Einar prepares me soup and tea, and both he and Oski cuddle next to me to give me as much warmth as possible. Next to them and the fire, I grow sleepy, but we have so much to tell each other.

“I have the time stones,” I say between sips of soup. “My new runes.” I hold up my pouch, and the runes emit a soft glow, tinkling together like soft music.

“Já,” says Oski. “Now you are a proper runecaster.”

“I knew you’d get them,” Einar whispers.

“Now I have to figure out how to use them,” I say.

Oski laughs.

“You think I’m joking, but I’m not.”

We sit in silence for a bit, until I feel warmer. I lean back to look at the sky and feel a jolt of surprise when I see that the red moon is close to the sun.

“How long have I been gone?” I ask, panic rising in my throat.

I start gathering my things in a frantic rush.

“Runa, calm down,” Einar says, trying to help me.

“How long?” I demand.

“Days,” says Oski. “Many days.”

I pause. Days. “How can that be?” I glance at Einar and see that he looks very tired and drawn, as if he hasn’t slept or eaten in a long time.

“So long that the elf starved me,” Oski complains.

Einar packs our things in silence, ignoring Oski.

“What do you mean?” I ask, remembering the large portion of soup Einar forced into me after I got out of the water.

“He saved it all for you,” Oski says, picking up their sword and marching off.

I turn to Einar. “Is that true?”

He shrugs, back to his shy way of communicating without words.

“You must be starving,” I exclaim, scrambling to find any scraps of food in our pots or in my pack that I can give him. I find a tiny pinch of fish in the pot.

“Runa,” Einar says. “I’m fine.”

“No,” I say. “I need to do a spell, find a way to make this into more.”

“We don’t have time,” Einar says. “We had to make sure you were warm and fed, but now we must go. We’ve heard stirrings in the trees. Katla is watching us. There are signs. Scorched earth, carcasses, bits of yellow dust everywhere. Screams in the night, Runa. Terrible screams. She knows you have the stones.”

I nod. “Yes. I saw her when the marbendill forged the runes for me.”

“The what?” Einar asks, shocked. “You saw a marbendill?”

“It’s a story for another time,” I say. “But Katla was there—in my vision, at least. She tried to get my stones. She wants them.”

“Of course,” Einar says, pacing. “Of course she would want them. They’d be almost as valuable as the moonstone itself.”

“What is our plan?” Oski calls, walking back to us. They are carrying a dead bird on the end of their sword. Not game for us to eat, but a dried-out husk, yellowed and stinking, more evidence that something came through here and left death in its wake.

“We must continue,” I say. “Onward to moonwater.”

“But which way?” Einar asks.

“My new runes will help us find the way. But I need to do one final thing to get ready. I need to charge them. Now that the red moon is constant in the sky, and full, it should be even more powerful than a regular moon charge. At least, I hope so.”

“Red moons, regular moons, what’s next?” Oski says. “Perhaps the moon will vanish one day. And all of us with it!” They laugh their bellowing laugh. “Ah, that would be a delight.”

Einar shakes his head at them. “What do you need?” he asks me.

“Well,” I say, “according to the spellbook’s instructions, the ritual involves laying my new runes onto the bare earth with their steads pointing in all the directions of the compass. I need dirt.”

Einar sets to work, clearing rocks from the ground to uncover the dark, rich soil of the island. There is a lot of volcanic ash here, being so close to the sea and the fissures beyond the shore, and I remember Amma telling me that this type of dirt is excellent for growing things. I hope it helps my runes grow in power.

Carefully I spill the newborn runes out onto the cleared area and arrange them with their symbols facing every point of the earth. I place a cup before me to hold the elements of the ritual and add a pinch of dirt inside it.

“I will need you both to place your hands on me,” I say. Einar and Oski stand behind me as I kneel in the dirt. Their hands are a comforting presence on my shoulders. “Don’t be afraid if you feel…something.”

“What?” asks Einar.

“You are not going to set me on fire again, are you, runecaster?” Oski asks.

I shake my head. “Shush. Be quiet for once, and whatever happens, don’t move.”

I hear Oski mutter to Einar, “Do you have a bad feeling about this?”

I want these runes to be as powerful and as connected to me as possible. I am going to be drawing the energy of the red moon into them, as well as the power of a Valkyrie and an elf. But I need more. If I could stand to sacrifice a part of my body, that would ensure the connection, but I worry that too much violence would corrupt my runes. I want them to remain pure. I don’t wish to use them for evil. Sýr warned me long ago to never use the runes for nefarious deeds, for once corrupted, they will steal my soul. A power-hungry runecaster is a dangerous force. I’d be no better than Katla.

“Knife,” I say to Einar. He gives it to me without hesitation.

I saw off a chunk of my hair and place it in the cup.

“Humph,” Oski grumbles. “I have none, and you cut yours off willingly. Ah, what I would do for that wild mane.”

“Oski,” Einar hisses. “You must be quiet.”

Blood is essential when charging runes. I pierce the tip of my left little finger with Einar’s blade and squeeze several drops into the cup. To this I add some spit and a piece of chewed-off fingernail. I pull free a few eyelashes from each eye and drop them in as well.

Now for a tear. This is the easiest to produce, because all I have to do is think of my amma giving me the vegvisir clasp, and of my beloved Sýr lulling me to sleep each night. How I miss them, their faces, their smells, their comforting presence. Once I start crying, it’s difficult to stop, and I feel both Oski and Einar give me gentle squeezes with their hands. I wonder if they can feel what I feel.

“Flame,” I say. “Einar, do you have a fire-rock?”

He pulls a well-used one from his cloak, and I strike the flinty rock with his knife, showering the cup with sparks until the hair singes and the blood sizzles.

I blow the smoke over my runes, pledging myself to them.

“I am yours, and you are mine,” I intone. “My will is yours, and yours is mine.” I touch each rune, then bring them all to my heart and hold them there as I gaze at the moon. “By the light of the red moon we are bound through time. Even death will not break this bond of mine.”

When I finish saying the words, it’s as if the world falls away under my feet. Oski and Einar’s hands disappear, and I spin around to find them gone. I am alone in a barren land, and I do not recognize it. I spin in circles, seeing nothing but desolation and a gray sky with no sun and no moon. I gather my runes from the ground and place them back in my pouch.

“Sýr!” I call out, hoping she will hear me.

“Yessss,” I hear a voice hiss in the distance.

When I turn to look, I see a figure approaching. Katla.

Her yellow cloak floats behind her as she advances on me, wielding her dripping daggers in each hand like a pair of fangs.

I won’t let her strike me again. “Do your worst, witch,” I challenge. “For I am not the child you met before.”

Katla cackles, throwing her head back. As she does, a serpent’s head appears in its place, snapping and hissing at me. She is Grabak. I know it.

“Vile creature!” I shout. I clasp my runes. “DIE!” I project the image of Kaun, the rune of death, in my mind’s eye.

The snake head disappears, and instead of Katla standing before me, it’s now Sýr. She looks at me with an unreadable sadness.

“Why have you failed me?” Sýr asks.

I know this must be a trick. But it’s so real. Too real.

“Lies!” I cry out, but Sýr’s image remains.

“I waited so long,” Sýr says. “And you never came.” She reaches her hands out to me, but her fingers begin to crumble into dust, and then her hands and arms, and soon she falls apart in front of me. My beloved sister, now a pile of yellow dust.

“No, Sýr!” I shout.

“Forget her,” says a familiar, soft voice.

I turn and see Einar and Oski standing behind me. Einar offers his hand.

“Come with us,” he says. “We can leave, run away, forget all of this.”

“We can find a new land,” says Oski. “One across the sea. A new home.”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “You’re not real. None of this is real.”

I clutch my runes and close my eyes. “Stop this,” I say. I open my eyes and Katla is there again, walking in a slow circle around me. Her eyes are dead black, and she reminds me of the green shark that patrolled the water around the marbendill’s lair.

“What is real?” asks Katla. “Who can you trust, Runa? How do you know the half elf and the Valkyrie are not in my command, hmm?”

I shake my head. “No. Not Einar. Not Oski. Never.”

“How do you know they’re not wasting your time? You will never make it to moonwater.”

I reach into my pouch and pull out a rune, knowing that any one of the them should be powerful enough to get me away from this vision. I receive Hagall, the rune of transformation. “Take me far away,” I whisper to it.

The rune is too strong, for I am not transported back to my present. Once again I find myself in a barren land. I stand on an immense glacier, and this time there is a dead body lying prone before me. It wears a black cloak with brilliant blue lining. It has wild, white hair, frozen solid in a halo around the face. It’s me.

“No,” I say, backing away.

I don’t look behind me, and I trip on a ridge of ice, causing me to stumble over the edge of a crevasse. I struggle to regain my footing, but I’m falling. I know I’m falling, and I know I will never be found.

I scream, “Bjarkan!” The name escapes my lips as I fall into blackness. This rune of secrets is also the rune of new life, and it is by pure instinct that I call its name.

I land on my back, hard, and it feels like every one of my bones has shattered.

I blink and I return to my friends. I’m lying on the ground staring up at the red moon. Oski is looking down at me with concern, and Einar is holding me. He pushes my hair back from my face.

“Runa!” he exclaims. “Are you okay?”

I struggle to sit, my whole body aching. “No, but I will be.”

“Runecaster,” Oski says. “Your eyes.”

“W-what?” I ask.

I look at Einar. “What is it?”

“One of your eyes has changed,” he says. “One that was blue is now brown.”

“What? It must be from my rune,” I say, trying to stand up. “I used Hagall, and the changes can be permanent. We must go. I had a vision of Katla. I feel that she is close.”

I gather my runes once again and clutch them to my chest.

“Show me the way,” I command. A vision floods my mind. I see crumbling ruins next to a wild sea.

“The troll castle,” I say. “That is the way we must go.”

“Troll castle!” Oski exclaims. “Have you gone mad, runecaster?”

“I don’t know this place,” says Einar. He casts an uneasy look between us.

“My amma said the troll castle is a region of great walls and outcroppings of rock next to the shoreline,” I explain. “It was abandoned after the great massacre of the trolls in ancient times. It is nothing but ruins now. Nothing to fear,” I add, with a pointed look at Oski.

“Runecaster,” Oski says in a warning tone. “If there is even one troll…”

“My runes want me to go this way,” I say. “So I will go.”

Oski sighs. “I do admire your taste for danger,” they say. “Still, the troll ruins are unprotected. If we are ambushed, there is nowhere to run. There is the sea on one side, and if you get too close you will be washed away forever, for this is the wildest part of the ocean. There’s nothing but impenetrable rock on the other side. The way to go is forward.”

“Forward is the only direction we need,” I say, giving Einar a look.

“I agree,” says Einar. “And it’s Runa’s choice. She leads us, so she decides.”

Oski shrugs. “I will follow her anywhere.”

“Good,” I say. “Now let’s go. The witch doesn’t rest, and we can’t either.”