Chapter 23
Gullveig
It’s easier to see some things after the fact.
I should never have left the heart with Freya, that much is now clear. When I walk into her chambers, as I have been every few hours, to make sure she doesn’t deliver this egg alone like the last one, she’s whispering to the heart.
She’s talking to a rock, cooing, really, like it’s a baby or something.
And then she giggles.
“Freya,” I say. “It’s so good to see you awake.” And in her earth child form. She hasn’t taken that in a while. She’s been huddled around the heart like a mother bird guards her eggs, her tail twitching furiously as her magic ebbs and flows.
Her eyes shoot upward and meet mine. “Gullveig. You’re the only one I can really trust.” She holds up the heart, which is pulsing in her hand like a bowl full of lightning bugs. “You should try it, too.” She holds out her hands.
I debate whether to try taking it from her.
The last time I tried, she went ballistic, even though she offered it to me like she is right now. “Actually, you better keep it,” I finally say. I’d rather not set her off when she’s due to lay an egg any hour now. The last laying was a total disaster. She raved for weeks after.
“Yes, maybe it’s better,” Freya mutters, stroking the heart. “He only talks to me anyway.”
“He?” I can’t help raising my eyebrows, though I immediately wish I hadn’t.
She scowls. “Yes, he, and you know who it is.”
I do know who she thinks it is, anyway. “How is Veralden? Been talking to you much lately?”
She beams. “Of course. He’s my father, you know. He misses the sky children and promises to visit any time now.”
“You should ask what his timing’s like,” I say. “Our timing’s tied to the star that powers life here on this planet. Soon for him might not be the same as soon for us.”
Freya frowns. “I don’t bother him with things like that. I just tell him about the problems we’ve been having with the vanir. He says he did that on purpose, making them our opposite. They exist to keep things here in balance.”
“How lovely for us,” I say. “Balance is fun.”
“I did tell him how his plan was flawed,” Freya says.
“His balance was meant to keep the earth children down, but we like the earth children. We just need to explain to him, when he comes, that we want to get rid of that balance—no more pitting us against one another so we stay strong and keep the earth children in the dirt.” She beams.
“So, you think he’s actually coming?” Even with the bond, sometimes it’s hard for me to tell when she’s being this crazy what’s real and what’s delusion. “Have you really spoken to him?”
Freya drops the stone by her side and pats the cushion on her bedroll. “Poor Gullveig. It’s been hard for you, taking care of me while I have all these eggs. I know I get upset and then I act a little insane.”
The rare moments of lucidity in the midst of her preparations to have an egg are the hardest. They remind me why I love her, though. I sit, hoping the egg comes out soon.
She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I think this egg will be different. I’ve been pulling on Veralden’s magic every time we speak, and yes, I really have spoken to him. Watch. I’ll show you.” She picks the heart stone up again, holds it close to my ear, and then draws on her own ice magic.
It gathers up inside of her body, swirling bits of blue light that sparkle like firefly flashes. Then she shoves it into the heart.
I’ve never in my entire life shoved magic into the heart. I’ve always only tried to pull from it. “What are you doing?”
“Shhh.” She pats my leg with her free hand. “Just watch and listen.” She closes her eyes just before the heart flashes bright blue, red, and then brilliant gold.
A little warning on that would have been nice.
And then I do hear it, a great whooshing sound, like a terrible wind storm crying near the windows, and then, I hear something else. Something. . .ominous. It sounds like a long, protracted moan, but echoey, like a whale singing in a cavern. “What’s that—”
Freya shushes me. “Listen.”
The moaning becomes a strange sort of whistle, and then I can make out words. Soon now. Send me more. Send me all you have, and I can come to you, my daughter. I can come soon.
I leap to my feet, shaken. “Freya.”
She beams. “See? Now you believe me. Veralden Radien knows we’re here and that we need him.”
“How do you know that’s him?” I ask. “You could be channeling that magic anywhere.”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be silly. This heart is the physical manifestation of the love he and Jore shared. He told me that himself. It’s why we can reach out to him at all. He left it behind so she could call him back.” Freya frowns. “He’s sad she never has.”
“Call him back?” I sigh. “Freya, I’m worried you’re messing with something big, something dangerous.
Jore and Veralden Radien may be our parents, but they’re not like us.
The things they worry about aren’t the things we do.
Case in point, the balance he intentionally created, between the vanir and the aesir.
Who would think that’s a good idea—battling for eternity? ”
“There is a poetry to it,” Freya says. “The earth children do suffer, but think about it. It keeps the sky children from completely dominating them, too. It was Jore’s idea to make the sky children need the earth children. The bond, you know.”
“What does Odin say about all this?”
She scowls. “He doesn’t want to call anyone. He thinks we should just leave.”
“Leave?” I frown.
“That’s right. Take our earth children bonded, take their families, and just move to another place, another world, leaving the vanir here alone.” She shakes her head. “It’s irresponsible. It’s. . .”
“It would help us,” I say. “We could leave the vanir and take any earth child who wants to come along.”
“How are we going to find this new place?” She shakes her head. “Running never solves things. It just drags your baggage along with you.” She grabs my hand then. “Owww.”
It’s time.
I’ve been with her for many egg layings now, close to forty, and they’re never comfortable.
Not in this form, not in any form. But at least in her earth child form, Odin can’t hear it’s happening and usually doesn’t storm in, throwing his thoughts and feelings about.
Though, maybe she wants him here. I’ve never asked.
“Should I call Odin? You could still shift.”
She shakes her head. “It only upsets him.” She groans.
“He doesn’t understand what I’m doing—when he comes, Veralden will fix it.
” She glances at the baskets of eggs lining the walls.
“He’ll be able to heal all our babies. They’ll all be born then, living and healthy, once Veralden Radien sets the balance right.
Ice and Fire, storm and strike, we can all get along once he sets things riiiiight.
” She screams then, and she crouches, and she lays an egg, right on the ground.
It’s easily the strangest egg I’ve ever seen, but it’s also beautiful.
Stunning, really.
From one angle, it’s bright, sparkling red.
The strongest, best flame aesir shell I’ve ever seen.
But when I shift, it turns golden. It looks.
. .different than anything else. And when I reach to pick it up, it’s bluish, like the shell of an ice vanir.
Then as I lift it into the light, it looks silver. And black. Then green.
“This—I’m not sure what kind of egg—”
Freya’s arm hits me as it stiffens, and then her entire body goes rigid, from where she’s holding the heart stone, all the way down to her toes. When she begins to speak, it sounds nothing like her, as though she’s merely reciting words with no meaning whatsoever.
“He who is last hatched among the deserters, the final heir of the sky king, shall redeem the sky children above and below, and shall cleanse them of their stain and drag them through the darkness and back into the light.”
My mouth gapes open, and my eyes widen, and I’m not sure what to do or say.
Then, as if she didn’t just spout some of the strongest words I’ve ever heard, Freya beams. “The egg is this beautiful because of all the magic I’ve been pouring into it from the heart.
” She runs a hand down the side of the multi-color shell.
“This egg is Veralden Radien’s magic brought to life.
He’ll be so pleased to hear that his power’s still strong here on Jore’s world. ”
I’m not at all sure he’d be pleased at the thought that Freya’s taking the magic she channels from him and weaving it into a new sky child, especially as he told her that he intentionally balanced things between the vanir and aesir to run opposite one another.
I doubt it would do much good for me to tell her that, however.
I’ve barely placed the egg in the basket she already prepared when she grabs my arm. “I need your help, Gullveig. There’s no one else I can trust.”
The crazed light in her eyes tells me she’s still stuck firmly in the middle of the egg-laying mania. “Okay.” I just need to keep her from making any decisions until this insane compulsion has passed. They do always pass.
“Odin doesn’t agree with me. He thinks this is all insane, the whole idea of reaching out to our own parent.
He wants nothing to do with him. He says that if Veralden left us, it’s for the best, but I can’t watch any more killing.
Not senseless killing like it always is.
If we can’t shear away the vanir side, then we’ll force Veralden Radien back to do it himself. ”
I’m kind of with Odin on this one, but I’m hoping once the egg-laying insanity has faded, she will be too.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already set up almost all the important parts.
All I need now is for the vanir to attack, and for Odin to go fully against them, without knowing it’s part of my plan.
” She beams. “Then I can use the power of their aggression and the power of our fighters in the call I put out to Veralden. When they’re fighting, the differences between vanir and aesir in energy signatures is entirely clear. ” Her eyes are far too bright.
“What exactly do you need me to do?” So I can figure out how not to do it.
Freya smiles. “Just what you have always done best. Keep my secrets, and make Odin believe I laid a normal egg today.”
“But he’ll know as soon as he sees—” But when I look down, the egg she just laid isn’t there. There’s a red egg in its place. I blink.
She winks. “I hid that special one. I’ll need it to call Veralden, you know. When I sacrifice his pure power, and I pull on the strength of the enmity between vanir and aesir, all that magic will be enough to bring him here at last. Trust me.”
I’ve never been less inclined to trust her in my life, but I have two important tasks, apparently. Make sure Odin doesn’t know what she’s doing, and make sure Freya doesn’t know that I mean to stop her any way I possibly can.