“Feel your fear,” Heid had told her the first time she’d gone into trance. “You never know who you’ll meet where you’re going, never know who your song will summon. It could be Odin himself for all we know.”
That had not comforted Gunnhild one bit. “Will it get easier with time? I’ve been frightened my entire life. I came with you to escape my fears. I loathe being scared.”
“Of course you do. And it doesn’t get easier with time, but you’ll become more courageous,” Heid had replied. “You’ll get used to being afraid. If you don’t feel fear, why would you need to be brave?”
Many winters later, Gunnhild still didn’t understand what she’d meant. All she knew was that this couldn’t be the end—she needed her teacher back.
This time, instead of sending her mind out into the world as the swallow, she forced it to sink down, and down, and down.
She opened her eyes to the utter blackness of the void, the place between worlds. Her form was illuminated by an inner light, a thin wisp of thread reaching from the center of her chest and upward into nothingness, where her own song echoed above her from very far away.
But no spirits had come, as they usually did when Heid sang for her—why?
Suddenly Gunnhild felt a tingle, as though she were being watched: Something was circling her out there in the dark, and it wasn’t Heid.
But where was Heid? Where were the spirits?
“Heid? Heid, please!” she called. Then she paused, felt the prickling again. Someone is here. “Heid, you must come back. I’ll find a way to heal you. I’ll find a way—”
“You’re bolder than I thought if you think you can raise the dead,” said a familiar, gravelly voice. The voice of the eagle. Katla.
This was wrong. This was all wrong. This was not how it was supposed to be.
A woman’s chuckle resounded through the deep darkness, and Gunnhild felt someone reach out and grab her from behind—but at that exact moment she willed herself up, following her thread back to her body.
When she opened her eyes, she was back in the cottage, throat raw from singing. She threw down the distaff and reached for Heid’s body, taking the old woman’s bony hands in her own, and cried as she never had before.
“I’m sorry, Heid,” she whispered. “I’ve failed you . . .”
But once her tears subsided, a fire began to burn within her. All was quiet so deep in the woods—a glaring contrast to the chaos she’d so narrowly escaped—but her blood pounded in her ears as she released Heid’s hands and stood, fists balled at her sides.
As she stared down at the body of her mentor—her surrogate mother for these past twelve winters, her teacher, her entire world—her mind reeled with all that had transpired that day, tried to make sense of it. Who were these witches, this Katla and Thorbjorg, the eagle and the fox—and their unknown companion, whom one of the raiders had pointed out in the water? How had Katla followed Gunnhild to the dark place? What did they have against Oddny and Signy and their family? What would’ve happened to Oddny if Gunnhild hadn’t decided to spy on her friends that morning? And what would’ve happened to Gunnhild had Heid opted to stay behind and sing for her instead of joining her as a crow?
And, perhaps most important—how had these witches known her name? How had they known anything about her? And why?
She needed a plan. She needed answers. She needed to find Signy, who was being taken farther away with each passing moment. The encounter with Katla in the dark place must have been a fluke. Gunnhild would find Oddny, make sure she was unharmed, and have her sing the warding songs so Gunnhild could ask the spirits where Signy had been taken. And there was only one place Oddny could have gone once the coast was clear: to her closest neighbor, Ozur.
Gunnhild needed to get home.
She had friends at the Sámi encampment nearby, and they would be heading west soon to meet with King Harald’s men as they did each autumn. If she caught them, she could go with them. She would close up the cottage and leave first thing in the morning.
But first she needed to bury Heid.
6
ODDNY AWOKE IN THE empty bunk room in Ozur’s hall.
She didn’t fully remember how she’d gotten there. She’d been flickering in and out of consciousness for . . . she didn’t know how long. For all she knew, she’d been in a state of grief-induced catatonia for days or even weeks—no, it must have been only a day or two, for her blood hadn’t yet come. Her stomach should have been roaring with hunger, but the pain in her womb overshadowed it.
She had only snippets of memory, brief flashes of staggering toward Ozur’s approaching warriors, being guided onto the ship. A rowboat had washed to shore, and there’d been a corpse underneath with an arrow sticking out of its neck. She hadn’t looked, hadn’t dared. The boat and her brother’s body, along with those of her beloved farm dogs and the slain farmhands, had been somberly laid out atop the charred ruins after Oddny had told the men—Had she told them? Had that been her own voice? It’d sounded so far away—that her mother and Lif were already buried beneath the pile of blackened beams that had once been her father’s hall.
She’d watched without seeing as Ozur’s men had torn down the earthen hayfield wall and used it to build a mound over the remains of her home and the people who had lived there. No fine grave goods to take to the afterlife, not for her family: They’d be destitute in Hel’s realm, even more so than they’d been in life.
And now she was alone. For those precious few moments upon waking, she almost forgot what she was doing there. But then the raid came flooding back, her mother’s last moments repeating over and over in her mind’s eye:
Yrsa on her knees in front of the axe-wielding leader of the raiders.
Yrsa, eyes locked on Oddny and Signy, bidding them to stay quiet, stay hidden.
Yrsa, stone-faced and fearless as the axe came down.
Oddny took a breath and tried to hold back her tears. Her mother wouldn’t want her to cry.
This can’t be real.
Signy . . .
Signy, reaching for her over the shoulder of her captor, calling her name, then begging her to run, her voice cut off midscream.
Oddny wanted more than anything to go back to sleep again, to forget that any of this had ever happened. But now she was wide-awake and the pain in her mind and body was overwhelming. It took every ounce of her strength to sit up, swing her legs over the side of the bed, and stand.
She heard the rap of Ulfrun’s cane moments before the thick curtain separating the bunk room and the anteroom parted and the woman herself tottered in.
“Oh, Oddny! Goodness, I’m glad to see you awake. You’ve been lying there for two days,” said Ulfrun. She pointed with a knobby finger to something behind Oddny. “They found your basket in the field at your farm. They thought it might be important, seeing as you’re a healer.”
“Thank you.” Oddny picked up the basket, relieved: Her plants were wilted, but they would do, and she would scavenge from the kitchen’s garden for the rest. She needed her tea badly. Pain rippled down her legs, making her knees threaten to give out. “Is there news of my sister?”