Thief Eyes

I thought of how in my dreams I was the arrow, the fire that tore the earth open. “If I accept your offer, could I return the coin to Hallgerd first?”

Muninn’s krawk was angry this time. “That other one is not as great a danger to this land as you are now. Even so, I’ll not have you returning any part of her power to her. There is danger there, too. The coin is a part of our bargain. It comes with you. Do you accept?”

Even now, I trusted Hallgerd with magic less than I trusted myself. Hallgerd’s magic already had killed. Yet she hadn’t even seemed to want the coin when last we’d spoken. “Do I have a choice?” I asked Muninn.

“There’s always a choice.” The raven’s wingbeats were slow, rhythmic. “Yet bear this in mind, Haley—if you refuse this bargain, I will do all I can to claim your memories once more.”

“Which, as it turns out, is not very much,” a voice said. I looked around and saw a small white fox crossing the bridge over the mist-shrouded river.

“Freki!” I said.

Freki calmly trotted over to stand at my feet. “You know you have no control over Haley’s memories now, Muninn, any more than you had control over Hallgerd’s memories once she made her bargain. The spirits that burned away Haley’s hair burned away the veil over her memories as well. Those powers are older than you or I, and as you say—we have no sway over them.”

Muninn’s feathers puffed out. “This is none of your concern, Freki.”

“Ah, but it is.” The rain didn’t touch Freki’s fur, either. “Haley gave me a gift, and I may have the chance to repay her, this day. So I will wait. Make your decisions, Haley. Cast your spell, or choose not to cast it. Neither Muninn nor I may interfere.”

I looked at Ari. He looked at me. I knelt down and hugged the little fox tightly. “I missed you,” I whispered, and realized it was true.

Freki squirmed out of my arms. “I have done my job well, then.”

“Do you think I should accept Muninn’s bargain?”

“I cannot say,” Freki told me. “Mostly because I do not know.”

“The fate of the land is at stake,” Muninn said with several short, sharp wingbeats.

“This is not the first time the fate of what matters most has rested on human choices.” Freki curled up at my feet, resting his head on his paws. “None but our master sees the future in full, and the price he paid is not one that others can bear. Haley will do as she thinks best, and no one here knows what will happen after that.”

Rain still fell, soaking through my jeans and steaming back into the air. No one knows what will happen. If only we did know—then Mom never would have gotten on a plane to Iceland. Ari never would have told Mom—or me—the things that he did. I wouldn’t have run from the things I was told. And Dad wouldn’t have—I pushed that thought aside. “None of us know. We just do the best we can and hope we don’t screw it up too badly.”

“Yeah,” Ari said with a wry smile. “That.”

Whatever you steal, be sure to give it back again. Hrut’s words—I had no idea whether he’d meant the coin when he spoke them. But Katrin had thought the coin should be returned to Hallgerd, too. Did I trust Katrin? I thought of her and Dad—then I thought of how Katrin had stayed up through the night for me, translating Icelandic words to English ones, doing everything she could so that I wouldn’t face magic unarmed.

I thought of Thorgerd, Hallgerd’s daughter, whose warnings and instructions Katrin had passed on. Thor gerd’s descendants had remembered, for generation after generation, that the coin needed to be returned. There had to be some reason for that.

I hadn’t destroyed the land or the world yet. Neither had Hallgerd. Maybe there was a reason for that, too.

I fished the coin out of my pocket and set it down beside the black fire stone. “Let’s finish this,” I said.

Ari nodded and handed me the spellbook. I read Thorgerd’s instructions one more time, thinking of how it took a thousand years’ worth of my ancestors—of Hallgerd’s daughters—to get this book to me.

Muninn’s wings flapped steadily as he watched me. The mist thickened. “If this goes badly,” the raven warned me, “you will pay.”

Ari handed me the mead. We exchanged a glance as I uncorked the skin. If things are going to go wrong, this is the place. Freki’s whiskers twitched. The little fox turned away from me and began nosing through my backpack. I poured the mead into the bowl, careful not to splash any to the ground. The amber liquid was tinged faintly with red. I waited, but the mead didn’t steam, and the ground didn’t shake. I caught a whiff of its sweet scent, and tiredness washed over me.

I blinked the heaviness from my eyes and took Svan’s raven’s claw to my thumb. Piercing my skin with it was easy. The pain felt good, the way holding the coin had felt good. I squeezed my finger, and blood welled to the surface, along with a tiny wisp of smoke. The wind felt suddenly hotter.

I tossed the claw down and used my blood to draw the symbol from the spellbook on the black stone: a circle with three intersecting lines, the ends of each crossed by smaller circles and lines—the same symbol that was on the coin. The stone grew warm. A few more flakes chipped off as I dropped it into the mead. I dropped the coin into the liquid, too, and then I chanted the words I’d memorized from the spellbook:

Powers beyond the earth, hear me!
Powers beneath the earth, aid me!
Find her, turn her,
Return to her this gift!

The fire in me rose with the words, like flames to wind. The mead hissed and steamed. I thrust my hand into it. Flames leaped from the bowl, burning my skin. The scent of hot metal filled the air. I closed my eyes and saw more flames, the flames of my nightmares.

The flames I’d leaped through. Huge figures strode toward me, made entirely of fire, their arms and legs and necks bent at unnatural angles. One of them reached in my direction. I drew away, hot shudders racing through me. He wasn’t reaching for me, though. He was reaching for the bowl in which the mead yet steamed. He dipped a fiery hand into the liquid, then jerked back with a roar.

“How dare you offer us the drink of our enemies? We refuse your gift!”

The flames in my blood burst through my skin. Pain—I’d never felt pain like this. My skin was melting, my bones were melting—I started screaming and couldn’t stop. The ground buckled beneath me like a horse trying to throw me from its back.

Someone grabbed me. There was a roaring in my ears, and then—silence, save for the steady beating of wings.

I opened my eyes. Ari looked at me, his green eyes wide, his hands shaking as he clasped my arms. The fire still burned in me, but it was contained—barely—beneath my skin once more. Liquid dripped from the hand I’d thrust into the mead, and the drips fell back into the bowl.

I drew my arms free, shook the last of the mead from my hand, and looked into the liquid. Somehow, impossibly, the earthquake—if there’d been an earthquake—hadn’t spilled any. Maybe you couldn’t spill mead like this by accident, or maybe the fire giants hadn’t wanted to call on Freki and Muninn’s master, either. “The mead was no good.” My throat felt scratchy from screaming. “It just made them angry. The spell—”

“The spell isn’t worth your life,” Ari said.

What is this small life against the fate of the world? But if I’d died, the fire would have burst through my skin, out into that world.

Muninn’s wings beat on. “Stupid girl! The power will never be contained now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” There was movement in my backpack. Freki backed out of it, holding the hilt of Svan’s knife between his teeth.

We all turned to look at the fox. He dropped the knife in front of me. “Even had you offered more suitable brew, the fire’s hold on you is too tight. A working as great as this one requires blood. I can give you that.”