My hand clenched around the coin. I fought the urge to stop, to listen closer, to try to stare longer at the moving pictures on the tunnel walls. Scraps of mist drifted through the air, raising goose bumps beneath my jacket. Were all the memories in this place of sadness and loss?
“My father gone, my brother gone, only this price upon my head remains.”
“Yes, the girl is beautiful, and men enough will suffer for it, but I do not know how the eyes of a thief have come into our family.”
The coin flared suddenly hot. Smoke rose from the handkerchief. A woman’s voice, not in the tunnels but in my own head. “How dare Hrut speak of me that way!” Anger in those words. A moment’s silence, then, “Haley?”
Dizziness washed over me. The other one, I thought. The one whose spell had caught me. I ran from that turning, not sure what I was so scared of. My legs trembled, then settled into an easy lope, as if I was used to running. The light bobbed ahead of me. The coin cooled from hot to warm. I kept going, enjoying the feel of my feet hitting stone and cool sweat trickling down my neck. Had I liked to run before?
In the distance, I heard a roar. I quickly slowed back to a walk. I was breathing hard, but that felt good, too. Freki caught up with me as the coin pulled me sharply left.
Up ahead, the tunnel ended abruptly. The bear—Ari—huddled against the far wall, his nose hidden beneath his enormous legs. My blue light shone on his white fur. Two terns perched on the ledge above him.
He looked up, through eyes that seemed more blue than green by my light, and growled.
“You may want to stop here,” Freki said.
“Yeah. Good idea.” I stopped, though the coin kept pulling me toward the bear. Did it want to kill me? Mist curled past the beam of my light. Around me I heard the memories of other roars and growls. The hair on my arms prickled at the sound.
“Are you still in there?” I asked Ari. He kept staring at me. He was trembling—maybe he was as scared as I was. Yeah, but it’s not like being trapped with a scared polar bear is a good thing. I looked at his long black claws. My light wavered, shining off the walls. I saw images of bears in battle, tearing through warrior shields and chain vests as if they were paper.
“Any ideas?” I asked Freki.
Freki wrapped his tail around his legs. “I am no spellcaster, and even if I were, it is not my place to interfere.”
I remembered something from the notebook in my pack. Other useful spells follow. Freki was no spellcaster, but what about me?
The coin kept urging me on. I stuck it in my pocket, keeping only the handkerchief in my hand. The pulling continued. It wasn’t the coin that wanted to kill me—it was the handkerchief. I should drop it and run away. How could I make a bear remember who he really was when I didn’t know who I really was?
Was I the sort of person who would run away? I seemed pretty good at running. Was I the sort of person who’d abandon someone who had tried to rescue me? Who maybe cared about me, and who maybe I cared about in turn?
To hell with who I was. That’s not who I am.
The bear kept growling. I shoved the handkerchief into my pocket and pulled the notebook from my pack. Freki lay down and buried his nose beneath his fluffy tail, watching me all the while.
By the flashlight’s blue beam I flipped past the pages I’d already read. A spell for restoring one’s own memories, the next page said. I hesitated, but the spell required a raven’s feather. Maybe I could find some way to steal one from Muninn—later. I turned the page.
A spell for returning berserks to their true form, whether they will it or no. “Berserks?” I said aloud. “Like crazy people?”
Freki lifted his head. “Warriors with animal shapes. Very powerful. My master valued them. Fearsome in battle, ill suited to life outside of it.”
The bear didn’t look like a warrior, pressed against the wall like that. I quickly scanned the spell.
Berserks do not respond as readily to runes and chants as others do to magic. Still, you may try reciting these words and see if the shifter wishes to change back.
The words that followed were a mix of familiar and unfamiliar letters. I had no idea how to sound them out. There was a bit more English at the bottom of the page, though: Alternately, you may offer the berserk some item that belongs to him, and see if it reminds him of his human life.
I dropped the spellbook and yanked the charred, bloody handkerchief from my pocket. “Was this yours?” Was that why it had led me to him? Had my backpack led Ari to me, too? Did objects remember, in some strange way, who they belonged to?
I started toward him, holding the handkerchief out in front of me, while the birds on the ledge watched through tiny eyes.
“You have a warrior’s soul,” Freki said, but he made no move to follow me.
Here, kitty, kitty. I kept walking, fighting nervous giggles, until I was close enough to reach out and touch the bear’s nose—if I had a death wish. I reached toward him. Ari snarled. I dropped the handkerchief at his feet and skittered back.
With surprising care, the bear drew the thing between his paws. He sniffed it with his long nose, as if it were a book he was reading. He made a questioning sound and looked up.
“You still there, Ari?”
A ripple ran along his body, like wind on water. Fur retreated into black bear skin, claws into paws. Skin turned to clay once more, and beneath it the bear shrank, paws melting into human hands, snout into a human face. That skin drew away from legs and arms and face—
All at once Ari knelt gasping before me on hands and knees, wearing his leather jacket and jeans. He looked up at me, his eyes wild, his whole body shivering. The hair beneath his wool cap was bright white, not brown like before. The birds took off from the ledge, chittering harshly as they disappeared down the tunnel.
Ari tried to get up. His legs wobbled and he crumpled to the ground. I knelt to take him in my arms, my own body trembling with relief. Holding him felt familiar and right. Surely I knew this boy. “You’re all right.” I held him tighter, until his shivering eased.
He looked up at me. “Thank you, Haley.” He had an incredibly sweet smile. Our faces were just a few inches apart.
I felt like I was still being pulled. I did what felt right, even if I couldn’t remember why. I pulled my hood back, leaned down, and brushed my lips against his. Surely—yes—I’d done this before.
Ari drew away a moment, as if still frightened. Then he drew closer. We pressed our lips together while the damp air raised more shivers from us both. I reached beneath his hat and ran my fingers through his hair. It felt coarse and soft at once. I shrugged off the backpack and let the flashlight drop from my other hand. That hand brushed my pocket. The coin felt warm through the denim.
A fragment of memory: A dark-haired boy—the boy in my wallet photo. We kissed beneath the bright desert moon while hot wind blew all around and we promised we’d e-mail each other every single day. The boy was shorter than me, and my hands cradled his head. I drew back to look down at his quiet brown eyes—
I jerked abruptly away from Ari and groped for the flashlight. I shone it toward him. He smiled, but then his green eyes grew uncertain.
“How long have I known you?” I hoped he’d be hurt that I could possibly forget him.
Ari looked down as if embarrassed, and my stomach knotted up. “Time passes so strangely in this place. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been here a few hours, sometimes like years—” He shut his eyes. “That is not what you are asking.”