Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  Mouth agape, Heimdall stared at his cousin. Freyr had always been a voice of reason and even non-violence. At his martial arts studio—the Raven Dojo—he first taught his students awareness and self-confidence, and then backed it up with defensive moves. He was a nature god, for frigg sake.

  Freya rested a hand on her brother’s shoulder, effectively defusing him. “We can’t go rushing in without more information. We’re stumbling in the dark here. We don’t even know where they are.”

  Thor locked eyes with Heimdall.

  “I do not advocate inaction,” Thor said. “They cannot steal the apples of immortality. They cannot ransom our own lives for our sisters.”

  Standing next to him, Saga shivered.

  “There will be no hostage exchange.” The corners of Freyr’s mouth ticked up slightly. “There will, however, be a blood bath.”

  Freya looked at Heimdall and sighed. “We have a plan, right?”

  Heimdall shrugged. “I’m working on it.”

  Sally sat cross-legged on the ground, which was surprisingly dry for a fog-clouded forest. Bits of mulch and dry dirt stuck to her jeans and sneakers.

  She’d spent the last twenty minutes drawing runic symbols on 24 pieces of russet shell—as she’d named the strange flakes she’d found—and was now trying a location spell for the third time. She gathered the runes into her hands and tossed them gently into the air, then bent over them to examine their pattern on the ground.

  As with both previous attempts, the same six runes fell together in a jagged line, while the others scattered face-down around them.

  “Laguz. Othila. Fehu. Teiwaz. Ehwaz. Nauthiz,” Sally murmured in consternation. She’d been hoping the runes would fall into the shape of an arrow or other directional symbol, or maybe that they’d give her coordinates she could use to find Maggie and Loki—assuming those two were even together.

  Laguz at least indicated a journey across water—or was the rune asking Sally to use her imagination? Othila spoke to ancestral property, which Sally took to mean that Maggie and Loki were at least somewhere in Scandinavia—homeland to Odin’s clan—but she couldn’t rule out the possibility that the rune was instead indicating the moon or maybe the hawthorn tree.

  Sally sighed. She should have grabbed the maps from Saga before the others disappeared into the grove. Everything was easier with a map.

  She thought about pulling out her Book of Shadows to check other possible meanings and correspondences, but that was pointless. She knew the runes backwards and forwards, and she still couldn’t make sense of this same message that kept coming up.

  “Sally!”

  She looked up to find Freya, followed immediately by Heimdall and the others spilling through the archway. The goddess stopped in her tracks when she spotted the runes in front of the Moon Witch.

  “What have you got there?” Freya asked.

  Sally managed a wan smile. “Improvising.”

  She looked down at the runes she’d fashioned. “But I’m not sure it’s doing any good. I was trying to do a locator reading, but I just keep getting these same runes coming up over and over again. No idea what it means.”

  Freya looked at the string of runes on the ground in front of Sally. She whispered the ancient name of each symbol to herself, then shook her head. “What do you make of the gap between Fehu and Teiwaz?” Freya asked.

  Sally shrugged. “The divide between wealth and self-sacrifice? Or the difference between a cat and a wolf?”

  Freya knelt down so she was on eye-level with Sally. “What does your intuition tell you?”

  Sally pursed her lips for a moment. “Saga, I need your maps.”

  Freya smiled with approval. Saga dug into her bag for the maps of Oslo and Norway they’d pored over earlier and handed them to Sally.

  Saga’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket but before she had a chance to answer, Heimdall ripped the phone out of her hands. His breath caught in his throat when he read the display.

  “It’s Maggie,” he stammered. Getting his breathing under control, he held the phone against his ear. “Maggie? MAGGIE?! Where are you? Did they hurt you? Are you okay? I can’t hear you!”

  Saga pried the phone away from her brother and lifted it to her ear. “Maggie? It’s Saga. First, tell me if you’re all right.”

  Freyr grabbed Heimdall by the arm to keep him from tackling his sister to get the phone back. “Let her do it,” Freyr whispered. “You’re too distraught.”

  Straining against Freyr’s grasp, Heimdall felt a heavy hand come down on his shoulder—Thor holding him firmly in place.

  “Relax, brother.” Thor nodded toward Saga, who had stepped several paces away to continue her phone conversation. “There will be plenty of time to talk once we have freed Maggie.”

  Heimdall realized he was shaking. He closed his eyes and started to cry. Thor let go of him, and Heimdall sank down to the ground, practically landing on top of Sally’s runes. Freyr pulled him out of the way and held him as he wept.

  “Find her,” Freyr mouthed to Sally. She nodded back and unfolded the maps. She collected all the runes that had landed face-down, then stared again at Laguz, Othila, Fehu, Teiwaz, Ehwaz, and Nauthiz all in a row.

  “So they haven’t hurt you?” Saga paced around the stone bench. “Do you have any idea where you are? Hello? Maggie?!”

  Heimdall looked up sharply at her. Saga lowered the phone and shook her head. “I lost her.”

  Heimdall stormed over to her. “What do you mean, you lost her?”

  “It was a bad connection!” Saga shouted back.

  Sally started to pick up the six runes on the ground, when her eye was drawn suddenly to the map, specifically to an archipelago off the northwestern coast of Norway. She looked back down at the runes. “L, O, F . . .”

  Heimdall grabbed Saga’s phone and punched at the touchscreen keypad, trying desperately to get Maggie back on the line. “What did she say?” he demanded. “Where are they keeping her?”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” Saga yelled at him. “I could barely hear her.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Sally exclaimed, then felt her cheeks flush red when she realized everyone was looking at her. “I know where they are!”

  She pointed excitedly to the runes on the ground and nearly laughed at her own myopia. “I was trying to do a location spell, and I guess that’s what the runes did.” After a beat, she realized they weren’t following her. “They were literally spelling the name of the place. The Lofoten Islands.” Sally looked at Freya. “That’s why there was that gap between Fehu and Teiwaz, for the second O.”

  Maggie stared at the phone in her hands. The connection had lasted only a few seconds before the battery died.

  “All that time, hunting for a signal.” She felt the sting of tears at the corners of her eyes. Maggie slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and looked out over the low, stone wall that lined the platform she’d managed to find at the top of whatever tower this was.

  She shivered against the chill air but remained outdoors as long as she could bear it, scanning the horizon for anything that might be familiar or any clue that could tell her where she was.

  Maggie looked out over the brown and green patchwork of land, frosted mountains, and the brilliant blue water against a pristine coastline. It looked exactly like every other part of Norway she’d seen so far, and the sun hanging low in the sky didn’t tell her much, either. Assuming she was still in Scandinavia, she had no idea if it was mid-morning or 10 o’clock at night.

  Maggie hugged herself against the arctic breeze that lifted her hair off her shoulders. She wasn’t anxious to head back inside. She didn’t want to think about what the suspiciously courteous giants might have planned for her, especially if she couldn’t bring Loki out of his coma—and she was pretty sure she had no hope of doing that.

  She wondered if it was cold enough to freeze to death, and how long that would take. Would there be any real pain? It was supposed to
be just like going to sleep, right?

  But she had gotten through to Saga, if for just a few seconds. If there was any hope of Heimdall finding her, and getting her out of this place . . .

  Maggie hopped up and down to keep her blood circulating. Her feet and lower legs were already numb, and she wasn’t sure whether she could still feel her hands. She glanced back at the trap door she’d climbed through to access the tower roof.

  It was warm inside. She could sit next to the fireplace, have creepy-polite giants serve her the same unappetizing meal of apples and bread, struggle desperately to wake a sleeping god—and very likely be married against her will, raped daily, and imprisoned for the rest of her life. But she’d be warm.

  Her tears froze on her face.

  8

  Sally stood at the metal rail of the ferry as it made the Vestfjorden crossing to the Lofoten Islands. Feeling the cool mist on her face, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the sounds and smells of thousands of years ago.

  Freyr stepped up beside her and gazed at the passing coastline. “It’s entirely changed,” he paused. “And at the same time, exactly the same.”

  Sally opened her eyes and watched as they passed a small village on the shore. “Was that town there when you were last here?”

  Freyr shrugged. “It’s been a few centuries, you know.”

  Sally turned toward him and felt a jolt in her chest when his eyes met hers. He’s an immortal, Sally reminded herself. And you’re just a silly teenager with a stupid crush. Get over it. She looked back out over the water and was glad the Nordic summer air was cool enough to hide her fevered cheeks.

  “But this is your homeland,” Sally said.

  “Not really my homeland. Adopted, remember?” Freyr rested his forearms on the railing.

  Sally brushed a wisp of damp hair out of her eyes, and then dug a knit cap out of her jacket pocket. “I always wanted to come here.” She pulled on the cap—pink and white in traditional Norwegian snowflakes, expertly knitted by Saga—and pushed more hair out of her face. “Even before I got interested in runes and magick, you know.”

  “You’re the Moon Witch. It’s in your blood.”

  Sally pretended she could remember when these shores were clear of paved roads, docks, buildings, and other modern structures. Her ancestors had come from this land, just as Heimdall and Thor had.

  The Moon Witch didn’t reincarnate like the Yggdrasil or the Dalai Lama, but every so often—Freya said it was something like every twenty generations, give or take—a magickal mortal appeared on the scene to assist Frigga and the others. Sally hadn’t been the first Moon Witch in the New World, but she was the first one to fulfill her destiny. Even if that destiny sometimes chafed a bit.

  “It’s not your fault, what happened with Managarm,” Freyr offered, as if reading her mind. “You don’t have to atone for his transgressions.”

  “Yeah.” Sally made a poor attempt at a smile. She looked across the water at the approaching snow-capped peaks, wishing she could have seen the mountains when they were young, before their jagged edges were worn down by time. “That’s what they keep telling me.”

  Freyr turned toward her and rested against the railing. “They’re telling you that because it’s true. It’s up to you whether you want to believe it, but you know better than anyone how powerful belief can be—no matter if it’s accurate or not.”

  Sally watched the sea foam and spit at the ferry churning through it. She wondered how many ancient creatures—monsters and allies alike—had either expired or disappeared to unknown depths and crevices.

  “This is where it all began,” Sally whispered to the mountains across the water. She fancied that they remembered, too, and had stood vigil all these centuries over the changing landscape, silent sentinels from a time that no longer existed.

  “And here we are again, for another confrontation with the Frost Giants,” Freyr sighed. “Assuming we’re in the right place.”

  Sally set her jaw. “This is the right place.” She knew Thor wasn’t convinced—even when she’d thrown the runes another four times and kept getting the same answer, even when her pendulum had practically spun out of her hands when she dangled it over the map.

  “Thor thinks I’m grasping at straws, trying to offer hope to Heimdall.” Sally sighed.

  “Well, Heimdall would grab at anything just about now. And Thor is suspicious of forces he can’t personally control,” Freyr offered. “Like your rune magick.”

  Sally shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and wished she had a pair of gloves. “I’m not wrong. Not about this.”

  Freyr smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “That-a-girl.”

  Feeling suddenly very warm, Sally kept her eyes on the water and tried to mask the grin on her face.

  Thor scowled as he walked through the doors of the Lofotr Viking Museum. Bringing up the rear of the group of immortals-plus-one, he brushed stray crumbs from a cranberry-orange muffin out of his beard and onto the floor. He deliberately ignored the disapproving look from the docent standing at the entrance to the gift shop.

  He caught up to Freyr. “This is a bloody waste of time. What are we going to learn here about a renegade band of Frost Giants, here and now?”

  Freyr nodded politely to an older lady and her granddaughter as he and Thor lumbered past.

  “They have maps of the old settlements,” Freyr murmured. “Overlaid with current villages and towns.”

  “This is a mistake!” Thor scoffed. He followed along behind Saga as she led the group past two half-sized models of Viking ships and a display case of disintegrating battle helmets. Thor paused in front of a trio of not-so-well preserved swords mounted on the wall, then continued forward.

  He found the others in an alcove, crowded around a miniature of a Viking fishing village—complete with tiny people, houses, and boats.

  Sally looked positively giddy as she leaned over the glass case. “This is so cool! Is this what it looked like, before?”

  Thor glowered over Sally’s shoulder and cast a looming, Thor-shaped shadow over the historical scene.

  “Not how I remember it,” he grumbled.

  Saga made a face and turned toward him. “Maybe that’s because you were always storming around the countryside, drinking beer and inciting riots.”

  Before Thor could defend his reputation, Saga caught sight of a display on the far wall and pushed past him. She spread her arms wide as she approached the collection of maps, drawings, and photographs. “This!”

  Thor caught Heimdall’s arm. “I’m telling you, they’re not here.”

  Heimdall stopped and looked him in the eye. “What makes you so sure?”

  “What adversary have you ever known to return to the scene of their most brutal defeat, even to stage an uprising?”

  Heimdall took a moment to consider Thor’s point, but he was so impossibly tired he simply couldn’t think straight. Vacillating between anger and desperation, he was frantic with worry for Maggie, furious over her abduction, and mystified by the Frost Giants’ return.

  Heimdall honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had restful sleep. Passing out on the ferry and drooling in Saga’s lap didn’t count. The swelling at his temple had receded, but the knot was still tender. The pain rushed back in blinding flashes whenever he leaned down or turned his head too quickly.

  Heimdall realized his brother was still standing in front of him and waiting for a response. He hadn’t been much of a leader lately, even though Thor kept giving him opportunities to step forward and take charge.

  Heimdall shook his head. “I can’t say that I—”

  Freya laid a gentle hand on his shoulder as she passed by. “Have a little faith. We are in the right place.”

  Thor inhaled deeply in preparation for a sarcastic sigh, and felt his leather belt digging into his gut. “What makes you so certain?” He nodded toward Sally, standing next to Saga by the far wall and making inappropriately dramatic hand gestures
. “All we have is the hunch of a teenager.”

  Freyr stepped up behind his sister. “This is where they would bring Maggie, and even Loki, too, if they have him. Think about it. If you’d been trapped in the ice for millennia and were suddenly released into a completely unrecognizable world, wouldn’t you seek out something—anything—that was familiar?”

  Freya nodded. “Even a place of surrender.” She nearly laughed. “And I imagine they’re having a difficult time of it. When we last battled the Frost Giants, humans had barely emerged from caves. Now they run the whole planet.”

  Heimdall nodded. “They’d want a remote location, far from cities but still close to the land they walked when they were last free.”

  Freyr added, “And if they’re maybe looking for a rematch . . .”

  “So.” Thor lifted a still-skeptical eyebrow. “Lofoten.”

  Freya smiled. “Lofoten.”

  Saga waved them over to the wall-mounted map that she and Sally were studying. “You guys know anything about a castle on any of the islands? Maggie said something about a tower, or maybe a fortress.” She looked sheepishly at Heimdall. “It was a bad connection, and she really didn’t know where she was.”

  Heimdall dipped his head. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Next time, we’ll just make everyone has phones with GPS and maps,” Freyr added.

  Sally’s eyes grew wide. “Oh! If her phone’s still on, or if we know what time she called you, we can hack into the phone company’s database to see which cell towers her signal is pinging off of, and then triangulate her location from there!”

  Thor crossed his arms over his chest. “And you know how to do all that?”

  Sally’s mouth twisted to one side. “Not really, no. But they do it on TV all the time.”

  “So, back to the map.” Thor gestured for Saga to continue.

  “We’re looking for a structure with some kind of tower.” Saga ran her fingers over the map. “Maybe somewhere in the mountains, they could have built a stronghold for themselves?”