Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [71]
I’d had no choice. I didn’t owe her any compensation—maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe she’d thought she had no choice, too. The air before me wavered. The roaring grew loud again, so loud. What would happen once the fire burst through my skin?
Even in my own time, that fire might destroy me yet. I could stay here. I could make Hallgerd’s daughter suffer as I’d suffered, knowing her mother was stolen from her—no. I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t leave Ari and Jared—and Dad—to wonder forever what had happened to me.
“You’re right,” I told Thorgerd, though I could barely hear my own voice over the roaring. “Your mother is no coward.” I fumbled for the coin I’d dropped.
“Wait.” Thorgerd took my hands again. I felt more fire flowing from me to her. When she pulled her hands away, the heat beneath my skin had cooled a little more. At my startled look, Thorgerd smiled. “I know more of sorcery than my mother thinks. I would have taken some of the fire from her years ago, if only she’d let me. I am sorry I cannot take more.” She laid her hand on my shoulder. “Go now. Return to your own place, and give my mother back to me.”
“Thank you.” I picked up the coin. To Hallgerd I said, “Swear to me you won’t set your fire loose once I’m gone, not if you can help it.”
Hallgerd laughed bitterly. “You control the spell. The fire follows you, not me. I give up much because of you, Haley.”
Too much fire—but better that fire stay with me than remain behind with Hallgerd. I would at least try to control it, and I still wasn’t sure Hallgerd would. I drew my hand back to throw the coin.
The air blurred before me, and I saw the path once more. Far away, at the end of that path, I saw a girl—myself, only my eyes were gray, not brown—kneeling before the bowl of Freki’s blood and chanting.
Not really me. Hallgerd. She reached out her hand.
“A gift!” I called, and threw the coin to her. The path came into sharper focus. On it I saw Thorgerd’s daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters. The path branched—not all Thorgerd’s descendants were my ancestors—but the branches that didn’t lead to me disappeared into the distance.
Sunlight glinted off the burning silver as it flew. Hallgerd caught the coin, and that light shone through her fingers.
“Goodbye, Haley. I leave you to your life, and I return to what remains of mine.”
The light pulled me along the path, and the fire beneath my skin came with me, all of it, flaring hotter once more. My skin seemed suddenly thin, my hair and limbs and thoughts all made of fire. For a heartbeat I knew the fire would destroy me and burn through to the wide world, right here, right now. But then a green-eyed girl—Thorgerd’s daughter—grabbed my hands as I passed her. A spark of fire leaped from me to her. An older woman with a long blond braid did the same, and then another woman with tangled curls falling into her face.
One by one they held out their hands, all of my ancestors, each of them taking a spark—or more than a spark—of power from me, bleeding the fire away. How did they know?
Take some of the fire if you can, but do not take too much. Thorgerd had told them so, in her spellbook. For a thousand years she and her descendants had passed down everything I’d need. Hallgerd must have told her daughter what had happened after all—or maybe Thorgerd had figured it out. True dreams run in our family.
The roaring turned to anger. “Free!” the fire spirits screamed. “How dare you deny us? We would be free!”
I felt the fire in me slowly lessen from the firestorm it was to a mere bonfire. The roaring in my ears—the voices of the fire creatures—turned to whispers. I still burned hot, too hot, but the fire was only enough to destroy me now, not the world around me.
“Thank you,” I told each of my ancestors in turn. “Thank you.”
My own grandmother’s grandmother