Suddenly, I heard Mardi’s voice at my side.
“Out the back,” she hissed. “Now.”
Part of me wanted to hurl her away, but another part knew she was right. Rocky’s body was still in my arms, and I turned and ran into the back room and then out the back door, Mardi hard on my heels.
The first thing I saw when I was outside was her Ferrari. I ran to it and propped up Rocky’s body in the passenger seat.
“We’ve got to get him to Ingrid,” Mardi was saying. “She might be able—”
“Haven’t you done enough?” I snapped.
“Molly, please,” Mardi begged, her eyes brimming with tears. “You have to let me fix this!”
“Fix this?” I sneered. “It’s way too late to fix anything.” I was already running to the driver’s side of the car, but even as I reached for the door handle, I remembered: Mardi’s car was a stick, and I had no idea how to drive it. I kicked the door in frustration, knocking a massive dent in the metal.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“We’ve got to get to Fair Haven,” I said.
“What? Why?”
“Because that’s where Rocky’s headed. Are you going to drive me, or do I have to destroy your transmission?”
“What are you talking about?” Mardi said, her face a mask of bewilderment. And then her eyes bulged. “Wait, you mean—”
I nodded. “The seam. Niflheim.”
Mardi shook her head in terror and disbelief.
“What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going after him,” I said. “I’m going to the Underworld.”
• • •
I don’t remember the drive to Fair Haven. I just remember squatting in the back of Mardi’s car and reaching around the passenger seat to hold Rocky in place so that he didn’t hit his head when Mardi screeched around a corner or stomped on the brakes. There’s something really ridiculous about that, I know, given the size of the dent in his forehead. Given the fact that he was already dead. But although I didn’t know if I’d be able to follow his soul through the seam into Niflheim—let alone drag it back—the one thing I could do was keep any further damage from happening to his body.
Then we were sliding to a stop on the gravel path. The first thing I saw when I got out of the car was the skid marks I’d left when I headed out that morning, less than two hours before. It seemed amazing to me that so much had changed in such a short time.
I swept up Rocky in my arms and ran for the door.
“Molly,” Mardi said, running along after. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”
“Don’t talk,” I said. “Just—don’t talk.”
“I have to talk,” Mardi said. “I have to apologize. I have to help. You have to let me make this right.”
“You want to help? Open the door.”
Mardi just stared at me helplessly for a moment, then turned and grabbed the door handle. I half expected it to fly off its hinges, but either Fair Haven was more sturdy than the Cheesemonger or Mardi was getting herself under control, because all that happened was that the door flew open and banged against the interior wall.
I ran in, heading straight for the ballroom. Mardi ran ahead of me and threw the door open.
“Do you even know where the entrance to the seam is?” she asked as I laid Rocky’s body on the floor as gently as I could.
“I think we’ve already gone in it,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Mardi asked, her head whipping from side to side as if the ornate walls of the ballroom might suddenly disappear, replaced by the ice sheets of Niflheim.
“You’ve seen it in the dream. I know you have.”
A frightened look came over Mardi’s face. “You mean the tunnel? With the light at the end.”
I nodded. “I don’t think it’s a question of finding the seam. It’s a question of knowing how to use it.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Not me. Us.”
“Us?” I could hear the confusion in Mardi’s voice, the fear. But underneath that, I knew she understood.
“We’ve been having the same dream,” I said. “We see the house, ruined. We come into the ballroom and find ourselves in a tunnel. We see the light at the end. But every time we go toward it, we wake up. I think it’s because we can’t go through it alone. We have to go together.”
“Our power,” Mardi said, nodding. “It’s stronger when we’re together.” She glanced down at Rocky’s body. I could tell she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop herself. “It’s too strong.”
“That’s a risk we have to take. If we’re going to save Rocky, we’re only going to do it together.”
I stared at her, a question on my face that I couldn’t put into words. Finally, Mardi nodded.
“Okay,” she said. She held out her hand, and I took it. I could feel an electrical charge run through my body.
“Now what?” Mardi said.
“Now we dream,” I said.
Mardi nodded again and closed her eyes. I closed mine.
“I can see the tunnel,” I said.
For a moment, there was nothing. And then I felt a cold puff of air on my skin. The ground seemed to soften beneath my feet, and then it went hard again, but it was a different kind of hardness. Before, it had been smooth, polished wood, and now it was slightly uneven, like rough-hewn stone or chopped ice. An odor came to my nostrils. It wasn’t stinky or anything like that. It wasn’t even unpleasant. It was just . . . cold.
I opened my eyes. The frozen mud walls of the tunnel were all around me.
“Mardi.”
She opened her eyes.
“You did it,” she breathed in awe.
We did it, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud because I was still too furious at her. But then I realized that if this was going to work, we would have to put aside our anger. For now at least.
“We did it,” I said.
“We haven’t done anything yet,” she said, nodding at the far end of the tunnel. “We still have to go through.”
Only then did I realize there was light at the far end of the tunnel, but no shadow. No woman. For some reason that felt wrong to me. Off. She should be here.
And suddenly it hit me. The female shadow I’d seen. It hadn’t been Mum. It had been Mardi!
I could see the same thought occur to Mardi.
“Of course!”
We started forward. The floor grew colder and icier with each and every step, and we slipped back and forth but pressed on.
“I don’t know why I ever thought it was Mum,” she said. “It was you, the whole time.”
“Or you,” I said. “In my dream. But . . . ?”
“What?”
“But if it was you, why were you warning me away?”
“I don’t . . .” Mardi’s voice broke off. “I don’t understand. Was it you?”
That’s when we heard the voice.
“Mooi? Magdi?”
There was no mistaking the voice this time, or the shadow that appeared on the wall.
“Magdi? Mooi?” Mum’s voice called. “You shouldn’t be here.”
We rounded the corner, and there it was.
Niflheim. An endless, almost featureless plain of frozen snow lit by a pale, massive sun that cast almost no light. Yet that light was reflected by a billion crystallized snowflakes. A brightness relieved by only a single shadow.
Mardi’s hand squeezed in mine. We were so in sync that I could feel her eyes slide with mine up the length of that shadow, until it reached a pair of delicate feet. Feet as white as the snow they stood on, and shod only in a pair of open sandals, and at least a foot and a half long.
Our eyes traveled up the endless length of ankle, of thigh, up the short tunic that fell from her narrow wa
ist and hung from one shoulder until finally we came to the face.
Mum’s face. But it was at least twelve feet off the ground.
30
SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE
Mardi-Overbrook-Journal.docx
Girls, what are you—no, how are you here?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Molly was faster.
“There’s no time. Mardi kill—” She stopped and gulped. “Rocky was killed. Accidentally. We’ve got to grab his soul before it reaches Hel. He shouldn’t be here.”
Mum frowned. “Rocky? The human boy you had a crush on? How did he die?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Molly pleaded. “We just have to—”
“I killed him,” I cut Molly off.
This is not a sentence I ever imagined saying to anyone, least of all my own mother. Nor was her reaction anything like I might have expected. She didn’t appear shocked, or angry, or scared. All she did was purse her lips for a moment, as if she was still trying to picture Rocky’s face. Then: “Why did you kill him?”
Molly stamped her foot into the frozen ground. “Can we stop talking about this and start going after him? Please!”
Mum reached down and used one of her massive fingers to stroke Molly’s hair.
“My darling Mooi. I know you’re upset. But this is a serious matter you’re talking about, and before we can even think about trying to intercept your friend, we first have to ascertain whether we have the right. So I ask again,” she said, turning to me, “why did you kill Rocky?”
Mum had spoken gently, nonjudgmentally, but her words fell on me like hammer blows.
“It was an accident,” I blurted. “I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t even see him.”
But even as the words left my lips, I knew they were inadequate. Technically they were true. I hadn’t been able to see him behind the counter, and I hadn’t been thinking of hurting him when I pushed the counter over. I was thinking only of hurting Molly.
But we were fighting over him, and I knew there was a part of me that had been thinking, If I can’t have him, Molly can’t have him either. It was just like the time we were four years old, when we had talked Dad into buying us a one-of-a-kind Victorian doll we saw in an antiques store in Paris. We had promised to share, but inevitably we disagreed about what to do with it (as I recall, I had wanted the doll to go for a horseback ride, while Molly wanted it to serve high tea to its doll companions). The disagreement escalated into a screaming match, and the screaming match came to blows. Soon enough, we’d each grabbed hold of the doll, and seconds after that, the doll was in pieces, its cloth body ripped to shreds, its porcelain head shattered. And I still remember screaming, “If I can’t have it, you can’t have it either!”
“I wanted him, but he liked Molly more than me. So I guess I decided to hurt him. I mean, I wasn’t thinking about it, but on some level, I must have wanted to do it. And then my powers just kind of took me over.”
“It was both of us,” Molly said now. “It didn’t feel like we were in control of them. It felt like they were in control of us.”
Mum nodded. “It’s as I feared. The Reawakening is upon you.”
I shot a glance at Molly.
“You knew this was going to happen?”
“I suspected it would. Your births are unprecedented, so no one could say for sure what was going to happen, but if my calculations were correct and you were going to turn out to be the goddesses of strength and rage, then your powers were going to descend upon you in one fell swoop. Your bodies and minds are still more mortal than immortal, which means that you are going to have a harder time assimilating your power than the Aesir or Vanir when they reincarnate. That’s why I chose to reenter your life now,” Mum finished. “I wanted to be able to help you through the process.”
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but can we finish the explanation later? After we’ve saved Rocky?” Molly stared at Mum hopefully. “We are going to save Rocky, aren’t we?”
Mum shook her head, and Molly gasped, but Mum put a hand up.
“Not you. Me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rocky’s soul is loosened from his body. As a consequence, it is traveling at a far greater speed than you could hope to reach without magical assistance, and we don’t have time to prepare the necessary spells. Plus, someone needs to stay here to keep the portal open. Given how inconsistent your powers are, it’s safer if both of you stay. For one thing, your powers tend to manifest more when you’re together. They’re also stronger that way.”
“But I want to come,” Molly said. “He’s my boyfriend. I love him.”
“Mooi,” Mum said firmly. “Arguing is pointless, and juvenile. If you came, you would only hurt our chances of saving your friend. You and your sister need to stay here and keep the portal open.”
“How do we do that?” I asked.
“Simply by standing in it,” Mum said. “The energy that powers the Reawakening doesn’t come from Midgard—it comes from the farthest reaches of the universe, in the infinite wastes beyond the nine worlds, and it enters Midgard through whichever seam happens to be closest to the two of you. In this case, that’s the seam in Fair Haven. As long as you stand within it, or just on the other side of it, it will stay open.”
Mum paused, looking at both of us sternly.
“I want to be clear on this,” she said. “Under no circumstances should you come after me. If you step through the portal and I’m not there to reopen it, you’ll be trapped on this side. And though there are other ways back, they are difficult and dangerous, even for goddesses—and there’s no way a mortal would survive them. Do you understand?”
Molly and I nodded.
“Okay, then,” Mum said, waving a hand at the darkened tunnel entrance behind us. “Go back in the tunnel, and wait for my return. It shouldn’t take long.”
She bent down and grabbed Molly, wrapping her in an enormous hug, and did the same to me. Her arms felt the same as they had when she was human-sized. Just bigger. So much bigger.
She kissed me on the top of my head.
“Go,” she said.
She turned then, and started running. She looked just like a normal person running, yet somehow the ground seemed to melt beneath her feet. The plain of ice was miles and miles long, but within seconds, she was out of sight.
“Wow,” Molly said as we ducked back into the tunnel. “That was fast.”
“That was insanely fast,” I said, joining her inside the tunnel.
Molly stared across the ice field, as if Mum might suddenly reappear. After a long moment, she turned away, taking another step into the tunnel.
“So I guess now we wait.”
“I guess,” I said. “And try not to kill each other.”
I heard it as soon as the words left my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said. “Poor choice of words.”
“Ya think?” Molly said sarcastically, before waving her words away. “I’m sorry. That was stupid of me. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Gods,” she continued, “why is it we always feel the need to escalate things? Everything always turns into World War III between us.”
“I know. Goddess hormones, I guess. They’re like human hormones on steroids. Supersteroids.”
To my surprise, Molly shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, sure, we’re wrestling with our new powers, so our fights are more destructive, but we’ve always argued, for as long as I can remember.”
Somehow, I knew what she was getting it.
“You think it’s because of our divine nature? I mean, I’m the goddess of rage. You’re the goddess of strength. These aren’t exactly gentle callings.”
“I wonder,” Molly said. “Do you think our whole lives are going to be one big struggle to hold them back? To keep from killing or destroying everything that cro
sses our path?”
“What if we can’t control them? What if our powers win and we become something like Loki—agents of chaos, of destruction?”
“No!” Molly said forcefully. “I refuse to believe it. You’re a good person. I’m a good person. I know that.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t as convinced as Molly. But then, she hadn’t just killed someone. I had.
“Look at Freya, at Ingrid,” Molly continued. “They have very specific callings like we do. Freya’s the goddess of love, Ingrid the goddess of the hearth. And you can see how their divine natures influence their personalities, but they’re way more complex than that. It’s not like Freya’s just a slut or Ingrid sits around knitting all the time. They do other things—lots of other things.”
Despite myself, I snickered. “Freya is a bit of a slut,” I said.
Molly laughed too, just a little, but it was so good to hear it in that cold dark place, especially after what had just happened between us.
“Rage, strength, they’re not such terrible things,” I said. “Especially when they work with each other rather than against each other. Look at Joan of Arc. She was full of righteous fury, and she used it to lead an army.”
“Or the Rhinemaidens,” Molly said. “And we’re descended from them. I mean, assuming that Mum was telling the truth.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “The Rhinemaidens were human, and, well”—I waved a hand at the field into which Mum had disappeared—“the evidence is starting to look like maybe Mum’s not actually human, after all.”
Molly stared across the vast field, but the only thing that appeared was a small spray of snow and ice flakes, kicked up by a distant breeze.
“Maybe she’s part human,” she said after a while. “Or I don’t know, maybe she’s managed to acquire magical powers somehow. The Rhinemaidens were some of the most blessed humans of them all. Odin was supposed to have given them all kinds of gifts to help them defend the Rhinegold. Maybe some of those gifts were magical talismans or . . .” Her voice trailed off.