Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [58]
“Run, ghosts!” the girl called, laughing still. Ari broke into a faster, springier run.
Wind whipped past me, fast and fierce, blowing my short hair from my face. I held on for dear life—hands clutching fur, legs pressed down against those shoulder blades—but then I laughed, too. Ari’s spine coiled and uncoiled as his paws hit the shoulder of the road, and he seemed to spring forward—to fly forward—rather than to run. “Wow,” I said. “Just—wow.”
Ari ran faster, leaving Holmavik behind as he returned to the main road. The wind got down beneath my jacket and up inside my sleeves. It cut through my jeans, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even care that it was the fire inside me that kept me warm. Running had never been anything like this. When I ran, I always knew I wasn’t really flying, that my feet could only leave the ground for too-short instants.
We flew past barren rocks and windblown autumn grasses. The road wound around to follow a broad bay. Pavement gave way to dirt, dirt to more pavement. The moon rose and the stars came out, impossibly bright. The horizon began to shiver and glow.
I stiffened, remembering dreams of fire rising from the earth, but this fire wasn’t orange. A curtain of shimmering light rose from the edge of the sky, unearthly ripples of red and green. “An aurora,” I whispered. The northern lights, so beautiful—the laughter caught in my throat. Dad would love this. Mom, too.
Ari stopped and looked up. In the sudden stillness we watched the curtain blow across the sky, as if in some unfelt wind. Too beautiful—tears streamed down my face. I suddenly missed Mom more than anything. I buried my face in Ari’s fur, which smelled faintly of the sea. When I looked up again, the light was fading, the world turning silver with moonlight.
Ari took off again, sticking to the shoulder of the road when he could, running on pavement when he had to. The road veered inland along a deep fjord, wound back out to sea, then followed a second fjord. The hills turned lower and gentler. A horse with a shaggy mane and big brown eyes whirled and ran from us, whinnying a warning. Like the girl in Holmavik, apparently the horse could see ghosts.
We entered a deeper, broader fjord, this one filled with thin fog. At an intersection Ari slowed a moment, then chose an unpaved road over a paved one, following a river valley away from the water. The fog stayed with us, not as thick as last night’s fog, and the land grew flatter. Ari began breathing harder, slowing down a little. I leaned toward one of his small ears. “Do you need a rest?” I asked.
He nodded his shaggy head and slowed to a stop. I slid from his back. My hips were sore from stretching across his shoulders, and my hands ached from holding on. I walked to keep from cramping up, stretching my fingers one by one and rubbing my palms. Ari lumbered close beside me, a comforting presence.
I turned on the flashlight. Mist made the blue light eerie and strange. Farmhouses dotted the land, their windows dark. Signs by the road named the farms as we passed them: Hornsstadir, Hoskuldsstadir. At a bend in the road, just past the sign for Hrutsstadir, an old man stood alone, gazing into the dark. His hair was white, his gaze sharp. He wore a belted shirt and leather-wrapped pants, just like Svan. I stared at him, and like the girl he looked right back at me.
“I know your eyes,” he said.
“What?” Mist curled between us. “You can see me.”
“You and your tame berserk, yes.” The man chuckled, but then his face grew grim. “I see many things, and little good comes from most of them. I saw you when my niece was born, though I did not know it at the time, and so I said she had the eyes of a thief. But your eyes tell me that you see things, too. Seeing the future runs in our family.”
Ari tilted his head, as if he’d figured something out, but the words meant nothing to me. Not until the man added, “You are heading to her home. In the south.”
I backed away then. The last thing I wanted was to get tangled up with another one of Hallgerd’s uncles.
“Truly, Haley, I mean you