We ran into a group of people on snowmobiles less than a mile away. Right after my rune tempus started the world going again, thank gods. Alva, her brother and a few of the kids made room on the vehicles for us.
I sat behind a snow-covered Sky. She told me that she and the two other with gods’ souls had crashed when the world had gone into the spin. They were okay, just cold and wet now. I couldn’t help but feel responsible, though there was nothing I could do to stop this. It still weirded me out that others were experiencing it now.
The entire ride back I wasn’t the only one trying to watch over my shoulder for fast-moving elves. I caught Nanna, Brigg and Arun looking often, too. Every time my skin prickled, I imagined I saw their scary black eyes watching from the forests. But they never showed.
The scent of grilled meats came through my helmet when we reached the edge of the forest. I had never been so glad I hadn’t gone vegetarian like Coral in my life. I climbed off the back of the snowmobile when Sky pulled it to a stop, and I looked for Nanna. Arun was busy introducing her around and while everyone was oohing and aahing over Brigg’s light, I finally met Axel, Arun’s uncle. He brought a first aid kit and bandaged my neck. He looked exactly like Arun and his sister—had the same light blond hair and dark eyes. He barely spoke, but his smile was kind when he didn’t look sad. My heart ached for him because he’d spent his life building up these greenhouses, too.
He was finishing when Nanna found me. “Let’s get some food and find a quiet place to talk. I can’t wait to learn if what I’ve been told is the same as what you have been.”
I walked with her to where it looked like people from town had set up grills. Away from the surviving greenhouses, I was happy to see. I chose grilled chicken and a steaming aluminum foil packet filled with potatoes and onions, grabbed a bottle of water and found us a corner in a still-standing greenhouse to talk. First, I sought out Arun and found him watching me with a smile as he partially listened to something Tyrone was telling him.
My heartbeat picked up again. I didn’t know why I looked for him or why he watched me, but the two of us seemed to share something, a kind of connection. I wasn’t entirely sure it was romantic—despite the kiss in the tent—but it was there. It was like I could relax once I knew where he was and that he was okay, and I was getting the same thing from him. After one last quick look at him, I followed Nanna.
We chose a quiet spot in a corner of one of the greenhouses that had been partially cleared and settled between a stack of sleeping bags and a cooler filled with more water and soda. I sat my plate down and rolled out a sleeping bag so we could pull it over our legs and share.
Before I started eating, I chewed on my lip and stared at her. “I guess I should warn you that I don’t have anything to compare with your stories. My mother told us nothing other than her family was Arapaho and lived in Minnesota. She spent more time telling us Norse stories.”
Nanna cut into her chicken, took a bite and sighed. “I was so sick of sandwiches.” She opened her foil packet and sniffed the steam coming from it. Then she frowned. “So you don’t even know your whole heritage, just part of it.”
I nodded, my stomach in too many knots to start eating yet. “We don’t know if we have grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. Nothing. Raven, she’s the oldest of us, and I tried to research on the internet, but we couldn’t find any Lockwoods in that area who seemed like they could be family. For all we know, Dru made up the name.”
“Dru?”
“Our mother.” I looked down at my plate. “She’s kind of crazy, though I think she skated past kind of sometime in the last few months.”
She looked stunned, her dark eyes wide. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine growing up without family. I had so many, I sometimes felt I’d never get any privacy. I kind of resented it, even. But there was someone always there who could help if I needed it. You guys were alone?”
“Completely. But we did have each other. Raven, Coral and me.” I smiled to show that it was okay, even though there’d been many times we could have used an interfering aunt or uncle.
“I don’t know where to start. It goes back far. To when a group of Vikings came a long way into this country. They met our people, became friends. Then some of them went hunting and came home to find the rest of their men and a lot of our people dead. We don’t know how. Some say it was a massacre and some say an illness.”
I nodded. “I know this story. It’s about the Kensington Runestone from Minnesota.”
“The Vikings who survived, stayed and mixed with our people. You and me—” she pointed her fork at herself, then me “—we’re from the same ancestors. It was how my grandmother knew I carried a goddess soul. There have been prophecies passed down over the years.”
“The one about the warrior from two magical clans?”
She frowned, tilted her head. “No, that one I don’t know.”
“I’ll share later.” I wondered about Arun as I opened my foil packet and speared a potato with bits of onion clinging to it along with something else. I sniffed it. Yum. Parmesan. Arun’s last name was Dahl, which I knew was Germanic. In fact, it was an old name that I thought could be traced back to Vikings—though they didn’t really use surnames. Most of the time, they were identified as the son of someone. But Dahl was most definitely a part of one magical clan and because we usually took the father’s last name, that meant his mother was something else. That didn’t sit right, so more than likely she’d given Arun his last name.
I’d have to remember to ask him later. I chewed slowly as I watched Nanna eat half her chicken.
When she laid down her fork and knife and let out a deep sigh, I grinned. “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” It had been. Whoever grilled the chicken knew exactly what they were doing. My sisters and I could all work a grill—we’d grown up cooking on outdoor stoves. And Coral baked like a dream.
“Food of the gods,” Nanna said, then snorted.
I cracked up and nearly dropped my plate.
“Have you ever heard of the Whirlwind Woman?”
Her blurted question stopped my laughter, and I shook my head.
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe your mother didn’t tell you about this. She had to have been told. And when it became apparent that triplets carried Norse souls, our people would have gathered. Why did she leave?” Her black eyebrows met. “Because otherwise you would know about all this. And I would have known about you, for that matter.”
“My mother ran from her family and then spent the last eighteen years keeping us on the move. She was hiding us from the warrior who would supposedly kill us. It’s from an old prophecy about a warrior bringing death to a norn, and whoever shared the story also told her that one of us wouldn’t live to nineteen. So she ran and hid us. We lived all over the country with the exception of here.” I waved my fork around. “Any place she thought might have magic was a big no-no. Oklahoma especially. She thought the Heavener Runestone there meant it was a place of magic and that Norse people would be there. Funny thing is, if what my sister said on the phone last time is true, it turns out Dru was right about that.” I took another bite of potato. “Tell me about Whirlwind Woman. What a name.” I grinned because it sounded like a superhero name or even a villain in a scary movie.
“That thing you did—that spinning of the world like we were in the center of a tornado—that is from Whirlwind Woman. She’s an old legend. Well, she’s actually real, but most think of her as a myth that’s shared by more than one tribe. She’s a powerful force of nature who brings the gift of sight.” She smiled. “My grandmother studied both sides of our shared heritage. She made sure I did, as well. That gift of sight is actually a form of Norse magic, we believe, called seidr.”
“I’m very familiar with that one. So you’re saying it’s not the Norse goddesses my sisters and I carry who do this?”
<
br /> “Oh no, that’s not it. Your magic of prophecy, at least that part must come from your norn. But the way you turned the world into a spin? Like a tornado? That is from the Arapaho. And like I said, sometimes Whirlwind Woman gives the gift of visions, as well, but I think because you write in runes, that wasn’t a part of her offering to you. My guess is she does this to protect you. Otherwise, you’d stop and write those messages while people watched.”
The piece of chicken I’d eaten lodged in my throat. I coughed, swallowed. “One of my sisters gets visions.” And...if the fire nightmares weren’t really nightmares...
“My grandmother told me that there would be triplets with gifts from Whirlwind Woman and that they would come to Henihco’oo’. That’s our name for Yellowstone.” She looked down at her plate and frowned before setting it on the ground next to her. “Our people once kept Yellowstone a secret. They believed that men would come and form a league with the devils there, and those devils would come to destroy people entirely. Wipe us off the face of the earth.”
I couldn’t eat anymore, either. I stared at the food on my plate, at my hand as it opened and shut next to my plate. Everything narrowed around me until all I could see was the plate and my hand and even then, those things didn’t seem real. It was as if part of my mind just shut down over the enormity of what I was trying to process. “It was always meant to be here. The final battle.” I whispered the last part.
She nodded, and her eyes grew shiny with tears.
“How did you meet Brigg?” I blinked back my own tears.
“Need a subject change?” She gave me a wobbly smile and picked up a napkin to wipe her eyes.
I nodded. “Don’t you? Gods, this whole thing is blowing my mind. All these years, my sisters and I thought the norns were the only things shaking us up, and it turns out we should have done more research on this side of the family. Or maybe we should have run away years ago and tried to find more family.” I tightened my hand into a fist. “We wouldn’t have been so alone and so, so...ignorant.”
She was quiet. I didn’t blame her.
Loosening my fingers, I took a deep breath and changed the subject before my anger and resentment turned the food in my stomach into a hard lump. “So tell me about your boyfriend. He is your boyfriend, right?”
“Oh yes. That gorgeous boy walked right up to me at school almost a year ago and told me we were destined. How is a girl supposed to resist that?”
“So you’ve been together since?”
“Nah,” she scoffed, then laughed. “I resisted for a couple of months. He needed to be brought down a notch or two.” She leaned close. “Actually, I needed that. He was nothing but sweet. I’d just always gone for a different type.”
“What type was that?”
She grimaced. “A lot taller. And not so sweet.”
This time I snorted and she cracked up.
A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see that Brigg and Arun had joined us. Brigg plopped down next to Nanna, and she leaned over to kiss him. He grinned at her before he tackled his food. It looked like he’d piled one of everything offered onto his plate.
Arun sat close to me. I slid part of the sleeping bag over his legs before he lowered his plate on top of it. He stared at me, reached out to cup my cheek and swipe his thumb over a tear that must have escaped. “Okay?” he whispered.
I nodded, too choked up to speak. In one day, I’d learned so much about my life and my fate; I was completely overwhelmed. Suddenly, this boy, this future warrior who could end up being responsible for my death, seemed like the safest, most steady thing in the world.
He started to eat, and I leaned my head on his shoulder and just soaked in that safe feeling as long as I could.
* * *
Voices woke me, and I blinked into surprisingly bright light. I’d actually slept. Surprise. Surprise. When I’d crawled into the sleeping bag on the greenhouse floor, I’d expected to be up all night. I had lain there a long time, shivering, trying to ignore the weird mix of smells—potting soil, lavender—which I loathed beyond all reason because of Dru—and some sort of rubbery scent coming off at least one of the sleeping bags. I think that one was making my nose itchy. Also, someone badly needed a shower. Everyone else had fallen asleep, so I had to assume my Florida bones weren’t adapting, as well. It was too damned cold to sleep. Plus, I was starting to cough a little. My lungs felt sort of fluttery and a little heavy, so I was probably allergic to something in here. I looked at my hands, glad to see the faint rash from the cucumbers yesterday was gone.
But then, I’d stayed awake mostly out of fear, though the word didn’t come close to describing the tangled mix of emotions tearing me up. My neck ached and the things I’d learned from Nanna had my mind spinning. Spinning. After what I’d learned about the Whirlwind Woman, that word fit. Snorting, I rolled onto my side and flinched when my ribs met hard cement.
We’d all carried plants from one greenhouse into the others and turned this one into what Alva called the sleep zone. It was a step up from the front of my Jeep, but I still didn’t fall asleep easily.
Arun had set up watches and had actually taken the first one because we’d napped in the tent earlier, so I had no idea where he was.
But it wasn’t just the fear of the creatures attacking us while we slept that had kept me awake; it was the way that elf had looked at me. I’d been afraid I’d see his face the moment I closed my eyes. Arun had been right. The thing had acted like he recognized me and it hadn’t been my imagination. He’d planned to kill me, but there had been regret in those weird features of his. But as usual, I hadn’t dreamed of anything other than fire. This time, I could see more of my surroundings. Tied to the tree—well, tangled in rope among trees this time—and in a tank top as usual. It was as though I’d been outside myself, like I was someone else watching the events happening.
One massive gnarly-branched tree in the center of a snowy clearing. I could see me, passed out, tied under a long limb that stretched out over the ground.
The scariest part had been the fire.
It had burned in a circle all around the tree.
A circle in the snow.
Fire that burned in wet snow.
Just the thought stole my breath.
I picked up my phone, saw there was a message and felt a million times better when I heard Coral’s voice. She was fine.
A grunt, then a groan sounded right next to me, and I turned my head, catching Tyrone’s grin as he pushed his sandy-colored hair off his face with his prosthetic hand as he sat up. The ease with which it moved fascinated me.
“Neat looking, isn’t it?” He flexed the fingers a couple of times. “I’m not sure what my parents did to get the money for this baby, but my mom always said it was worth every penny.”
“How did you lose it—if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Mastiff.”
I blinked. “Seriously? Aren’t those, like, really sweet dogs?”
His grin let me know he was teasing. “Mastiff as in British armored vehicle. I fell in the wrong place.”
I shuddered.
“It could have been worse.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me. The god Tyr lost his hand to a wolf. “Your parents don’t care that you came here?”
Grief tightened his features instantly. “They were killed two years ago. Drunk driver.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What for? You weren’t there.” He shrugged. “It’s easier now, but I was a mess for a long time.”
Trying to lighten the mood, I smiled and hoped I didn’t have morning goo on my teeth. “You know, it’s generally accepted that the sorry is for the grief of the person left.”
“Is that so? Then thanks.” He stretched out long legs. “I generally don’t get people who drop the word s
orry for things they have no control over. Kara says I’m an ass about it. So um, sorry.” He chuckled.
I did, too, because I could tell right off I’d like him—that maybe if things had been different, we could have been friends. “Arun said your birthday is coming up, so you’re not yet eighteen?” I wrestled with the sleeping bag as I sat up and pushed my tangled hair off my face. “Are you on your own then?”
He looked down at his hand and flexed it again. “I live with my uncle. He’s cool and I didn’t want to leave him, but this is kind of important, you know?”
“But how did you know?” I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Arun said you guys can’t feel the soul you carry. So how did you know that you had it? Or to come here?”
“Well, I kind of always knew I was different. And I’ve had dreams of Yellowstone my whole life when this is the first time I’ve stepped foot near it. Then Kara showed up and told me what was going on.”
I looked around for the redhead, partly to see what she’d be wearing today. But then, her things had probably been burned with the others’. “She barely looks older than us. Why did you trust her?”
He stared at me for a long moment. “I was playing basketball with a group of guys. Good guys, though not everyone thought that because they were in a gang.” His mouth twisted. “It wasn’t much of a gang and they’d only put it together to offer each other protection because there was another local gang who was anything but good.” He cleared his throat. “There was a fight. A brutal one. She walked right into the middle of it and knelt to touch the shoulder of one of my friends who was dying. I watched him sit up, look at her and disappear. His body was there, but his spirit just walked away. Then she came over to me and held out her hand to help me up.” He started to laugh. “I was scared to death to touch her and scrambled away. Thought she was there to make me disappear, too. But she explained that Rick was one of the einherjar.”
I covered my mouth, stunned that he’d actually witnessed a Valkyrie choosing a warrior for Valhalla. “The einherjar, Odin’s warriors, are supposed to come back and fight in Ragnarok.”
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