Chapter 24
The wards of Alfheimstod parted for them like a curtain of warm rain, and Linnea walked out of dreary Oslo into a clear Finnmark winter day.
Linnea drew in a deep breath of clean air, relieved to be out of the city's smog.
Tor closed the portal behind them with the small crystal in his hand, and the sudden lack of traffic noise left Linnea's ears ringing.
"Thank the gods for portals so I don't have to deal with Tor's driving," Von declared, shattering the silence completely.
He had a pack shaped like one of the really large traveling backpacks that were the bane of European airport staff in the summer, but it was made of soft black leather with brass buckles and elaborate knot patterns tooled into it.
Layla had taken one look at it and asked if Kathmandu had done a collaboration with The Lord of the Rings and why she hadn't been told about it.
Linnea had half-expected Von to turn up with a man bag and a smile, so it was a shock to see him in sturdy hiking boots and jeans, a cold-weather coat, and zero eyeliner. He looked like he was about to start work on the fjord for the day, and the change kept drawing her up short.
Above the frozen lake, Alruna's log house looked picturesque and welcoming with smoke rising from the chimney in a steady ribbon.
The Queen of the Light Elves stood on her deck in a thick woolen tunic dress, silver-gray braid over one shoulder, and waving like they were just family turning up late for lunch.
"There you are." Alruna came down the steps and folded Linnea into her arms, surrounding her in the scent of lavender and woodsmoke. She pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Running off after wolf gods and leaving dramatic notes. You took ten years off my life."
"I'm sorry, Aunty," Linnea said, her eyes sliding to Fenris. "It was kind of an emergency."
"You're forgiven, I suppose, but if you do it again, there will be trouble." Alruna let her go and turned to the mountain of a man standing quietly at the edge of the group.
Fenris looked cautiously around him at the house, the lake, the trees, and finally Alruna.
Alruna crossed the snow to him and took his scarred hand in both of hers without hesitation or fear.
"Welcome, Fenris Lokisson," she said, her steady amber eyes looking up at the Great Wolf. "Be welcome in my house and on my lands."
Fenris bowed, deep and formal, the courtly manners of a god trained in respect at an early age.
"The honor is mine, Queen Alruna. You're a queen in your own right, and you are my uncle's mate, and I'm glad to know you on both counts." His voice dropped, rough at the edges. "Vili was kind to me when few were. Whatever hurt lies between you, I hope time mends it."
Alruna's eyes went bright, and she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.
"Thank you," she said simply. She gave his hand a brisk pat, and the queen became the aunty again between one breath and the next.
"Okay, out of the way. I need to kiss the queen." Von pushed past Fenris and picked Alruna up off the ground. "I'm so happy, Runa! I'm going to see Hel!"
"Put me down, you goblin." Alruna laughed brightly and kissed Von's cheek. "I'm glad to see that you are excited about your adventures."
"And I want to hear about yours. To Asgard. With Havi. Huh? Huh? What's happening there?" Von teased her and got away with it when no one else would.
"Gods, Von, shut up," Layla growled.
"What? You're just jealous I'm going to get the gossip, and you aren't." Von set Alruna back down and looped his arm around hers. "It's okay, Runa. You can just whisper it to me."
"You really are incorrigible." Alruna looked back at Fenris. "Now, when did you last eat? Don't answer. I can see it. You're coming with me for a snack, but there's hot stew and fresh bread already cooking for dinner. I want to hear about your father from someone who actually likes him."
"Mama, give Fenris a moment to breathe," Arne said from the deck.
"Hush. Go and help Layla pack. Fenris and Von will help me in the kitchen.
" Alruna threaded her other arm through Fenris's and the three of them headed toward the house.
"The rest of you, off you go. Get your things from Ulfheim and be back by dinner.
It's on the table at six, and I'll be wounded if anyone is late. "
"She's been cooking since dawn," Layla called down. "There are three kinds of cake. Save yourselves."
Fenris glanced back over his shoulder at Linnea, his eyes wide with something close to panic.
Good luck, she mouthed at him and pressed her lips together so she wouldn't laugh.
Are we leaving him? her wolf demanded.
For a few hours only. He's survived worse.
Don't like it, her wolf grumbled, settling like a storm front.
Too bad, we have things to do.
The drive over to Ulfheim was short, though they had to drive more slowly because of all the ice on the road. Tor swore colorfully under his breath for most of the trip while Ciara and Linnea tried not to laugh.
"Quick in, quick out," Tor said, taking the forest road that skirted wide around the village proper.
"If anyone catches your scent and asks where you have been, say doing volva work down south and don't let them sniff at you.
The minute the pack learns Fenris is awake, every wolf will lose their minds, and we don't have time for that circus. "
"You think I don't know that?" Linnea kicked the back of his chair. "I know how to keep a secret, big brother."
Ciara reached across and patted Tor's shoulder. "Let it go, baby. She knows what she's doing. I'm more worried about the wolves grilling you than her."
The trees opened, and the end of its snowed-over track was Linnea's cabin. It sat on the forest edge above Ulfheim, far enough out that the village was just woodsmoke above the tree line, close enough that the wards of the pack lands still hummed against her skin.
"You got an hour," Tor said as she climbed out. "Pack warm and as light as you can."
"I know. I'll be ready," she agreed and stood in the track until the engine noise faded into the trees.
Linnea breathed in the silence and the feeling of being alone in her own space. She walked up to the blue door, the lintel above it carved with the Othala rune she had burned in herself her first winter. She reached up to touch it out of habit before going inside.
The cabin smelled of beeswax, cold ash, and dried herbs. It had one large room that combined a kitchen and living area, one bedroom, and a bathroom with a tiny sauna. Bundles of yarrow, mugwort, and juniper hung drying from the kitchen beam over shelves of labeled jars.
Her workbench sat under the window with her kit of woodworking tools and a half-finished carving of a bear.
Wool blankets were folded over the back of the chair by the woodstove, and her own paintings hung on every wall featuring northern lights, ravens in a birch, and the big one over the bed, a black wolf running through a forest that she had painted last winter.
She tried not to think of the significance of the last one.
Linnea got the heating going first, then went up the small ladder to pull her travel pack down from the loft.
Bring him here, her wolf said. He belongs in the den with us.
Linnea paused with a wool thermal half-folded. He's a god. He has nine whole worlds to live in.
Nine worlds and no den. The wolf's voice was stern, all her usual nonsense tampered down.
Linnea didn't know how to make it understand that Fenris wouldn't stay there with her, and thankfully, a knock at the door saved her.
The door opened before she reached it, and Gudrun stamped the snow off her boots on the mat. Her red braids were wrapped around her head under a knit cap, her wool coat hung past her knees, and her eyes were glittering with magic and trouble.
"You took your time getting your ass home," Gudrun said, toeing off her boots and coming inside. She opened her arms. "Come here, my wayward apprentice."
Linnea walked into the hug and stayed there longer than she meant to. Gudrun thumped her on the back. "You're okay. Make the tea. I want to know what's going on from start to finish."
Linnea threw the last few things she had out into her pack while the water boiled and told her all of it, from the dream of Fenris tearing free of his bindings to Von's cracked little book and the road down into Niflheim.
Gudrun listened with only minor interruptions, drinking her tea with a thoughtful expression. When Linnea finished, the volva sat back in the chair.
"Hel's trials," she said, rubbing her temples. "The Norns don't do anything by halves, do they? Dark gods, what a mess. What is Fenris like? Clearly not as mean as they say if you've been carting him around Norway like a rescue dog."
Linnea rolled her eyes. "He's not a rescue dog, and there would be no carting him anywhere he didn't wish to go."
"That's not an answer. I want details, Lin! Is he hot? Oh, look at your face. He must be," Gudrun teased.
"He's..." Linnea looked into her tea, trying to find the right words. Quiet. Grumpy. Funny. Gentle in a way that made her chest hurt. The heat climbed up her neck and bloomed across her face before she could stop it.
Gudrun's eyebrow went up like a raised flag. "Oh. Like that, is it?"
"Don't start," Linnea begged.
"I said nothing."
"Your eyebrow said it."
"My eyebrow is its own woman. I can't control her." Gudrun sipped her tea, eyes glittering, and let the silence do her interrogating for her.
Linnea cracked in under ten seconds, which was about standard.
"It's so strange, Gudrun. My wolf has lost its mind over him.
I've never shifted once in my life, and the moment he walked out of that forest, the thing started acting like her favorite person in the Nine Worlds came home.
It howls when he leaves a room. It hates that we are apart from him right now.
I don't get it. It's never been like this about anyone. "
Gudrun set her cup down. The teasing dropped away, and what was left was her teacher, the woman who had rebuilt Linnea out of salvage and stubbornness.
"Listen to me because I'm only going to be profound once today.
" She leaned forward, elbows on the wooden counter.
"Your wolf has never once been wrong about a person.
Not when you were a girl, not in that cult's cage, not now.
It can't speak through a shift, so it speaks the only way it can, and you should trust its instincts, especially where you are going. The dead lie. Our wolves don't."
"It's a wolf that doesn't exist, according to the whole village," Linnea replied, the old wound stinging.
"The village has its own set of fools who act like dogs instead of wolves," Gudrun snorted.
Linnea crossed her arms. "We aren't mates, if that's what your wolf side is thinking. He had a wife and kids, and there's no way he would have agreed to be bound if it wasn't to protect a mate."
"You are assuming that," Gudrun pointed out. "Fenris isn't a wolf like us, Lin. He's a god who just so happens to turn into one. You just told me that we were made by the magic of the All-Father."
"But Alruna and Vili…" Linnea began.
"Vili is Alruna's mate because she is álfr! Vili is a god like Fenris."
The realization was like a bucket of water had been dumped over Linnea's head. Gudrun was right; she had been thinking of Fenris as a wolf and not a god.
"It still doesn't matter," she said at last. "I have no idea why I was chosen by Freya for this or why I feel about him the way I do."
"It doesn't matter why, only that you do.
" Gudrun shook her head at her like she always did when she thought Linnea was being too stubborn.
"I always knew you were marked for something greater.
The old prophecy to awaken Fenris asked for the blood of an unshifted female wolf, the rarest blood there is, and your veins were the ones carrying it.
Freya looked across every volva in the north and set you to sing and soothe the Great Wolf.
Twice now, fate has reached past everyone else in the room to put its hand on you.
That isn't chance or convenience. You've been tied to that wolf since before you drew breath, girl, and I would bet my best runes the Norns... "
She stopped. The air in the cabin changed, a pressure against Linnea's ears like plunging into deep water. The herbs hanging from the beam swayed, and the back of her skull lit up with the warning prickle of magic arriving.
"Gudrun?"
Gudrun's eyes had gone pale, fixed on something a thousand miles past the cabin wall. When she spoke, her voice was distant and echoing.
"The Norns are weaving again. I see you and the Great Wolf's threads twisted into one cord. It's the next length of your wyrd, measured and strung. Remember your magic. It was made for the dark roads, and it won't fail you among the dead."
Her white eyes turned and found Linnea without seeing her.
"Keep your head clear in the underworld.
It's a realm of mirrors and pits. Don't be fooled by anything you see.
Look for the truth under the lies. Listen to your gut and your heart before your eyes.
Remember, when the dark rises, you are the light. "
Gudrun blinked, and her eyes were normal again. "I went somewhere…"
"You did." Linnea's hands shook so hard she tightened them into fists.
"Whatever it was, I hope it was useful. We are out of time." Gudrun hopped off the kitchen stool and pointed to the window where headlights were swinging up through the blue dusk of the track. "Your brother drives like the Wild Hunt is chasing him. Come on, get your pack."
Linnea recited the words Gudrun had said back to her while they put their coats and boots back on. Linnea made sure the heating in the cabin was off, and the door was locked behind them.
Gudrun pulled her into another hug at the door and held her back at arm's length.
"Don't forget what I said, Lin," she said, squeezing her shoulders. Her normally cheerful eyes were more serious than Linnea had ever seen them. "Not everything your eyes see is the truth. Let your heart see for you when your eyes are lying, and your magic will show you the way."