A cheer sounded before the screen blipped off. “Well done.” She gave me a wink. “You’ll make a fine Queen.” She pointed at scroll knob with eight runes glimmering beside it. I recognize the Norse style merged with the modern date system. “Plug in when you want to go. Just remember, once you successfully change the timeline, it’ll take the space-time net a period to adjust. You won’t be able to use it again—not in this lifetime, anyway.”
So, no pressure then. Great.
I’d been watching Will ever since he’d been assigned to me. His first life was his dedication to the Norn and the first moment he’d appeared on our scanners. I’d been so young then that I hadn’t understood what it meant to be dedicated to the Norn, but I knew the date by heart. Those Norse runes were etched into my memory as the day I’d gone from being a child to becoming a fledgling Valkyrie.
I dialed in the date: February 4th, 1955.
The Gulltop hummed to life, singing that familiar high-pitched scream that was all too familiar. When the Einherjar has sent me to Earth and fitted me with a human body, the same invading sensations rattled my bones, but this wasn’t just travel through space. My Frigg powers reacted as the Gulltop drew its strength from me. The Bifrost was powered by the souls trapped on Asgard, but the Gulltop had no such resource. It was now powered through me.
I sensed Dalia when the Gulltop made its connection to the sister ship. Her shouts rang in the background of my senses, warning Baldr that the Bifrost was being manipulated. I grinned, because there was nothing that he could do about this. He wasn’t a Frigg and he had spurned the Surtr, the one race that could have helped him gain control over time itself.
I was glad the Surtr were on my side. I wanted to tell Ymir as much, how much I appreciated her help, but the Gulltop’s screech ended and my vision went black as pain streaked through my body.
Another scream sounded, and this time I realized it was my own. Every atom in my body protested the reverse movement through time as the Gulltop gained momentum, ripping into me and pulling out the dark powers of my Frigg nature to unseat us from the present.
How ironic, I thought, that this was how I would save Will. He’d always loved the present.
Scandinavia, 1920
The hilltop where Will had been dedicated as a child was just as I remembered it, but my memories were from a grainy hologram screen that had spied on the aftermath of the contract Leanne had made with the Norn. The darkness that had cemented the bond had distorted the image, leaving me wondering what Will had looked like as a child in this life. I’d been submerged in my training at that time, Tyler close on my heels trying to make sure I learned how to defend myself against the power of the Norn. He had firsthand experience with them and it was his fear of them that had driven me. I’d been so focused on protecting myself and learning the skills I would need that I hadn’t even paid attention to Will during his first, short life.
Now, though, I marveled at the serene calm of the wavy hills topped with bright grass that made it look more like a velvet carpet than something born of nature. The sky glowed with a healthy blue and puffy clouds lazily danced across the horizon.
I’d arrived during the cheery part of the day. Wildlife bounced through crags and a chill wind tangled invisible fingers through my hair.
Then a twig crunched behind me and I whirled to find Ymir grinning. Panic filled me as I searched for the Gulltop. Where was it?
“Relax,” she said. “This is how it works.”
“How do we get back to our time?” I asked as dizziness swept over me. My feathers brushed my shoulders and I startled, nearly forgetting that even though I was surrounded by Earth’s air and soil-scent, I was still a creature of Muspelheim.
“The Gulltop hasn’t moved, it’s still in the heart of Jotunheim. It’s transported our bodies through time and space and we’ll be yanked back like a rubber band when you call for it.”
“And how do I call for it?” I asked.
She paled. “You mean you don’t know? It’s the same way that you got us here.”
I grimaced. “You put far too much faith in me, Ymir.”
She sighed and stepped through the grass, but then she stopped and curled her toes. “This feels amazing.” When I glowered at her, she laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She pointed at an assortment of vertical stones atop the highest hill. Tufts of moss and grass stuck out of its sides. “I assume that’s where we’re going? I sense something familiar there.”
I sensed it too. The pull of a portal drew me to the place that housed the weight of suffering and pain—an Immortal’s cocktail for power.
“Come. Let’s check it out before Leanne arrives.” I marched up the hill and Ymir followed me.
She was a scientist, which meant that her calculating eyes were documenting every step of this journey. She should have been terrified, even just a little bit, but everything seemed to fascinate her. I remembered the first time I’d come to earth, how the abundance of nature and life mesmerized me. Even without my memories, and the addition of a few new ones thanks to Grimhildr, I recognized how special this place was. Humans had no idea how good they had it.
A path of cobblestones and footprints led me to the top of the hill which was more of a rundown temple to the Norse gods. Fresh offerings of mint and flowers settled on the offering stone and I stared at it. Leanne came here often.
Ymir bent and examined the offering. “Do the Norn eat this?”
I laughed. “No. I suspect that humans have their own idea of what the Norn want.” The Vikings were the closest to true followers of the Norn. Sacrifice and constant bloodshed was what had given them a place in history, and what had kept Immortals like the Norn going strong for centuries.
“Leanne is going to dedicate Will. I need to stop her.” I sat on the stones and stared at the sky. It would only be a few more hours before she’d make her way up the cobbled path. I flexed my wings. There was one thing about being in my native form. She would listen to what I had to say.
Ymir hid in the bushes by the time Leanne arrived. I’d planned out exactly what I was going to say. The crazy woman I remembered didn’t care a speck for Will or his future. She was coming here to kill her son, and I was going to do what Grimhildr should have done. Wipe her mind, make her a vegetable, and then I’d make sure Will would find a new home that cared what happened to him.
The shy, wide-eyed woman who crested the hill wasn’t how I’d imagined the terrifying creature that would be willing to give her son as sacrifice to the Norn. She stared at me as the blood drained from her face and she clutched a baby to her chest.
“Leanne,” I said, hoping to win her over by showing that I knew her name.
She looked more like a frightened rabbit ready to bolt. She froze and her mouth bobbed open and closed, but no words came out.
I shrank my wings to my back as far as I could and crouched as I offered a hand. “It’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid.” I tried to remind myself that this woman was evil beyond evil, but she looked so terrified. I managed a smile.
Shaking, she unlocked from her frozen stance and tugged an amulet from underneath her blouse. “Ofre.” Sacrifice.
My mind worked to translate her tongue, instantly replacing the Danish with English that I was more accustomed to.
I didn’t know if I was capable of speaking her language, but I tried anyway.
I cleared my throat and then flinched when a soft hum swept through my body. I glanced back at the brush where Ymir was hiding, only seeing two eyes peeking at me over the foliage. She held up a device that blinked.
I turned back to the woman whose gaze hadn’t left my wings. She was still as white as a sheet. “Leanne,” I tried again, this time my lips wrapping around an unfamiliar accent as her language and muscle training of how to form her words downloaded into my brain, “I know why you’re here.”
She startled. “You speak my language?”
I relaxed, glad that Y
mir was able to pull through for me. Trying to talk to Leanne without speaking the same language would have proved difficult. “That’s not the question you should be asking.”
Her gaze went to my wings again. “You’ve come for my son’s sacrifice?” She pulled the child away from her bosom and offered the boy. I melted when I saw Will’s face. Little eyes opened, revealing chestnut irises that had always held me captive.
“No,” I snapped, and she clutched the baby back to her chest. I forced my anger to simmer in the low heat of my core that begged to be set free. This woman didn’t deserve explanations. Here she was freely offering her child to me. “I’ve come to ask you not to sacrifice your son.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “But, he is sickly.” She took a brave step forward and I knew it cost her. Her knees wobbled, but she stood her ground. “You’re a Valkyrie, yes? Does Freya not demand my son’s life, just as she’s taken my daughter’s?”
My wings flared of their own accord, the feathers scraping against stone and sweeping away the small offerings on the pedestal. Leanne shrank into herself in fear. “A daughter?”
She nodded vigorously. “I would not expect such a warrior as yourself to know of it. Freya does not honor those who die from sickly illness and succumb to weakness.” She squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to block out the memories. “I vowed, should I ever have a child again, I would make sure they lived forever and earned a place in Valhalla.” She clutched at me with her free hand. “Please. Do not let this child be lost too. He has the same illness.”
That’s when I sensed the darkness in the child that had been masked by my own rage. I wrapped my fingers around the bundle and Leanne released him.
Holding the baby who cried against my overwhelming warmth, my heart crushed under the inevitability I hadn’t expected.
It was just as Leanne had said. I sensed a biological flaw in this child, one that could not be undone. I could knit flesh anew, build new bodies for Immortal souls to inhabit, but I could not mend that which was broken. Tears sizzled in my eyes as I returned the child.
There was something to be said about humans who died of illness. Such suffering weighed down a soul so that even they could not return to Yggdrasil.
If I prevented Leanne from bonding Will’s soul to the Norn, he would die in a few short years anyway, denied Yggdrasil and the life I wanted for him.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t save him.
Just a Bite
Pinned with indecision, Leanne asked me over and over again what she must do. If she could not bind her son to the Norn, how else could she save him?
I had no answer for her. I also couldn’t explain that she would turn into a twisted creature unrecognizable from the kind, fretful woman I saw before me now. She was a victim in all of this just as much as the rest of us, just as much as the innocent child in her arms.
Eventually I gave in to the hum of grief in my soul, inwardly activating my connection to the Gulltop and hoping I hadn’t done anything to change this timeline. I needed another shot to get this right.
Ymir and I vanished from Scandinavia, from 1955, and returned to the heat of Muspelheim.
If I couldn’t save Will by undoing the Norn’s curse before it even began, I had to think deeper.
“What if I stop Will from unlocking the seal to the Gulltop in the first place?” I asked Ymir as we huddled in the cramped confines of the time-traveling ship.
She shrugged. “You could try that, but the moment you did the timeline would be rerouted and we would be stuck in a timeline where the Gulltop is still inaccessible.”
I growled. “Why did you seal it away in the first place? We need it to stop Baldr, especially if he tries anything.” Having time travel on our side gave us a distinct advantage I wasn’t ready to give up. It wouldn’t matter if I saved Will, only to lose him again to Baldr’s insane plan to release Ragnarök on the universe. The bastard actually thought that he could control it.
Ymir bit her lip. “I told you, I’ve failed my people before. The last god to steal the Gulltop from me kicked the gods out of Asgard.”
My eyes went wide. “Baldr had control over the Gulltop? How did you get it back from him?”
Her gaze darkened. “With enough sacrifice, anything is possible.”
Now I understood the weight of guilt Ymir carried around with her. It wasn’t just the creation of the Jotun that rested on her shoulders, but the reason the Surtr were nearly an extinct race. Their cavernous city of Jotunheim held only a mere few hundred Surtr. Jotun like the Huldra numbered in the thousands.
“I see,” I said. “So, if we’re to keep control of the Gulltop, we need someone to manually release the lava.” Why did it have to be Will. I would have offered myself, but if anything happened to me, there’d be no one to stop Ragnarök or my insane brother. Ymir couldn’t do it. I needed her to run the Gulltop. I certainly couldn’t ask any of the other Surtr to give their lives so that Will might live.
There was one last weapon in my arsenal. The Yggdrasil fruit still in my pouch.
The concentration of raw life lived underneath its soft flesh. Perhaps if I got him to take a bite before he sacrificed himself… I could still save him.
I glanced at Ymir. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”
We dialed in the time stamp to just a few moments after I began my call with Baldr. Traveling through time with the Gulltop wasn’t any easier the second round and my screams echoed through time and space as we ripped through the natural world and followed the threads to where I needed to go.
My feet met the smooth, warm stone of Jotunheim and Ymir joined me at the tunnel’s entrance to the hologram room. We’d stop Will before he ran out.
“Are you sure about this?” Ymir asked.
I’d explained my plan to her in its entirety, but I couldn’t be sure if it would work. Yggdrasil’s fruit traveled with me and I wouldn’t be able to restore it after its use.
I nodded and spread my feet. “I’m sure.”
Baldr’s mocking voice echoed through the corridor and I scraped my fingernails against my palm. Will came barreling into us a moment later, nearly plowing us over on his way to the Gulltop.
He balked at me. “Val?” He looked back at the room, the dark silhouette behind the screen being my past self, then he looked back at me. “What is going on?”
I held both hands. “There isn’t much time to explain, but you’re on your way to unlock the Gulltop. It worked.”
His shoulders relaxed. “Good.” Then his jaw flexed. “If you’ve come to try and stop me, you’re wasting your time. This is the only way you can fight Ragnarök and you know it.”
I nodded. “I’m not trying to stop you. I think you’re brave, stupid, and heroic, and you’re right.” I pulled the golden fruit from my pouch and offered it to him. “But you don’t have to die.”
He stared at it. “You need that.”
I shook my head. “No. This is why I took it in the first place. It was all to save you.”
He flinched, but reached out and ran his fingers over mine as he took the fruit. He didn’t let go of me. The rainbow specks glimmered, hope flickering in the backs of eyes that should have been chestnut brown and warm. “I’m not worthy of all that you do for me.”
I pushed the fruit at him. “Just take it. We don’t have much time.”
I slipped my fingers away from his and he lifted the fruit to his mouth. The golden skin glowed against his lips… then he took a bite.
Light exploded and Ymir dashed behind me to avoid the worst of the blow. I flared my wings to protect her. I didn’t know what the fruit of Yggdrasil would do. All I knew was that it was power and raw life. It would give Will a chance against the lava that would come bearing down on him when he went to free the Gulltop.
He handed the fruit back to me with a small piece missing. He’d barely taken a bite and tiny teeth marks glowed around the wounded fruit. I lifted it again, about to tell him that he
should eat the whole thing, but he dashed around me, faster than he should have been.
Gold blurred through the corridors, and then Will was gone.
Time distorted and pain snapped through my spine.
“You did it,” Ymir breathed. “You changed the timeline.”
I clenched my fists against the fresh waves of pain as I struggled to stay in one piece. It felt as if tiny claws raked against the inside of my ribcage, threatening to tear me apart. “What’ll happen to us?” I was the product of my timeline. Would I simply cease to exist?
I looked too Ymir, but she blurred. My vision distorted as dizziness swept over me, and then my body began to disintegrate. Bits of ash ran down my fingers and burning agony swept through me.
I’d been through this before. This was how I’d felt when the Einherjar sent me to earth. When I’d shed my Immortal skin in favor of a mortal one. Except, this time I wasn’t getting a human body. I was merging with my Immortal self in this new present.
I blinked a few times, readjusting as I found myself on the platform with the screen around me gone black. Baldr had just informed me that I was a god in my own right, capable of commanding Ragnarök and feeding off of its power. I could give life where I’d taken it, the trait of any god. Life was like any other energy in the universe. It could never be destroyed… only transformed.
When Wills screams rocked my body and the caverns trembled, I ran after him just like I had before. When I slammed into Mr. Jefferson, he tried to tell me about Will, but I didn’t need to hear it this time. I knew exactly where to go.
I sped down the halls and found the chamber with lava freshly drained and the Gulltop lopsided, ready for me once again.
But this time Will had survived the onslaught. His blackened body trembled on the edge of one of the massive drains. I ran through the broken diamond wall and to his side. Had I saved him, only to watch him suffer?
He lifted a hand and tried to speak. No words came out.
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