“But I don’t remember.” I looked right into his eyes, not flinching as dizziness washed over me. I could handle lots of things. “If you want to negotiate further, you’ll have to give me my memories.”
Muninn launched himself from the ledge, claws aimed right at me. I ducked. He circled once around the room, then disappeared down the tunnel with an angry krawk.
“We have no bargain!” I called after him.
And I had nothing at all, save for an old coin and a scrap of cloth and a few scattered memories.
Something brushed my ankles. I looked down to see Freki winding around my legs. I hadn’t seen him enter the room. “What do you deal in?” I asked the little fox bitterly.
“Only companionship. Muninn and I may share a master, but we have different roles to play.”
I had no more reason to trust him than Muninn, but still I knelt down and squeezed him tightly. The little fox didn’t resist, not even when I found myself sobbing into his thick musky fur.
I didn’t have time for crying, not now. Ari—the bear Ari had become—was still out there. With a shuddering breath I drew away. “Can you turn Ari back?” I asked the fox. “Can
The tip of Freki’s tail brushed the floor. “I do not deal in memory. I’m sorry, Haley.”
“Can you at least help us get out of here?”
Freki looked at me through sympathetic brown eyes but said nothing. I was on my own.
Ari’s flashlight lay on the floor, casting a beam of blue light. I turned it off and put it in my pocket with the cloth. His backpack lay on the floor, too. I took it to the bed. Maybe there’d be something inside I could bargain with. Freki climbed up beside me, watching as I unzipped the pack’s small outer pocket. “Will you at least not try to stop me?” I asked him.
“I can no more bind you than Muninn can,” the fox said.
That was something, at least. I went through the pack. The outer pocket held a thin wallet and a United States passport. I opened the passport. Dark brown eyes—almost black—stared at me from beneath blond hair pulled into a high ponytail. My own hair was unbound, but I pulled a lock around, and it was the exact same color. This wasn’t Ari’s backpack—it was
Why was I visiting Iceland? As I tried to remember, a headache stabbed behind my eyes. I let it go—for now—set down the passport, and opened the wallet. It held a few multicolored bills and a handful of silver coins with fish stamped on them. Ordinary coins, cool to the touch. Freki sniffed them without much interest. Did that mean Muninn wouldn’t be interested, either?
There were some photos in the wallet: a man with his black hair sticking out in all directions, grinning atop a rocky pink outcrop; a gray-eyed woman in a white doctor’s jacket, a small orange cat in her arms, one of its legs bound in a bright turquoise bandage; myself, standing beside a serious-looking boy with short dark hair, a large yellow-and-black king snake draped over our arms and linked hands. I guessed the man and woman were my parents, but who was the boy?
There were no pictures of Ari. Maybe the pictures were out of date. Maybe I’d always meant to take one of him.
I looked down the dark tunnel. What if I never got to take that picture? What if the boy who’d tried to rescue me was gone forever, turned to white fur and black claws?
No. I wouldn’t let that happen.
Water! Freki sniffed disdainfully as I uncapped the bottle and took a long swallow. Cool liquid soothed my parched throat. I’d never tasted anything so wonderful—or maybe I had and didn’t remember. I forced myself to screw the cap back on before I drank it all.
I also found a smushed bag of malt balls. My stomach grumbled at the scent of half-melted chocolate. Freki nosed at the bag. I gave him a malt ball—he took it between his paws and nibbled it delicately—then gulped down a handful of my own. The grumbling eased. I put the malt balls back into the pack beside the water and opened the notebook. A note was written on the first page:
Another name. Another person I couldn’t remember. Had Katrin tried to rescue me, too? There was a phone number beneath her name.
What had happened to my mother? How could I forget something like
The rest of the pages were covered with strange symbols—squiggles and circles and lines—with smaller writing scrawled among the symbols.
Had I run from magic? Was that why my life had needed saving? I reached into my pocket and drew out the coin, hoping that holding it would help me remember, like before.
Heat shot through my palm—too hot! I dropped the thing and it clattered to the ground. I pressed my hand to my mouth as the burning cooled.
On the floor, the silver coin shone in the lamplight. I didn’t dare lose it, no matter how much it burned. I reached into my other pocket for the cloth. A white handkerchief streaked with dried blood. My blood? I used the handkerchief to pick up the coin. The heat was fainter through the cotton.
I felt a powerful tug, as if the coin was trying to pull me from the room. For just a second, I caught an image of a boy with shaggy hair and a wool hat jammed down over his ears. The coin kept tugging. Leading me toward Ari?
My heart pounded. Not letting go of that coin for a second, I loaded everything into my pack. The wineskin Freki had brought me still lay beside the bed. No way was I drinking the mead, but if I found more water, I could use the skin to carry it. I tugged the cork free, meaning to empty it out.
Freki let out a single sharp bark and rose to his feet. “Don’t spill that! My master would not like it!”
