Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2) Read online

  After listening to Heimdall’s concerns about dark shadows and possible surveillance—for $4.99 a minute on the Norns’ 900-number Mystic Sisters Hotline —they adopted a solemn tone and warned there was a summer frost coming, and that he might want to buy a new sweater.

  “But first, I want to get over to Gimbledown.” Maggie slowed her pace and frowned down at the text in the guidebook. “No. Gamlebyen. Right. Gamlebyen.” She squeezed Heimdall’s arm. “A walking tour of medieval Oslo might be nice. The whole trip doesn’t have to be all Vikings all the time.”

  Heimdall’s spine tingled, warning of impending ambush. He started to glance back yet again when Maggie grabbed his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her. “You need to knock that off. Now.”

  Heimdall shoved his hands into the front pockets of his blue jeans.

  Maggie released his chin. “I know it’s weird for you, being back here after so much time. Maybe that’s why you’re on edge. I guess many things are a lot different now.”

  Heimdall raised his eyebrows in a half-smile. “Many things?”

  “Okay, everything.” Maggie closed the guidebook and tucked a strand of golden-brown hair behind her ear. “It’s only natural that you would feel out of sorts, displaced even.” She stepped closer and looked up into his face. “I don’t want to intrude on all your memories or whatever else you’ve got going on. But I do want to be with you. Here in Norway. I want to understand your past and your family’s history. Even if it’s an awful lot to try to take in all at once, you know?”

  Heimdall pressed his lips together and nodded. “Okay.”

  Maggie rose up on her tip-toes to kiss his cheek, then gestured toward him with the guidebook. “So, off to Gamlebyen, then?”

  “Lead the way.”

  Maggie paused, then looked down and opened the guidebook again. “Right. You don’t know your way around modern Oslo. Why should you?”

  Glancing up to gauge her surroundings, she pointed east past Oslo Cathedral. “This way, I think.”

  They started walking again, Maggie’s face still buried in the book.

  Heimdall glanced around at the open square, the blooming trees, and the ornate buildings he guessed had some important governmental or social function. This wasn’t at all the Oslo he remembered. This wasn’t even the country he remembered, from so many centuries ago.

  “Where are we right now?”

  Maggie groaned. “Studenterlunden. I swear, for a supposed Norse deity, you’re particularly useless in your own land. If I’d known I’d have to plan this whole trip myself . . .” She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Your mother.” Maggie dialed. “I promised I’d check in.” She waited for the call to connect.

  “Hello, Frigga!” Maggie exclaimed a bit too cheerfully. Heimdall wasn’t certain he liked how well his girlfriend and his mother were getting along. Things hadn’t been easier before Maggie knew he was part of an ancient pantheon, but at least then he didn’t have Maggie and Frigga teaming up on him about what shirt he should wear and the condition of his boots.

  “What’s that? I think we have a bad connection. What did you say about soup?” Maggie smiled up at Heimdall. “Yes, I’m having a delightful time. But I get the feeling an awful lot has changed since you were last here.”

  A tall figure in sweats stepped into their path. The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled low over his face, and he clutched a copy of the same guidebook that Maggie carried. Heimdall’s skin prickled as adrenaline poured into his system.

  “Excuse me . . . ?” The deep voice carried a familiar accent Heimdall couldn’t quite place. “Can you help me find Vikingskiphuset?”

  On instinct, Heimdall tried to pull Maggie back from the towering stranger, but she shrugged out of his grasp.

  “Hang on a second,” she said into the phone, then looked up at the hooded man. “The Viking ship museum, right?”

  “Yes, please.” His face in deep shadow, the man was at least two feet taller than Maggie, and he held his guidebook close to his chest with massive hands.

  “You’ll like it.” Maggie indicated Heimdall with a tilt of her head. “We were just there yesterday.” Maggie dropped the open phone into her purse and flipped through her book. “It’s a couple of miles, but I think we can figure out the best way for you to get there.”

  The giant shifted his weight and his hood inched back, revealing his pointed chin and long nose.

  Heimdall’s breath caught in his throat. Heart pounding, he stepped forward to place himself between Maggie and the tree-sized tourist, but an unexpected tap on his shoulder brought him whirling around to find another hooded giant standing behind him.

  Heimdall cracked a nervous smile. “You guys with a traveling basketball team or something?”

  The second man yanked his hood down to expose his face. Heimdall’s blood ran cold.

  “No.” Heimdall shook his head, eyes widening. “This is impossible.”

  The tall man before him broke into an icy smile.

  Heimdall’s hands balled into fists and he angled his shoulders, ready to fight. But he felt Maggie stiffen at his side and then go slack. When he turned, she was already unconscious and in the grip of the first giant.

  “What are you doing?!” Heimdall shouted, attracting the attention of a group of student artists at their canvases several yards away. He spun on his heel to face the second man. “What do you want, Valthrudnir?”

  The giant lifted a colossal fist and struck Heimdall across the temple. Blinded by pain, Heimdall collapsed to the cobblestones. He heard a brief struggle above him and his mother’s distant voice shouting over the muffled phone in Maggie’s bag. He smelled the dirt and soot of the street. Then there was nothing.

  The runes she had drawn on the heavy parchment burned through the paper, again. Sally fought back tears—against her own angry frustration and the putrid smoke hanging in the air.

  “Curse it!” She sank into the comfort of the black leather sofa and tucked her unused wand under her arm. The length of oak had been nicely sanded and wrapped with a soft, leather grip, but the pointed tip dug into her ribs. She sniffed stubbornly against the pain.

  “Now, now. That’s no way for the Moon Witch to carry on,” Frigga chided as she tended the fire in the pit-style hearth that was central to the den in the newly built Lodge. Even in June, the hearth fire was constant. Frigga settled in beside Sally.

  Sally avoided Frigga’s eyes and stared at the evidence of her spell’s failure lying on the wide ledge of polished stone that surrounded the fire pit on all four sides. Two attempts at a simple protection spell had scorched several pieces of expensive parchment and sent Baron the cat scurrying for cover under the sofa.

  “I did everything right,” Sally complained. “I don’t understand why it’s not working.”

  “Walk me through it,” Frigga said.

  With an afflicted sigh, Sally lay down her wand and pulled another sheet of parchment from her backpack. Taking up a ball-point pen, she started drawing on the paper.

  “First, I inscribe the Futhark substitution for my initials.” She glanced down at the shadow of blue ink that stained the floor. “Sorry about before.”

  Frigga waved her off. “Nonsense. What’s one exploded pen in the course of mastering your magick? Besides, that ink spill will serve as a gentle cautionary tale for generations to come. Perhaps Saga can weave it into the Viking Histories.”

  Great, Sally cringed. That’s just awesome. She tried focusing instead on the paper in front of her. “The runes Sowilo, and Dagaz. For SD. Sally Dahl.”

  Sally held the paper up for Frigga to see. The goddess nodded curtly and motioned for Sally to continue.

  “Okay, so then it’s time to add the protection sigil . . .” Sally put down her blue pen and reached for a red one.

  “Why do you choose these colors, Sally?”

  Sally froze just as she was about to touch the r
ed pen to the parchment. “Umm . . .” She felt self-conscious explaining simple magickal concepts to a goddess at the pinnacle of the Norse pantheon, even if it was a matter of a master testing her apprentice.

  “I use blue here in the center, because blue is the color of protection,” Sally stated with confidence. Frigga didn’t like it when Sally’s voice was full of questions.

  “And what tells you that?”

  Sally pursed her lips and thought for a moment. She’d wanted to blurt out that everyone knows that, but she’d learned that wasn’t an acceptable answer. “Well, that’s what the Wiccans do.”

  “I see.” Frigga rested one elbow on the back of the sofa and absently ran her fingers through her short, black hair now peppered with silver and white.

  Sally’s heart sank. Frigga was disappointed. “I mean, that’s what I learned before, and it’s always worked before . . .”

  Frigga gestured toward the pieces of scorched parchment Sally had discarded. “This is working?”

  “No.” Sally tried hard to keep from scowling.

  “I think you’ll find, young Moon Witch, that it’s important to not merely memorize the ‘what’ of magickal correspondence, but also to understand the ‘why.’”

  “Yeah,” Sally replied. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard this advice from Frigga—and from Freya, Freyr, and even Heimdall. “But when I—”

  “Then what did you do?” Frigga interrupted.

  Sally turned back to the parchment in front of her. “Okay, so next I drew the protection sigil—combining Thurisaz and Algiz—at eight points in a circle around the center . . .”

  “In red ink?”

  “Yeah.” Sally sat back after drawing just two of the sigils. “You know, for sort of a firewall of protection.”

  “A firewall,” Frigga commented. “Interesting.”

  “A wall of fire, I mean.” Sally put the cap back on the red pen. “Is that why the others burned up? Because of the fire I was calling in? I’d thought maybe it was because Heimdall and Thor haven’t been getting along too well, and those are their runes, combined . . .”

  Cautiously, Sally smirked, and she was relieved to see an answering spark of mischief in Frigga’s eyes.

  “That could be,” Frigga suppressed a smile. “But there are many kinds of protection. Sometimes you may want to call in fire, yes, when you plan to use a protective shield as an offensive weapon, for instance. But protection can also be more subtle.”

  She paused and fixed Sally with her probing gaze. “What are your thoughts on that?”

  Sally felt the thrill of adrenaline at the challenge. This was Frigga’s mentoring style—to remind Sally of something she already knew, and then ask her to expand a little farther. “Subtle protection?”

  “Mmm,” Frigga nodded and ran her fingers through her hair again.

  “Like, maybe when you don’t want to make a big show of it?”

  “Is that an answer, or a question?”

  Sally balled her hands into fists in her lap and stared down at her wand and the half-drawn sigil. “If instead of defending yourself, you just want to avoid the situation to begin with.”

  “And . . . ?” Frigga encouraged with a small lift of the eyebrows.

  “When you just want to disappear?”

  “Say it like you mean it, dear,” Frigga corrected.

  “Subtle protection could include spells of avoidance, like distracting your enemy away from you, or making yourself invisible.” Sally didn’t have to look at Frigga to know she was right this time. She picked up both pens in one hand and her wand in the other. “Is that even possible? Invisibility?”

  “Everything is possible, by degrees.”

  Sally opened her mouth to beg to be taught the secret of cloaking spells, but Frigga’s cell phone started ringing in the kitchen. Frigga smiled and raised a hand to ask for Sally’s patience as she got up.

  Sally pulled her Book of Shadows journal out of her backpack and scribbled down everything she could remember from the morning’s lesson. Ever since the Battle of the White Oak and the near miss with Ragnarok the previous autumn, Sally spent every Saturday with Frigga to learn more about Norse magick, what was legend and what was reality in mythology, and her role as the fabled Moon Witch.

  “Yes, Skuld,” Frigga’s voice drifted in from the kitchen, followed by an exasperated sigh. “I said, YES! I’m sorry, but my phone is a bit damaged. So we’ll see you and your sisters for the apple feast?” Frigga walked back toward the den and stood in the threshold. “I said, my phone isn’t working properly!” she shouted into the small device.

  Sally looked up, and Frigga rolled her eyes and gestured toward the phone. “The Nornir,” she mouthed. Sally laughed.

  “I’ll have to call you back.” With a growl, Frigga pulled the phone away from her ear and held it directly in front of her mouth. “I said, I’ll call you back!” Without waiting for a response, she ended the call and sat back down on the sofa.

  “Those apples can’t arrive a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned.” Frigga stared at the phone in her hands.

  “Is it really that bad?” Sally closed her journal and put down her pen.

  Frigga nearly laughed. “Well, first I lost my car keys. Then I crushed Odin’s phone in the blender. Honestly, I have no idea why I’d mistake a Nokia for a bottle of vanilla extract.”

  Sally smiled, but Frigga stared up at the ceiling.

  “I ruined last night’s meat pie when I stuffed it into Rod’s tool bag in the pantry. And then, of course, I substituted my own phone for a bay leaf in a vat of root vegetable stew.”

  Frigga tossed her phone onto the fire pit’s stone ledge. Sally could have sworn she saw a sliver of onion fall out of the microphone hole.

  “Is it always like this?” Sally asked.

  Frigga turned to Sally and smiled. “We’re all a bit off as the apple harvest approaches. The impact is more obvious for some of us.” Frigga laughed. “The last time, I couldn’t keep the hearth fire going even if the heroes of Valhalla had depended on it. Freya became particularly emotional and behaved wildly out of character. She kept asking one particular yeti to marry her, even though I really don’t know what she saw in him.”

  “Yeti?” Sally asked in mild alarm.

  Frigga dismissed Sally’s question with a wave of her hand. “Thor kept dropping his hammer on his own toes—and let me tell you, my son makes a particularly poor first aid patient. All ten toes and three fingers were black and blue by the time the apples were ready.”

  “But that was four hundred years ago,” Sally said.

  “Mm-hmm,” Frigga replied. “And here in our forested homestead, too far out for even a simple landline, you think I’d have known better than to switch cell phone plans and try to get satellite service installed right on the cusp of the harvest . . . But extreme absent-mindedness seems to be my bane this time around. Once we have Iduna’s apples in hand, I’ll be right as Odin’s ravens.”

  Frigga’s phone started ringing again. It vibrated across the stone ledge and Frigga caught it just before it rattled off the edge and hit the floor.

  “Hello?” she answered with a wary frown, but then her face brightened. “Maggie! How lovely to hear from you. If you can’t hear me, it’s because my phone took a bath in some soup.”

  Sally reached again for her journal and pen and recorded what Frigga had said about subtle protection. She made a silent vow to press the goddess for more details once she was off the phone.

  “Is my son treating you well?” Frigga half-shouted into the phone. “Is he showing you all the sights?”

  The trip to Scandinavia to learn more about Heimdall and his family’s long and storied history was Maggie’s consolation prize for having been kept out of the loop during the madness with Managarm the previous autumn.

  And Sally would get to spend a week with them in Norway, and Baron would have a vacation with Frigga at the Lodge. Sally checked her watch. Her flight left in
just a few hours. Sally wrote faster.

  Frigga wandered around the den and sat down on the opposite side of the hearth from Sally. “Well, certainly I wouldn’t expect everything to be exactly the same.” She thumbed through a few cookbooks she had scattered across the sofa—all earmarked for apple recipes.

  Sally closed her journal and slipped it into her backpack along with the pens. She crumpled up the parchment she’d been working on and tossed the pages into hearth’s modest flames.

  “With all your running around the Old World, I hope you’ll not forget to visit my daughter-in-law,” Frigga continued.

  The pages sparked as they burned, and flame and smoke twined together into a scrying surface in the hearth. Sally’s breath caught as she saw flickering images of apples covered in a thick layer of ice, dissolving quickly into a flash of burning yellow . . . eyes? The image blurred again and Sally recognized the symbol Uruz she’d accidentally branded on her thumb as she watched her own hand drawing protective sigils on Heimdall’s and Freya’s arms.

  Sally pulled her journal back out of her bag and started jotting down everything she saw in the flames. Spontaneous divination, she thought as her breath rushed out.

  “I’m already making plans for the harvest,” Frigga nearly shouted into her cell phone. “And I’m growing anxious to get started—What? Oh, yes. Fine.”

  During an apparent lull in the conversation, Frigga offered Sally a polite nod.

  “Look!” Sally gestured frantically toward the hearth, but her shoulders sank when she saw that the images dancing on the flames had faded with the last of her pages.

  Ignoring Sally, Frigga’s brows knitted together and she gripped the phone tighter against her ear. “What? I’m afraid I didn’t catch that? Did you say . . . Valthrudnir? Because that would be . . .”

  Valthrudnir? Sally hadn’t heard that word before. Or maybe it was a name? She glanced at Frigga and frowned at the alarm spreading across the goddess’ face. At least, Sally thought it might be alarm. It might also be annoyance or even constipation. She was still learning the peculiar mannerisms of each member of Odin’s Lodge.