A boy’s voice:
I tried to recall why I wanted a way out, but I saw only burning things: a bow, an arrow, a woman’s hair, cracks within the earth.
A squeaky voice:
A voice that held the beating of wings:
When I woke again, the pain was gone. I sat up slowly, afraid, but nothing hurt. I began trembling, with shock or relief or maybe both. The air was still dark. I couldn’t see my own fingers, held up in front of my face. Just then, that didn’t matter. “I’m all right,” I whispered, and the trembling eased.
Small feet clicked against the stone and stopped beside me. I felt a cup pressed to my lips. The liquid within smelled sweet and alcoholic. I pushed it away.
“It would be better if you drank.” The squeaky voice again. I reached out and felt soft fur. So soft—more like a plush toy than anything real.
“I’m not thirsty.” Whatever was in the cup would make me sleep, and I didn’t want to sleep anymore. I heard movement in the dark as the furred creature left my side. Something scraped the floor.
I felt around me. I was sitting on a hard low platform, like a stone bed. The air smelled heavy with water. I swung my feet over the edge—still no pain. “Is there light?” I asked my—captor? Rescuer? Had I needed rescuing?
“I will get light.” Claws tapped rock, leaving me alone.
I squinted into the dark, but my eyes didn’t adjust. I knew I’d been able to see before—where? I couldn’t remember. My thoughts felt fuzzy and strange. I stood—the floor was stone, too—and walked forward, stretching my arms out in front of me. After a few steps I came to a rough stone wall.
My shoes squeaked as I returned to the platform. I’d been running. I remembered that much. I’d been running, and someone had been calling my name.
I sank to my knees, fighting nausea. I was in more trouble than I could imagine if I had to work to remember my own name.
I rubbed my arms. They were covered in nylon—jacket sleeves. My long hair was loose, and it fell into my face.
Yellow light flared at the edges of my sight. Too bright—I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them. More light bloomed in front of me, behind me, as if by magic. The light cast faint shadows.
I blinked and stood. I was in a small stone room, maybe ten feet across, wearing jeans and a blue hooded jacket. The light came from small bowls of oil with burning wicks in them, set in shoulder-high niches in the walls. Smoke drifted from the bowls, carrying an oily animal scent. Aside from the bed and the lamps, the room was almost empty, with just an ivory-colored drinking horn filled with amber liquid, set in a wooden stand beside the bed, and some shelves and ledges in the walls, which disappeared into the darkness above me. To my left, a broad doorway led out into a dark tunnel.
A small white fox padded out of the tunnel and crossed the room to sit at my feet. An arctic fox with small ears and a long fluffy tail—not a red fox or a fennec fox or any of the other species names that tumbled into my awareness. Why could I remember twelve kinds of foxes when I couldn’t remember my family or home?
“Light,” the fox said.
Never mind what species he was—I sank abruptly down on the stone bed. “You can talk.” None of those dozen species could talk.
“So can you.” The fox scratched behind his ear with one paw. I couldn’t help it—I reached out to pet him. The fox leaned into my hand. His woolly fur really was that soft.
Was I someone who liked animals? I stared into the darkness above. My name was Haley. What else? Mother and father? Sisters or brothers? My thoughts slid away when I tried to focus them, as if they, too, were beyond the light. I clenched my other hand into a fist, released it when my nails—sharp nails—dug into my palms. “Ouch!” I jammed both hands into my pockets.
My fingers brushed soft cloth in one pocket, warm metal in the other. A memory of gray eyes and hot wind shook loose from the dark, and another of losing my grip and falling—
I jerked my trembling hands out of my pockets. Maybe there was a reason I’d forgotten. I stared down at my palms. They were crossed with faint half-moon scars.
In the distance, I heard wings beat the air. A huge black raven flew out of the tunnel and into the room, wings outstretched. A half dozen small black-capped birds—arctic terns—followed in its wake.
I scrambled to my feet. The raven swooped up onto one of the ledges, perched there, and looked down at me through bright black eyes. Dizziness washed over me. Somehow I knew those eyes remembered all I’d forgotten. The smaller birds arrayed themselves on lower shelves while the fox tapped my ankle once—a friendly gesture— then curled up on the floor, wrapping his bushy tail around his paws.
The raven flapped its wings—slowly, rhythmically—and somehow those wingbeats shaped themselves into words. “So. You have chosen to wake.” He flexed his black claws. His glossy wings shone in the lamplight.
“Who are you?” Speaking—thinking—took too much work while staring into those eyes. I looked down. My sneakers were gray with gravelly dust. “Why did you bring me here? What do you want?”
The raven’s wings kept beating the air. I swayed in time to that beat. “I saved your life.”
Even without looking at the bird, speaking took effort. “Why did my life need saving?”
“It didn’t,” the raven said matter-of-factly. “But the other one, by whose spell you were caught—the fire she called on could tear the land asunder, should it be set free. Perhaps your dying while bound to her magic would not be enough to release that fire. Perhaps it would. I prefer not to take chances. The other one was young when she cast her spell. She thought it a game, a matter of her own human life, yet the earth still trembles with the memory of how she called upon the realm of fire.”
I had no idea what the raven was talking about, and my murky memories yielded nothing. “What other one?”
“I’ll not name her, lest I give her more power—for though she died a thousand years before you were born, time is a fragile human thing and can be altered to bring the land’s ending. All things must end, as my master foretold long ago. Even so I would hold off their end awhile longer. I would remember for a small time more.”
“Wait, you’re saying the world could end if I die?”
The raven didn’t laugh. He just kept flapping his wings. A chill breeze blew through the room. “This island, certainly, which is all of the world I can see. You are not as strongly tied to the spell as the other one. You have only touched the fire—you have not offered gifts to the giants who wield it, and they have not left their power burning within you in turn. If they had, you would be as far beyond my reach as the other one. As it is, the danger is smaller, but still real. Just ask the first victim of the spell.”
“What first victim?” My throat caught on the words. There was pain in that question’s answer, pain sharp as shattered bone.
“Ah.” The raven’s wingbeats slowed to a whisper. “Even were I willing to return that memory to you, you would not want it.”
Yet now that I knew the memory—the pain—was there, I couldn’t help searching my thoughts for it, like digging at an old scab.
The memory remained out of reach. I looked up again. It was easier now than before. I focused on the glossy wings and avoided the bright eyes. “Who
“I have many names. Most of them humans have forgotten. Muninn is one a few yet remember. Memory is
