“I have a knife,” Sally volunteered. She was really hoping Moon wouldn’t make her leave her backpack behind.
“I do, too,” Opal added quickly. “And water bottles, and camping food, and a sleeping bag, and my journal, and—”
Moon held up a hand. “That all sounds fine.” She looked at Sally. “You’re sure you’ve packed everything you need?”
Sally stared back at her and tried to shake the eerie feeling that she was about to star in her own personalized disaster movie. She really wished Freya was there.
“Sally,” Frigga prompted.
“Uh, yeah.” Sally looked into Moon’s dark hazel eyes and tried to figure out what the guide was up to, but Moon’s expression was steady and unreadable. “I think I’ve got everything.”
“Good,” Moon announced with a satisfied nod. “Anything we don’t have already, we can find along the trail.” Moon gestured toward the forest. “Shall we begin?”
“Don’t you have a pack?” Opal asked.
Moon tapped her right temple. “Everything I need is right here,” she said with a wink, then turned and led the way into the woods. Sally and Opal fell in behind her, single-file. They entered the woods a few yards from where Thor and Hugh had started, and then turned sharply away to travel a divergent path.
Loki lowered his binoculars and smiled. He’d hidden himself well, high on a ridge overlooking the field where Tim had built the sweat lodge for Thor and his groomsmen. No one had invited Loki into the sweat lodge with the other male members of Odin’s Lodge, but he hadn’t expected to be included.
These days, he was more of an outcast than he’d been in a good while. Not even Odin had reached out to him since the trouble in Ireland. Maybe the revelation of Loki’s ancient alliance with the pookas against the Vanir was the proverbial last straw. Although Odin and the rest of the Æsir had ultimately benefitted from Loki’s actions, Odin wasn’t too happy about being kept in the dark all these centuries.
To add to his transgressions, Loki had knowingly allowed Sally to be placed in grave danger. He didn’t speak up before she went abroad. He kept it to himself that Freya and Freyr were the grandchildren of the goddess Badbh, and that the twins had a claim to the Éireann throne if they wanted it. It didn’t matter that Freyr and Freya hadn’t volunteered this information themselves.
Instead, Loki had been conveniently elsewhere, as always.
Thor had long bellowed that he’d catch Loki in a lie one of these decades. This time he’d come close enough to satisfy himself that Loki should be expelled from the Lodge once and for all. Odin didn’t agree, not entirely. Technically, Loki hadn’t lied; he never did. But this time his mischievous tendency to withhold vital information was enough to earn him Odin’s cold shoulder.
That suited Loki just fine. If Thor wanted a schism, Loki was happy to provide a long one. Maybe he’d even take the Moon Witch with him.
Loki raised his binoculars again and watched Sally disappear into the woods. She trailed behind Opal and their guide. He couldn’t help the grin on his face. The Moon Witch needed to be tested, again and again. She’d needed to get a taste of the Vanir homeland in Ireland. She’d needed to get close to the Køjer Devils in Norway. Her kind of magick would stagnate if she was always being coddled. This Moon Witch’s power thrived on danger. She should get dirty and bloody, mess with forces beyond her control, and learn from the sometimes devastating experience of trial and error.
It had been too bad about her roommate, the silly girl who called herself “Tara” and went on about how only she was a true witch. Her sacrifice wasn’t Sally’s fault. And Sally had come through unscathed, at least physically. This little nature walk was simply the necessary next step along her magickal path.
It wasn’t a secret that Loki had a soft spot for Sally. He didn’t wish her to come to any true harm. But he would sit back and watch her leap into this crucible, no matter the result.
2
Sally stumbled over a rock in her path and caught herself on the stout trunk of an evergreen tree. The forest was darker and quieter than the open field, and grew more so with every step.
“Stay on the path!” Moon called back again, but as near as Sally could tell, they weren’t following any kind of marked trail. Almost like clockwork, the guide offered curt shouts of encouragement as she had the girls turning first one way and then another, zig-zagging through the trees as though Moon were following her nose rather than any set hiking plan.
A few yards ahead of Sally, Opal was whistling and humming to herself as she traipsed along behind Moon. She’d started the hike calling out the common and scientific names of many of the plants they passed, but Moon didn’t seem interested. Then Opal had tried to impress the guide with her fancy GPS unit as she stopped to record the location of some white-flowered bog orchids—“habenaria leucostachys,” Opal intoned as she took a photo and entered the plant’s details into her device. But Moon kept pushing forward, and Opal’s GPS signal was growing weaker. Eventually Opal stopped showing off.
Sally offered an uninspired grunt here and there—mostly, she was just trying to keep her feet as she struggled under the weight of her backpack. Blisters were already forming on the backs of both heels. She should have invested a week or two in breaking in her new hiking boots. She should have trained with the new backpack, too. Her pack was far from full, but Sally wasn’t an experienced hiker and the shifting weight strapped to her body kept pulling her off-balance.
Having caught her breath, Sally pushed off from the evergreen’s rough bark and tried to catch up. As long as she kept both Opal and Moon in sight, she considered her progress decent enough.
A root reached up and snagged the toe of her boot—at least, Sally could have sworn that’s what happened. She fell face-first into the dirt and narrowly avoided braining herself on a moss-covered rock the size of a basketball.
Sally lifted her face and spat out a mouthful of thick loam and pine needles. “Uhck” was the only sound she could make.
“Sally?!” Opal cried in alarm when she turned and saw her friend lying prone on the ground.
“I’m okay!” Sally brushed away a clump of dried plant matter that was stuck to the corner of her mouth. She made a series of awkward attempts to lift herself up, working against the weight of the backpack pressing her down. She finally managed to push herself onto her knees. She sighed when she saw the dirty, wet stains soaking into her sapphire blue Trinity College sweatshirt. She should have known better than to wear her favorite sweatshirt on a backpacking trip. She wiped her dirty hands on her even dirtier jeans. The expedition was off to a less than stellar start.
“Everything okay back there?” Moon’s voice drifted through the trees.
“Sally fell down!” Opal called out.
“You don’t have to broadcast my clumsiness, you know,” Sally grumbled.
“But she’s okay!” Opal called to Moon again. “Give us a couple of minutes?”
There was silence from farther ahead, along whatever invisible trail Moon was following. Was the guide trying to lose them in the forest? Sally figured they’d been in the woods maybe thirty minutes, and she was pretty sure Moon was already disappointed in her charges.
“Don’t take too long,” Moon finally answered back. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before dark.”
Opal walked toward Sally, digging her walking stick into the dirt with every right-footed step. It was just a worn branch she’d found a few minutes into the hike, but the five-foot stick was the perfect diameter and shape for her hand. Opal had declared that it must have been waiting just for her, and then she started referring to it as her “shaman’s staff.”
“Come on, Sally. Get up,” Opal commanded. “Or, are you hurt?”
Both gravity and inertia toyed with Sally as she struggled to her feet. She had to spend a few seconds finding her balance beneath her hulking pack before she could take a reliable step. She hated camping. Ever since Managarm had dragged her to his ill
egal campsite to do his magickal bidding, she avoided being in the woods for extended periods of time.
“I’m fine,” Sally replied with a masked growl. “I’m really not out of shape. It’s this stupid backpack.”
“Okay.” Opal sat on a nearby stump and let the wood take the weight of her own pack.
Sally could easily guess what Opal was thinking: Sally was unprepared. Ever since Sally’s anal over-planning for Odin’s Return—the spell which had resulted in the appearance of errant Berserkers and the near fulfillment of Ragnarok, instead of the environmental peace, love, and harmony she’d intended—she’d been playing fast and loose with her magick and making compulsive and questionable choices. So Sally hadn’t studied ahead for this nature trek, even after Opal gave her a copy of Michael Moore’s Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West. And she still owed Opal $15 for the REI Backpacking Basics class she’d skipped.
“Do you even want to be here?” Opal asked at last.
Sally wavered on her feet, still testing her balance. She wondered if her parents had slipped some dumbbells or leather-bound encyclopedias into her pack when she wasn’t looking.
“I want to do this, Opal.” Sally wanted to plant her hands on her hips to emphasize her words but she didn’t think she could make her point and remain on her feet—it was one or the other. “What kind of question is that?”
Opal shrugged. “It just doesn’t seem like you’ve been taking your training very seriously.”
That’s because I keep getting burned, Sally thought. No matter what I do. Images of Freyr sinking helplessly into the Black Pool and of Frigga’s exasperated face flooded into Sally’s brain, accompanied by her suspicion of Opal as the goddess’s special pet. She flexed her fingers and rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen her aching muscles and joints.
“I mean, I’ve got a full course-load, plus being a teaching assistant, plus all my research, and I still manage to make it out to the Lodge every weekend,’ Opal said.
Sally looked down at her barely scuffed boots. While Opal attended Norse Hogwarts studying kitchen witchery with Frigga, trance states with Freya, and magickal gardening with Maggie, Sally’s participation had been decidedly more sporadic. This nature hike was the first practical lesson Sally had participated in since her return to Oregon. Everyone had given her a wide berth after the fiasco of her first semester in Ireland. Apparently, they’d just never gotten around to closing that circle around her again—and Sally wasn’t sure she wanted to come back into the fold.
“And now I’m supposed to just smile and step back and be your freaking assistant.” Opal kicked at the stump with the heel of her boot. “It’s not fair.”
“You’re right,” Sally said without pause. “It’s not. None of this is fair. If I could go back and decide for myself, honestly, do you think I’d choose this? You want to be the Moon Witch? Fine by me. Only, it’s not up to me, is it? I didn’t ask for you to be the assistant anything. And, if you’ll notice, I’m the one covered in dirt while you’re finding a shaman staff around every corner.”
Opal looked away and gazed up into the trees.
“But we’re here now,” Sally huffed, then took a second to cool herself down. There was no sense making the hike even worse by fanning the flames of discord. “And, like you keep reminding me, we have this great opportunity to really get to know the magick that’s been right under our feet our whole lives. We get to hang out in the woods with a real Indian medicine woman!” Sally cracked a mostly genuine smile, and she was relieved to see it reflected on Opal’s face.
“I mean, how cool is that?” Sally added.
Opal nodded. “It’s pretty cool.”
Sally brushed a clump of moss off the front of her sweatshirt and gestured into the woods where she hoped Moon was still waiting. “So, should we get on with it?”
Opal rose to her feet and planted her staff in the ground. “I’m sorry. It’s just that what Frigga said, it just kind of took me by surprise.”
Sally nodded. “You and me both.”
“Hey, you two!” Moon called from somewhere ahead. “You want to get moving, or should I continue without you?”
“We’re coming!” Opal shouted. She turned to Sally. “Do you think it’s strange that she doesn’t seem interested in any plants so far? I thought that’s why we’re out here.”
Sally shrugged. “We’re definitely taking a weird route.” She was completely disoriented and doubted she could find her way back even with a trail of red velvet cupcakes laid out for her. Sally remembered the compass and forestry maps her father had tucked into her pack, but she was clueless about orienteering. She really should have gone to that backpacking class.
Sally nodded toward Opal’s pack. “You’ve been mapping plants on your GPS?”
Opal unzipped her pack’s hip belt pocket and pulled out the small device. “You need it?”
“Nah.” Sally shook her head. “But maybe keep that thing handy?”
Thor jogged to keep pace with Hugh. While the thunder god was huffing, the guide hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“So, where are we going, exactly?” Thor stretched his arms wide in an attempt to cool off. The moist fabric of his sweatshirt stuck to his skin.
Hugh glanced sideways at Thor. “I could say something wise and cryptic about the journey being more important than the destination, but that would just be pushing your buttons.”
Thor smirked. “I appreciate that.”
“But there’s something to be said for that old axiom.” Hugh grinned. “We don’t have much farther to go. Not to get to our starting point, at least.”
“Okay, good,” Thor jogged a few paces more, then paused. “And what is it that we’re going to be starting?”
This time Hugh laughed out loud. “You really have no idea what you’re in for, do you? First you try to bring a pack, then you waste your breath asking inane questions instead of paying attention.” Hugh chuckled without slowing his pace.
Thor hurried forward again. He didn’t want Grace to get a bad report about his quest performance. “What should I be paying attention to?”
Hugh continued in silence for a long while. Finally, he said, “You’ll see.”
Thor resisted the deep-seated urge to growl and curse, maybe even to kick something. He thought about Bonnie in her wedding dress, even though he hadn’t been allowed to see it yet. He let his imagination wrap his bride in endless yards of satiny silver fabric and decorate her dark hair with tiny lavender flowers. He hopped over a raised tree root and tried to laugh. “Okay, now you’re being cryptic.”
“Just want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.”
Hugh led the way deeper into the forest, not following any established or broken trail that Thor could discern. This was no direct path, either. After a long and confounding series of twists and turns, Thor was completely adrift. All of the trees, rocks, and undergrowth looked the same. Had they pushed untold miles into this wilderness, or were they just going in circles a few hundred yards from the sweat lodge?
Quickening his pace, Hugh took another sharp turn at a moss-covered pine tree and glanced back at Thor. “Dizzy yet?”
Thor wiped the sweat off his brow. His blood sugar was dropping, and his head hadn’t yet cleared from the potent smoke of the sweat lodge. He made a mental note to ask Tim about any possible hallucinogens in his herbs, once the quest was complete.
And he hadn’t drunk nearly enough water before for the sweat—he’d expected something more like a fifteen-minute sauna, not two hours in a close, dark space sweating his brains out and inhaling mystery spices. He’d scarcely had time to pull on his pants, much less rehydrate or have a proper snack before Hugh had him sprinting off into the woods.
“Getting there,” Thor replied.
“Won’t be long now.”
Thor hoped there would be streams or waterfalls or some other water source, but that wouldn’t help his hollow belly. His stomach was already growling in loud co
mplaint, and each uncomfortable gurgle seemed to broaden Hugh’s smile.
Bonnie had tried to stuff his pockets with bread, but Thor was determined not to cheat—despite the snacks he’d tried unsuccessfully to sneak past Odin’s inspection in a moment of weakness. He didn’t want to risk losing Grace’s favor. So there were no chocolate-covered raisins or roasted turkey legs secreted in his boots. But he was beginning to wish he’d slipped a couple of Frigga’s fig muffins up his sleeves.
“You’ll survive,” Hugh cut into Thor’s thoughts as though he’d been reading them. “This isn’t the first time I’ve led someone into the woods.” He eyed Thor’s sturdy gut. “And a cleansing fast might do you good.”
Thor choked on the retort that sprang fresh to his tongue. He wasn’t fat; he was big-boned, and this skinny little Indian . . . Thor remained silent. He relaxed his fists and kept moving.
Hugh executed another sudden turn, seemingly at random. Thor frowned. “You sure you’re going to be able to get us back out of here again?”
One corner of Hugh’s mouth quirked into something approaching a smile. “That’s a long ways off. Keep your mind on where you are now. Plenty to distract you along the way without worrying about what happens at the end.”
What happens at the end. Thor didn’t like the sound of that. He felt for the hunting knife he’d tucked into his belt, wary of Hugh’s prediction that it was all he would need these next few days in the wilderness. He could use it to skin small game or slice bark for a fire. Whittling a “vision whistle” or some other trinket would be no problem, either. But if there really was a siatco roaming these woods, and if Hugh intended Thor to go hand-to-hand with it . . .
His thoughts turned to the old battle camps, generations before modern “necessities” like electricity or indoor plumbing. There was nobility and freedom in basic living, and Thor understood some modern people’s yearning to “go off the grid.” And the hunting trips! He and Heimdall had disappeared into the dense forest for months at a time, spent entire seasons tracking wild game. He’d had little more than a hunting knife on those adventures, and he’d thrived with minimal effort and planning. Was he now so soft that he worried about three nights in the woods without a tent or a propane stove?
Raven Quest (Valhalla Book 4) Page 3