Chapter 14 #2
I don’t want to drop all her treasures, but I’m not sure what else to do.
After a moment’s dithering, I abandon them, but even so, it’s hard to follow her quickly in this form.
I can still feel her location, thanks to our bond, but I can’t see her with my own eyes anymore, and I don’t like it.
I’m about to shift into my flame blessed form so I can more easily catch up when I hear a massive whamming sound up ahead.
It’s hard to draw on the bond and also navigate at the same time, so I focus on pushing through dozens of holiday shoppers until I break into a large courtyard.
The sound was Thunar landing in the center of the plaza. He’s holding a woman between his claws, peering at her. It’s an old woman I believe I’ve seen once before, on the day I burst from the volcano. She was the old woman to whose house Liz flew the very first time I ever saw her.
Or, at least, that’s my first recollection of seeing her after losing my memories.
Liz gestures for Thunar to put her down.
I finally reach her side.
“Hey.” Liz smiles when she sees me. Then she frowns. “Wait, where are all the bags?”
I blink. “You ran. I—”
“You’ll have to go back and get them,” she says. “Unless you think this little old woman is someone I can’t handle.”
I open my mouth to argue, glance at Thunar, who looks as perplexed as I am, and then turn around and shift into Azar. I’m not going to shove my way through crowds to go back and retrieve things. As I launch, I glance back over my shoulder and notice Thunar smirking at me.
It must make him really happy to see me acting like an errand boy.
I reach the clearing with the bags quickly, but Liz isn’t waiting on my return. I snatch all the bags in one big claw, hoping nothing will break from the rough treatment, and leap back into the air.
“Put her down. She’s coming with us.” Liz drops her hands on her hips. “But thank you for stopping her.”
“You can put me down,” the old woman says. “I’ll go along with her.”
But she ran, Thunar says. She shouldn’t have run. It’s suspicious. What if she runs again?
“I won’t run,” the woman says. “It was a reflex.”
I reach the clearing in time to see more humans showing up from several directions.
“Is there a problem?” A man with a gun lifts it to point at Thunar.
That makes Liz laugh. “Put your gun down before he roasts you, idiot.”
The soldier glances back at me and then turns to face Thunar again.
“Do it now.” Liz doesn’t look entertained anymore. “Your government welcomed us, and we’re not harming anyone.”
“That woman appears to be forcibly detained.”
“That’s our business,” Liz says. “Put the weapon down, or I’ll let him incinerate you.”
The soldier blinks, but he lowers his arm.
“Liz.” That voice I recognize. Stupid Gideon. “What’s going on?”
When she spins around and sees him, Liz groans. It’s satisfying. “We came to get Christmas gifts before we picked everyone up, but then. . .” Liz points. “This old woman was also in Selfoss and I want to know why.”
“Wait.” A woman with long, curly hair steps out from behind Gideon, and I recognize Liz’s mother. “I know her, too.”
The old woman’s still clutched in Thunar’s massive claws, and now she’s cackling like she’s unhinged.
I don’t like her. I’m going to melt her, Thunar says.
“Wait,” Liz says. “Please put her down. She can’t run away with all of us here, and I have some questions for her.”
Thunar looks extremely irritated, but he complies. I’m going to open a portal for the humans waiting in lines near the camp outside of town. Hurry back, or I’ll return and eliminate the distraction.
He drops her from quite far, and the old woman crumples in a heap when she lands.
“Sorry,” Liz says. “He’s not—”
“Do not apologize for the behavior of the sky children,” the old woman says. “I know what they are.”
“It is you,” Liz’s mother says. “You—” Her nostrils flare. “You told me you could heal Elizabeth when she was a dead babe in my belly.”
Liz spins on her boot so fast, she almost bumps into me. “She—this is the witch who lied to you?”
“She didn’t lie,” her mom says. “She saved you.”
The cackling’s even louder than it was before now. “You were so easy to manipulate,” the woman says. “All we had to do was pay the hospital technician to tell you that your baby died.”
Now it’s Liz’s mother who looks ready to do violence. “You—what? Why would you do that?”
“Gullveig’s rebirth was foretold for centuries,” the old woman says. “The prophecies said the heir of the Valkyrie would return, and when she did, the dragons would return as well.”
“What prophecy?” Liz asks. “And why would Gullveig’s return bring the dragons?”
“You had children, you know,” the old woman continues as though Liz asked her nothing.
“As Gullveig, you had three children with a man named Fagen, all girls, and they were all born with wings.” She smiles.
“Those three lines vowed to preserve the bloodline of the strongest earth child ever to live. But in the fourth generation, the offspring stopped being born with wings.” She sighs.
“There was always a mark where they should have been.” She turns and lifts up her jacket, high, high above her shoulder, exposing a saggy, wrinkled back.
Even so, the reddish marks on her shoulder blades are clear.
I hear the sound of grinding and crashing at once that tells me that Thunar has opened a portal. That’s good. It means he’ll be busy at least.
The old woman drops her jacket and shirt into place again and turns. “We tracked the lines for thousands of years.” Her smile’s a little off. “We lost contact with some offspring, sure, but we kept up with most, including your line.” She points at Liz’s mother.
“You’re saying I’m descended from Gullveig?” Liz’s mother asks. “The one who caused the war between the vanir and the aesir?”
“You’ve been doing your homework,” the woman says. “But the stories foretold that rejoining the lines, one known and one lost, would produce Gullveig once again.”
“But my father,” Liz says, “he has no marks. I’ve seen his back.”
“His mother had his birthmarks removed,” Liz’s mother says. “She found them unsightly.”
“More like she didn’t want him found,” the old woman says.
“But we did discover his lineage, and when we found out you were expecting. . .” She shrugs.
“Then the baby bore the mark—the heart-shaped birthmark.” She frowns.
“But no wings. We thought that maybe she had to be thrown into the volcano to regain those.” Now she beams. “And we were right. Wish we’d gotten her chucked in years ago. ”
“Sorry to have disappointed you,” Liz says, but she doesn’t sound sorry at all.
“Oh, dear, you never disappointed us. You were exactly the vicious little thing we knew you would be, and we were able to encourage your parents to get you just the training we knew you’d need.”
I really dislike the old woman, and I have to ignore the impulse to burn her to char.
“You wanted me to be a warrior?”
The old woman grins. “Gullveig was never taught to fight. She wasn’t the champion we needed.”
The bond’s trembling, but I can’t tell whether Liz is more upset or scared.
“Why would you want her to be a warrior?” Liz’s mother asks. “She was just a little girl.”
“Gullveig never united the sky children with the valkyrie line, but she can.” The old woman looks crazy. “Now she’ll be able to rule the entire earth.” The woman’s cackling again. “Valkyries will rise again. Earth children will lead this time.”
Thunar’s supposed to be watching the portal, but instead, he drops to the ground again in the courtyard. He nearly squashes two soldiers, who barely leap out of the way in time. Why are you still here? We’re ready to leave.
“How many more of you are coming?” the old woman asks. “And why did you dragons finally return to earth in the first place?” She cackles. “I’ve been wondering that. Did Gullveig’s birth bring you? Or did your coming prompt her rebirth?”
A small pillar of flame flies out of Thunar’s open mouth and roasts the woman into a black pile in front of us so quickly I can’t even try to stop him. I groan, but it’s too late to do anything else.
She was tiresome, Thunar says, as if that’s a suitable explanation. For a blessed, it is.
Liz’s mouth is dangling open, and the soldier who kept aiming a gun at Thunar finally fires. The bullet does nothing, of course, but I have no idea how Thunar will react.
I don’t expect him to laugh. Let’s go, Gullveig. You have work to do to protect your people up north. He launches into the sky then, never once looking back.
“Are you coming?” Liz is looking at her mother, and she looks a little rattled about the death of that old woman.
But she and her mother both also look a little relieved.