Rock, Paper, Shivers

by Sara C. Roethle

  Her eyes narrowed. “I see that is not your intent,” she accused.

  I shrugged. “We were trying to summon Freyja because we thought she might be compassionate to our cause. I don’t want this energy inside me any longer. It took me over entirely before, and all it wants is power and destruction.”

  The Morrigan seemed to withdraw herself from me, deep in thought. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself for several minutes while she continued to ponder our predicament.

  Finally, her eyes lit up as she came to a conclusion. “We will take the energy from within you, and use it to regrow Yggdrasil. You will be free, and we will restore the natural order. You are wrong to think it only wants power and destruction. It wants chaos. The thing you call the charm is the embodiment of wild magics, and the concepts of luck and chance. War and destruction may come naturally to it, but they are not all that it signifies.”

  My heart skipped a beat. I wanted to press the you will be free comment, but I needed to actually understand the rest before making any real decisions.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but she was so excited she didn’t seem to notice. She clapped her hands together. “First, I must find a suitable host,” she mused. “I would not use one of the children of the gods any longer than necessary.”

  I opened my mouth again to ask a million questions at once, but suddenly Sophie/the Morrigan shut her eyes and went limp. I darted forward to catch her before she hit the snow.

  Cradled awkwardly in my arms, she opened her eyes. Her brow wrinkled.

  “Sophie?” I questioned.

  “Care to explain why you’re cradling me like a child?” she asked, uneasy.

  “Um,” I began, licking my chapped lips. “You were possessed by the Morrigan.”

  Sophie pulled away from me and stood. She brushed off her already clean clothes like a cat smoothing its fur. “Come again?” she asked incredulously.

  “The Morrigan came through the tree and possessed you,” I stated, waiting for her reaction.

  Her eyes narrowed. “The Morrigan? I always thought she was just a legend, not a goddess.”

  “We should get to camp,” I advised, hoping for backup when I explained everything that had happened to Sophie.

  She startled and looked around us, as if just then realizing we were standing alone on the frozen tundra. With a look of distaste, she nodded her agreement, and began walking in the direction of the camp without me having to tell her which way it was.

  By the time we neared the smell of woodsmoke, the first light of morning had descended. I stifled a yawn, longing to go back to sleep, though I now doubted more than ever that it would happen.

  Alaric jogged toward us as we came into sight. If I would have jogged on the snow, I would have broken an ankle, but he did so effortlessly, his feet barely making a sound.

  “She’s Sophie again,” I explained as he reached us.

  He let out a long sigh of relief, then swept his sister up in a hug. She struggled and fought him off, then huffed and smoothed her hair.

  “Why the hell did she choose to possess me?” she questioned. “She could have taken Maddy, or Aila, or anyone actually standing near the ritual.”

  “Well,” Alaric began, “she wanted to talk to Maddy, so she wasn’t really an option.”

  Sophie glared at me as if it was all somehow my fault. I lifted my hands in defense. “Don’t shoot the messengers.”

  Sophie sighed and turned back to her brother. “I didn’t do anything horrible, did I?”

  He shook his head. Just the fact that Sophie thought she’d done awful things while she was possessed made my mind jump back to Mikael’s assessment of the Morrigan. He was the one who would likely have any more relevant details on her, so he was the one I needed to speak with.

  I walked away from Alaric and Sophie, only to have them both jog to catch up as I approached the fire, which had been rebuilt even larger while I was gone, as if to ward away any more spirits. Everyone had remained awake, and now Aila, James, Faas, Tabitha, and Mikael all sat gathered around the fire for warmth. Something was cooking near the edge of the fire in a large pot.

  I looked down at Mikael as he leaned forward to stir the lumpy brown stew. Stew for breakfast. Yummy.

  “I take it Sophie is Sophie again?” Mikael asked.

  I nodded. “The Morrigan is gone, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be back. I’d like you to tell me all you know about her before she returns.”

  He grinned, then patted an empty space on the blanket beside him. “Story time it is!”

  Relieved Mikael had shifted back to his normal, joking self, I took a seat beside him. Alaric sat on my other side. Sophie walked across the fire to sit near Aila, who had the hood of her coat cinched over her mane of blonde hair, leaving only her eyes and part of her nose visible.

  “There are many accounts of the Morrigan, from many different sources,” Mikael began. “Some call her a goddess, some a witch, and some label her a member of the Tuatha De Danann, the Celtic fairy folk.”

  He shifted into a more comfortable position as he continued speaking. “The only thing most accounts seem to agree on, is that the Morrigan is vindictive, a woman scorned. Sometimes she is described as a single woman, sometimes as three, sometimes portrayed as the maiden, the mother, and the crone. In many myths, she’s a shapeshifter, changing between the three female forms, as well as the form of a crow. The crow form chooses who will die on the battlefield.”

  “Well she thinks I was made in her image,” I interrupted. “So the death thing kind of fits.”

  Mikael nodded. “As does your ability to heal.”

  Well now he really had my attention. No one had been able to explain how I was an executioner, but also a healer. The two “gifts” seemed counterproductive.

  “Go on,” I pressed.

  “In early myths, before the Morrigan became more of an ominous figure, she was a bringer of both life and death, keeping the balance. She was a protector of the land, and in some tales, was the earth herself. It was only in the later stories that she was portrayed as a bitter old witch.”

  “I wouldn’t let her hear you say that,” I cautioned as the gears began to turn in my head.

  Perhaps I really was descended from the Morrigan, if the early stories were true. Just as Alaric, descended from a goddess of war, was skilled in combat and tactical thinking, and Mikael, descended from a god of deceit and treachery, was skilled in manipulation, I might have gained my skills from a goddess of life and death.

  Tabitha moved to begin filling wooden bowls with stew. The meat inside looked brown, probably beef, making my stomach churn uncomfortably. My pregnancy had given me a taste for red meat, even though years of not eating it made me sick at the thought. Still, I took the offered bowl. If baby wanted beef, baby would get beef.

  I felt almost cozy sitting by the fire, enveloped in the scent of woodsmoke, with a bowl of hot stew warming my hands through my gloves. The comforting illusion was shattered as I noticed the blood stain on the blanket beneath me. It was Aila’s blood from the ritual. She seemed dejected this morning, and I wondered if it was because her goddess had rejected her call.

  A sudden thought dawned on me. “The Morrigan claimed she wanted to regrow Yggdrasil to restore balance to the land.”

  Everyone suddenly seemed uneasy, and no one would meet my eyes.

  “Why isn’t anyone looking at me?” I questioned, not getting why such a notion would scare my companions.

  Alaric placed a hand on my leg. “Maddy, when a goddess of death says she wants to restore balance to the land, you should be afraid. When she says she wants to regrow a tree that would allow the old gods to come and go as they please, you should be terrified. Think about it. Life as we know it would cease to exist.”

  My mouth formed an ‘oh’ of understanding. Suddenly the stew in my hands seemed even less appetizing. While balance sounded like a good thing, the Morrigan’s version of balance might not be what one would expect
. She might be even worse than Estus and Aislin combined, and I’d brought her here. Any disasters that might occur would be firmly placed on my head. I could only hope it would remain attached to my shoulders long enough to deal with the fallout.

  “So what do we do?” I asked of no one in particular.

  “She’s here now,” Mikael answered. “There’s no undoing it, so we should try to move forward as planned. We knew our actions would have grand consequences from the start, so we cannot truly complain when those consequences aren’t what we expected. She may not be Freyja, but the Morrigan is still a force to be reckoned with. She could make a formidable ally, and we need all the allies we can get.”

  I nodded. “So we try to bring her around to our way of thinking. She already wants to free me from the key, so we’re halfway there.”

  Alaric gave my leg a squeeze at the new information. I turned to see him smiling. “If we can manage that much,” he commented, “we can worry about the rest later. Separating you from the key takes priority.”

  Aila snorted, drawing everyone’s attention to her. She hunkered further down into her coat.

  “Is there a problem?” Alaric questioned.

  Aila snuggled her arms tightly around herself, but didn’t comment, seeming to regret her snort.

  “If you have concerns, then voice them,” Sophie pressed, compassionately rather than angrily. It wasn’t a tone I heard often from Sophie.

  Aila frowned. “Thinking of only the next step, and only how things affect Madeline, has not gotten us very far. Instead of fighting, we are hiding in the snow with our tails between our legs.”

  Mikael laughed, bringing everyone’s attention to him. He grinned in Aila’s direction. “What Aila is so eloquently trying to say, is that she hasn’t gotten to kill enough things. We promised her war after many years of inaction, and she’s seen little of it.”

  I sighed, not agreeing with the sentiment. “I’m going back to bed,” I announced as I stood.

  “It’s morning,” Aila argued.

  Alaric stood with me. “I’ll join you, in bed,” he purred lasciviously.

  Aila grunted in annoyance, but Alaric only smiled down at her. “There are a few things more exciting than battle,” he teased. “Perhaps you should try them sometime.”

  Aila began to lunge forward, but Faas put a hand on her arm, holding her back. He was grinning, as was Tabitha. Something told me that teasing Aila was a favored pastime amongst the group of Vikings.

  I urged Alaric forward before Aila decided to kill him, but I couldn’t help my grin.

  It’s funny, just when you think the world has stolen away all your smiles, they tend to come back in the direst of times.

  4

  Over the next few days, we bided our time, waiting for the Morrigan to return in her new host. Then we waited some more. Finally, on the third night, a woman appeared. She had long, fiery red, curly hair, and dark brown eyes. Her skin was pale, a little too pale, and lightly freckled. She was tall and lithe, with narrow hips and little meat to her. She would have been beautiful in a gaunt sort of way if she didn’t look so much like a corpse.

  Alaric and I were the only ones who hadn’t gone to bed when she arrived, and suddenly I was kicking myself for wanting to stay out by our warm fire to look at the stars. On the other hand, since I knew she had no problem with letting herself into our tent while we were sleeping, maybe staying up had been the wise choice.

  The red haired woman approached and sat by the fire, settling the loose, black fabric of her clothes around her. Her dress was partially covered by what could only be called a cloak. Her clothes looked vaguely medieval, but were crafted out of modern day fabrics with fine stitching. She waited as I observed her, staring at us with her dark eyes.

  “Are you the new Morrigan?” I asked hopefully, because otherwise some crazy woman had found us in the middle of nowhere, and hoped to share our fire.

  She nodded as she tucked her legs a little more firmly around her side. “I apologize for leaving you for so long. It took time to find an acceptable host in a stage where its soul had left it, but it still had not begun to rot. I cannot maintain anything with another soul in it for long, unless the vessel has welcomed me as its guest.”

  I cringed, since she’d basically just said that she’d taken over a dead body, though I supposed it was better than her stealing a live one.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

  She glanced at the dark snow around her, then shook her head. “This body is dead. It feels very little.”

  Well that was an uncomfortable thought, though I was a little envious that she didn’t have to feel the cold. Alaric remained silent beside me, allowing me to do the talking, though his eyes were cautiously glued to the Morrigan.

  The Morrigan began playfully swooping her hand through the fire, back and forth, quick enough to not let her skin burn.

  I cleared my throat.

  Her eyes met mine. “I forget how impatient children can be,” she mused. “If we must speak, tell me more of this war. I haven’t tasted war in quite some time.”

  I took a deep, even breath, picturing the Morrigan as a crow flying over the battlefield.

  “There have only been small skirmishes so far,” Alaric explained, letting me off the hook. “Madeline was to use the deaths to destroy the key, but complications arose.”

  I shivered. Complications was one way of putting it. A total lack of will power and follow through on my part was another.

  The Morrigan’s gaze went distant. “It was a sound plan, if only you’d known exactly what you were dealing with.”

  The way she spoke made it seem like we still didn’t know what we were dealing with. If that was the case, I’d have to argue, since what we were dealing with was now a part of me.

  Her eyes suddenly snapped to mine. “You were chosen for a reason. The fates may be scattered and unorganized, but have no doubt, it was fate that brought you together with such a divine force. This is not entirely a curse, though you may view it as such.”

  I wrapped my arms tightly around myself. I didn’t believe in fate. Too many screwed up things had happened over the course of my life for me to believe they were meant to happen. No, I believed in choice, even if an alleged deity was arguing otherwise.

  “Let’s see,” she continued, eyes once again going distant. I was beginning to get the impression she wasn’t entirely sane. “First, we’ll need to choose the location for the final battle,” she continued. Her eyes returned to mine. “You will need enough energy to not only part yourself from what you refer to as the key, but enough to regrow Yggdrasil.”

  “In other words, we need a lot of death,” I clarified. I definitely wasn’t sold on regrowing Yggdrasil, but parting myself from the key seemed like a good start regardless.

  She nodded. “We’ll need to move on from this place in the morning. Your enemies are near.”

  Well that was news.

  “How close are they?” Alaric cut in, suddenly all business. “Have you seen them?”

  The Morrigan’s eyes flicked to Alaric, then back to me. Ignoring him while still answering his question, she said to me, “This corpse is not my only form,” she gestured to her body, “and I saw much in my time away. Your enemies have left their holes to march forth. They search for you night and day, understanding the threat you pose. One still hopes to use you, while the other hopes to kill you, or so the rumors go amongst their troops.”

  I briefly wondered if it was Estus or Aislin that wanted to kill me, but really, it didn’t matter. We couldn’t wait around for either of them. We had to bring them together to fight each other, instead of us.

  Echoing my thoughts, Alaric interjected, “We need to make Estus believe Aislin is close to success in her endeavors. We must force him to act against her, rather than focusing his resources on finding Madeline.”

  The Morrigan finally acknowledged Alaric with a nod. “I do not think such a feat wil
l be overly difficult. They are all afraid. The Vaettir’s way of life will be changing no matter the outcome of this war. It puts doubt in the minds of the soldiers. A non-unified army is an easy target.”

  I yawned. Not that I wasn’t interested in the Morrigan’s plans, but the cold made me tired, and if we were leaving first thing in the morning, I would rather discuss the plans while we traveled.

  Seeming to sense my need for rest, the Morrigan stood. “I would appreciate another moment alone before you retire.”

  I nodded and stood. Alaric didn’t argue this time. If the Morrigan had wanted to harm me, she would have done so the first time we were alone.

  I reached down and gave Alaric’s arm a squeeze, then followed the Morrigan into the chilly darkness. I hoped this wouldn’t be a long talk, as every moment spent away from the fire seemed to increase my fatigue.

  Once we were out of sight in the darkness, the Morrigan stopped and leaned close to me conspiratorially. “How well do you know the child of Bastet?” she whispered, surprising me.

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “Well enough.”

  She sighed and linked my arm in hers. I tensed initially, not liking the idea of buddying up with a goddess filled corpse. “In these matters, we must look out for ourselves. I need you to understand. He cannot comprehend the road before you, and will only cause you to fail.”

  I shook my head. “Alaric is one of the few reasons I’m still alive. He protects me.”

  The Morrigan smirked. “You are more than capable of protecting yourself. Your lack of belief in that point is part of the problem. You cannot rely on the help of others in this situation. You must find the strength within yourself.”

  My eyes narrowed even further, this time in suspicion. “But it’s okay to accept your help?”

  The Morrigan sighed, letting out a long stream of fog in the air. Whatever she’d done to the corpse she inhabited had given it true life, if it had the body heat and lung function for its breath to create fog.