The lights on the display wavered, and his dollar was accepted: “Credit: 1.00.” Beneath his graying beard, a smile played on Odin’s lips. A postured threat often went a long way with such machines. Thor wished he had the same luck with photocopiers. Odin punched a button and claimed the cola can the machine dropped into the plastic tray.
He repeated the process with a second dollar, then stepped aside and gave Thor his choice of illuminated buttons. Thor closed his eyes and hit a button at random. A can of orange-flavored soda dropped to the tray. Thor smiled. The orange ones usually weren’t so bad.
“Not a word to your mother.” Odin cracked open his cola and took a long sip. “Better than coffee. A far cry from mead.” He gazed down the hallway at the informal student lounge area. Alone in the alcove crammed with a vinyl love seat and a few chairs sat David McAllister with a textbook balanced on one knee, an open notebook on the other, and his book bag on the floor between his feet.
“Mr. McAllister.” Odin pursed his lips and strode toward the fifteen-year-old sophomore.
Thor took note of the library books stacked up on the seat beside the boy and made a face. Another nerd. These modern humans produced few offspring with the potential to be real warriors.
The slight teenager barely glanced up from his work, the vinyl squeaking as he shifted his weight. “Hey, Principal Wyatt.” He scribbled in his notebook, then rested his pencil on his thigh.
“Last minute homework?” Odin took another sip of cola and swallowed a burp. That had been a difficult trick for the gods to learn, after centuries of celebratory, manly belching at the banquet table. To these evolved humans, normal bodily functions were more an embarrassment than a source of pride.
The corner of David’s mouth ticked upward, then immediately settled into meek apology. “Umm, no . . . Getting in some extra practice before the math contest this Saturday.”
Odin glanced meaningfully over his shoulder at his son. Mathematics made for stronger weapons, accurate navigation, and abundant crops. Mathematics built longboats and spacecraft. He turned back to David. “Good job, son. You make us proud, eh?”
Another smile-like spasm played on David’s mouth, and the teenager bent again over his notebook where he’d drawn a pair of contiguous triangles inside a circle. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled as he tapped his pencil against the paper and bobbed his head, silently running through the rules of geometry.
Odin watched him a moment more and began to turn away, then stopped dead in his tracks.
The hair on the back of Thor’s neck stood on end as he saw the sudden, quiet alarm in his father’s frame.
Then he felt it, too.
An invisible chill flew toward them from the far end of the hallway. Thor felt the wave of cold tear through his skin as though he were standing naked in a blizzard. He reached for the wall to steady himself and gasped for air, reeling from the shock of bitterness that shivered down his spine. Blinking hard, Thor regained his balance and realized the moisture in his nose had condensed.
Sniffling and trying to catch his breath, he looked at his father rocking on his feet and struggling to regain his own equilibrium. Thor pushed away from the wall and was about to say something to Odin when his gaze was drawn instead to David. The boy sat up straight on the love seat and stared ahead blankly. His books slid off his lap onto the floor with a thud that echoed off the concrete walls.
There was something markedly different about the boy’s eyes.
Thor inhaled sharply. The fire that ignited the boy’s bony frame was unmistakable. Thor knew that peculiar set of the shoulders and the rapid breathing characteristic of the warrior called to battle. David’s eyes came alive, glinting with a dark madness none of the gods had seen in centuries.
Berserker.
Thor felt adrenaline pour into his system as the boy stood up, his young eyes deepening as he stared down first Thor, then Odin.
“I think you need to settle down, son,” Odin stammered, surprised by the unexpected awakening. He glanced back at his son, who shook his head in incredulity.
“If this is some kind of joke, there’s going to be hell to pay at the Lodge,” Odin grumbled at him.
Thor took a bold step forward. “Shut him down. We have to stop him before the Berserker fully takes hold.”
Planting his broad feet, Odin cleared his throat and stared hard at the new warrior standing before him. “This is not the time. You are not a Berserker, and there is no battle to be fought. Sit down, now. And forget.”
David blinked at him with a confused frown. Then there was a flicker of a smirk, darker and more sinister than the boy’s shy smile just moments earlier. Refusing to back down, he squared his shoulders and bared his teeth in the wide, vicious grin of a crazed predator.
Thor saw a shudder run across his father’s shoulders. He stepped in front of Odin to face off against the insubordinate boy.
“You will obey your gods!” he bellowed, no longer caring whether anyone in the surrounding classrooms or stairwells might hear him.
David considered Thor’s demand, then threw his head back and laughed.
It was the closest Thor had ever come to soiling his clothes.
Transformed into something more primal and single-minded, the new warrior who had seconds earlier been a studious schoolboy walked past his principal and the photocopier repairman, leaving his books behind as he headed toward the fire door. With an angry, blood-chilling howl, David slammed the lever and threw the door open wide, not so much as slowing when the alarms began to sound.
Odin and Thor stared after him.
“Holy . . .” Thor whistled through clenched teeth.
Odin shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no mistaking it. We’ve just witnessed an awakening.”
With fire alarms blaring overhead, students poured out of their classrooms and labs into the hallway. A particularly nervous science teacher, barely old enough to be out of school himself, raced toward Odin.
“Principal Wyatt?!” he screeched. “What is it? What should we do?”
Odin blinked at him. After a long silence, he seemed to remember his surroundings and took the teacher by the elbow. “It’s nothing. Just a false alarm. One of the sophomores opened a fire door.”
Visible relief washed over the young teacher. He nodded at Odin and went to work corralling the students who were buzzing about in the hallway in a state of excitement that bordered on panic.
Standing apart from the throngs of teenagers and teachers, Thor broke into a cold sweat. He leaned toward Odin and spoke sharply over the din of the alarms and the squealing students. “I didn’t call any warriors. I’ll go out on a limb and guess you didn’t, either.”
Odin’s mouth tightened into a hard, angry line. More than anger, though, Thor knew his father was scared. Because he was, too.
“Berserker,” Thor whispered hoarsely, barely audible over the repeating alarms. He watched the students file back into their classrooms, then looked down the hall again at the fire door David had thrown open.
A Berserker that Odin hadn’t called. A Berserker who laughs in the face of his gods.
Thor felt the blood in his veins turn to ice.
4
Sitting at a table in the window of The Cauldron & Crumpet, Portland’s trendiest and most traditional Pagan pub and tea room, Sally thumbed furiously through her Book of Shadows and checked the time every thirty seconds. Her reference books—Pekoring Weismann’s Practical Correspondences for the Asatru Witch, Adele Marmonte’s The Way of Freya, Stuart Kleinhaber’s Rhythms of the Runes—were strewn across the table in front of her, alongside a cup of herbal tea and a half-eaten bagel.
“I wish Opal would hurry up and get here,” she said to Baron, who peeked slyly out of Sally’s backpack on the chair next to hers. Technically, pets weren’t allowed at The Cauldron & Crumpet, but the staff generally turned a blind eye to witches and their familiars. Baron sniffed the air as a middle-aged witch and her pocketbook miniature poodle—b
oth decked out in dark purple robes and black leather collars—passed by on their way out the door. Sally swatted Baron lightly on the nose when he growled at the dog and tried to climb out of the backpack to go after it.
She glanced at the murky sky outside the window. Portland would be dark and rainy for months to come. Her parents cursed the seasons once the sunny, dry summer was over, but Sally loved the darker half of the year. It was the perfect time for study and spell-work.
She flipped past a thirty-page handwritten section in her journal on the individual runes and their correspondences—associated colors, seasons, deities, sacred trees, divinatory meaning, times of day—and landed on the page detailing the next rune pattern she’d need to lay out. It was a complicated arrangement of more than half of the Elder Futhark runes in a woven knot based on Jormungand, the World Serpent. But she wouldn’t have to put it together until later in the evening. Between now and then she just had to keep up with sporadic intervals of candle-lighting, with the occasional incense, incantation, or feather—assuming Baron hadn’t done permanent damage to her pigeon feather.
Sally rested her fingers on the open pages of her Book of Shadows and whispered to herself as she read. She ignored the pale, scaly skin of her hands. The sloppy ponytail she’d pulled her mane into, without benefit of a mirror, felt itchy at the back of her neck and when she reached back to scratch, she wrinkled her nose at her dry, crackly hair. After the Black Moon, she’d research a restorative, moisturizing spell. Despite the future of the Cosmos weighing on her thin shoulders, she was still a teenager and in the newly groovy world of cooperation and environmental stewardship that her magick would surely usher in, she wanted to look nice for the winter dance at school.
She checked the time again and sighed. Opal wasn’t late. Sally was early.
Affecting an epic yawn, Baron stretched his front paws toward the table and made a play for Rhythms of the Runes, nearly pulling it off the table before Sally caught it.
“Baron!” Sally tapped the cat on his orange-and-black nose. “Don’t make me wish I’d left you at home.”
She pushed the book back onto the table. Baron sat up and sniffed at the edge of the book, then tried again to catch it by the corner. Sally smacked at his paw.
“No!”
With a huff of indignation, Baron licked his affronted paw and curled back down in the backpack.
Sally turned the page in her Book of Shadows and shifted in her chair. She was having trouble sitting—unusual, because she’d always relaxed easily at The Cauldron & Crumpet. But her burnt thumb was throbbing and the more she tried to find an agreeable sitting position, the more the muscles in her back and shoulders protested.
“Dagaz in the North, Othila in the South, and Ansuz in the East,” Sally muttered as she traced her index finger along the hand-drawn outline of the Jormungand’s Knot rune spell. “Okay, so it makes sense to have Laguz in the West, Berkana and Hagalaz in the center, and . . . Perfect! Jera back in the North, directly beneath Dagaz.”
She counted the points along the drawing in her journal of the World Serpent’s body as it wound through a loose trio of interlocking infinity symbols. She’d need fifteen of her twenty-four runes for this planetary harmony-building spell, along with nine white candles and a sizable chunk of live forest moss.
Sally smiled and patted her bag. Everything she needed for the next few days was right by her side.
Baron hopped out of the bag and leapt onto the table where he briefly inspected Sally’s half-eaten breakfast before he deliberately pushed one of her books to the floor with his nose.
“Baron!” Making sure no one had seen him, Sally grabbed the naughty cat and shoved him back into her bag. “You have to be careful with books that are out of print.”
She lifted Kleinhaber’s Rhythms off the floor. The book had fallen open to a section on crafting Teutonic sigils, which she’d practically memorized while designing the layouts for all her runic spells—The Map of the Nine Realms, Heimdall’s Comet, Jormungand’s Knot, Frigga’s Cup, and the Triple-Spiraled Triskele she’d used in the central piece of Odin’s Return.
At the bottom of page 240 was the familiar line drawing of the sigil ancient Vikings had carved into the sides of their fishing vessels to ensure a bountiful catch and protect them from storms and sea monsters. Sally read the accompanying text aloud.
This symbol was typically painted or engraved on the left side of the vessel, five hands’ distance from the bow and four hands down from the top of the hull. The vivid blues and golds of the intricate knot pattern at the center of the sigil stood in sharp contrast to the dark red predominant in the outer rim of the symbol. It is believed this particular shade of red denoted the fire of the volcanoes of Iceland.
Fire is a common element in modern-made sigils, often used to activate magical spells associated with the symbol. The first step in creating any sigil is to select the element which most closely matches the intention and purpose behind the symbol that will be created. (See Appendix F for Elemental Correspondences.)
Symbols of the deities themselves can also be woven into sigils to draw upon a god’s or goddess’s attributes or participation. For instance, the valknut, a tight knot of offset triangles . . .
Reaching the bottom of the left-hand page, Sally continued reading at the top of the right-hand side.
. . . is a powerful representation of fertility! Include this symbol for a potent sigil to bring about powerful change. Also, some modern practitioners draw a small stick figure cat at the bottom corner of their sigil. The cat is closely associated with Freya, the goddess not only of love and beauty but also of magick.
“Yeah, yeah, the cat,” Sally muttered, absently glancing at Baron, who was staring languidly at the ceiling. Sally sighed at the dull ache in her teeth and the stiffness in her fingers. She knew this intense series of spellcastings would be hard work, but she didn’t think it would take such a toll.
Just a few more days, Sally reminded herself.
She checked the time on her phone. Opal was now officially late. Sally was about to close the book, when she stopped cold. She glanced again at the top of the page she’d been reading.
Page 245.
Sally looked back at the open page on the left side of the book. Page 240. Four full pages were missing. She flipped through the book to other key sections she’d referenced when crafting her rune rituals. The book was missing pages in seven other places/ Forty-two pages simply weren’t there.
Sally turned back to the section on sigils and scanned the words on the bottom of page 240 and the top of 245.
“So if the valknut isn’t a symbol of fertility, and isn’t used for harvest spells . . .”
She thought back to the rune rituals in her bedroom that morning, and the trio of interlocking, red triangles that had sat at the center of her altar through it all.
“Holy crap!”
“Sally?”
She looked up into Opal’s concerned face. Dark-haired and slightly overweight, Opal was a sophomore at Portland State University—three years older than Sally and the only person she’d told about her magickal work.
The lines around Sally’s eyes crinkled as her face broke into a pained smile. “Opal! Thank goodness you’re here. I . . .” Sally held a hand to her chest and tried to catch her breath. She’d never felt her heart race like this before. “I think I’ve made a big mistake. Huge. Something might go seriously wrong.”
Opal set down her teacup and blueberry muffin and sat across from Sally. “You look horrible.”
Sally’s hand shook as she reached for her own cup of tea. “I haven’t been sleeping.”
“Looks like your hair is going gray.”
“What?” Sally turned toward the window and tried to catch her reflection in the glass.
“Maybe it’s just the dim light in here.” Opal pinched off a big hunk of muffin and popped it into her mouth.
Baron sat up, his eyes and ears just visible over the table. He looked
at Opal and sneezed.
“Lovely to see you, too, Baron.”
Fighting exhausted tears, Sally collapsed back against her chair and placed the open book on the table. “There are whole sections missing! I used this to craft my spells, Opal. What if I got something really, really wrong?”
Baron reached up and dragged his claws across the open pages.
“Baron!” Sally grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and shoved him down into her bag, then zipped up the top so only his head could squeeze through. “Great. Now the book is doubly damaged.”
Opal flipped through the book as she munched on her muffin. “So what? It’s the intention that counts, right?”
Sally crossed her arms tight across her chest. “Sure, if you’re a fluffy bunny Pagan who doesn’t care about real magick.”
“Here we go.” Opal sat back and drank her tea.
“Magick is an art,” Sally protested. “It’s not silly love charms or chanting random spells to get help with homework. If you’re going to do magick, you have to get it right. I’m not playing with Tarot cards or howling at the moon, you know.”
Opal nodded wearily. “I know.”
“I’m doing real work, based on real research and real practice.” Sally wiped at her wet cheeks. “Magick is alchemical science.”
Opal smiled. “Do you even know what that means?”
“Opal, please. This is serious.”
“Okay.” Opal put down her tea. “What do you think you got wrong?”
“With that many pages missing, maybe everything.” Sally reached for a paper napkin and blew her nose into it. “How could I have missed that? I’ve probably ruined everything.”
“Maybe not. What’s the worst that could happen? And will you stop wringing your hands? You’re acting like my grandmother.”
Sally looked down at her hands in her lap. She hadn’t realized she’d been massaging them. “My hands hurt.”
The sun came out from behind the clouds and streamed through the window beside them. The light hit Sally full in the face and she blinked at the sudden brightness.
Moon Dog Magic Page 5