Chapter 6
Linnea's body was burning hot all over in mortification.
Gods, she was such an idiot for stroking Fenris's scars.
Why? Why did she have to do that? It was like she hadn't been able to stop as soon as she started.
He must have thought she had lost her damn mind.
Her wolf tried to say something, but she pushed it away before it could start.
"No. It's enough. Get your shit together. You have a goddess to talk to," she told herself, and got to work. She didn't know how to process whatever that moment had been in the kitchen, but she knew magic. Magic was her sanctuary and safe place.
The rug came up under Linnea's hands in a single heavy roll, and she shoved it against the wall hard enough that her shoulder twinged. The last thing she wanted was to accidentally get ash or burn marks on it and have the All-Father pissed at her.
She crouched at the small fireplace and built it up one stick at a time, because her fingers were less steady than she wanted them to be.
The kindling caught on the third match, and she blew on it gently, feeding it pieces of birch until the flames were tall enough to throw their light across the wood floor.
Linnea grabbed her bag of runes, knelt on a pillow she had pulled from the bed, and emptied the wooden discs into her hand. She had carved them herself in Gudrun's house last winter, and her mentor had sat across from her at the workbench every evening and refused to do a single one for her.
A volva carves her own runes, Lin. Or she works with someone else's tongue.
The runes were rough where she was beginning, and smooth where her hand had learned to carve. She had never gone back to try to pretty up the first ones; they were what they were meant to be, and they were hers.
She set them on the floor in front of the fire. Fehu first, the rune Freya had drawn over her basket of charm bags last midsummer. Then Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, until each rune sat in a spiral, and Othala closed it. She sat back on her heels and looked at them in the firelight.
Are you sure? her wolf asked.
Not really, but I don't see another option.
Linnea closed her eyes and took a long breath through her nose. The cottage smelled of woodsmoke and pine and the faint eucalyptus of Havi's shampoo where Fenris had brushed against her earlier. She breathed it in, breathed it out, and on the second breath, let everything around her drop away.
What was left was the breath itself.
What was left was the song.
She started low. The galdr Gudrun had taught her for calling was nothing like the lullaby she had sung in her dreams. The lullaby was wordless. The galdr was word and intent and magic. It moved out of her in three falling notes and up again, and she let it go where it wanted to go.
Heyr mik, Freya. Heyr mik, gyeja. Heyr mik, móeir volva.
Hear me, Freya. Hear me, goddess. Hear me, mother of volva.
The air in the room shifted. The fire flared. The window glass behind her made a cold, cracking sound.
Linnea kept singing.
Greinar Yggdrasils, berit mál mitt. R?tr Yggdrasils, festie mál mitt. Hverju eyra sem heyrir, snúisk hingat.
Branches of Yggdrasil, carry my speech. Roots of Yggdrasil, anchor my speech. Whichever ear hears, turn here.
The world was thinning around her. The galdr was a rope of sound now, a long climbing vine she was sending up and out, seeking and calling.
Til ásgares kalla ek. Til Freyu kalla ek. Móeir, heyreu mik.
To Asgard I call. To Freya I call. Mother, hear me.
The pull came like a soft answering tug on a fishing line. She let it take her.
Linnea opened her eyes in another place.
She was sitting on a low wooden bench in front of a fire that burned in a long stone hearth set into the side of a hall. Heavy doors opened out onto a field of golden grass that ran on without ending.
Freya sat across the hearth from her in a plain wool dress the color of cream, with a heavy fur thrown over one shoulder for warmth, and Brísingamen at her throat catching the firelight. She had a mug of something steaming between her hands, and she didn't look surprised.
"Little volva," she greeted. "You came up the tree fast."
Linnea folded her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling and lowered her head. "Lady Freya."
"None of that. We are family." Freya tilted her head, and a small knowing smile moved across her mouth. "You have something to tell me, Linnea?"
"Yes, my lady." Linnea swallowed. "Fenris is awake.
He came up out of the Hall of Nowhere last night.
I am with him. He asked me to take him to Havi, so we went to the cottage in Otta.
Please, don't be mad, but I broke into Havi's cottage and fed him out of the freezer, and I'm trying really hard not to think about how this is the most disrespectful thing a volva has ever done. "
Freya's smile became a laugh. "Fenris is acting tame for you, is he?"
"I suppose so? I have no idea why." Linnea was babbling and couldn't stop. "He hasn't bitten anything. Not even me. I had no other way to contact you or the All-Father, and I don't know what to do."
"You have done everything that you needed to. Tell Fenris we are coming," Freya said. "Put the coffee on, and we will be there before it brews."
"We? You are bringing Havi?" Linnea's wolf, who had been quiet while she sang, twitched once.
"Yes. Don't look so worried. You did well, child. Better than you know." Freya leaned forward, and the warm gold of her power moved across the hearth between them. "Go back to your body now. Coffee. Cups out. Milk and lots of sugar, because Havi has a hopeless sweet tooth."
Linnea nodded, dazed, and Freya touched two fingertips to her brow, pushed, and the world spun.
Linnea opened her eyes in the spare room with the runes still spread in their spiral on the floor. The windows were thick with a layer of frost on the inside, and her knees were stiff.
She sat there a moment, scrubbed her face on her sleeve, gathered her runes carefully, and went to make the coffee before the gods descended on her.