Thief Eyes

by Janni Lee Simner

  He walked up to the door and pounded the floor three times. The sound echoed through my chest, loud as Ari’s polar bear roar. The sorcerer chanted:

  By the sweat of the trolls, open!

  By the blood of men, open!

  By the voices of the gods

  And those who serve them, open!

  Svan blew softly over the staff. The door swung silently inward, revealing a patch of gray sky beyond.

  Wingbeats burst into the air. The little birds launched themselves right at us.

  “Run!” Svan said.

  I grabbed Ari’s hand and raced across the room, ignoring the pack slamming against my back and the bird claws grabbing at my hair. A darker shadow swooped into the room. The little birds flew away. Ari and I kept running, through the open doorway. Icy air hit us, way colder than in the cave. We skittered to a stop.

  We stood on a stone ledge only a few yards across. To our right the ledge quickly narrowed and disappeared, leaving only a vertical stone cliff. To our left the ledge wound around the curve of a towering black mountain.

  Ahead of us, where the ledge fell away, there was only gray swirling fog. I stepped back, fighting dizziness. Ari grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it into the fog. It disappeared silently into the mist, but I didn’t hear it hit bottom. Ari’s eyes widened, and he moved back, too. Svan stepped out to join us, his staff in hand and a leather sack slung over his back. The drop into nowhere didn’t seem to bother him.

  “Not wise, Haley.” Muninn’s wingbeats were slow and rhythmic behind me. The raven swooped through the doorway and turned to hover before me in the mist. As I looked into his shiny eyes, my hands fell limp by my sides, even as some small part of me kept thinking about that drop. Fear shuddered through me. I was falling, arms flailing for a hold, knowing when I landed I would die—I wrenched my thoughts away from that memory.

  “You do not want to remember.” Muninn’s wings kept pumping the air. “You do not want to return to the world that nearly destroyed you. I cannot bind you, but I can give you one more chance. Turn back before the door closes.”

  Maybe Muninn was right. Maybe it was better to forget. I stepped back into the doorway. My thoughts felt fuzzy and strange. Another step and I’d be inside.

  Ari grabbed my hand. “Don’t.” He held on so tightly, as if all by himself he could keep me from taking that step. His palm felt warm against mine. I wanted to remember him, even if we only had a day together for me to remember. If I turned back, what he meant to me would always be a mystery.

  I walked back out of the doorway. Ari let out a breath, but he didn’t let go of my hand.

  Muninn screeched his anger. “I cannot bind you, yet I will do what I can to keep you from acting in the wide world. Know this, Haley, Amanda and Gabriel’s daughter, and Ari, Katrin and Thorolf’s son: None shall remember you, beyond these stones. None shall see you, comfort you, aid you.”

  He turned his gaze to Svan and I stumbled, released from the raven’s hold. “As for you, sorcerer,” Muninn said, “you know well enough the price for failing to guard the door. No more will you wander these tunnels, listening to the past and learning its magic. In the human world you shall age and die, like the mortal you are. Now go!”

  Muninn gave one final sharp beat of his wings. A bitter wind began to blow. The raven swooped past us and disappeared into the cave, his wingbeats echoing. “I leave you alone, alone, alone.”

  “Not so alone as all that.” I felt fur brush against my jeans. I looked down, wind biting my cheeks, and Freki looked up at me. “Thank you for the mead, Haley. Good fortune go with you.” I reached down to scratch the fox behind the ears. He slipped out of reach through the wooden door. It swung shut as it had opened, without a sound.

  I searched my thoughts, but still found only darkness in place of my memories. Amanda and Gabriel—my parents—when I searched for images to go with them, I saw only the lifeless pictures in my wallet. Leaving Muninn’s mountain hadn’t changed anything.

  “So,” Svan said. “That went better than expected.” Staff in hand, he brushed past us, following the ledge like a trail away from Muninn’s door.

  “I don’t trust him,” Ari whispered.

  Neither did I, but what choice did we have? It wasn’t like there was anyplace else we could go. I followed Svan. Still holding my hand, Ari walked by my side, only a couple of feet from the edge. Looking at the fog made me all trembly. I forced my gaze away. To my left, the mountain rose steeply, a solid, comforting presence.

  The wind picked up. Icy raindrops blew into my face. Svan disappeared around the mountain’s curve. Ari and I walked faster. The sorcerer glanced back as we came into view. “What do you wait for? The mountain will not remain in the mortal realm for long.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ari asked.

  Svan looked at him like he couldn’t believe how stupid Ari was. “Now that would depend on the realm, wouldn’t it? In the realm of fire, your flesh will melt and boil; in the realm of ice, it will freeze and shatter; in the realm of light, you will turn to sunbeams and disappear. In other realms, other things. I suggest we not wait around to recite them.” He walked on, his staff tapping the ledge, which had begun to slope downhill.

  The cold rain fell harder. I pulled up my hood, but the wind blew the rain right into it. More rain dripped from Ari’s hat. I glanced past him, toward the foggy emptiness—and quickly wrenched my gaze away, breathing hard.

  “Haley?” Ari squeezed my hand, and I realized I’d stopped walking. I looked up at the mountain. The vertical rock wall stretched up and up—that made me dizzy, too. I squeezed my eyes closed. When I opened them Ari was looking at me, his own eyes wide with concern.

  “I fell, didn’t I?” I said.

  Ari frowned and began walking again. I followed, keeping my gaze firmly on the stone beneath my feet. Svan had disappeared out of sight once more.

  “Were you there when I fell? Did you see?”

  Ari pulled his cap down over his ears. “Yeah. I tried to stop you, but I messed it up. So Muninn saved your life instead and I got pulled along for the ride.”

  Ari wasn’t the one who’d fallen. He couldn’t have messed up half as much as me. “Why did I fall?” It seemed suddenly important to know.

  Ari walked faster. I hurried to keep up, still keeping my eyes on the ledge. “You climbed too high,” Ari said. “And then you let go. I don’t know why.”

  The ledge grew slippery as the rain continued. I glanced at my scarred palm. I couldn’t have let go on purpose, could I?

  Svan had stopped walking. A couple dozen paces ahead of him, the ledge ended abruptly, giving way to more fog. A few cold tendrils drifted toward us.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Now we jump,” Svan said, as if that should have been obvious. He broke into a run, his leather shoes slapping the stone. As he reached the edge he held his arms out wide—one hand holding his staff, the other his leather bag—and leaped into the fog. It swallowed him at once, leaving no sign he’d been there.

  In the silence that followed, Ari and I stared at each other. Dizziness washed over me, stronger than before. I began backing away, only Ari still held my hand. After a few steps I came to a halt.

  The blowing rain stung my cheeks. I can’t, I thought, but I had no choice. I looked up at Ari. “You go first,” I said.

  “And give you the chance to change your mind? No way.”

  My hand trembled in Ari’s grasp. “Someone has to go first,” I said reasonably.

  “We’ll jump together,” Ari said.

  We wouldn’t jump as far together. Ari was risking his own life just to make sure I didn’t risk mine. I adjusted the backpack on my shoulders, knowing I was stalling. “We’ll have to run first. We should count. But you don’t have to—”

  “One!” Ari ran, dragging me along.

  I stumbled, then matched his pace. “Two!” I said. I can’t do this.

  “Three!” Ari said. “N
ow!”

  We jumped, our hands still clasped. Wind whistled past my ears as fog surrounded us. It blew my hood back, and my hair streamed out behind me.

  The whistling turned to a roar. Icy rain gave way to burning wind. Somehow, impossibly, we were still jumping. The fog around us turned to roiling orange flames. Heat rolled over me, a physical thing. The realm of fire. Something reached for me out of the flames—a huge misshapen arm, made entirely of flame. Hot fingers stroked my cheek. Any second my skin would catch fire, and then there would be pain—

  Another fiery arm reached for Ari. “Leave him alone!” I screamed, knowing they couldn’t hear me, knowing they wouldn’t listen if they could.

  Yet in my head, through the roaring, I heard a rough, inhuman voice, crackling like dry paper. “What would you give us to leave him alone?” Burning eyes stared at me through the flames. A burning shudder ran through me.

  “Anything!” I said, knowing I had less to offer the power here than I’d had to offer Muninn.

  Fiery fingers brushed my hair. “Once before, we accepted such golden locks as a gift. We accept them now. We gift you our fire in turn. Nothing will stay our power this time. You will take our fire into your blood and not merely your hair. You will take our fire into your world, and in so doing, perhaps help us find our way free into that world at last. Do you accept?”

  Hot wind scoured my skin like sandpaper. A sickening charred smell filled the air—my own skin melting away. The darkness in me burned away, too, replaced by light so bright it hurt my eyes. Another moment and I’d burn down to ash. I clutched Ari’s hand, though I could no longer see him through the burning. “Yes!” I said, knowing only that I wanted the heat to go away.

  “Very good.” The voice in my head made a satisfied sound. The smell of burning hair filled the air.

  I slammed into ice-cold water. It cooled the fire, leaving behind warm coals that settled down somewhere deep inside me. Water washed over me as my hands and knees hit wet sand. I sputtered to my feet, thigh-deep in salt water, my clothes and backpack soaked through and dripping. A hand grabbed mine—Ari. He must have landed on his feet; he was only wet to the thighs. “Haley, your hair …”

  The fire was gone, my skin unburned. We were no longer on a mountain ledge, but in a bay beside a black sandy beach. Beyond the beach I saw a dirt-and-gravel road, beyond that, gray hills smudged with red and orange mosses.

  Ari shivered—was he cold? His hat was gone. Rain dimpled the surface of the bay, and water soaked through my sneakers, but I wasn’t cold at all. Ari splashed out of the water, and I followed, still holding his hand. As we reached the shore, I stopped short and stared at him. “I know you,” I said.

  Ari kept shivering. “Yes, we’ve been through this already. I’m Ari, Katrin’s son—”

  “No. I remember you. I ran into your dog—” I reached around and touched my hair. It was short, barely touching my ears and the back of my neck. The ends were brittle—burned away—and the smell of burning hair lingered. The darkness over my memories had burned away, too. I was Haley, I went to Rincon High, I studied biology and wanted to work with animals and ran track, my father was Gabe, my mother was Amanda—

  My mom—I released Ari’s hand, my fingernails digging for my palms. My mom had disappeared—no, she hadn’t disappeared, she’d been caught by a spell—it had to be a spell, because I knew magic was real now—only before the spell caught her she’d run, because she found out that Dad had—nails broke through my palms, the pain shoving other thoughts away. Smoke seemed to rise from the broken skin, but I could have imagined that. I knew only that I had one more chance to push the memories back, to bury them so deeply that only the stone halls of Muninn’s cave would ever remember them.

  I forced my fingernails away from my skin. The pain receded, the smoke disappeared—if it had ever been there—and I faced the memory straight on. “My dad,” I said slowly, looking at Ari. “And your mom …” Katrin, who gave me her notebook, who told me not to run … “They had an affair. My mom found out, and she ran.” Ari looked down, as if my steady gaze hurt him. He rubbed his sleeves for warmth. His lips were pale, which should have worried me, but I just went on, “Mom’s been gone a year. I came to Iceland to find her. If Katrin’s right, there’s nothing left to find. Hallgerd’s spell—” Katrin said the spell had consumed Mom, as surely as the fire Ari and I had leaped through had almost consumed us.

  The coals inside me grew hot at the thought. My jeans and jacket steamed in the damp air. I reached for the coin—its metal felt merely warm now—and closed my fingers around it.

  The coin flared hotter. The ground shook beneath me, and I fell to my knees.

  “Haley!” Hallgerd’s voice roared into my head. This time, I understood every word. “Where have you been?”

  Chapter 8

  A woman stood before me, gray eyes smoldering, blond hair swirling like flame around her, so long it pooled at her feet. Her red cloak was bright against the gray sky. She reached for me, but I drew away.

  “I waited for you. For days I returned to the cave. When I could no longer return I searched from my home, whenever I could escape the eyes of my family. I sought you on my wedding day, and past it as well, until Thorvald was gone and my anger was quenched. All that time you hid from my spell. Why do you wake it now, after all these years?”

  The coin burned against my hand. The air held the stench of sulfur. It hasn’t been years, I thought. The woman shimmered, as if with heat. For an instant the air seemed to blur, and I knelt—not in a cave this time but on a yellow autumn hillside, beside a wooden house with a grass-thatched roof. I wrenched my focus back to the woman and the beach. My eyes hurt, the way they do when you try to make a fuzzy picture clear, but I didn’t let the picture go. I stared at Hallgerd—at Svan’s kinswoman, who had killed her three husbands, and who Katrin thought had also killed my mom—yet no one knew, because Mom had never been found.

  Hallgerd reached toward my singed hair. I felt a hot shudder as her fingers passed right through me. “You are either very brave or very foolish to gift so much of yourself to the realm of fire. I gave them but a few dozen strands when I cast my spell.”

  The ground still shook, but that seemed a small thing. I’d come here for answers. I looked right into Hallgerd’s gray eyes. “What did you do to Mom?” Nothing mattered more than the answer to that question.

  The earth went still. Hallgerd frowned. “She accepted my gift. But then she ran, and the spell consumed her. I did nothing. She did everything.”

  “You killed her.” I waited for Hallgerd to deny it.

  “Indeed.” Hallgerd met my gaze without shame. “What compensation will you seek for this, Haley?”

  “Compensation?” How did Hallgerd imagine there could be compensation for such a thing? “You can leave me the hell alone, is what you can do!”

  Hallgerd laughed. “You price your mother’s life far too low. Thorvald has been dead many years, and my second husband as well. I desire escape no longer. I’m content to live and die by Gunnar’s side. Gladly I’ll leave you alone. I release my claim on the coin—and on the spell. Do with them as you will. Farewell, Haley.”

  Hallgerd faded away. I dropped the coin, scrambled to my feet, and lunged at her. “Get back here!” My hands grabbed someone’s shoulders. I began shaking them, shaking hard, and only when I shoved the person to the sand did I realize it wasn’t Hallgerd.

  Ari looked up. His lips were blue now, and his teeth had begun to chatter, but an ironic grin crossed his face. “It’d be easier—if you could remember—who I am.”

  Not funny. I scrambled away from him. My mother was gone, and he was making a joke—a stupid joke. I began coughing, dry empty heaves. Gone. I’d come to Iceland to find my mother, but there was nothing left to find. Tears ran down my face, hot as the fire that had burned my hair away.

  It was Mom who’d always talked me out of cutting my hair. Mom who’d held me after nightmares, who’d kept my life fr
om falling apart a million different ways. Nothing had been as hard as the year she’d been gone. I coughed harder. My chest ached. Nothing could make this right. Never, ever, ever.

  I felt Ari’s hand on my shoulder, and I jerked away. “You knew!” I screamed. He’d known she was gone for a whole year, while I waited and hoped and fought off nightmares, telling myself that the worst possible thing couldn’t be the true thing.

  “I thought my mom was crazy.” Ari shivered harder. I heard him, didn’t hear. “I wanted her to be crazy, about this at least.”

  My nails dug for my palms, but it wasn’t enough. I rolled up my jacket and dug my nails into my arm. Still not enough—I couldn’t seem to break skin. I dug harder, waiting for the pain of hot flowing blood.

  “Haley!” Ari grabbed my wrists. I fought him, and as I did a hot sulfurous smell filled the air. The coals in me flared hot, heat roaring through me as I struggled. The fire roared outward, toward the one who held me. The ground shook.

  “Bloody hell!” Ari dropped his grip. I fell backward onto the sand. A few raindrops landed on my face, but they didn’t feel cold. My clothes were still steaming. I saw red welts on Ari’s palms as he staggered back.

  You will take our fire into your blood. Sweat trickled down my neck as I remembered the words. You will take our fire into your world.

  “What have I done?” I whispered. I thought of the heat in Hallgerd’s coin, but the fire inside me had nothing to do with her spell. It came from my own bargain with the fire creatures. Once before, we accepted such golden locks as a gift.

  I thought of the winter storms back home, how they doused the desert’s summer heat and turned dry washes to cold flowing rivers. I thought of cold rainwater rushing over my bare feet. The fire—and the anger—inside of me subsided down to banked coals.

  Ari shoved his hands into his pockets, green eyes wary. “You okay?” he asked, shivering still.

  No, I’m not. Okay was part of some other world, the world I’d lived in before my mother went to Iceland, before I’d known there was any such thing as magic.