Thief Eyes

Muninn’s wingbeats fell silent. I stared at Freki, not understanding—not wanting to understand.

“Haley,” Freki said, “not long ago, you gave me a gift. Two gifts: a drink of sacred mead and the life of one of my kin. I would repay those gifts now.”

A single sharp beat of Muninn’s wings. “No.”

“No!” For once I agreed with Muninn completely.

Freki tilted his head and said nothing.

“There’s nothing to repay!” Wildness rose in me. Fire roared in my ears as I yelled, “It was a gift! You don’t pay back a gift! That’s not how it works!”

“The spell will consume you if you do not complete it.” Freki nudged the sheathed blade with his nose.

“So let it consume me,” I said.

“Hell no,” Ari said.

“After the spell consumes you,” Freki went on matter-of-factly, “its power will be set free into the world.”

I shook my head. “I won’t kill you. No way will I—” I looked wildly around. “If the spell needs blood, it can have mine!” I grabbed the knife out of its sheath and drew it toward my wrist. I had a lot more blood than Freki did. I might not even have to die.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Ari tried to grab the knife. I wrenched it away from him and pressed the blade to my skin. It was sharp, and I was used to breaking skin. A thin line of blood welled up.

I smelled a burning sulfur smell. Paper-thin flames rose up out of the cut—out of my blood. I froze, clutching the knife, mesmerized by the sight. The ground trembled. I barely noticed. Such a pretty light—

Ari’s hand clamped down over my wrist. The fire went out. The ground went still. I jerked my arm away from him. “How dare you—”

A sickening burned-skin smell stopped me mid-sentence. I looked down and saw puckered red skin around the cut. Pain seeped into my awareness slowly, like blood through a bandage. I felt the cut bleeding again, and I knew any moment fire would follow once more—my own blood burning, melting my skin. I doubled over and threw up in the grass, even as the pain in my wrist flared hotter. Burning hurt way, way more than breaking skin or drawing blood.

Ari grabbed my wrist and wrapped something around it. His handkerchief. I swallowed and sat up as the pain receded a little.

“So you see,” Freki said calmly, “your blood will not do. It will only set the power free.”

I smelled the handkerchief beginning to burn. Ari grabbed the water bottle out of my pack and poured it over the cloth. The burning smell subsided, replaced by the wet ash scent of an old campfire. Ari handed me the bottle, and I drank deeply, cool water soothing my throat. “I won’t kill you,” I told Freki again.

“Don’t be silly, Haley.” Freki laid a paw on my leg. “I cannot die. I will only leave this world for a time, nothing more. Even so, I do not offer this lightly.”

My chest ached. “Will it hurt?”

Freki didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Muninn’s wings flapped sharply downward. “I will not allow it,” the raven said.

The little fox laughed. “You have no power over me, Muninn. We’ve always been equals, in our master’s eyes and all others’. This gift is mine to give.”

To my amazement, Muninn didn’t argue with that. He glowered at us all in complete silence.

I looked at Ari. Ari swallowed hard. He tore a blank page from his mother’s spellbook and made it into a funnel, then sat down, balanced the mead skin between his knees, and used the funnel to pour the mead back into the skin. Nothing soaked through the waterproof paper. Not one drop hit the ground. In a few seconds the bowl was empty.

“You didn’t want me to do this before,” I said.

“Not so much depended on it then,” Ari said grimly. He took the fire stone out of the funnel and set it on the ground. The black stone had my blood upon it still; the mead hadn’t even smudged it. Ari set the coin on the ground, too, bouncing the silver in his palm as if it were hot. His skin was burned where he’d grabbed my wrist, a new welt across his palm and fingers already blistering.

“I hurt you.”

“I’ll survive,” Ari said brusquely. “I’d like to see to it that you survive, too.”

I looked down at Freki. He looked up at me. His tiny eyes were filled with compassion. “It is different for humans, I know,” the fox said. “If you leave this world, you leave it forever, and there are those who would miss you if you did.” He flicked an ear toward Ari, even as Ari muttered, “Damn right.”

“Accept this gift, Haley. Erase the debt between us.”

“There’s no debt between us.” My throat tightened around the words. I glanced at Ari. His lips were pressed together, his expression grim. If the fire beneath my skin destroyed me, he really would be alone here.

I thought of Dad, staying in Iceland, waiting for me. I thought of Jared in Tucson, waiting as well. What would they think if I never came back? Would Dad remember me at all?

Mom wouldn’t want this. But I wasn’t so sure. The thing about the animals at the clinic, Mom always said, was that they were helpless. They depended on us for everything. And wild animals were wild—they didn’t understand. Freki was neither wild nor a pet.

It was because of Mom that I knew what it was like to have someone disappear and never return.

I wiped the sweat from my neck. My skin was fever-hot. “You swear you’ll come back?” I asked Freki. “Eventually?”

“You have my word.” The little fox glanced toward Muninn. “So long as you remember me in this world, I will return to it.”

My throat hurt. “Of course I’ll remember you.”

Ari gave my hand a quick squeeze. I swallowed hard and reached for the knife.

Muninn gave an angry krawk and launched himself from the ground, flying up to the church. He perched beside the little birds. “Have a care, Haley.”

I can’t do this. I stroked Freki’s head with my free hand. So soft—softer than bear fur, softer than anything I knew. He sat back and gazed at me through brown fox eyes, waiting. I moved my hand to his back and gently took hold of the scruff of his neck. Around my wrist, the handkerchief began to smolder. I brought the blade toward Freki’s throat. My hand shook.

“Quickly, Haley, please.”

I drew the knife across his fur, gasping as it bit the skin beneath. Yet that was only his skin—I pushed harder and felt a sickening pop as the blade severed the vessels beneath. Freki twitched, once, and was still. Muninn let out a piercing cry. And then hot blood spurted from the wound, onto my hand and sleeve. Its coppery scent was everywhere.

Ari shoved the bowl under the little fox to catch the blood, even as Freki’s open eyes went dull. I dropped the knife and grabbed Freki’s legs to hold him over the bowl. So much blood—it stopped spurting and began to pour from the wound, filling the bowl. Too soon it was done. The flow of blood slowed, then stopped. Freki hung limp in my hold, his white chest drenched with red. Hot tears burned down my face. What kind of monster was I?

“Don’t you dare waste this gift!” Muninn’s wings beat furiously at the air. Wind picked up around us, and the rain began falling again—had it ever stopped? I scratched Freki behind the ears one more time. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and laid him gently on the grass.

Ari’s eyes were damp, too, but he just pointed to the stone and the coin. I dropped them both into the bowl and repeated the spell. This time the liquid began to boil.

I shoved my hand into it. The blood didn’t seem so hot now—or maybe my skin burned just as hot. I shut my eyes and saw flames once more. A fiery hand reached into the liquid. I heard a deep, satisfied sound.

“Ah. Better,” the rough fire-voice said. “Much better. We accept your gift. Cast your spell. We’ll be ready for you and for your world, should you fail.” A hot shudder ran through me at the words.

The flames rose higher. Through them I saw a clear sky with a broad path beneath it. I saw back, past the years of my own life, to a time before cars and airplanes, when homes were made of wood and grass, when dragon ships sailed the seas and cloth was woven on weighted looms. I saw stories released from their pages, not bound in books but free to be spoken and remembered. I saw—