited for a troop of militia types to come running around the barn. It had sounded like the door slam echoed through the valley here. Had probably bounced off the plastic covers on all the greenhouses.

  When nobody showed, I crept around the corner and saw that the back door was ajar on the closest one. At least I thought it was a back door. With one on each end, either one could be, right?

  That was such a Coral thought. We called them random thought farts whenever she blurted things out.

  Sleep. Need it. Badly.

  Biting back a sigh, I sneaked into the fragile-looking building, crouched down behind a row of plants and listened. The slam of heat and humidity made me hold my breath. I immediately unwrapped my scarf because the material scratched when I started to sweat. The leaves next to me were bigger than my head. I moved one aside to peek through the vines but didn’t see any movement. Except for bees. There were a lot of bees. Which was weird because I’m pretty sure they don’t do well in cold.

  Not that it was cold in here. Gods, it was a freaking sauna!

  Grimacing, I kept an eye on the small buzzing creatures as I walked down an aisle, moving aside heavy dangling leaves, recognizing cucumbers. Halfway down the row, my hands started itching, and I realized the vines had these tiny prickly things on them that aggravated my skin.

  Sweat ran down my spine. I thought about taking off my coat, but I reached the other end of the greenhouse and heard voices.

  “I spotted powdery mildew on some cucumber plants this morning, so I’m going to prune them. Can you grab that portable television and bring it to me? I want to keep up with what’s happening south.”

  “Sure thing, Arun.”

  Both voices were male, both sounded young. And Arun was the right name. But he sounded like the guy I’d met in the diner. I peeked through the door, spotted two guys standing between the rows of greenhouses. I couldn’t see one of them. The one I could see was freaking huge, with broad shoulders, tight jeans that showed the thickest muscled thighs I’d ever seen and a cowboy hat on his head. A cowboy hat. I stretched my neck to see if he wore boots, too. He did! Black steel-toed cowboy boots. He lifted his right hand to adjust his hat, and it looked like he had black gloves to match. Something glinted off that hand. I squinted because who wears jewelry on the outside of their gloves?

  He moved again so I could see his hand clearly, and I sucked in a breath. It wasn’t jewelry—it was some kind of metal. And it wasn’t a black glove. He had a prosthetic hand.

  “Did you find Gullin and Freya?” His voice boomed as big as his body.

  I lifted my eyebrows at the mention of Freya. And Gullin. It was so not random; I was in the right place for sure.

  “Yeah, they wandered outside and got lost in the snow. It’s over their heads now, so we’ll have to try to keep a better eye on them. Silly things.”

  “I’ve got to check some of the heat mats in the last seed greenhouse—then I’ll grab your TV. And maybe some lunch, too.” The big kid in the cowboy hat moved out of the way.

  Those amused seal-brown eyes locked on me. “Bring a couple of extra sandwiches. I got distracted by something pretty when I was out and never got around to eating.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Panic kept me from moving right away. My first thought was to hide. Maybe I was imagining him being able to see me crouched behind the leaves. But the smirk on those poet lips let me know he had spotted me. He walked toward the greenhouse with the same confident strides he’d used in the truck stop earlier. He made me feel strange. He was unnaturally beautiful—godlike unnaturally beautiful. I’d never liked pretty guys. Had always preferred the rougher, craggier faces—but it was kind of hard to look away from this one. I thought of Freyr, reputed to be the most stunning of the Vanir, the sworn enemies of the Aesir.

  The freaking fertility god.

  Suddenly, the heat in the greenhouse grew unbearable. I bit my tongue to try to moisten my bone-dry mouth.

  “The extra sandwich request was for you.” Arun stepped inside, and the space felt instantly smaller. Too tight. “I thought you might be coming here to find me,” he murmured as he pulled off his gray coat and draped it over a wooden chair beside the door. “It’s nice to see you again. I’m Arun Dahl.”

  Now normally, I’m not slow, but I stared at him with my mouth open. Open too wide like I was mimicking a starving baby chick. Finally, I found my tongue, remembered how it worked. “Why would you think I would come looking for you? Kind of arrogant, aren’t you?”

  “Arrogant? Me?” He laughed. “No, not really. And of course I knew you were coming here. You’re all coming here. You and the others—all those like us.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Great. That sounded very cultlike.

  “What do you mean like us?”

  He sighed, leaned against the table behind him. “So you’re one of those who has no idea what’s going on then? I’m curious. What made you come north? Did you hear the music?”

  At that moment, I was more confused than I’d ever been in my entire life.

  He seemed to know it, too, because his smile became kind. “You carry a soul just as I do. Just as the other kids who’ve been showing up do. What do you think we’re doing here? With the monster barn? The greenhouses?”

  “Growing food? What’s so different about having greenhouses?” I tugged on the neck of my sweater, grimaced at the sweat on my skin. “Look, I came all the way here from Florida to find you.”

  “And yet you said I was arrogant for thinking that
.” He pulled the beanie off, revealing the lightest blond curls I’d ever seen. And his hair didn’t look bleached. In fact, those curls looked so soft, I had to fight the urge to touch them to see if they felt like baby hair. Funny, I would have thought soft curls and a pretty face on a boy would have made him seem kind of feminine. Not on this guy. “I’m flattered,” he said.

  The confusion he made me feel did what confusion always did to me. Made me mad. I hated not knowing what was going on at all times, hated the blurred edges that showed up too often in life. “Don’t be flattered. I came because I thought my mother might try to hurt you, but I found out this morning that she went to Oklahoma, so I don’t have to stay.”

  It was his turn to look confused. “So you think your mother left Florida to come all the way here to hurt me, but now she’s in Oklahoma. That’s kind of crazy.” He grinned. “It’s also kind of cool to have a girl riding to my rescue. Who’s your mom?”

  “That’s not important now that I don’t have to stay.”

  “But you do have a god or goddess’s soul, don’t you?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, took a long deep breath, then looked at him again. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that question. You don’t think that’s a strange thing to ask someone?”

  Right then, I flashed back to my conversation with Raven that morning.

  “Vanir has brothers, all with Norse names, and they look like their Choctaw-Irish father. And everyone here knows what’s going on. I just know it. This whole situation is too surreal, Kat. We’ve spent all our lives hiding our magic, knowing others don’t even know about it, and I walk into a family who knows things. Even the sheriff, I think. It’s like I marched right into a book.”

  “Sounds like it’s all coming together. Ragnarok. Just like the stories.”