The last woman on the path looked up at me—or maybe she’d never stopped looking. My mother’s gray eyes grew wide. Please, please don’t let her see me die.
She dropped what she was holding—a coin, the same coin I’d held, only she’d caught it a year before I had—and ran to me. The fire seemed to fade as my mother drew me close. I clung to her, inhaling the scent of her hair, remembering how it felt to be safe in her arms. “Mom. I missed you so much.”
“Haley, how on earth—” Mom stroked my hair, drew back, and touched my face. “Honey, you’re burning up.” She grabbed my hands.
“Mom, no!”
Too late—fire flowed from me to her, fast and fierce. Mom hadn’t read Thorgerd’s warnings, either. She didn’t know not to take too much. Or maybe she did know. I tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let go. She drew me closer instead.
It happened so fast, flames leaping at her arms and legs and hair. In moments she turned to ashes in my arms, leaving only the faintest spark of fire behind. “Mom!”
I fell to my knees with a gasp, and my eyes flew open. My hands were covered with fox blood, and a smooth silver coin lay in my palm. The pattern etched upon it was gone, the magic spent at last. Water dripped from the gray sky and my wet hair, dimpling the surface of the blood in the bowl. Most of that blood was gone now; only enough remained to cover the stone. Wind blew, and I shivered, feeling the cold down to my bones.
Ari stared down at me, a knife in one hand and a blue LED flashlight in the other. “Haley?” he asked, but his voice was uncertain.
I let the coin fall to the grass, where Freki’s limp body still lay. The fox’s open eyes reminded me of Gunnar. Thinking of Thorgerd, I closed them, then looked up at Ari. “Yeah, Luke,” I said, in English so there could be no doubt. “It’s me.”
“Oh, good,” Ari said in Icelandic. He fell to his knees as well. “I wasn’t sure I could keep that up much longer. Hallgerd was distracted, I don’t know why, but I got the knife away from her, and then she didn’t like the flashlight any more than Svan did, only after that she said she was leaving, so I let her say the spell and—are you all right, Haley?”
I shook my head. “Mom.” My voice came out as a shuddering sob. “She’s gone.”
“Oh,” Ari said softly. He set down the knife and took me into his arms. I buried my head against his jacket. It smelled faintly of seawater and of bear. Cool tears flowed down my face. “Mom didn’t know. She took too much fire. I couldn’t stop her.”
Ari didn’t try to tell me everything was all right. He didn’t even ask what I was talking about. He just held me as I cried on and the rain drizzled all around us. What is the fate of the world, against this one life?
The sound of wingbeats made us both stiffen. I drew away slowly. Ari took my hand, and we got to our feet as Muninn landed in the wet grass in front of us. The little black-and-white terns landed beside him, and then came a second raven who watched us thoughtfully but said nothing. I looked down into Muninn’s small dark eyes. Did my human life mean anything more to him than to his master? Did Mom’s? “You can’t take my memories anymore.” I kept my voice steady, though I still felt tear-tracks on my cheeks. “So what do you want with me?”
Muninn’s wings beat the air. “Only to offer my thanks. You have done better than I expected, Haley, Amanda and Gabriel’s daughter, and so this land will hold a time longer. I shall return to it all its memories of you. I trust you will accept that as payment for my misjudging you?”
The salty taste of my tears reminded me of a piece of licorice, offered freely by a girl who thought I was a ghost. I was so tired of every gift having a price. “Just make sure you give back the land’s memories of me and Ari both.”
“Very well.” Muninn lifted his beak toward Ari. “So long as I am dispensing gifts, do you wish to forget your warrior ancestors once more?”
Ari hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Only—I would like to get to decide when to change, if I may.”
Muninn threw his head back, and the glint in his eyes was like laughter. “You need only remove the jacket for that.” The laughter died as he stalked past us to where Freki’s body lay. The other raven followed him. They stared at the fox, their wings utterly still, and then Muninn tipped the driftwood bowl over with his beak.
Freki’s blood steamed as it soaked into the earth, much as the mead of poetry once had. The blood on my hands steamed, too. That steam stung my eyes, and I blinked. When I opened them again, my hands were clean and Freki was gone.
Both ravens launched into the sky, and the little birds followed them.
“Have a care,” Muninn’s wingbeats said as he disappeared into the clouds. “If we both have good fortune, we will not meet again.”
Cold rain soaked through my sodden jeans and jacket. Ari and I watched, still holding hands, as the birds disappeared out of sight. Only then did I realize that the mead skin was gone, as well as Hallgerd’s coin. The spell was done, I thought, the coin blank. Muninn didn’t need it—but even ordinary ravens liked shiny things.
The sound of a car on the gravel lane made us jump. A door slammed, then another. Katrin came running up the hillside, a notebook clutched in one hand. She stopped short when she saw us, as if she couldn’t believe we were real. “You’re all right?” she asked in Icelandic.
“For certain definitions of all right, yeah,” Ari said, also in Icelandic. A wry smile tugged at his face. Katrin ran forward, dropped the notebook, and grabbed him in her arms. “Thank God,” she whispered, then drew away and took my hands.
The last spark of fire in me leaped at her touch, and some small splinter of that spark passed from me to her. “I would have taken it all,” Katrin said, in English now. Rain made strands of her flyaway hair stick to her face. “I was hoping—to cast the spell, and take your mother’s fire, and set things right.”
I said nothing. For just a moment, I wished Katrin could have taken the fire instead of Mom, too. But then Ari broke in in Icelandic with, “Oh, yeah, because that would have been so much better,” and I knew I didn’t mean it. I never, ever wanted Ari to miss his mother like I missed mine.
“It’s okay,” I said in English, though of course it wasn’t. “It’s—it’s over, anyway.” That was a start. But I felt more sobs rising within me. “I lost her,” I said, trying to keep the sobs inside as once I’d tried to contain a blazing fire. “I lost everything.”
“Not everything,” a strangled voice said.
I looked up. My father stood a short distance down the hill, his hair sticking out in every direction, his jacket dripping rainwater. He looked like he might shatter into a million pieces if he took a single step.
Or maybe that was me. My legs shook as I drew away from Katrin and walked to him. Dad grabbed me in his arms, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe. I wouldn’t have pulled away for the world, though. More tears came, the tears I’d spent a year trying to hide from him.
“I thought I’d lost you both,” Dad said.
I heard the whisper of wingbeats in the air. Dad heard it, too, and we both fell silent.
“I will remember her, Haley,” Muninn said, just before he slipped out of hearing. “I remember all who live here, always.”
Chapter 18 