Late that same night, Jinky and I beat a quick path to Alpenstock and its sweat lodge. She wanted no assistance with the sacred fire, so I, again, sat back and observed her. She was cool and efficient in all things. I’d have called it dispassionate, once upon a time. I now saw her as confident. And focused. And hardly without passion. She was out here in the middle of the night assisting me, though I still had never fully explained why. She deserved her shaman wings, all right.

Once inside the small space, I gave myself freely to the ceremony and transition. Again, upon passage, I felt myself dissolve as if into smoke.

A whinny roused me from slumber. My lids parted slowly, reluctantly. Grasses tickled my cheek and nose. I stifled a sneeze as I sat up with a cottony head and unwieldy limbs. Above me, upon a tree limb, the lark sang: Tee, tee, hoo. Tee, tee, hoo.

When the song gave way to voices, I stood, crouching behind the tallest of nearby reeds.

Frigg and most of her maidens were still gathered with only a few noticeable changes. The freckled tomboy held the reins of a horse, the white-blond identical twins were no longer present, but two swans circled the glassy waters beneath a giant weeping tree.

For a better view, I stepped forward, crunching a branch underfoot. I gasped, thinking I’d surely alerted them to my presence, but, as before, they took no notice of me.

“Hurry, my maidens, for evil threatens,” Frigg urged. “One queen is consumed by rage, while the other grows desperate and restless. Should they conspire, it would be catastrophic. Ragnarök, I fear.”

The women reacted with cries of alarm.

“We prepare,” Frigg said, silencing their outburst. “Bleik, Norn of Childbirth, and Eyra, Norn of Healing, have you my magical aliments, kept in another’s stead?”

At the mention of “another’s stead,” the lark startled, flying off with an agitated kerr, kerr, kerr. Something about the bird’s vacant post caught my eye. There, wedged between two limbs, was the pretty young girl’s upside-down basket.

The two with similar dark features — the one who held a golden bowl and the other who held a mortar and pestle — stepped forward. “Yes, Goddess Frigg,” they answered as one.

They handed items to Frigg, but from my position I could not make them out. Frigg took it quickly and dropped it into the pocket of her voluminous skirt.

“And Helin, Maiden of Protection, do you and Orbotha, Chooser of the Dead, stand ready?”

“We do,” answered the sword bearer and the shroud wearer.

“Then Saga, Maiden of Poetry, recount our epic preparations. Already Blith and Frith, my Swan Maidens, swim in the wells of fate. Only Nyah, my Carrier of Messages, remains.”

Nyah opened her pouch. From the fold of her skirt, Frigg removed objects and carefully placed them in Nyah’s bag.

I stepped closer, hoping to see what it was that Nyah received, but I only caught her folding down the large flap and buckling its closure. With the satchel stored across her chest, Nyah swung atop the horse. Once secure in the saddle, the horse took two or three thundering strides, vaulted over the water, and was, astoundingly, airborne. With a great flap of wings, one of the swans also lifted into the air and fell behind Nyah’s horse as if a contrail to her flight.