78

Ouroboros

Ulla

Dagny finally lowered her bow, but she didn’t put it back in her quiver. We were about to leave the armory when I heard yelling and running on the stairs.

“Go as far down as you can!” a familiar voice commanded, and I ran out in the hall to see injured survivors coming down the steps.

“Where should they go?” I asked, looking to Noomi. “Where can they be safe from the wyrm?”

“Um . . .” She thought for a second. “The girjastu should be good.”

Dagny stepped out and started directing the dazed survivors. “I’ll take you down to the girjastu.” Then she turned to Noomi. “Come with me and help me get them safe and comfortable.”

Noomi knew her way around here, and Dagny wanted to keep an eye on her, I’m sure, so it made sense. Dagny didn’t ask me to join her, but she probably knew I wanted to be here, watching and waiting.

Pan had gotten split up from us a while ago, but I hadn’t let myself think about what he might be doing or if . . .

Finn I saw first, and he hugged me tightly—hard enough that it hurt. When he released me, I noticed his red-rimmed eyes under the amber torchlight.

The only time I had ever seen him look this shattered was after his sister died, but this time he was all bloody and banged up like he’d been in a car wreck.

“Go, rest while you can,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He only nodded and then moved down the hall, shuffling like a weary zombie. As survivors continued down the stairs, most passed me by without saying anything—like Sumi with her head down and an injured Jennet. They just followed Dagny’s voice, directing them to the girjastu with promises of water and blankets.

Tove went by very slowly, until he saw his sister, Sunniva. Then they both ran at each other and hugged. He had dried blood in his ears, and Sunniva cried when she got a good look at him.

I was waiting in the doorway to the armory, and Bryn paused as she reached me. Her arms were covered in both scars and fresh wounds, and sweat left trails through the blood and dirt staining her arms.

“Glad you’re safe,” she said, and that’s when I went in for a hug. She let me hug her, but her arms hung limply until she finally squeezed me back.

“I knew you’d be okay,” I said. “You always are.”

She coughed and pulled away from me. “Right now, I need to get something to drink.”

“Yeah, go,” I said. “I’ll see you in the girjastu soon.”

At least that’s what I hoped. The more time passed without seeing Pan, the more anxious I became. The survivors were trickling down slowly, but there really weren’t that many.

The Trylle Queen and King descended the stairs, and right behind them, Pan was helping Rikky down the stairs. I ran over to them, and I wanted to embrace Pan and cover him in relieved kisses, but Rikky couldn’t stand on her own, so I swooped in and put my arm around her.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as we walked down the hall.

“The Trylle Queen sent messages to all the kingdoms asking for volunteers,” Rikky explained. “It sounded too important to sit out just because I was mad at Pan.”

“Well, it’s very brave of you to be here,” I said.

“I’ve always helped those who need it.” Rikky put too much weight on her injured leg, and she winced.

“Lean on me,” I told her. “I got you.”

When we made it to the girjastu, Dagny and Sumi were organizing the space to be a makeshift camp. They had pushed the shelving toward the back to create private spaces for the more seriously injured to be treated, while the rest of the room had pillows and blankets for everyone to get comfortable and water buckets to start allowing them to drink and clean up.

Eliana had a spot right near the front door, where she had set up a cozy sitting area with blankets and hay for herself and two younger girls. As soon as she saw me, she invited us to join her, and Pan and I helped Rikky get settled in with her.

Once we’d finished, Pan and I offered to take water pails down to the well at the end of the hall. Everyone was coughing and dirty, not to mention many of them had serious wounds.

Someone had lit the torches that lined that hall, so Pan and I walked in the warm glow down the cool stone floor. We didn’t say anything at first. The relative silence—the sounds of talking muffled and echoed from the girjastu—was comforting after all the noise and violence of the day.

We were almost to the well when Pan stopped. I paused, looking back at him. His biceps had been wrapped in gauze, taut around the muscle as he stood with his hands on his hips.

“Pan?” I asked.

He stared down at the floor and rubbed his chin. “I . . .”

I set the pails down and stepped closer to him. Then he looked up at me, his lips slightly parted and his eyes dark as night. Without saying anything, he moved in a flash. His mouth on mine, one hand on my face and the other on my waist. I wrapped my arms around him, and he pressed me back against the wall.

He kissed me fiercely, hungrily, in a way I felt all the way through me. The way his hands felt, gripping me like he was afraid to lose me.

He rested his forehead against mine, and he inhaled deeply.

“I love you so much, Ulla,” he said, his voice husky. “I need you to know that. In case anything happens today.”

“I do know,” I said, and he looked me in the eye. “I love you so much. But nothing’s going to happen. We’re going to make it out of this, and we’re going to make our own happily ever after.”

He smiled wanly and kissed me again. “We should go. They need water.”

On our way back from the well, we passed by a brightly lit underground greenhouse of sorts, filled with all kinds of lush plants and vegetables. I stopped to peek in the open door, and Finn was standing in a circle, talking with Bryn, Sumi, and the Trylle Queen and King.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Pan and I had our hands full with water, so I kept on moving.

After all the water had been dispensed, I went over to where Dagny and Elof had holed themselves up in a corner with a pile of books. I sat down on the floor beside them, taking a quick break.

“How are you doing?” Dagny asked me.

“Okay. I just need a minute.” I looked over at her and Elof scouring dusty pages. “How are you guys doing?”

“If the situation wasn’t so dire, I’d be happier than an elk in spring,” Elof said dourly. “All these old books are a dream come true, but everything else is a nightmare.”

“The biggest obstacle is that most of this is written in runic chicken scratch,” Dagny said with a heavy sigh. “They’re difficult to read at best and impossible at worst.”

“I do have plenty of experience with that.” I leaned over to read over her shoulder.

“I’ve been struggling with this passage.” She held the book out to me. “I know it says something about Jörmungandr, the world ender, but the ink in the passage is smeared, so it’s nearly illegible.”

The page was written in an Old Norse derivative, and it had survived water damage at some point in its history. Beneath the smeared words was a relatively intact drawing of an ouroboros—a wyrm biting its own tail.

A few words stood out to me—allhardr, morginn, groenn—and I suddenly remembered, “The suns set in the green sky when the good morning becomes the violent night.”

“What?” Dagny asked.

“I think I know what I need to do,” I said.