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. Whoever I am, no way do I give up that easily. I opened the main inner pocket of the pack. It contained a small yellow notebook, an English-to-Icelandic phrase book, and beneath them—
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:
Haley,
I’ve done my best to translate these pages. Your father will tell you the words written here are nonsense, but you must believe me when I say the danger is real. If we are lucky, that danger will not find you—but I will not rely on luck. I will not let you face this magic unarmed.
I am sorry you could not stay home. I am sorry for what happened to your mother. I am sorry for many things.
By the time you read this, we’ll have already talked. But call if you need to talk more.Whatever happens, you can always call me.
Katrin
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 that? I turned the page.
Never run from magic.
When offered escape, turn away, no matter how deeply you desire it.
Take some of the fire if you can, but do not take too much. Do not let the fire consume you.
If the spell lands on you in spite of these warnings, you must cast it back again. Go to Hlidarendi to return the coin from whence it came.
The means of the casting, plus other useful spells, follow.
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!”
“I thought your master didn’t walk in this world anymore.”
Freki made a strange sound, low in his throat. “And if you’re wise, you’ll not draw his attention back to it. If you spill his mead—if you deny his hospitality by letting it touch the earth—he will know.”
Right. No point pushing my luck. I corked the skin and put it into the pack. Maybe I could empty it later, when I got out of here.
Memories or no memories, I’d get Ari and myself both free. I zipped and shouldered the pack, took Ari’s flashlight in my other hand, and followed the coin’s pull into the dark.
Chapter 6 
The tunnel was colder than the room. I pulled up my hood and zipped my jacket to the chin. The flashlight’s thin beam cast eerie blue light on the tunnel walls. Water dripped somewhere up ahead, and the air felt thick and wet.
Freki followed at my heels, to guard me or provide companionship, I didn’t know. Either way, his presence was comforting. Was that a sort of magic, too?
The tunnel branched left. The wrapped coin pulled me forward. I followed, but as I passed the branch, a gust of icy air blew toward me. A child’s voice whispered, “Three shells in return for my poem, poem, poem.” The words echoed off the stone walls.
I stopped short and peered down the side tunnel. “Hello?”
“I’ll toss my silver at them and watch them fight, fight, fight.” An old man’s voice, carried by the same cold wind. I turned left, though the coin urged me away. There were pictures on the tunnel walls. They skittered like nervous lizards out of my sight as the light hit them. A boat torn apart by the sea. A coffin washing to shore. I squinted into the distance. I saw no old man, no young boy.
Teeth nipped at my ankle. I looked down and saw Freki’s mouth around my leg. “You hear memory, nothing more.” He drew back, the tip of his tail brushing the floor.
“The sea has stolen my sons.” The echoing voice sounded real—real and incredibly sad.
“Muninn holds all the island’s memories here,” Freki said. “Follow them without purpose, and you’ll wander to the end of days and still not find your way back to where you began.”
I clutched the handkerchief-wrapped coin tighter. Bad enough to lose my memories—I didn’t want to spend my life lost among other people’s memories instead. “That’s a lot of tunnels.”
The fox’s whiskers twitched. “Only Iceland’s memories lie here. Other lands have their own guardians and their own mountains.”
A brief image flashed through my thoughts: jagged brown mountains beneath a hot blue sky. My mountains, I somehow knew. I tried to remember, but the mountains sank into the muddy darkness of my missing memories, leaving behind empty shells of words—mountains, desert—with no images to go with them. My eyes stung. Muninn had no right to take who I was away from me.
I brushed my eyes, turned my back on the voices and the images on the walls, and let the coin lead me on, back to the main tunnel. Freki walked alongside me, his gait smooth and liquid. The tunnel branched again and again. Sometimes the coin urged me left, sometimes right, sometimes straight ahead. I counted the turnings, repeating them to myself to make sure I could get back.
“I have spun twelve ells of wool. You have killed a man. A fine morning’s work for us both.”
“I already must grieve for my brother. Is it not enough for you that I set a bowl of porridge before his killer?”