I sleep without dreaming. A soft fluttering against my cheek wakes me, and as I open my eyes to the darkened shed, I see a cluster of moths. They hover over me, each one in turn sparking aflame, passing the firelight back and forth in a kind of frenzied dance.

“Sýr?” I whisper.

As if in answer, the moths move as a group toward the door. I grab my spear and tighten my cloak around me. The moths want to go, and I am sure they want me to follow.

I ease open the door, letting a loud creak escape into the cold night air, and the moths fly out, sparking as if to beckon me. The alleyway in front of the tavern is empty save for a sleeping man propped against a barrel. He’s drunk on mead and doesn’t stir when I step out into the night.

The moths move quicker now, and I hurry to keep up, my boots squishing in the mud-caked footsteps of so many others.

The moths lead me to a locked shed that looks like it’s used to store dry goods or tools. There is no sign of the Jötnar sentinels, and for that I am grateful. No indications of Katla. To be sure, I consult my runes.

“Reveal the witch to me,” I whisper, holding out my rune pouch.

They clatter and glow, sending off little beams of light that pierce the darkness. The beams fizzle and fall all around, settling in grooves and footprints and creating a pattern of Katla’s activity. Everywhere she’s been glows a sickening yellow. I see her footprints, pointed at the ends like knives, and smears on the building’s doorframe that suggest her brushing against it. Her fingerprints are on the door handle. The whorls of her imprint aren’t like a mortal’s in any sense. They form a pattern like a serpent’s body. I am careful not to touch them.

The markings fade, and there are no other signs of her. Wherever Katla is, it’s not close by. I push in the door, peeking inside the murky darkness. The moths flutter inward, illuminating the space, and my heart lurches in my chest. My beloved sister is chained in the corner like an animal.

“Sýr!” I exclaim in a loud whisper. I rush to her and kneel to embrace her.

“Runa,” she gasps. “My Runa.”

She is emaciated, her ribs visible beneath her dress. Cuts and bruises cover her body and her once long and lush hair is choppy and matted. Katla must have hacked it off for use in her wicked spells. If I ever get the chance, I will cut that witch to pieces. But for now I must try to free my sister. I grab the chains and examine the heavy locks.

Sýr moans. “Stop, Runa,” she says. “It’s no use.”

“No, I won’t give up. I will get you out of here.” I wonder if her bonds are enhanced by a spell. “My runes can help me break through these. I just need a little time.”

“No, Runa,” she says. “Look at me.” She searching my face with her eyes. “By Freyja!” she exclaims. “Why do you look so old?”

At first I don’t understand, and then I remember the disguising spell I used earlier. Taking my runes in hand, I wipe the soft leather of the pouch over my face.

“Better?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “There is the Runa I have longed to see again. I knew you were coming. I left messages for you. I tried to speak to you, to cross the distance between us.”

“Sýr, I want to know everything. I want to sit and talk with you forever. But I have to get you out of here before Katla comes.”

Her eyes have a ghostlike sheen to them, as if she’s fading out of existence. Is it Katla sucking her life force? Or is it the stone?

“Where is the moonstone?” I ask.

“I have it,” she says. “But it is almost drained. Katla draws from it even more when she takes over my body. But she cannot wield it herself. I have made sure of that.”

I shudder, thinking about Katla possessing my sister’s body. “I can get help. I’ll go to the elders. They’ll stop her.”

“No, you can’t.”

“But why, Sýr?”

“You have to let things be,” she says. “You must leave me and battle Katla in the circle, or else she won’t get the stone.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” I ask. “You want her to get the stone?”

Sýr is shaking and I know she won’t be able to hang on much longer. “I don’t have time to explain everything, Runa. You have to trust me. We must make sure Katla gets the stone, but it has to be in the circle after it charges in the reflecting pool. It needs to be strong. As strong as possible.”

“Where is it? How did you disappear it?” I am getting more scared by the moment.

“I didn’t disappear it,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no time now, Runa. You must go. I wanted to see you one last time, sister. My beloved baby sister.” Sýr starts to cry, her sobs racking her thin chest, and I throw my arms around her.

“You’ve grown so beautiful,” Sýr says through her tears. “As I always knew you would.”

“How can I leave you now that I’ve found you again?” I cry.

“You must. I am weak, Runa. So weak. Now you are the strong one.”

I shake my head, but I know it is true.

“Trust me, Runa. When Katla holds the stone, she won’t understand what it is, what it truly is.”

“What is it, Sýr?” I whisper.

“It’s a time stone, Runa. The most powerful of all the time stones, and so few can wield it.”

“A time stone,” I say. I pull open my rune pouch and cast my own time stones on the ground.

Sýr gasps. “It’s all coming true,” she says. “You are who I dreamed you to be.”

“What does that mean? I’m so confused, Sýr. I want you back. I want to go home. Our village, our people. Frigg. Amma.”

Sýr nods. “I have felt the loss in my heart. When Frigg was killed, I knew my old life was over.”

“Sýr, Frigg is not dead. She is under the power of an enchanted dust. If we defeat Katla, then maybe the spell will be broken and Frigg can be saved. Maybe you can have the life you dreamed of.”

My sister cries harder, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. “Please promise me,” she begs, “that when you return home you will help Frigg. And tell her…tell her she was the only one I ever loved.”

I rest my head on Sýr’s shoulder, taking in her smell. Still the same.

“Listen to me, Runa,” she says. “The runecasters who know the moonstone’s true nature are those who’ve been blessed to hold it and survive. Runa, there is so much you don’t know, and I fear I have not prepared you.” Her voice is strangled with emotion. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I tried. You must forgive me.”

“For what, Sýr?” I ask. I lift my head to look at her.

“For what I must do,” she says, meeting my eyes with a sadness I’ve never seen before.

I shake my head. “No, no. I don’t want to know.”

“When you were born, we knew you were special,” she starts.

“You mean a freak,” I say.

“Hush! Special. But—” She hesitates. “There was something odd too. You seemed to shake, like the light of a candle before it flickers out. And then Mother realized that you weren’t connected to this time.”

I stare at Sýr, starting to comprehend what she is saying.

“Runa, you were still attached to our mother with your life cord,” says Sýr. “And you were jumping around in time. You took her with you.”

The air is still and silent between us. “What happened to her?” I am terrified to hear the answer, but I must know.

Sýr shakes her head. “One moment you were there in my arms, still attached to Mother, and we were admiring you. Then you vanished, and she vanished too. And when you came back, appearing once again in my arms, Mother did not come back with you.”

I swallow hard. I’m dizzy and overwhelmed. “I killed our mother?”

“No!” Sýr says. “She’s gone. Lost in another time. And…”

“What?” I ask.

“I thought it was me,” Sýr says, her voice quiet. “I was jealous while Mother was expecting you. I dreaded your birth. And when you both vanished, I thought I had wished you away. It took me a long time to understand. And when I did, I made it my life’s goal to protect you and keep you here. With me. In the now.”

Sýr looks at me with pleading eyes, begging my forgiveness.

“So every night, when you did the sleeping spell—” I begin.

“It was a time spell,” Sýr finishes. “To keep you with me. I was able to do it because I carried the moonstone.”

I take all this in. “Could Mother be alive?” I ask at last, thinking back to the vision of her at the entrance to moonwater.

“I don’t know. All I know is that you’re the one who will wield the moonstone.”

“But you’ve been using it all this time!” I say.

“No, Runa,” she says. “I inherited the stone. It was low on power after Mother disappeared, and it has been killing me ever since. Look at me,” she says, opening her arms as wide as the shackles will allow. “This isn’t from Katla. It’s from the stone. And when it is charged in the reflecting pool, it will be more powerful than I can handle.”

“If you can’t do it, then how—?”

“You must believe,” she says, interrupting me. She nods at my runes. “Those,” she says. “And that.” She looks at my spear. “Those are the tools of a powerful caster. The most powerful I have ever seen.”

I gather my runes and put them away, then reach out to touch Sýr’s cheek. Gone is the soft, tanned skin that glowed with youth and health.

“I’m scared,” I say, not without shame.

Sýr nods. “That’s because you are still bound by my time spell. And once I remove it, you will be who you truly are. I’m so sorry I had to do it this way.”

A surge of panic goes through me. “What will happen? Will I disappear? Will you?”

Sýr shakes her head sadly. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Runa. I’m sorry I had to keep this from you.”

“Sýr, please,” I plead. “Let’s find another way. It’s all I have left of you.” I embrace her again, crying into her neck.

Sýr whispers in my ear. “I must take it off now, Runa, and you must fight to stay here and use your own strength. I know you can do it. I unbind you, Runa. I set you free.”

As she says these last words, I feel myself falling fast, as if plummeting through the earth. I tumble in darkness, and I’m jolted back and forth by alternating flashes of light. I realize that I am slipping around in time.

How do I stay? How do I get back?

Sýr, I call out with my mind and heart. Help!

The bright light of day rushes at me, and I’m sitting on the floor of our dwelling back home. I am very small, and Sýr is a teenager. She feeds me porridge, and I am filled with love.

Back again into the darkness, tumbling faster now. Another flash, and I am an infant, newly born, staring at my mother’s face. Darkness. Light. Over and over I fall. Over and over I visit some small moment of my life. Feeding Núna, my raven. Sending Amma’s body out to sea. Waving at Father’s ship from the shore. Eating shark with Sýr. Casting runes with Sýr. Always Sýr.

Blackness. Cold. A sharp, searing pain in my left side. And then the bright blue sky is spinning past. I land on a hard surface, the breath knocked out of me, and it takes me a long time to sit up. When I do, I recognize nothing.

I am alone on a small hilltop. There is nothing but green fields of tall wild grass as far as I can see. I am naked and cold. Wet leaves cling to my body.

There is a lone tree on the hilltop with me, its branches bare. Sap runs from a gouge along its trunk. As I look at the tree’s wound, I become aware of my own injury. My side pulses, and I reach down to examine it. I touch the edges of the wound and then cry out in pain as a hot, stabbing sensation rips through my abdomen. How did this happen? Where am I?

Even as the terror of my wound rushes through me, it is replaced by a new fear. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know my own name. I struggle to recall something, anything, of what happened before this, but my mind is blank. Did I exist moments earlier, or not? Somewhere deep inside my soul, I know that I was someone. I am someone.

I’m lightheaded. The blood runs from my wound, thick and dark, and it smells like death, like bodies festering in the earth, and of long-forgotten things cast into pits. I turn around, and in the distance I see a golden lake and a dark figure standing next to it.

I tumble out of control again. What was I doing? There is something I need to do. What is it? I’m lost. And then, through the fog, a voice.

Runa, the voice calls. Stay with me.

Sýr.

The love of my sister calls me back. All I can do is focus on the love. Sýr is my guiding light. In a flash I am beside Sýr once again in the dark room, kneeling beside her bound form.

“Please,” Sýr says. She is frantic. “Go! They’re coming. You need to be strong.”

“No, Sýr, I don’t want to leave you.”

My runes begin to clatter, and the sound they make is a name, repeated over and over. Katla. Katla. Katla.

“Go, Runa, run. When you need me, look for the moths. Today, tomorrow, it will always be the two of us, Runa. Forever,” Sýr says, her voice shaking.

I kiss my sister on the cheek. “I will set you free, Sýr. And I will kill Katla.”

My runes are reaching a crescendo now, warning me of Katla’s imminent arrival. I hurry through the small window that opens into the back lane. Once I’m out, I look inside at my sister one last time.

“I love you,” I whisper, before running away into the night.

I sprint through the filthy lanes, crying and desperate to get as far away from Katla as possible. But how will I ever do this without Sýr? How can I be strong enough?

Sýr may have lifted her binding spell, but I feel more confused than ever.

I turn a corner and run into someone hard and unyielding. It’s Einar.

He grabs me and whirls us behind a stall, crushing me with his hug.

“Runa!” he exclaims. “Thank the gods. I have been searching everywhere. I found your shelter and your pack, abandoned, and I thought the worst.”

I look at him, at the concern and fear in his eyes, and I let him hold me in silence for a while.

“Oski?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Come,” he says. “I found a place.”

We steal through the lanes to a hay stall, where we collapse in a heap. Einar has brought my pack. He hands it to me.

“I wasn’t sure if…you know,” he says in explanation.

“If Katla killed me already?”

“No!” he says. “But this place…this place is strange. I feel danger everywhere.”

I nod. “I found Sýr.”

“And?”

“It isn’t good.”

He doesn’t say anything. And of all the things I love about Einar, this is perhaps my favorite. He knows when to be quiet. When to let things be. He opens his arms, and I lean into him. We stay like this as the night brightens toward day. It may be the last time we ever do this.

“How did you get in?” I ask at last.

“Oh,” he says, stroking a piece of my hair, “I thought of you. And then you opened the door.”

“Me?” I look at him.

He shrugs. “I knew it wasn’t real,” he says. “You were like a light in the darkness. And I followed you. As I’ve been doing all this time.”

He gazes at me, his golden eyes dilated wide in the dim light of dawn but as glowing as ever. I lean in and press my lips to his. I half expect him to taste like honey, but he does not. He’s warm and spicy, and softer than I imagined. When I pull away he doesn’t try to kiss me back, but he doesn’t let me move too far away either. He holds me in place, looking at me like he’s never seen me before.

“When this is all over,” he says, “will you do that again?”

“I will,” I say.

He smiles the barest of smiles, and it coincides with the tolling of a loud bell.

The competition is starting.

I scramble to my feet, gathering my things, but Einar doesn’t move.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I wish we had more time,” he says.

I know he is afraid that I might die battling Katla. I am afraid too. But I can’t indulge those thoughts. And I need Einar.

“There will be time for us,” I say in response.

“When?” he asks.

“I don’t know. But I will find a way to make it myself, if I have to.”

I swing my cloak on, feeling stronger than I have in a long while. I don’t know if it’s because Sýr lifted the binding spell or if it’s because of the kiss, but I feel alive. I suppose walking into certain death can have that effect on a person.

Einar stares at me. “I wish you could see yourself the way I do,” he says.

I smile at him and offer a hand to help him up.

“I think I do,” I say. “Now.”

I hand him his own pack and pull up the hood on my cloak.

“Whatever happens,” I say, “you must take care of yourself. Help your clan. If I can’t kill her, then you have to.”

He adjusts his pack and draws his cloak tighter, shivering a little, as if he’s cold.

“I promise,” he says. “I’ll see it through.”

We stand there, a beam of cold morning light shining through the slats overhead. We’ve come so far, and it feels like a lifetime since Katla first came to my village to steal the stone.

“Runa, I—” He struggles to find the words.

“Tell me after,” I say, turning to go.

I walk away from the stall, leaving him behind. I can’t look back or else I’ll never leave.

We’ll have our time. When we’re back on the black sands of home, and the world isn’t falling apart around us.