The pepper falls in little flakes. A waiter slips by us, heading to another table. It’s quiet and calm here, nothing like the crazy racing heart in my chest, nothing like how all my nerves are super adrenalized from what happened in the lagoon.
“We are going to Valhalla tomorrow!” I blurt.
“I know!” Astley laughs and then stabs some lettuce. He chews for a little bit before asking me, “What is your biggest want?”
“To keep people safe and get Nick back.”
He ponders this but doesn’t look surprised. “And what is your biggest fear?”
“Well, it used to be of myself, of what I could become, but that’s a reality now. I mean, I’m all”-I lower my voice-“pixie, so that big fear has actually come true, but my next biggest fear is failing out of school. Well, no, not really. It’s just of losing people.”
His eyes meet mine. His eyes are so deep and blue. “Because you have lost your father, and your mother too in a way, and now you have lost Nick.”
A lump of lettuce seems stuck in my throat. It makes my eyes water. “Yeah.”
His hand reaches out and covers mine on the table. “I am so sorry for all your sadness, Zara.”
I don’t move my hand. “I am sorry for yours too.”
In my room, I can’t calm down, so I make a “Steps to Happy” list on the little hotel notepad sitting on the desk.
Steps to Happy
1. Get Nick.
2. Make Nick calm down about me being pixified.
3. Buy Astley thank-you present.
4. Get back home.
5. Kick bad pixie butt and make Bedford safe.
It’s a good list.
I barely sleep because I’m so excited about heading to Valhalla. When I wake up in the morning, I look around the room, trying to find some good Valhalla travel gear, but towels and bathrobes and Reykjavik guides do not seem appropriate. So I stuff into my backpack a steak knife I took from the restaurant, some sterile gauze I snatched from home (in case of wounds), and the curtain ties from the room, which I think could double as rope. I stash my water bottle and a few granola bars in case we get hungry. By the time I’m done with packing and showering, Astley is knocking on the door.
His jeans drape off his hips. His unzipped parka hangs from his shoulders. He hands me another water bottle and then slings his own pack on his shoulder. He doesn’t smile. He’s all serious.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“Yep.”
He pushes open the door. “You have your room key?”
“Nope!” I hop back and grab it. “My mom always forgets those too. Do you have yours?”
For a second he pretends like he doesn’t, and then he pats his wallet. “Of course. Right with our passports.”
“Show-off,” I tease.
He finally smiles.
That’s all we have for fun. We are pretty silent for the entire car ride through the dark Icelandic landscape. I’m too psyched to talk much, and I wonder if Astley feels the same way or is just respecting the silence, because he’s quiet too.
There are two falls, each over a hundred feet tall. At first because of the way the land drops off, it seems that the massive river just vanishes into the earth, but it’s an illusion. We’re on top of the waterfall, which rushes to a pit beneath us. The sun rises as we get there, revealing how far down into a canyon the falls actually go. Half the water is frozen while the other half thunders down through the ice. Mist rises everywhere, creating tiny rainbows all over the place.
“The way to get to Valhalla is over the rainbow bridge,” I whisper as I slip on the crazy terrain.
Astley grabs my arm to steady me, smiling but surveying the scene. “I know.”
We are the only ones here, probably because the sun just began to rise and it’s so cold and slippery. Ice and mist encase the landscape. It’s like frozen magic everywhere.
“It’s so beautiful,” I whisper. I reach out my fingers like I could touch a rainbow somehow, but all I touch is cold mist. I pull my gloves on, and then Astley shoves big yarn mittens over them for an extra layer of protection. The mist from our breaths joins the vapor in the air.
Then I see it: a rock tied with a golden scarf. It waits near the edge of the stream. “Look!”
We rush toward it. Astley gets there first. The rock is flat and large and has writing carved into it. He picks it up and hands it to me. My hands tremble beneath the weight. We untie the scarf together. The writing is not English. I don’t understand it at all, so I look to Astley for help.
“It’s old Norse.” His brows knit together as he stares, obviously concentrating. “It says, ‘Throw the stone to the golden falls and proclaim your intent to awaken the way.’ ”
The wind blows against us. I stagger, trying to maintain my balance. “What does that mean?”
“I assume what it says.” His eyes are bright. “I assume that-”
Something catches his attention. He stops midsentence and yells behind me, “Do not come closer!”
Whirling around, I see him too, a tall man, with dark hair that matches my own. I lean toward Astley as my heart pounds hard and fast. “Astley, that’s-”
“Your father. I know.” He steps in front of me acting protective, the same way Nick always did, the same way I do with Devyn and Issie.
I clutch the stone to my chest as my father steps forward. His skin is so pale. Circles live beneath his eyes. His hands are out, palms facing us. “I offer you no harm. I have come to help.”
I push around Astley and confront my father. All the wrongs he’s ever done form a ball of anger in my chest.
“You? Help?”
He shakes his head, comes closer. “Yes. I followed you here.”
My father, the stalker. Great. I will myself to calm down.
Astley speaks before I can. “I told you to stand back. Explain yourself.”
He tells us that he followed us onto the plane, glamoured himself so we wouldn’t see him, and trailed us to the hotel, then to the spa and here. He saw Vander speaking to us at the lagoon.
“I do not trust him,” my father says. His eyes look infinitely weary, as if he has given up on trust, on his kingdom, on everything.
“And why not?” Astley asks, bristling. He stands with his feet shoulder width apart, bracing himself. “He is most trusted. He has been with us for ages. Whereas you, sir, have only shown yourself to be untrustworthy, a king with such a failure of strength that you often do worse than evil would. So tell me why I should not trust my man?”
“I have no words to explain why. I just do not.” My father’s voice is so tired.
“What do you think, Zara?” Astley touches my shoulder with his glove. It’s a nice, steady hand.
My father has killed and tortured, stalked my mother, and possibly caused my stepfather’s death. I’d like to say that there was no way I would trust him, because that would be logical. I’d like to say that he is just all evil, because that would be easy. But nothing is that way. Nothing is all good or all bad. Even I have killed and kidnapped, haven’t I? We didn’t have trials when we imprisoned all his pixies. We didn’t give them a choice. Sure, our motives were about keeping people safe and my father’s motives were about need, but still… And what about redemption? What about the chance to change your ways, to make things right, to cast aside a life of bad for a moment of pure good?
“I don’t… I don’t know what to think,” I say.
“Zara, when Nick died, I ran away. I could have helped you, but I did not.” My father grabs my shoulders, forces me to look at him. “I have never done anything to earn your trust, or your mother’s. But you are journeying to the land of the gods, Zara, and you are so young.”
“I’m not that young,” I sputter out. The falls rush below us. The mist swirls around my father’s hair. “And I know that you have done things before, things that are good.”