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Rostfar was tossed and whirled around by an unrelenting current. She wasn’t just looking at the wyrdness; she was inside it. The rushing tide of pure magic snagged her like a leaf and pulled her up, up and away from the familiarity of Ys. Her very bones were unravelling, melting, spooling.
If she couldn’t find something to hold on to soon, she feared she might lose her soul completely.
I’m here.
A voice. Was it? Sound, like time and touch, didn’t exist here. The words seeped through her consciousness slowly.
Then there were fingers – the memory of fingers – curling into her.
Please listen to me.
“I can’t,” Rostfar said – or, thought she said. “I’m drowning.”
“No, Mama,” said Arketh, “you’re not.”
Rostfar opened her eyes. She stood in the same flourishing valley that had greeted her after her sleepwalking, all those months ago. Birds wheeled and circled overhead. Strange birds, like none she had ever seen before. They had bald heads like wrinkled old men and harsh, grating cries.
Looking down, Rostfar saw that the birds were circling two small, dark shapes.
One was Arketh, kneeling in the grass. And the other . . .
“What is that?”
“Her name’s Illarieth, Mama,” Arketh told her, chiding in a way that only a child can. “Remember?”
“Yes, I . . . I’m sorry.” Rostfar crouched on the other side of the thing that should have been Illarieth. It – she? – had been flayed until only sinew and gore remained, and she lay curled in a tight ball, shivering.
“It’s what she gave you.” Arketh continued speaking very softly as she ran her fingers over Illarieth’s stripped and bloodied flesh. Tiny white flowers blossomed beneath her touch.
“Did you see it too?” Rostfar made herself ask, although she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer. She knew she couldn’t shield Arketh forever, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing something so brutal so young.
Arketh looked up at her quizzically. “She didn’t give it to me.”
“Oh.” Rostfar exhaled with relief and nodded shakily. “So does this mean you’re – awake?”
“I don’t know.” Arketh frowned and drew her hands away from Illarieth.
The whole of Illarieth’s body was coated in living flowers now. Rostfar found this disturbing, but the flowers seemed to have helped; Illarieth’s breathing was calm, and she had stopped shivering.
Speaking slowly, not looking up, Arketh continued. “I’ve been up here for ages, haven’t I?”
“Three months,” Rostfar said. “Give or take.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.” Arketh tucked her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them. “I didn’t want the raven lady to have me. She was so . . . cold, and angry. And I don’t think she was going to help, even though she told me she was. Or—” she chewed her lower lip for a moment. “She was, but in a bad way. Not everyone would have been happy or safe.”
“You’ve been really brave, Ket,” Rostfar said. Arketh’s eyes darted up briefly, and Rostfar saw a glimmer of pride in them. She reached out, wanting to run her fingers through Arketh’s hair – but she couldn’t feel anything. It was like trying to touch fog.
“I said to her I’d rather be brave like you, and she wasn’t happy. I had to run away to where she couldn’t find me.”
“Have you been here alone?”
Arketh shook her head. “There’s lots of people if you know how to see them. Not just humans, but wolves and piskies and whales, and my friends from Erdansten who got sick. And . . .” she screwed up her face in concentration. “And effalents.”
Rostfar couldn’t help but smile. “What’s an effalent?”
“I don’t know.” Arketh shrugged. “They don’t have bodies here. But they sound very big and very kind. They’ve been helping me look after my friends by telling lots of stories so they don’t feel lonely.”
“They sound nice.”
“They are,” Arketh said seriously. Then her expression fell, and her shoulders slumped. “I want you to meet them, but not . . . not like this, for bad reasons. Because if you meet them now, then you’ll be – gone.”
Rostfar was glad she didn’t really have a body here, or she’d be crying. Her eyes still stung with the phantom-burn of tears, but they were painfully dry.
“It’s . . . it’s okay,” she said, but she could tell from the way Arketh trembled that it wasn’t.
“I have to go, anyway. I’m going to show the others how to get back into their bodies.” Arketh chewed on her bottom lip again. “And you have to go, too.”
“Go where?”
“Can’t you hear her calling?” Arketh asked and pointed. Rostfar looked down again and saw that Illarieth’s mouth was open – and still opening, yawning wider and wider. “You have to show them,” Arketh called out, and then everything dissolved.
“You have a remarkable child,” said Norðunn.
Rostfar might have smiled. She couldn’t tell. She and Norðunn were suspended in a bank of fog so thick it looked like frothed-up milk, and the star-studded sky stretched violet and endless above them.
“Yes,” Rostfar agreed softly. “She is.”
“She’s waiting for you.”
“But I’ll never get to her. You were right – we’re burning.” Rostfar’s breath would have shook, if she had needed to breathe. “I wish – I wish I could show them. Make them see everything that I’ve seen; to know what I know.”
“Then do it,” Norðunn said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
“I can’t!” Rostfar felt a surge of panic back in her body, like a tug on the end of a rope. “I’ve not got the magic like Aethren or the hrafmaer, and I can’t reach like Ket. I’m just – me.”
“And that is enough. When I said you couldn’t leave, you said ‘Come with me then’. Use that same strength.”
A long, clawed finger emerged from the nothingness that surrounded them and pressed into the hollow of Rostfar’s throat. She fell back, although falling shouldn’t have been possible in this place. Down and down through the fog she went, unravelling like a dropped skein of yarn.
Rostfar could stay here, she knew that now. Remain suspended in the twilit world of the eðir, without pain or worry or strife. Meet the fantastic creatures that Arketh had spoken of.
Except – she couldn’t.
With a great heave of effort, Rostfar gathered herself together. The not-world around her solidified until it had something like clarity, and she could look down on a sea of living, breathing lights.
A million souls sprawled out below her like insects glowing in the winter darkness. Rostfar wanted to see the people of Erdansten, and they showed themselves to her. Their lights were spiky and dark with terror, soaked in the sharp yellow-white that spelled out hatred and mistrust.
Beneath her fingertips, the memories that came from Illarieth bristled with a snarling desire – a desire to rend, to tear, to run away into the mists and never have to worry about anything ever again. Rostfar willed the memories to be still, and they listened to her with reluctance.
Far away in the clearing where her body lay, Rostfar felt the circle of protection around the Speaker fray. Flames slunk through the branches, hungry and searching for more to devour. She was out of time.
“Listen,” Rostfar called, not caring who heard. The wyrdness shook with her voice. Above and around and within her, Norðunn began to weep. “Listen.”
Illarieth’s memories lunged. And Rostfar let herself go.
Woman and wolf blurred together. Rostfar didn’t mind. All those people who had hidden behind the walls of Erdansten would feel as she had. Not just the agony of losing her pups, or the fear and hunger that had preceded it – but the joy of sitting by a fire while Yrsa slept at her side; of running with Myr and Bryn, spear in hand, braid flying out behind her. Of watching tiny, squirming bodies clamber over one another in their eagerness to feed. Of the grief in her heart and the horror on Faren’s face as he saw what he had done to Urdven. Of the look on Faren’s face when she had torn into him with teeth and fury.
Rostfar could feel Norðunn’s tears soaking them, soothing their wounds and quieting the crackling flames. That was good, she thought. But she didn’t have the energy to celebrate. All the pain and joy and fear and confusion and hope of the last few months had bled out of her, leaving only exhaustion behind.
She saw the two sides – both humans and wolves clouded in a haze of fear. She saw the humans waver, then stop completely. And then she saw nothing else, as the current of the wyrdness washed her away.
