by Cindy Dees
Karen rolled her eyes. “Is this the head shaman guy you were looking for earlier? The one that I can tell in no uncertain terms that I’m not Freya?”
“I think so. Everyone seems a little afraid of this guy.”
Vanessa interjected quietly, “Karen, I know this whole situation has bothered you. But be nice to this guy, okay? We need Sami help if we’re to find Jack and get access to a working phone. And we need to blow up that drug lab before anyone else gets hurt.”
Karen sighed. “Fine. I’ll break it to Naliki gently that I’m not a goddess. But I am telling him.”
“Fair enough,” her boss replied.
Anders stood up and held down a hand to help her to her feet. Karen shivered, hyper-aware of the warm contact between their palms. His gaze met hers, and for an instant, the connection between their hands was mirrored in their eyes.
Staggered, Karen allowed him to pull her easily to her feet. She followed him from the tent, at a loss as to what to say after that little exchange. He led her to a sod hut on the far edge of the village. It was unique in that its exterior walls were decorated with all kinds of tidbits—reindeer hooves, bear claws, eagle feathers and various bones, bleached white and glimmering in the moonlight. It looked like a throwback to a more primitive, mystic place and time.
As she ducked into the hut, that sensation intensified. The inside walls were covered with more of the same decorations, and absolutely everything else in the dwelling was handmade in the old tradition. An incredibly old person wrapped in a fur blanket sat on the floor across a small wood fire.
In raspy, flawless English the woman—a woman!—said, “Ahh, there you are, child. Come in. I’ve been waiting to speak with you for most of my life.”
Chapter 10
Karen stared at the elderly woman. “I beg your pardon?”
“Come. Sit. We will speak together.”
Karen sat. This old woman had an authority about her a person didn’t say no to.
“Your young man can go. We don’t need him to translate for us.”
Karen glanced over at Anders. He stood in the doorway, the firelight playing off his features and making him look more godlike than she ever could. He nodded his respects at the shaman and turned to go.
“Handsome lad you’ve picked for yourself,” the old woman commented.
Karen winced. Anders hadn’t left yet! His back was turned to her, but his hand froze on the door latch. He’d heard the shaman, all right. Silently, he let himself out into the night. The door closed behind him.
Karen turned to her hostess in no small dismay. “I haven’t picked him,” she bit out, “and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say things like that around him!”
The old woman laughed, a gay, girlish sound that surprised Karen. “See how you blush! You have picked him. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself.”
Karen scowled. Fine, dammit. So she’d picked the guy. Big deal.
“Look into the fire, child. Your soul is unquiet.”
Rather than argue, for this woman had all the hallmarks of someone who could be implacably stubborn and incredibly infuriating, Karen played along for the moment. She fixed her gaze on the dancing flames. The fire was warm and soothing. It smelled good, too. Like a green summer afternoon. Staring into it did push back the anger roiling inside her. “Where did you learn to speak English?”
“My grandfather worked with a British spy who parachuted into Norway during World War Two to help the resistance. They taught me.”
Something in the woman’s voice made Karen ask, “Did you help them?”
A smile creased the old woman’s face into a thousand wrinkles. The shaman leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “I did. And no one ever suspected a thing. I was just a girl, and I walked right past the Nazis every day carrying important messages down my shirt.”
Wow. Who’d have ever guessed this unlikely little old woman was a war hero? “My name is Karen Turner. I’m a soldier in the United States military.”
“I am called Naliki. I am a noaide. Do you know what that is?”
“As I understand it, you’re a shaman. A healer, counselor and mystic.”
Naliki shrugged. “Close enough for an outsider. I am a bridge between the spirit world and this world. A telephone wire through which communication passes.”
Karen wasn’t particularly into such spiritual mumbo jumbo, but she remembered Vanessa’s instruction. Make nice with this lady. “My teammates and I are here in Norway for Arctic survival training. But we’ve run into a bit of a problem. We thought we were staging a mock attack on a Norwegian military unit, but instead, we attacked an actual drug lab. We desperately need to get in touch with our Norwegian command center so they can come take care of the lab. But, our trainers are jamming all the electronic frequencies in this area, and we can’t contact anyone. We’re hoping your people can help us.”
A slow nod from Naliki. “So you have done what you said you would.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“In my vision of you, you said you would find and destroy the source of the drugs that are tormenting our young people.”
“I did?” Karen was startled enough by the accuracy of this so-called vision to forget to doubt it for a moment. “What else did I say?”
Naliki laughed. “You said in return you would set my people free.”
“Free from what?”
“From outside pressure to change our ways. We want to preserve our language. Run our own schools. Teach traditional values and folklore to our children so our ways are not lost. We need land—preserves—set aside for us so the reindeer herds continue to have places to graze without oil pipelines or electric lines or hazardous waste dumps contaminating them.”
Karen frowned. “And I said I’d do all this for your people?”
“All in good time. My visions do not lie. First, the drug lab. More and more of our young men are having fits—we must stop that first.”
“Fits?” Karen repeated. “Could you be more specific?”
“They fall to the ground in a seizure. If anyone tries to touch them, they strike out violently, with no care for who they harm. And then they fall unconscious. One boy never woke up from the deep sleep.”
“Are you saying he died?”
The shaman nodded soberly.
Yikes. “And drugs are causing these potentially fatal fits? What sort of drugs?”
Naliki nodded. “Neither I nor any of the other healers know what it is. It is unlike anything we have seen before. And unfortunately, we are familiar with all the drugs of the outside world. I can tell you the drugs come from the lab our hunters showed you.”
Holy cow. The Medusas needed to report this to the authorities right away! “We really need to let our superiors know about this. But the team we’re chasing is jamming all the radio and telephone signals in this area. To fix that, we need to get out of the range of the signal jamming so we can make a phone call, or we need to find the Norwegian military team who’s jamming us and get them to stop.”
Naliki’s eyes drifted closed and her head jerked a couple of times as though she was dozing off. Karen frowned. Should she reach over and shake the woman’s shoulder?
“How far must you travel for your modern gadgets to work?”
Oops. The elderly shaman was still awake. Karen shrugged. “Maybe as little as a few miles, maybe up to fifty miles.”
Naliki shook her head. “A storm is coming. A grandfather of a blizzard. You will not have time to travel so far.”
“How do you know there’s a storm?”
Naliki smiled wisely. “It hangs heavy in the air.”
Karen couldn’t argue with that. Back on the farm when she was a kid, everyone could feel a big thunderstorm building long before they could see it.
“Surely you know the signs,” Naliki said in a faraway tone that wasn’t quite a whisper. “The way the leaves flutter in panic on the trees, showing their pale undersides? The stillness tha
t presses against your ears? The animals clustering tight, shouldering each other and rolling their eyes until the whites show?”
Karen stared, transfixed. She knew exactly what Naliki was talking about. But how did the shaman know she would recall those particular images?
“There’s something I have to tell you, Noaide Naliki.”
When Karen didn’t continue, the shaman nodded encouragingly.
Karen took a deep breath and had at it. “Your people have gotten the wrong idea about me. They got the impression I’m some sort of reincarnated figure from Norse mythology.” Lord, it felt good to get this off her chest. She searched for the right words to use in her confession.
“I’m afraid I led them to believe it when we first met. A Sami hunter asked if I was the person a prophecy foretold would come to lead them to freedom. I said I was because it was easier than explaining that I wasn’t. It was a mistake. It was disrespectful of your beliefs and I shouldn’t have done it. But now this thing has spun completely out of control.”
The words came more quickly now, tumbling out of her. “Now they think everything I do is a portent of some kind. They’re wining and dining me and giving me my own hut and treating me like royalty. I feel terrible about it. I don’t want to disappoint them, but I can’t in good conscience let this continue any longer. I’m hoping you can help me convince them I’m no goddess at all, but a simple, flesh-and-blood person just like them.”
Naliki studied her for a long time in silence. Long enough that Karen had a nearly overwhelming urge to squirm under the bright, birdlike stare.
Then Naliki said slowly, heavily, “I’m sorry. I cannot help you. For, you see, you are exactly who they think you are.”
Karen stared. Replayed what the woman had just said to make sure she hadn’t misheard it. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are Freya. Or at least her reincarnated spirit.”
Oh, good Lord. Not this woman, too! “I so don’t believe in stuff like that,” Karen declared.
Naliki shrugged. “You do not have to believe it for it to be true. If you do not believe you are beautiful, and yet everyone who looks at you sees a beautiful woman, what are you? Ugly or beautiful?”
Karen frowned. She’d always focused only on her own self-image. She knew what other people saw when they looked at her. A big, strong, manly woman they wouldn’t want to tangle with in a dark alley.
“You are a warrior woman. You have unusual strength. Special skills and powers. Other people who look at you see the Viking goddess within you. Whether you want to admit it or not, Karen Turner, you are the living embodiment of Freya.”
The northern coast of Norway, March 5, 10:15 p.m.
Isa scowled as he jumped out of the skiff and onto the gravel shore. A goddamned glacier rose in front of him, blue in the moonlight and partially obscured by drifting whorls of snow.
He’d promised himself the last time he left this godforsaken icebox that he’d never come back to Norway in winter again. Yet here he was, a scant month later, freezing his ass off. And worse, it was supposed to get even colder over the next few days.
“Okay, men, let’s get those snowmobiles on shore. We’ve got a buttload of hauling to do.”
He wanted to get the finished product the hell away from the cabin before anyone else attacked the place. And, he’d brought in enough lab equipment—purchased at his own goddamned expense—to double the lab’s output. They had to make that quota. Six hundred kilos of white powder. Enough to bring the whole goddamned western world crashing down upon itself.
Two weeks in this eff-ing refrigerator. Then the drugs would be ready and delivered. After that, he was heading for a beach. A nude one with beautiful western whores lounging all over it.
Lakvik, Norway, March 5, 10:30 p.m.
“You’re wrong. I’m no goddess!”
“Child, I am not wrong. I have seen you in my dreams. You.”
“It’s not possible! We’ve never met before.”
Naliki chortled. “Whether or not you believe it, the truth does not change.”
So, maybe the woman was psychic and had dreamed of her. Stranger things had happened. Or maybe Jack had given Naliki information to mess with Karen’s head. And as soon as that thought occurred to her, it stuck.
Karen asked sharply, “Has a guy named Jack Scatalone talked to you recently? Or someone from the Norwegian military, maybe?”
Naliki shook her head in the negative. “No, no. Nothing like that. I’m telling you the truth.”
Karen’s mind whirled, entirely off balance.
Naliki fell into the singsong rhythm of a storyteller. “Freya is one of the most enduring of the old gods. Memory of her has never faded, and many still wait for her return as was promised in the days of old. If she were to come back to earth and walk upon it as a mortal, would it not make sense that she would choose the form of a woman who is sturdy and strong, and that she would guide her mortal footsteps to walk the path of the warrior?”
“But I don’t believe in this stuff!”
“It may not be your way to believe in reincarnation. But it is ours. Who is to say which set of beliefs is right and which is wrong? You cannot know for certain that you are not a reincarnated spirit any more than I can know for certain that I am. According to Sami beliefs, you are who you are. And you are Freya’s reincarnated spirit.”
“Wouldn’t I know that about myself if I were?”
“Not necessarily. Our lore has it that when the spirit decides to take form again on Earth, he or she must leave all they knew before behind.”
“Even a goddess?”
Naliki shrugged. “I do not know. Apparently. Since you do not remember who you are, I must assume that even gods and goddesses leave behind all their memories.”
Karen just shook her head. How could a person argue against crazy logic like that?
“This gathering of the Sami tribes is the first step in restoring our people’s heritage. A council of siida-isits has convened, and they are drafting a letter to the governments of all the nations who currently hold Sami lands. It is a great step forward for our people. One we have never managed to take until now. It is because of your coming that this thing has happened.”
“Yes, but I had nothing to do with them getting together!”
“You had everything to do with this gathering. It was the prophecy of your coming that brought them all here.”
Frustration bubbled up very close to the surface and threatened to overflow the seething cauldron of her gut. Karen struggled to contain it. She was a Medusa, dammit. She was disciplined. In control of herself. She would not lose her temper!
“Noaide Naliki. I have never made any pronouncements or prophecies of any kind regarding your people. It was your dream. Your thought. You are the one who made this grand statement that is uniting your people.”
Naliki grinned, showing gaps in her teeth. “I am an old woman. In all my years, I have never had any notion of uniting the Sami people. Such thoughts never even occurred to me. It is you who put them into my head. You are the sign. The goddess returned. The one who leads the way.”
“Stop it, dammit! I’m not your—”
The door burst open. “Noaide. Come quickly! More gods have come!” The Sami man threw a superstitious look in Karen’s direction.
Karen leaped to her feet. Thank God. Jack and the Norwegians must have gotten tired of waiting to be found and come looking for the Medusas instead. Naliki struggled to unfold her creaky limbs and climb awkwardly to her feet, and Karen reached down to help her. The woman was surprisingly frail. After the force of the diminutive elder’s words, it was a shock.
She helped Naliki wrap a fur coat around herself and picked up the large leather sack Naliki pointed at. And then the two women stepped out into the night.
They followed the man back toward the bonfire. And as they drew close, Karen registered two things. First was the awed silence enveloping the crowd. And second was the strange noise coming fr
om somewhere nearby to fill the silence. It sounded like war chants—half screaming, half singing, wild, almost drunken in nature.
Someone in the crowd of Samis standing around wide-eyed and silent looked over his shoulder and spotted her and Naliki. He called out something in Sami and the crowd parted to let the two of them through. Karen stared at the sight that met them.
Three teenaged boys had stripped down to their pants and fur leggings and were dancing, bare-chested and wild, around the bonfire. The unintelligible outbursts she’d heard before were coming from them. Their black ponytails were undone, and hair flew across their faces. The firelight jumped and swayed on their skin as they whirled and flailed their arms like puppets dancing on invisible strings. They did, indeed, look possessed.
Great. Just what she needed to convince the Samis she wasn’t Freya. Now other people were starting to speak in tongues and act like reincarnated Vikings.
Anders glided up beside Karen, parking himself at her left shoulder. “The locals think these boys have been possessed by Viking warrior spirits. Traditional berserkers.”
“They look drunk to me,” Karen muttered back. Then she cursed under her breath. The three boys, until now on the far side of the fire, had spotted her and were jerking and twitching their way over to her, jabbering and howling all the while. How creepy was that? Karen schooled her face to complete implacability.
Anders shrugged. “All these other people have been drinking hard all evening and they’re not going whacky. Just those three boys. I’ve never seen anything like this before among the Samis.”
The teen closest to Karen gave a bloodcurdling scream, arched his back and flung his arms wide for a suspended moment of time. His wild gaze caught hers. Froze her immobile for an endless second. Insanity glittered in the kid’s eyes. Power. Invincibility. Rage.
The youth collapsed dramatically to the ground. The crowd took a step back, oohing and ahhing, their gazes flitting back and forth between her and the prostrate boy.
He began twitching and flopping at her feet. Oh, for crying out loud.