Witching Fire: A Wild Hunt Novel, Book 16

by Galenorn, Yasmine

  I caught my breath and sighed. At least this was going right—so much better than what I had imagined. “All right. How do we do this?”

  “You’ll need to be asleep so that I can enter your mind without resistance. And by sleep, I mean I need to put you into an extremely deep sleep state.” He motioned to the door leading into the bedroom. “Why don’t you go in there and prepare. You’ll want to use the facilities, take off any constricting clothing because this process will take several hours, and get under the covers. Don’t worry about trying to fall asleep—I’ll make that happen. And if you want someone to watch over the process, I have no problem with that.”

  It was at that moment that I realized we’d been speaking English all along. “Say, will I be able to learn the translate spell? You must be using one.” I wanted to be like Raj and understand everybody.

  “During your internship with me, yes.” His eyes crinkled and I could tell he was amused. “Now hurry. The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can leave and I can get back to the problem I was working on.”

  And with that cryptic statement, he shooed me into the bedroom. My mother followed me in, leaving Kipa to talk to the bard.

  * * *

  I settled under the covers, both nervous and excited. I loved learning new magic.

  “I wonder what he’s going to do,” I said.

  “Are you nervous?” my mother asked.

  I thought about it for a moment, then said, “No, honestly, I’m not. At least I’m not afraid. I trust him—he’s crafty and cunning, yes, but there’s an innate goodness in his heart that I can feel. And do you realize what this means for my future? I’ve never had an opportunity like this, to actually train with someone. My magic has been self-taught. All of it except that which was given to me by the gods.”

  I was jumping out of my skin with anticipation. Magic ran through my veins, like ink through a writer’s veins. It made me who I was. I was a born witch and any chance to increase my abilities was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. It also occurred to me that, with Väinämöinen training me, Pandora might think twice about ever trying a second attempt on me.

  My mother leaned over me, stroking my hair out of my face. “I’ll be here, watching over you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, to my very best of abilities.”

  I knew why she qualified that. She hadn’t been able to save me from Pandora—no one had. Trinity did, at the end, but by then, the damage had been done. I preferred it when people didn’t overpromise. It seemed more genuine when someone promised the moon instead of the stars—because that meant they weren’t just overreaching.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. Then I looked into her eyes and said the words we seldom said to each other, but we knew were true. “I love you, Mother.”

  “I love you, too, Raven. You know that whatever I can do for you, I will.” Phasmoria patted me on the cheek and then stood back as the door opened and Väinämöinen entered the room.

  He motioned for her to sit in a chair on the other side of the bed. As he approached, my nerves rose again, but I tried to calm myself.

  “How will you put me to—” I started to say, but he waved his hand over my face and…

  * * *

  …I was standing naked in a field under the night sky.

  The ground was covered with snow, but I didn’t feel the cold, and the stars overhead wheeled in a massive arc around us. I could see both Arianrhod’s silver wheel, as well as the trail of Northern Lights. The aurora shimmered, scintillating as it flowed across the sky, waves of neon green and blue.

  The next moment, I was standing on the bridge of lights, staring down at the world as it circled beneath my feet. The aurora sparkled and crackled around me like synapses of the brain, like lightning arcing across a forest, jumping from crown to crown.

  I wanted to bathe in the energy—it flowed like a wild river around me, and as I stretched out my arms, it licked the tips of my fingers, jolting me with its touch as it beckoned me to join its dance. I wanted to run off, to play in it, but a whisper floating at the edge of my ears warned me against getting lost in the energy. Instead, I looked around and saw Väinämöinen standing on another part of the bridge. I cautiously tested my step but the lights were firm beneath my feet and so I made my way across the length to where he waited for me.

  “Are you ready?” he asked and he seemed to not notice I was naked—or if he did notice, he ignored the fact.

  Feeling at ease with him, and like a greedy child who was absorbing as much of the energy as I could, I said, “I’m ready. I could stay out here forever.”

  “Get lost and you might do that. It’s easy to let the aurora carry you out into the depths of space,” Väinämöinen said. “It’s seductive, and hard to resist. You’re doing remarkably well.”

  “What do I do now?”

  He raised his hands and began to weave a glyph between his fingers, a gold thread of light forming the symbol. After a moment, he lowered his hands and the glyph remained in the air. He motioned to me.

  “Reach up and touch the glyph on both sides, using both your hands. This will transfer the ability to use the spell to you. Usually, I would set about teaching you how to use it, but that would take a lot more time than we have at this moment, and your friend would be dead before then. This will give you the power to use the spell on a permanent basis. I warn you, the transfer might jolt your system. So be aware that during the next few days that you may experience a number of side effects, but they shouldn’t be too disruptive.”

  I focused on my astral body—moving on the astral was different from walking around a room. If you weren’t careful, you could shoot off to where you were thinking about, so it required a strong focus. Although I suspected we weren’t even on the astral, but out farther than either the astral and etheric realms reached. This felt far removed from the energy I was used to.

  My gaze intent on the glyph, I reached up and placed my hands on either side. The energy of the symbol almost blew me backward, but I forced myself to continue. The golden threads began to unravel and burrow into the center of my palms. It both tickled and hurt—as though it were drilling its way into my aura. Kind of like the dentist drilling into a tooth, and patching it with a filling.

  Bringing my mind back to my main focus, I jumped as the glyph vanished into my hands. The next thing I knew, a massive bolt of energy slammed into me and I was falling—dropping off the bridge of lights and plummeting into a void below. I screamed, but then Väinämöinen was there, catching me by the wrist. He was hurtling headfirst down toward the abyss as well, but as soon as he caught me, he did a U-turn and we were traveling back up, and then past the aurora into a mist that hovered off to one side. I began to get sleepy and, as we entered the mist, I dozed off, drifting in the swirling white fog, until I felt myself settle into my body.

  Another moment, and I opened my eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It took me a few moments to fully wake—I had been so far out on whatever realm Väinämöinen had taken me to that even though I was back in my body, I still felt disoriented. I groaned, slowly sitting up as I rubbed my head. I had the headache from hell and my temples and the top of my head throbbed like I’d been hit with a two-by-four.

  “Head hurt?” the bard asked.

  “Head hurts bad. Really bad.” My stomach lurched and I groaned and lay back down. “Can someone douse the light in this room? I don’t feel so good.”

  “That’s normal. Think of it like getting a shot full of magic juice that you don’t normally work with—all at once. You’ll feel under the weather for another day or so, but by tomorrow, you should be back on your feet, at the least.” He leaned back, staring at me like I was a monkey in a zoo. “This should be interesting. This is the first time I’ve done something like this in several centuries. I’m a loner by nature and I avoid people as much as I can.”

  “And you want me to be your acolyte? Boy, are you going to regret that,” I said, squeez
ing my eyes closed. “I want to go home and sleep it off.” As I turned over on my side, my eyes were growing heavier and it was easier to tune everything out and go back to sleep.

  * * *

  I slept the sleep of the dead—at least the dead who were at peace. When I next opened my eyes, I was in my own bed, in a comfortable nightie, and Raj was sitting next to the bed, staring at me. The curtains were closed and I had no clue whether it was night or day, or what time it was, or how I had gotten there.

  My head still hurt, though not as much, and my stomach had calmed down enough to where I was actually hungry. I slowly eased my way up into a sitting position, groaning slightly. My muscles were stiff from lying down.

  “Hey, can Raj tell Raven what day it is?” I said, squinting at him.

  Raj grinned. When gargoyles smiled, it was disconcerting until you got used to it. “Today is Thursday. Raj knows because Acrobert and the Alphas were on TV last night. And they’re always on Wednesday evenings unless preempted by special programming.”

  I suppressed a laugh. He sounded like a game show announcer. But that was Raj. “Raven thanks Raj,” I said, wincing as another pang hit my head. But it wasn’t as bad as before and I could tell the headache was winding to a close.

  “Can Raj go get Phasmoria or Kipa for Raven?” I asked, shading my eyes from the light that filtered in between the cracks in the curtains.

  “Raj will get Kipa.” He turned to bounce out of the room.

  I lay back down, pulling a pillow over my eyes to block out the light. Curious, I reached for the spell that Väinämöinen had given me and sure enough, there it was. I could see it—feel it—and, I knew—cast it. So it was part of my arsenal now.

  “Raven, you’re awake?” Kipa’s voice echoed through the muffled folds of the pillow.

  “Can you get me a blindfold so I can take this fool pillow off my face?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Another moment and he placed a blindfold in my hands. Technically, it was a sleep mask, but we usually used it for play time rather than sleeping. But today it would work other than as a sex toy. It did what it was supposed to do—block out the light.

  I slid the mask on, then pushed the pillow away and very slowly sat up again. I was dizzy and disconcerted, but the lack of light helped settle the queasiness that had started in again when I began moving around.

  “I need food. What’s today? Raj said it’s Thursday?”

  “Yes,” he said, sitting on the bed beside me to take my hands. “You were out from Tuesday when you crashed in Kalevala. Väinämöinen warned us you might sleep for over twenty-four hours, and you did—around thirty-six, to be precise. It’s nine o’clock on Thursday morning. Are you hungry?”

  My stomach rumbled. “Now that I’ve blocked out the light, yes. I was when I first opened my eyes but the light started making me queasy again. But it’s not bad like it was on Tuesday night after the ritual. Do you know where he took me? I don’t think it was the astral—”

  “No, it wasn’t the astral. He took you to Ukko’s realm, which is out on the web not too far from where the dark matter of the universe exists. It’s on the realm where the soul of the aurora lives. While the actual physical manifestation of the lights are created by the sun, the energy behind them is found in Ukko’s realm, among a few others, and the heart of the bridge they form is found there.”

  “You make it sound like the Northern Lights are entities, not just a connecting bridge.”

  “That’s because they are. Or rather, it is—the aurora is a hive-minded being. It acts as the bridge for the gods, but it’s also a sentient creature that exists in energetic form. And Ukko has forged an alliance with it.”

  “Is it the same thing as the Rainbow Bridge—Bifrost?”

  “No, that’s connected to Heimdall, from the Norse, and Iris from the Greeks, and a few other deities. However, the Rainbow Bridge does act similarly to the aurora, though it’s more bound to Earth than the aurora is.”

  He let out a sigh, squeezing my hands. “I’m so glad you came through this. I was worried.”

  I thought about all that had happened. “I’m going to be training with Väinämöinen. I never would have guessed that would happen, not in a million years.” I paused, then brought my knees up and rested my chin on them. “Did you know?”

  “That he was going to require you to train with him? No, I had no clue. In fact, I thought he would probably turn us away, given the mood Bear told me he was in. But…do you think you can actually follow through? It means that next month you’ll be leaving to live in Kalevala for a year. Two years, actually, given the internship afterward. I’ll go with you, of course, and we’ll take Raj. I can find us a snug-enough home. But can you live without modern technology, or access to your friends for that long?”

  I shivered. The thought was daunting. But I had given my word and one thing I was good for: following up on my promises. Also, the opportunity was too great to ignore.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it. I’m looking forward to it, in many ways, and who knows where this will lead. My mother asked me Tuesday, while you were talking to Bear, if I thought I could ever live in Kalevala. That one day you might want to return home and then I’d have to make the decision whether to go or stay.”

  I rested my forehead against my arms, feeling worn out and yet strangely alert. The thought of training under a bard who belonged to the Force Majeure was like candy sitting on the counter with no one watching. It was impossible for me to resist.

  “Väinämöinen wouldn’t have offered you the chance if he didn’t think you had the talent to go far. He’s not that generous. He’s also not into young girls, and to him, that’s what you are. So never think it’s because he wants something untoward from you. I’ve seen him train two other people in all the time I’ve known him. And that goes back long before I ever came to this realm.”

  “Good to know. I’m steady enough to eat.” I slowly took off the sleep mask and winced. Once again the light hit hard, but each time the effects were subsiding. I tossed it on the bed. “Help me into the kitchen. I’m hungry, and I want food.”

  As Kipa swept me up in his arms—with me protesting that I could walk—my thoughts were a swirl of chaos. I still had to take care of Lenny, but mostly I was thinking about what a shift my life was coming to. I was facing a crossroads in my life, and nothing would ever be the same.

  * * *

  By evening, I was mostly feeling back to myself. I tried to sort through whether I felt any different other than knowing a new spell, and to some degree, I did. There was something that felt like it had been triggered, in a good way, as though a part of me had woken up after being asleep for a long time. I felt stronger, and Väinämöinen’s energy signature had left a trail that—when I examined it—left me reeling with how much power the bard had. In some ways, I’d swear he was stronger than the gods.

  “What are you thinking about?” my mother asked while we were eating dinner.

  I cut into the lasagna with my fork, trying to think of how to answer her. “It’s as though a part of Väinämöinen came back with me, and it makes me feel more confident.” I looked up at her. “I’m looking forward to training with him, though the thought of staying in Kalevala is daunting.”

  “I’ll be there with you,” Kipa said. “I may have to leave now and then to help Herne, but I’ll be there with you for at least the entire first month. I talked to Väinämöinen before we left and we agreed that he’ll train you in Tapiola—Mielikki’s realm. I called her while you were asleep and she agreed that we could live in one of the grounds cottages while we’re there. So there will be people around, and we can keep a cow and chickens for milk and eggs.”

  I stared at him, then broke out laughing. “What the hell am I supposed to do with a cow? I’ve never milked a cow.”

  “You’ll know how by the time we return,” he countered, grinning. “But seriously, I know how to do all of that, and you won’t have much time for it given your training.
So I’ll hire a servant to clean the house and cook for us and—yes—take care of the animals.”

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to tell your father about all of this?” Phasmoria asked.

  I helped myself to more garlic bread. “I don’t know and I don’t care. He doesn’t get an opinion.” I glanced at her. She merely gave me a questioning look. “He’s going to have to earn my trust again. And given all that happened, that’s not going to be easy. He helped me get expelled from my own community, he turned his back on me, and he said he disowned me to please his own father. Those aren’t actions I can easily forgive.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’re giving him another chance, but I am glad for it. You may have thought you took after your father, but the fact is that you’ve always been more like me. That’s one reason I knew I could obey the Morrígan and leave you with him. You had the strength of will to handle it. I prepared you for it from the beginning, and the fact that your nature lent itself to being decisive was a help. I hope you know I’ve always been proud of you.”

  I stared at my plate. My mother wasn’t shy about giving out praise, but she was stern and no-nonsense and when she said something, she meant it. She never tiptoed around matters when people fucked up, and she was ready to let them know it, too. So for her to say she was proud of me meant the world. In some ways, it would have been much easier if I had been born with her Bean Sidhe blood taking precedence and followed in her path. But then I would have missed out on so many things.

  “You’re introspective today,” Kipa said, poking my arm.

  I glanced up at him. “Yeah, well…so much has happened the past week that I’m not sure what to think, in some ways. I’ve gone from holding a Winter Solstice party to being kicked out of the Ante-Fae community to my father disowning me to suddenly facing that I’ll be training with one of the Force Majeure for a year to my father returning to ask me to forgive him. That’s a lot to take in for one week.”