Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [51]
I managed a laugh. I’d known Jared forever, but right then I wanted nothing as much as to reach for Ari’s hand again.
Was that what had happened with Dad and Katrin? A stray thought—only Dad had followed where it led? That was different, though. Mom and Dad were married. Still, I kept my hands to myself.
Farmhouses disappeared into the mist. A row of sheep slowly crossed the road ahead of us, little more than shadows, the fog giving them a strange dignity. As we kept walking even Ari grew indistinct, a shadow seen through the gray. He took another step, disappeared—
“Ari!” I grabbed for his hand after all and felt his cool fingers grasping mine. He was still here. Of course he was still here. I could see him now, just barely, through the fog. I held my other hand in front of my face. I could barely see my own fingers. Tendrils of wet mist curled around us, soupy-thick. The road was barely visible, and I couldn’t see the water.
“Right,” Ari said. “Perhaps we should stop for a while.”
We got onto the shoulder of the road, huddling down amid damp rocks and springy mosses. Water beaded on my skin and jacket and the backpack I set down beside me. Fog swirled around us, coating the stones. The gray air felt clammy against my neck. Inside me the fire grew a little, keeping me warm. I reached a hand toward the fog. At my touch it sizzled and burned away, leaving a small clear area around us. Beneath us, the ground began to shake.
“Haley!”
I drew my hand into a fist, digging fingers into my palm, not quite breaking skin. The ground grew still. The fog settled back in, but the faint scent of sulfur lingered in the air. I forced my fingers apart.
Ari touched the back of my hand. “You’re so warm. Ever since we jumped through the fire. The creatures there—they didn’t touch me, but they touched you. Your hair—” He reached for my short hair, drew away. “What happened there?”
I drew my arms around my knees. Damp moss soaked through the seat of my jeans. “I told the fire spirits to leave you alone. They wanted some sort of payment for that, just like Muninn wanted payment for my memories. They asked for my hair, so of course I said yes, because we were both about to be burned alive.” Sweat beaded on my face at the memory of that fire. “Only the fire spirits said they were giving me some of their fire in turn. They seemed to think it was a trade.”
For several heartbeats Ari didn’t speak. The fog made the world seem very small, just the two of us in a gray cocoon. I stared at the mist clinging to Ari’s white eyelashes, wondering what it would be like to kiss him now, with all my memories intact.
“This rescuing thing—I think maybe you’re better at it than me,” Ari said at last. He pulled up a tuft of wet moss, examined it thoughtfully. “So we have two problems—sending the coin back to Hallgerd, and stopping you from setting off earthquakes everywhere you go.”
“The coin first.”
Ari nodded. “Is there anything in Mom’s notebook for this?”
“I don’t know. I kind of got stuck on the page about turning bears back into boys, you know?” I unzipped the pack and pulled out the notebook. The pages weren’t smudged and swollen like Ari’s notebook had been. Of course not—Katrin had used one of her waterproof field notebooks. The paper was a little wrinkled, nothing more, and the words were clear. She’d probably used a waterproof pen as well. She’d done all she could to make sure I wouldn’t lose the words she’d translated.
I flipped past the pages I’d already read. A spell for restoring one’s own memory. I wondered whether we could apply that to the entire island—but the spell had to be cast by the one who’d forgotten. A spell for returning berserks to their true form.
The spell for sending back the coin. I stopped and read that spell. There was a list of things it needed, like the ingredients in a recipe book. A wooden bowl. A black fire stone. (Lignite, Katrin called it in parentheses.) A raven’s claw. All the things Svan had given me, only he’d given them to me for a different spell, one