Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [73]
“Very well.” Muninn lifted his beak toward Ari. “So long as I am dispensing gifts, do you wish to forget your warrior ancestors once more?”
Ari hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Only—I would like to get to decide when to change, if I may.”
Muninn threw his head back, and the glint in his eyes was like laughter. “You need only remove the jacket for that.” The laughter died as he stalked past us to where Freki’s body lay. The other raven followed him. They stared at the fox, their wings utterly still, and then Muninn tipped the driftwood bowl over with his beak.
Freki’s blood steamed as it soaked into the earth, much as the mead of poetry once had. The blood on my hands steamed, too. That steam stung my eyes, and I blinked. When I opened them again, my hands were clean and Freki was gone.
Both ravens launched into the sky, and the little birds followed them.
“Have a care,” Muninn’s wingbeats said as he disappeared into the clouds. “If we both have good fortune, we will not meet again.”
Cold rain soaked through my sodden jeans and jacket. Ari and I watched, still holding hands, as the birds disappeared out of sight. Only then did I realize that the mead skin was gone, as well as Hallgerd’s coin. The spell was done, I thought, the coin blank. Muninn didn’t need it—but even ordinary ravens liked shiny things.
The sound of a car on the gravel lane made us jump. A door slammed, then another. Katrin came running up the hillside, a notebook clutched in one hand. She stopped short when she saw us, as if she couldn’t believe we were real. “You’re all right?” she asked in Icelandic.
“For certain definitions of all right, yeah,” Ari said, also in Icelandic. A wry smile tugged at his face. Katrin ran forward, dropped the notebook, and grabbed him in her arms. “Thank God,” she whispered, then drew away and took my hands.
The last spark of fire in me leaped at her touch, and some small splinter of that spark passed from me to her. “I would have taken it all,” Katrin said, in English now. Rain made strands of her flyaway hair stick to her face. “I was hoping—to cast the spell, and take your mother’s fire, and set things right.”
I said nothing. For just a moment, I wished Katrin could have taken the fire instead of Mom, too. But then Ari broke in in Icelandic with, “Oh, yeah, because that would have been so much better,” and I knew I didn’t mean it. I never, ever wanted Ari to miss his mother like I missed mine.
“It’s okay,” I said in English, though of course it wasn’t. “It’s—it’s over, anyway.” That was a start. But I felt more sobs rising within me. “I lost her,” I said, trying to keep the sobs inside as once I’d tried to contain a blazing fire. “I lost everything.”
“Not everything,” a strangled voice said.
I looked up. My father stood a short distance down the hill, his hair sticking out in every direction, his jacket dripping rainwater. He looked like he might shatter into a million pieces if he took a single step.
Or maybe that was me. My legs shook as I drew away from Katrin and walked to him. Dad grabbed me in his arms, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe. I wouldn’t have pulled away for the world, though. More tears came, the tears I’d spent a year trying to hide from him.
“I thought I’d lost you both,” Dad said.
I heard the whisper of wingbeats in the air. Dad heard it, too, and we both fell silent.
“I will remember her, Haley,” Muninn said, just before he slipped out of hearing. “I remember all who live here, always.”
Chapter 18
It was because of Jared that Dad and Katrin had found us.
For three months they’d searched, Katrin insisting there was magic involved, Dad not believing her. Then Muninn’s spell kicked in, leaving Dad wondering why he’d stayed in Iceland so long, and leaving Katrin with an apartment full of pictures she couldn’t quite focus on and an entire room she kept finding reasons not to enter.
But then Jared