When I awoke, it felt more like being thrown out of unconsciousness than waking. My eyes snapped open, and I lurched, my mind sure I was falling from a great height.
The cave was quiet, peaceful—at least until Keri and Fretyi, who lay pressed to my left side at two points, noticed I was awake. They jumped up, crooning like proud papas, running in circles, licking my face. They’d grown while I was out of it and both looked an easy ten pounds heavier. “Living up to your names, I bet,” I said, ruffling the fur behind two sets of ears.
My side ached, but it was a minor ache. What hurt worse was the hole in my belly where my stomach had once lived. I sat up and glanced around.
The remains of a fire glowed in the center of a large circle defined by the sleeping bodies of my companions. I stretched with care, wary of pulling stitches or tearing open my wound. A nagging, uncomfortable tightness lingered under my right arm, but nothing compared to what I had expected. I ran my hand over my ribs, but instead of a sutured wound, my fingers scrabbled across scar tissue. It was tender, but it didn’t hurt.
I shook my head, marveling at how fast I’d healed under Sif’s expert care. Images came flooding into my mind. More than images, memories, but of events I didn’t remember happening. I still remembered the battle with Kuthbyuhrn, but now I also remembered an alternate series of events—things I hadn’t lived through, and yet I had.
“Finally,” grunted Althyof from across the circle. He got to his feet and stirred the coals, then added fresh wood. He walked toward me, keen eyes traveling over my face, my right side. “You’ve lain in the grip of a high fever for more than a week, Tyeldnir.”
“A week?” I parroted, stunned.
“Sif refused to let us move you. Your spear wound became infected—something the damn Svartalf cooked up and gave to the attackers, no doubt.” That was from the new set of memories—dark forms swarming at Veethar out of the darkness. “What do you remember? I’ll fill in the gaps,” said the Tverkr.
“Well, that’s an interesting question, but I remember an ambush. When they swarmed at us out of the darkness, Veethar was out in front, and…I guess I had dreamed about a spear thrust arcing from the darkness because my mind showed me his death. I grabbed him and twisted him out of the way. When I turned back to the attackers, I…held something in my hands…”
“A spear,” said Althyof. “A spear you’d conjured.”
“Yes! I held a spear. The… Who was it that attacked us?”
“A small band of trolls.”
“Trolls? I can’t remember them.”
Althyof shrugged. “It’s no matter. I remember them enough for both of us.”
“Yeah. Anyway, the trolls who were planning to kill Veethar grew angry when I moved him. I… Were there two of them?”
“Three.”
“Okay, three of them came at me. I had the spear, and I tried to ward them off. One of them hit the spear dead-center with his massive club and shattered the spear-shaft. At the same time, another troll charged into me with his shoulder and sent me flying. I…I hit the wall of the cave and fell to the floor. When I landed, the spear went into my side… I don’t remember much after that: Sif working on me, something to do with Frikka and Veethar, but it’s not clear… Oh, and the dreams.”
“Dreams?” Althyof lifted his eyebrow.
“But what’s freaky is the other series of events I remember.”
“What?”
“In the other series of events, there was a big, undead bear. You had to keep singing a trowba to keep the lantvihtir off us, but the bear—”
“Do you mean Kuthbyuhrn?”
“Uh…yes. Do you remember this other version too?”
Althyof shook his head. “No. Kuthbyuhrn heard the ruckus of us fighting the trolls and came charging to our rescue. He and Kyellroona saved us.”
I shook my head. “You… How do you know their names?”
Althyof rolled his eyes. “Veethar speaks to the animals, remember? Lantvihtir, you say?”
“Yeah…” I shook my head. “Could all this be fever dreams?”
“No matter, go on with your story.”
“It was the bear, Kuthbyuhrn, who almost killed Veethar—who shattered my spear and sent me flying. It… Frikka…did something…”
“What did I do,” asked Frikka in a sleep-blurred voice, rustling in her bedroll.
“I…” I glanced her way and saw her shake her head. “I don’t remember.”
Althyof’s head snapped around to stare at Frikka with suspicion. She waved him off as if he were a mosquito.
“After that, it’s all just snatches of being awake while Sif worked on me. And the dreams.”
“There they are again,” muttered Althyof. “Tell me of these dreams.”
“Time for that later,” said Frikka, with a glance my way. She tried to communicate something with her eyes—she wanted me to keep mum about the dreams.
“I’m starving,” I said. “And parched. Didn’t anyone give me water?”
“Yes,” said Sif without opening her eyes. “Though you spat more back at me than you drank.” She sat up, weariness in every movement. “I’m glad you’re awake and yourself again, Hank, but I wish you’d chosen a time later in the day.” She stifled what looked to have been a huge yawn. “Now, Althyof, stop pestering my patient.”
“I wasn’t pestering—”
“Away with you,” Sif said, but she smiled to take the sting out of it. “Hank needs a check-up.”
Althyof glanced my way, and I smiled up at him. “Better do as she says, or she’ll make you drink one of her potions,” I said. Althyof nodded and walked to the pool to wash.
Frikka walked over and held out her hand. “We should speak privately.”
“Fine, but Sif—”
“We’ve known each other a long time,” said Sif. “I knew what she wanted.”
Frikka nodded, so I shrugged and let her pull me to my feet. We walked a short way deeper into the cave, out of earshot of the rest of the party. “What you did,” she began. “It is important that you not share the alternate version of the past.”
“The alternate…”
“Yes. The version of the battle with the undead bear.”
“You remember it that way, too?”
She shook her head. “I remember the undead bear killing Veethar in front of you.”
I stopped and stared at her. “It was true? My dream?”
Frikka nodded. “I couldn’t stand the prospect of going on without him, so I…so I…”
“You gave me a prophetic dream, so I would intervene?”
She nodded but wouldn’t—or couldn’t—meet my gaze. “I had no idea it would cause your injuries—I couldn’t see past the changes I would wreak because none of it had been written yet.”
“By the Nornir,” I muttered.
Frikka nodded again. “You’ve dreamed before—not troymskrok, but meaningful dreams. Yes?”
I recalled the dreams I’d had since coming to Osgarthr. I recalled the dream of finding Jane and Sig in Piltsfetl, only to have them murdered before my eyes. “Yes, I think so.”
“You have,” she said with a matter-of-fact demeanor. “But you never realized, you never knew you could change such things.”
“No.”
“But now, you do.”
“Yes.”
“And what happened in your fever-dreams…was that troymskrok?”
“I…don’t know. Maybe not.”
“Can you tell me of it?”
“There were three themes, or maybe two. One theme, which took place here in the cave, amounted to me speaking with Kuthbyuhrn and getting him to stop attacking. He told me about Kyellroona’s death and his own. We tried to get the lantvihtir to leave us alone, but they wouldn’t agree. The—”
“So, you changed their uhrluhk—theirs and Kuthbyuhrn and Kyellroona’s.”
I shrugged.
“How? How did you learn to do this?”
“The two other themes took place around the Tree of Life. One—”
“Iktrasitl?”
“Yes.”
“You saw them? You visited the Well of Urthr?”
“In my dream, yes.”
She was silent for a moment, staring into the darkness deep in the cave. “Do you… I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, Hank,” she said.
“I understand that, now. When the bear hit me—stabbed me with my spear and sent me flying—I landed near you. You were crying, trying to apologize. You rushed to my side, and in my pain and confusion, it seemed like you were trying to poison me, but you were only trying to staunch the flow of blood. I used my cloak—twisted my fettle—to get away from you, and when I came out of its effect, I collapsed. I didn’t understand—not until I…”
“Not until something happened at the Well of Urthr.”
I shook my head. “No, farther up in Iktrasitl. I think… Maybe I met Odin.” It sounded stupid to say it aloud, but I had no other explanation.
“To my knowledge, there is no Isir named Odin,” she said.
“It may be my subconscious mind filling in the gaps,” I said with a shrug. “In Mithgarthr, Odin is the ‘Allfather,’ the leader of the Isir. In our legends, he hung himself from Iktrasitl to learn runic magic or to gain wisdom or something of the sort.”
She arched her eyebrows, and a small smile played on the edges of her mouth. “And you only have to hang yourself on the Tree of Althyof.”
“In my dream, whoever it was hanging in the tree with me gave me his knowledge of the runes and his knowledge of the Gamla Toonkumowl.”
“Er thath svo?” she asked.
“Yes, it is so. Yek lyooa echke vith vini meena.”
“No. You are not one to lie to your friends—or anyone else.” Frikka cocked her head to the side. “Are we still friends?”
I stopped walking and turned to face her. “Yes, Frikka. What you did, it…it almost killed me, true, but it also saved Veethar and gave me what is perhaps the greatest gift I’ll ever receive.”
She nodded once, relief sketched in the lines around her eyes. “Can you tell me of it? Of the Well?”
“You have a better understanding of it than I do.”
She shook her head. “I can see what will happen, and I can change it, but it appears my methods differ from what you did—by a great deal. This…” She waved her arms wide. “This is much more than I can do.”
“The Well is at the base of Iktrasitl, but it isn’t a well. At least it wasn’t in my dream version. It was a campfire, around which the three Maids sat. The skein of fate…it’s carved into the bark of Iktrasitl—billions upon billions of runes describing all the events that make up all the lives of…well, everyone who ever lived, I guess. They stretched from the base of the tree up past where my vision could no longer resolve any details.”
“And how did you change…things?”
“Kuhntul gave me a chisel, and I carved through the line that described Kyellroona’s death, the death of the Tverkar who became lantvihtir in this cave, and Kuthbyuhrn’s death. The runes changed by themselves, to tell a different tale. The story went that Kuthbyuhrn let loose a mighty roar—”
“And the Tverkr saw the error of their ways,” said a deep, resonant voice from the darkness.
“Hello, Kuthbyuhrn,” I said.
“Hello, friend. It seems I should remember your name, but I do not.”
“My name is Hank, and I’m glad to see you again, but I don’t understand how you are still alive.”
“Uhrluhk,” he said and chuffed through his nose.
“Yes,” I said.
“It is what it is,” he said, with a curious inflection in his voice.
I laughed. “Yes, that too.”
“I don’t know why I said that, friend Hank,” Kuthbyuhrn said.
“It was part of a conversation we had, but which never happened.”
Kuthbyuhrn stepped out of the darkness, and he was beautiful, as he had been in my dreams. Alongside him stepped another bear, even more beautiful than Kuthbyuhrn.
“Kyellroona?” I asked.
She chuffed gently through her nose and lifted her head. “My mate has dreamed of you for years and told me stories. In my heart, we are friends already.”
“I’d like nothing more.”
“Uhrluhk,” she said and chuffed through her noise.
“Yes,” I said. “And I am glad to meet you.” In the corner of my eye, I noticed Frikka staring at me. “What?” I turned to face her.
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone but Veethar speak to animals.” She turned and bowed to the two magnificent bears. “Give them my respects, please. I’ll let you get reacquainted.”
Smiling, I turned back to my friends. “I don’t understand how you are both still alive, but I’m glad. And you were wrong, Kuthbyuhrn. You aren’t a simple bear. Not at all.”
The expression mirrored on those two ursine faces left me with no doubt that bears can—and do—smile.