Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  “I apologize if our trivial feud has disturbed you, Lady Maggie.” Geirrod gestured toward Maggie’s purse, sitting at Loki’s feet. “Perhaps now with your tools available to you, you will feel yourself again, and may better serve our loyal friend, Loki?”

  Maggie forced a thin smile onto her face. “You should know better than to keep a goddess separated from her bag.”

  She felt ridiculous trying to impersonate an immortal, but she held her head high and rounded her shoulders back. “I require you to leave now. Any further interference could have dire consequences.”

  The Frost Giants backed away from her, heads bowed.

  “Of course. Apologies.” Thiassen turned and disappeared down the corridor. Geirrod paused a moment, watching Maggie. She locked eyes with him and didn’t blink. Finally, Maggie sighed and rested her hands on her hips.

  “Do I have to ask you twice?” she demanded, impressed with how her stern voice echoed off the stone walls.

  Geirrod shook his head. “No, I . . . If you require anything else . . . ?”

  “Then I shall see to it myself,” she replied curtly. “You are dismissed, Geirrod. And I’ll not have you hanging about the corridors, either. Your very presence is an obstacle to the work I must do now.”

  Maggie stepped around the bed and retrieved her purse. “Unless you prefer to play games with Loki’s fate?”

  Geirrod backed away. “No, Lady Maggie. I will not disturb you again.”

  Maggie looked up at him. “See that you don’t.”

  Geirrod exited, and his retreating footsteps finally died away.

  Iduna turned to Maggie with a satisfied smile. “You’re quite the fast learner. Well done, Lady Maggie.”

  Maggie looked down at Loki. “Or maybe I’ve just made a bad situation worse. I still have no idea what to do for him.”

  Iduna sighed and sat back down at the table. “At least you have some power here.”

  Maggie reached for her purse—a ballistic-nylon knock-off she’d picked up from a street vendor the day after they’d landed in Oslo. She unzipped it and made a quick inventory of the contents: hotel keycard, sanitized hand wipes, a pocket English-Norwegian phrase book, lip balm, tissues, her wallet, passport . . . If there was anything in her purse that might help get her out of her current situation, it wasn’t leaping out at her.

  “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.” The last thing Maggie felt was powerful.

  Iduna shook her head and tsked. “You’ve got Geirrod wrapped around your little finger. Even Thiassen is apparently willing to give up his claim to Saga for a chance at you. You’re the belle of the ball, my dear. Isn’t that what your people say?”

  Maggie felt a cold dread seep into her stomach. She’d been deliberately ignoring that part of the recent exchange, but now Iduna had thrown it in her face. Geirrod had a claim to her? Thiassen expected to assert some kind of similar ownership of Saga? “I don’t think I really want to know about all that . . .”

  “Use it to your advantage, if you can,” Iduna offered. “Of course, you can only play that game for so long. Eventually, even an old widow like me starts to look attractive to these guys.”

  Maggie looked up sharply. “Widow?”

  Iduna looked away. Maggie thought she heard the goddess sniff back tears.

  Widow. Maggie turned the word over in her mind, trying to connect the mythological dots. She’d tried to absorb so much information about the Norse pantheon in such a short space of time that she couldn’t keep it all straight—and there was still so much more history and many more names she’d hadn’t even touched on yet.

  Iduna didn’t seem interested in elaborating, so Maggie sat on the floor and started digging through her purse instead.

  Opening every buckle and unzipping every compartment, Maggie dumped the purse’s contents onto the cool floor. Paper receipts, her tiny digital camera—a gift from Heimdall especially for this trip—nearly a half-dozen museum brochures and maps, a compact, a two-thirds-full tin of light green mints, a few tampons, her sunglasses, a spare pair of shoelaces . . .

  Close to tears, Maggie opened the tin and popped a few of the wintergreen-flavored mints into her mouth.

  “Mint?” She held the open tin up to Iduna, but the goddess ignored her.

  Rolling the tablets on her tongue, Maggie was grateful at least to get the taste of dry apples out of her mouth. She spread out her belongings on the floor and touched each item as though it could impart some secret wisdom that would clue her in on what to do. As each tampon and museum brochure disappointed her, she moved on to the next. She pushed her digital camera to the side to uncover her passport and her bluetooth headset.

  Maggie stopped and stared at the tiny device.

  “Oh!” Maggie exclaimed in a half-whisper, not wanting to attract the attention of the Frost Giants. She rummaged through the pile on the floor, then grabbed her purse, held it open wide and shook it hard.

  Her cellphone slid out of the bag and fell on top of a packet of tissues.

  Maggie climbed to her feet and grabbed Loki’s wrist. “Loki, if you can hear me, I think I’ve found a way out of this.” She brushed away tears with the back of her hand and flipped open her clamshell phone.

  “I don’t know who you think you’re going to call with that thing,” Iduna remarked, her back still to Maggie.

  “There’s not much power left,” Maggie frowned at the display. “And no signal.”

  Iduna turned toward her and wore what Maggie supposed was an attempt at a sympathetic smile. “There will be no heroic rescue, my dear. We are at the mercy of the Frost Giants. Their war brides, if you will.” She took a breath and lifted her chin. “This is simply the way things are done.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Maggie retorted.

  She glanced around the room. The windows were too high above her head, with no way to climb up to try to get a clear line to orbiting satellites. Maggie looked at the doorway to the corridor at the far end of the room. There was no way in hell—the Norse version or any other—that she was going to be anyone’s war bride.

  “I have to try to find a signal, Loki. But I’m coming back.” She squeezed his wrist. Maggie started to step away, then frowned down at the phone in her hands before looking back at Loki. Other than not having a signal, everything appeared to be working normally.

  “My phone should be totally fried right now, so close to you.” She rested a gentle hand on Loki’s still elbow. “I’m going to get us out of here. I promise.”

  Maggie hustled toward the dim passageway. Her phone beeped: TXT MSG FROM SAGA.

  Maggie squinted at the display. Signal strength flickered between a single bar and no signal at all. Maggie wandered into the dim corridor, not sure where she was headed.

  7

  Heimdall stepped through the thick mist, letting intuition and memory guide him. It had been centuries since he’d last sought out the grove, but it wasn’t a place an immortal soon forgot.

  For millennia, Iduna’s Grove had been hidden from mankind. Any mortal who ventured too close to her orchard invariably got lost in the fog and eventually found himself back where he started, with only a vague recollection of how he’d gotten there.

  But for a god, the passage was pure instinct. Every deity had in his or her blood the call of the apples that sustained them and gave them immortal life. Without the harvest of Iduna’s trees—which produced once every four hundred years—Heimdall and his kin would wither and die, just like the mortals around them.

  Heimdall felt more than heard the others following behind him. They’d fallen silent as they stepped into the mist, feeling the cool air kiss their faces and inhaling the sparkling scent of ancient magick.

  All but Sally, who stumbled over a rock and managed to get her long hair tangled in a low-hanging tree branch.

  “Hey!” she shouted into the mist. “You guys, I can’t see anything.”

  Freyr was at her side before she’d even finished her p
lea for help, and Sally’s pout quickly softened as the nature god lifted her locks and freed her from her arboreal trap.

  “Thanks, Freyr,” Sally said quietly. She wasn’t sure if she liked or hated the tingling she felt in her stomach whenever Freyr was near—or pretty much whenever she thought about him or heard his name mentioned. But she did like the way this crazy fog made his light-brown hair glisten.

  He shrugged. “Be careful.”

  Sally smiled at him stupidly and nodded. She hoped the mist hid her flaming cheeks.

  Freya turned back and cleared her throat. “Are you two coming or not?”

  “Sorry.” Sally trudged forward, the thrilling butterflies in her stomach transforming into vague nausea. She fell into step behind Freya and Freyr, with Saga and Thor bringing up the rear.

  At the head of the expedition, Heimdall stopped suddenly, and Sally nearly marched directly into Freyr’s back.

  She opened her mouth to apologize—her face was really burning now—but gasped instead when she saw the mists swirling around a white, stone archway in front of Heimdall.

  “Is this it?” Sally stepped forward to get a better look. There was nothing else to mark the boundary of the sacred grove. No gate, not even a sign on the archway. Sally reached out with her senses to determine if this spot felt different or especially magickal, but all she felt was damp and chilly from walking in the mist for the past half-hour.

  “This is it.” Heimdall reached out to touch one of the stones in the archway, and the mist began to clear.

  “That’s pretty cool.” Sally stepped up beside Heimdall and peered through the archway, where the lifting fog revealed a sun-dappled lane lined with weeping spruce trees and large, rounded stones covered in runes and sigils.

  Sally took a step forward to enter, but Heimdall pulled her back.

  She frowned up at him. “What’s the deal?” Even though Heimdall was Odin’s right hand—and these days was frequently more often in charge than Odin was—Sally had never felt intimidated by him. From the look on his face, she guessed he was wishing otherwise.

  “Moon Witch or not, you’re still a mortal.” Thor moved forward to stand beside her. “What’s on the other side here is no place for you.”

  Sally took a step back and dug the heel of her sneaker into the dirt. “Yeah. I know.” She looked down at the ground and pushed her fists into her jacket pockets. “I was just hoping you could make an exception.”

  Heimdall wore a patient smile as he rested a hand on her slender shoulder. “It’s not quite like that. There’s a barrier here that you can’t cross. No human being can.”

  “See what you can find out here,” Freya suggested as she walked past Sally on her way through the archway and into the lane on the other side. “Work on honing those magickal instincts.”

  Saga, Freyr, and Thor followed across the threshold into the sacred grove. Sally walked back a few meters and stumbled across a low bench primitively carved out of pinkish stone streaked with black. “I guess I’ll just make myself comfortable.”

  “Just stay put. This shouldn’t take long.“ Heimdall paused before taking the final few steps into Iduna’s Grove, afraid of what he might find on the other side. With one last look up at the arch, he stepped across. And then he was gone.

  Sally dropped her backpack on the ground and slumped on the bench. She took a deep breath, inhaling as much of the surrounding mist as possible. If the air contained any magick, Sally couldn’t feel it in her lungs. Other than the thick fog, the only thing out of the ordinary she could detect was a strange hiss from somewhere in the distance.

  That got her hackles up, until she realized that sacred grove or not, she was still out in the woods in a remote section of Norway. Chances were there would be wildlife nearby. The hissing noise came again, accompanied by the sound of scurrying or maybe even an animal’s footfalls.

  Perfect. Sally had come all this way to help Odin’s clan, and now she was going to get eaten by a Scandinavian cougar while the gods went apple-shopping.

  Sally got up from the bench and took a few seconds to calm and center herself. Remembering Frigga’s lesson about subtle energies, she imagined herself surrounded by blue light for protection. Then she lifted a hand to draw the symbols Algiz, Uruz, and Isa, bound together in a snaking pattern. She turned in a circle, tracing the sigil continuously in the air until she had completed her precautionary veil.

  Satisfied she had done her best, Sally sat back down. She listened hard for a few minutes, but didn’t hear anything else. Sally smiled. Maybe she really could think magickally on her feet without the Cosmos imploding.

  She considered Freya’s suggestion. Frigga might be less angry with her for coming to Norway if she were at least working on her witchy skills while she was here. But as soon as she settled into a cross-legged position and was ready to meditate, the long hours of travel and lack of real sleep began to catch up with her.

  She looked at the bench she was sitting on, gauging whether it was long enough for her to lie down. It wasn’t.

  Sally rose to her feet. If she just walked for a few minutes, that should wake her up, right? She paced back and forth in front of the bench, coming to within a few feet of the stone arch on each lap, peering curiously across the border, and then heading back again. On her fourth lap, Sally explored behind the pinkish bench and stopped suddenly when there was an unexpected CRUNCH under her sneakers.

  Burgundy-colored flakes clung to the rubber soles of her shoes. Sally bent down and found a scattering of what looked like burnt potato chips on the grass behind the bench. She picked one up and sniffed at it. Sulfur, and salt.

  The edges were slightly sharp, but the large flakes were less brittle than she expected. Like sections from a turtle’s shell, she thought.

  She turned the flake over in her hands, frowning at the tiny lines of red and brown that covered the surface like tree rings.

  Sally stood and glanced again at the archway. She wondered what might happen if she tried to cross into the grove. Given her earlier near misses with experimental Norse magick, she decided it was best not to find out. She glanced back at the ground, her rune-oriented brain automatically searching for patterns in the scattered flakes. Then her eyes sparkled and slow smile spread across her face.

  “I only need 24 of them.“ Sally bent down and started collecting the largest of the flakes. She just hoped the black ink from the pen in her purse would show up against the dark red mystery material.

  Saga stepped up behind Heimdall and laid a gentle hand on his elbow, urging him forward. They’d come to the end of the winding, tree-lined lane and stood on the threshold of the inner grove. Heimdall tightened his jaw and continued onward, moving from a place of dappled shade to a sunny orchard in a single step.

  Heimdall planted his feet on the rich, moss-covered soil and scanned the concentric rings of mature trees. He hung his head and sighed. As far as he could see, every tree had been picked bare. Not a single apple remained.

  Saga, Thor, Freyr, and Freya fanned out on either side of him. They stood together in silence, surveying the damage. Finally, Freyr spoke.

  “So it’s true. The Frost Giants have stolen the entire harvest of apples.”

  “When I read the note, I just couldn’t believe they’d do such a thing!” Saga didn’t bother wiping away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. She dashed forward through the rings of trees to the moss-covered building on the other side of the grove.

  “Odin would have taken them at their word.” Heimdall swallowed hard. “I just had to see it for myself. This was a wasted trip.”

  Thor clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Most Frost Giants are too simple for real deceit, but some of them are pretty wily. Personally, I didn’t think they had it in them.”

  Heimdall sat down in the moss and leaned back against one of the barren trees. Had their glacial imprisonment made the Frost Giants so desperate? Was it the craving for the immortal apples that had awakened them? T
heir old enemies needed the apples just as much as Heimdall and his kin did, but Odin had put the giants into forced hibernation beneath the ice.

  This had always been a sacred place for both tribes. Each side had sworn long ago never to deny the grove and its life-giving fruit to the other.

  He watched Freya move from one tree to the next, placing her hands on the bark and inspecting the remaining foliage.

  “These leaves have properties similar to the apples, but much weaker.” She collected a handful of leaves for each of her kin and encouraged them all to chew on them.

  “Bitter.” Thor made a face as he swallowed, then turned to Heimdall. “What’s our next move?”

  Heimdall climbed to his feet. The leaves had at least taken the edge off of the pounding headache he’d had since Valthrudnir punched him. He looked to Freya. “Any chance of a second harvest?”

  The goddess pushed her golden hair behind one ear. “Maybe with Iduna’s help, we might coax a small number of apples—”

  “No luck,” Saga panted as she ran back across the grove. “No sign of Iduna. They really did take her.”

  Heimdall turned instinctively to Thor, fully expecting to spend the next few minutes trying to quell whatever rage was bound to erupt, but the god of thunder was quiet. Pensive, even.

  “One thing the Frost Giants are not, is stupid,” Thor offered.

  “All right, this is wigging me out,” Saga announced. She marched across the moss and planted herself directly in front of Thor. “Where’s the red-faced bluster? Where are the calls for immediate, bloody battle?”

  Thor raised a hand to quiet her. “This is an honored space, sister.”

  Freyr stepped forward. “But she’s right.”

  Heimdall tried to circumvent the argument. “Look, I know we’re all feeling the effects of not having the apples on time—”

  “The Frost Giants have to pay,” Freyr cut him off. “It’s high time we carved up those icy bastards and put them back in the ground where they belong.”