The forest began suddenly behind a row of cut stumps and dead leaves, trampled into the ground. I hurried into cover and paused to look around. In the gray daylight I saw the trees clearly for the first time. I guessed that they were oaks, some European species, anyway, tall and crowned with spreads of bare branches. A few dead leaves clung stubbornly to twigs. On the ground, a litter of fallen leaves, brown and faded orange, clustered on the leeward side of the trunks and collected among the stunted shrubs and browning ferns—bracken, I think it’s called—in little hollows. When I stepped on something that crunched, I squatted down and found acorns. Oaks, then, for sure.
Here and there stood trees of a totally different kind: huge conifers, bristling with bright green needles, dotted with red berries, or at least, with things that looked like berries to my California eyes. A few must have been a hundred feet tall, but none of them were shaped like the kind of pines I was used to, Christmas trees and the like. These conifers grew in untidy lumps and heaps. On the largest ones, their lower branches hung tent-like almost to the ground.
I picked my way through the forest until I could be sure I was hidden from the steading. In a clearing where gray boulders poked through dying ferns I stopped and swung the backpack off my shoulders. I propped it up against a rock and crouched down next to it. On the far side of the clearing stood more of the conifers, these short with trunks that looked like bundled logs. I finally remembered the name: yew. Eihaz was their rune.
In an oak that stood among the yews, movement caught my attention. I looked up and saw two ravens perched on a swaying bare branch.
“Do you know where the vitki is?” I said.
They cocked their heads to one side and considered me. I waited. With a sudden caw they flew off. The branch bobbed from their leaving, then shivered to a stop. Otherwise, nothing moved, nothing made a sound around me. I’m a total city girl, but I remembered reading somewhere that forests fell quiet when there were predators around. Maybe I was the predator. Maybe something worse was.
I marked in my mind the direction in which the ravens had flown before I opened the backpack. I got out my sketchbook and a stick of charcoal. I had a number of pictures of Tor in that book, but I was looking for one in particular, a study that I’d done while he lay asleep and naked on our bed. I remembered aching with emotion while I’d drawn it, and as I’d hoped, there in the élan-soaked other world it seemed vibrant, solid, almost alive. I drew Tiwaz on the corner of the page.
“Where is he?” I breathed the question rather than spoke it. “Tyr, help me!”
On the paper the blank background developed smudges, faint marks and thin lines. The ravens returned, settling on a lower branch. They bobbed their heads at me and squawked. Odin’s birds, I thought, not Tyr’s. As far as I knew, Tyr had no particular bird associated with him, so maybe these were on loan. They flew off in the same direction as before. It was, I suppose, the only hint I was going to get. I started to close the sketchbook but caught my breath with a gulp. In the background of the drawing, among the smudges and marks, stood the outlines of not one but two cave bears, face to face.
“You sow!” My voice sounded more like a growl than human speech.
I flipped to a blank page in my book and began to draw. First, her outline, then her eyes—I could see them, suddenly, staring at me in terror. I grabbed brown Conté and began to fill her in, her humped shoulders, her powerful legs and claws. Inspiration! I snatched a black stick and drew a chain around her front legs.
I heard her shriek and roar with my physical ears. She was at some distance from me, off in the direction that the raven flight had indicated, but even though her voice sounded faint, I felt her rage and terror. I drew a collar on her neck and heard her snarl and chuff. A chain linked to the collar—another roar. I stood up and roared in answer, snarled and hissed as if I were one of the tiger spirits in my mother’s folk tales. Silence was the only reply I received. I knelt again and attached the collar chain to the links around her feet.
“There, you sow! Let my man go!”
When I turned the pages of the sketchbook back to the original drawing of Tor, the outlines of the two cave bears had vanished. The smudges and marks in the background had formed themselves into a rough view of a cave on what might have been a hillside. It gave absolutely no clues as to where the cave might be. I also had no idea if the bear really was helpless or what form Tor might be in. Maybe the moon was already full, here in Jötunheim. When I looked up, the darkening sky told me only that night was coming on. The flood of élan mingled with the smell of coming snow. I could survive the cold, but what would snow do to Tor, assuming he was human? He had his parka, but he’d been wearing jeans, not heavy pants, when I’d last seen him.
I started to close the sketchbook but paused. For the briefest of moments, the Tor in the drawing opened his eyes and looked at me. I could swear I’d seen it, but it happened so fast that it might only have been wishful thinking. I kept staring at the page while the light darkened around me. The drawing stayed only a drawing.
I stood up, put away the art supplies, and got out the flashlight. I’d remembered to bring some extra batteries, too. When I flicked it on, it worked. I’d wondered if it would, here in some strange world beyond Midgard. I turned it off and slipped it into the interior zipper pocket of my parka where it would be handy for emergencies in the night. I put on the backpack again and headed off in the direction that the ravens had indicated.
Trying to walk in a reasonably straight line through an unfamiliar forest at twilight turned out to be impossible, at least for me. After maybe a quarter mile I gave up. I found an enormous oak, bare of leaves like the others, that had branches hanging low enough for me to climb. After a struggle, I managed to get up into them. The backpack hindered me, not just the weight, but its nasty habit of hooking itself on little branches. Finally, after a lot of swearing and a few tears of frustration, I reached the tree’s crotch and managed to find a semi-secure sort of perch. I hung the backpack on a branch and sat astride another, one thick enough to nearly be a horizontal trunk, with my back braced against the main trunk. With the leaves gone, the oak provided no shelter, but I was off the ground and out of the reach of any wandering animals that might smell the food I carried.
The ravens returned, a flock of them, this time, led by an enormous bird who looked somehow familiar. I’d seen the matriarch of a raven group before, and I could have sworn I was seeing her again.
“Can you guys fly between the worlds?” I said.
She bobbed her head and danced a little on the branch.
“Do you know where Tor is? The vitki who helped you this summer?”
She turned her head away and stared off in the direction that the birds had previously indicated.
“Over there, huh?”
She squawked one sharp angry note. Look, I told myself. What is she looking at? After a dangerous scramble I managed to get to my feet on the super-thick branch. I clung to the trunk and stared into the darkness. Not all that far away, maybe a quarter of a mile, I spotted a tiny glow among the trees: fire. Jötnar, maybe, or Tor? A gamble, but I instinctively felt the ravens wouldn’t betray me.
“Thank you.”
She cawed, and the flock flew off again, a swirl of black against a leaden sky, heavy with twilight, that had fallen closer to the ground. By the time I managed to get myself and the backpack safely out of the tree, a blue gloaming had turned the light to fog, or so it seemed, thick, difficult to see through. When I looked up through the bare branches, I saw the ravens circling. They flew to a tree some yards on and settled. When I caught up with them, they flew again, a little farther, this time. They led me once more, but I followed stumbling in near darkness. When I tried to pick out their black shapes against the sky, I failed. While I looked up, I felt something wet and cold touch my face. A brief scatter of snow flakes, the first early warning of the storm to come, fell, then died away.
By then, however, I could smell a trace
of wood smoke in the chilly air. I got out the flashlight, kept my arm by my side, and flicked it on just long enough to gauge the ground ahead. Treacherous with tree roots, rocks, piles of leaves—I decided that trying to walk without light was as great a risk as signaling my presence. I kept the light low, however, when I walked on. The smell of smoke grew stronger. Another smell joined it—animal, greasy, strong. For a moment I panicked. I thought I’d gone round in a circle, as lost people do, and reached the farmstead again.
I flicked off the flashlight. In the darkness, the utter darkness of wild country on a night without stars, my eyes refused to focus. I said “the hell with it,” turned the flashlight back on, and raised it to illuminate the path ahead. No farmstead, but the swollen shape of a tall mound, not really a hill, loomed out of the night. It matched what I’d seen appear on my drawing of Tor. I strode toward it. Piled up stones, huge stones, roughly shaped, formed the mound, which rose some twenty feet above my head. Grass, dead in the chill, and bright green mosses grew over and in the cracks between them. I swung the flashlight back and forth to get some idea of its size: nearly a football field, so just under a hundred yards. I walked along its length to its nose, then paused. Smoke and the animal smell grew thicker.
Bear, I thought. I bet that’s what that stink is. The sow. Maybe Tor, too.
As I rounded the end of the mound, the smell of smoke abruptly vanished. I would have turned back if I hadn’t remembered Halvar dousing Tor’s fire. I was willing to bet that in this world, all of Tor’s magicks had become not just more powerful, but literal. He could command the Kennaz rune, and Kennaz would command the fire. I walked on past the short end of the mound, then turned down the long side. Apparently Tor could do nothing about the smell of bear. I sent a beam of light along the ground ahead of me.
“Tor,” I called out, “Frost Giants don’t have flashlights.”
I heard him laugh and call my name. All the anger I harbored transformed like alchemy into relief and love and even a few tears.
Chapter 13
About halfway down the side of the stone mound, firelight blossomed into a spill of gold. I could see an opening and Tor silhouetted against it. Even though I felt exhausted, I hurried along as fast as I could. The backpack seemed to weigh a hundred pounds on my sore shoulders. Tor jogged out to meet me, helped me take it off, and then caught me by the shoulders for a kiss. He was stubbled and dirty and smelled like bear, but his mouth had never felt so good on mine.
The snow had begun to fall in earnest. Since he wore only a tee shirt and his jeans, I could feel him shivering. He grabbed the backpack, and we hurried into the shelter, a rough chamber, not quite square, with mossy walls of crudely cut stones—the green room of my earlier dream. Near the entrance Tor had laid his fire to let the smoke billow outside. I noticed a pile of dead wood nearby, ready against the night. His torn and filthy parka sat next to it. An opening on the far side of the room led deeper into the mound.
Between the fire and that opening lay a heap of brown fur and malice. The cave bear lay on her side in an odd posture. She’d tucked her front legs up by her chest and rested her head on them. When she saw me, she snarled and tried to raise her head. She could only get it a few inches off the floor. Her paws jerked along with her head when she tried to raise it further. She howled in pain.
“Maya,” Tor said, “what did you do to her?”
“What makes you think I did anything?” I shrugged out of my parka. Thanks to the fire the room was warm. “I’ve brought food.”
“Great, but what did you do to her?”
“Why do you care? She trapped you here, didn’t she?” I knelt down and began to rummage in the backpack. “Now she can’t stop you from going home.”
He said nothing. I looked up. “Well, didn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Tor sat down next to me. “How did you know that?”
“I dreamed it. And then one of my drawings showed me the pair of you. You really did transform this time, didn’t you?”
He winced. In the fire a branch burned through with a shower of sparks. He twisted around, grabbed another branch, and laid it on the fire. I refrained from asking him just what he’d done as the bjarki, alone with this ardent female.
“I can’t leave her here like this.” Tor looked at the bear. “She’ll starve to death.”
“Tough.”
“Shit, I never thought you could be this cold.”
“You said you want me to be your equal, didn’t you?” I handed him a chocolate power bar.
****“I—Am I really that bad?”
“Yeah, actually. You are.”
Tor shrugged and unwrapped the bar. At the scent the bear whimpered and turned pathetic eyes his way.
“Don’t,” I said. “Chocolate’s bad for animals.”
He scowled, then tossed the wrapping into the fire and bit into the bar. I found another one and opened it. Tor wolfed his down. I handed him crackers and a chunk of cheese. He stuffed those in, too, while I ate my power bar. I brought out two bottles of mineral water and handed him one. While we ate, the bear kept watching me with her dark squinty eyes. Once she lifted a lip to show fang. I snarled at her, and she flinched.
“Come on,” Tor said. “What did you do?”
“First, you tell me what she did to you. Then I’ll decide if I tell you or not.”
“She thought she was rescuing me. Trying to do a good thing.”
“Oh, yeah, sure!”
Tor had a long drink of water. “Some guys,” he said, “are so stupid that they think they’d like it if women fought over them. Maybe if both women were human. Fully human, that is. Unlike some.”
“I could just go home and leave you here.”
“Now you’re being stupid.”
He was right, or I would have snarled again.
“What did she do?” I repeated. “Tell me!”
“Okay, okay.” He paused, thinking, for a minute or so. “When we got to the giants’ steading, they started arguing about what to do with me. I couldn’t understand much of what they said. I got the idea that some of them wanted to tie me up, but the leader thought that was a lousy way to treat a hostage. He was right. The inside of their longhouse is like a barn, mostly open. No chambers, just a few stalls on one side and a big loft upstairs. So they handed me a pair of greasy blankets, marched me outside, and locked me in a shed. Lots of straw on the floor and not much else. They left one poor bastard outside on guard.
“I’d been planning on leaving and looking for the bear, so this arrangement suited me fine. I never swore I wouldn’t escape, y’know. I was figuring out what runes to cast when the bear found me. I heard a lot of yelling, and then dogs barking. As far as I can tell, the dogs smelled her first—“
“She does stink to high heaven.”
Tor ignored me and continued. “The dogs came rushing outside, and the men must have followed. I heard a lot of yelling and barking. Something heavy crashed into the shed door and broke it off its hinges. She stuck her head in. I was so shocked I couldn’t move for a minute. So she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out.” He pointed at the parka. “One sleeve’s never going to be the same.”
It had been shredded, yeah, from what I could see of it.
“Anyway,” Tor said, “I stumbled over a dead dog. The mob of giants all had axes, it looked like, so I cast a galdr that froze them and took off for the woods. She followed me, and a damn good thing. I tripped over something and fell hard. She grabbed me and somehow or other got me onto her back. My memory’s blurry on that point. I hit my head when I fell. Anyway, I ended up riding her like a horse. Just like the shamans in the books. She brought me here.”
“How sweet. A love nest?”
Tor finished the water in the bottle. “What’s eating you? Do you really think I’d fuck a bear? Is that it?”
“Yeah, actually. It is.”
“Well, I didn’t. We’re just friends, and she knows that.”
“Hah! They go in
to heat in the fall. I read that on the Internet.”
Tor rolled his eyes heavenward. “I told you I’m not poly, didn’t I? Even if I was, it wouldn’t be with animals. What do you think I am, a pervert?”
“When you’re a bjarki, it wouldn’t be perverted, would it?”
“That doesn’t matter! I’m still aware that I’m a man, even in bear form.” He glared at me. “You know I can’t lie about myself.”
“I do know. Okay, I believe you. But I bet she—”
“It doesn’t matter what she wants. I’m the vitki. She’s the fylgja.” His voice snapped with authority, with command. “She had to learn that lesson this afternoon. Before you got here, I mean. She trapped me by bringing me to this chamber. She must have known about the wards in place here, and they were powerful ones. When I tried to chant a galdr, I got no response. This death mound sucked up the power of the runes. I was stunned when the power snapped back in my face. Couldn’t think for a long time.”
“Death mound?”
“It’s a burial mound, yeah. I could feel the ghosts moving.” He pointed to the opening that led deeper in. “It’s filled with bones in there, all sorted out.”
“You went in there?”
“Oh yeah. I needed to know what I was facing. Nothing much, it turned out. Leg bones in one pile, arm bones in another, skulls heaped up together on a stone altar. Rotting baskets full of smaller pieces. The chamber we’re in was a temple to the people buried here. The ghosts told me that. Ancestor worship. Someone set those wards against rune magic in here because they thought it would disturb the ghosts. I think. That’s just speculation on my part.”