Page 20 of Between Broomsticks and Beating Wings (Love X Magic #3)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

OLD BONES AND ROTTEN SEIDR

Kari

“ R une can be a pain,” áma said, giving me a once over.

She held open the door to her incantation chamber, and I ducked inside the stone room with a weary smile.

“It’s hard to earn her trust, no matter who you are.

If you want to make it through your travels with her, you ought to focus on what she’s saying and doing, not what she’s holding back. ”

“Yet I must be honest with her?” I asked, glancing around the cluttered room.

There were shelves lined with bottled ingredients, several mortar and pestles, and prepared spells.

One shelf was reserved for bones and treasures of the flesh, while another wall was reserved for strung up and drying herbs and flowers.

áma shrugged. “She can be of great use to you. The more she knows, the more she can help. Don’t forget, at the core of this journey, she’s the one aiding you, not the other way around.” The old Asgardian pulled out two stools from under a long work bench and motioned for me to claim one.

“I’d beg to differ. I’ve stayed alive. She seems to have great interest in ensuring I don’t find my death, even if it would’ve made my path so much simpler. I don’t believe for one moment it’s out of the kindness of her heart. ”

áma made a chuffing sound. “It rarely is with the gods or their attendants.”

“So you agree she wants something from me?” I asked, running my nails over the wooden table.

“Who’s to say?” áma said with a shrug. “But does it really matter? If she wants to keep you alive and help you break your curse for good, does it matter if her intentions do not align with your own?”

“I guess not,” I admitted, and it pained me to do so, because maybe there was truth in áma’s words.

Maybe it mattered little why Rune was doing what she was doing, because the outcome was the same.

I didn’t have to like her, didn’t have to trust her, but I could find comfort in knowing she wouldn’t cause my death. That was something.

“But the stubborn valkyrie isn’t why I invited you into my chamber,” áma said. “When I was scanning your body for Hel’s signature, I could certainly feel her seidr, but it was more than that. It was more than the remnants of a curse.”

“What are you saying?” I asked. When I took in a great inhale, the scent of elderflower and linseed oil greeted me.

“I’m saying, I want to spend the day with you, watching you perform your spells. I want you to tell me about your visions too, so I can understand your seidr for what it is, not for what you tell me it is, or for what I believe it to be.”

“Okay…” I trailed off, glancing around the incantation room for ingredients I recognized. “Where do you want to start?”

“You tell me,” áma said, holding her hand out to the side as an invitation to select a few ingredients.

I did as she wanted, grabbing elder root, a knife, and a jar of dried elderberry pigment.

I came back to the table and silently began working on the totem, whittling the root, rehydrating the pigment, and marking it with fingerpainted runes.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since I entered áma’s incantation chamber, but by the time I’d finished the first spell, my fingers were aching and my butt was numb from the pad-less stool.

“Well, this is quite…” áma trailed off, picking up the dilapidated elder root totem I’d spent way too long on.

“Pathetic.” The thing was meant to keep anyone wand-wed away from the incantation chamber if they had negative intentions; that way, no wicked seidr would spoil the sacred place.

But I had over-whittled the roots, and the spell I had cast smelled foul, like the seidr itself was rotten.

“There’s something very wrong with your seidr, child. Has it always been like this?”

“Ever since I can remember. My mother taught me her spells, and as I got older and had been her apprentice for many years, we both came to terms with the knowledge that my seidr wasn’t quite like hers. It had its similarities, yes, but her spells always felt so…wrong.”

“What felt wrong about them?”

“When I cast, my seidr felt very far away, tucked in my body, and I had to coax it out.”

“And how did you do that?”

“By putting my own little spin on my mother’s spells.

I had to make some changes, or I couldn’t get it to do what I needed it to,” I admitted.

“That’s what I did just now as well. When you told me to work on a spell I already knew, I picked one of hers and then shaped it in my mind to accommodate my own seidr.”

“Mmm. Doesn’t seem like you need to rework the spells.

You just need new ones,” áma said. She stared at me for a long time, tilting her head.

“Walk around the room and choose something that calls to you. Doesn’t matter what it is.

Don’t overthink it, just feel. I have plenty of spells cast on this place and the objects within it, and what you pick may help me understand the root of your problem. ”

I hopped off the stool and began meandering around the room.

Starting with the wall of dried herbs and flowers, I quickly moved on to the shelf of bones.

My fingers trailed over an impressive bear skull before I had the nagging feeling of being pulled in the opposite direction.

My gaze flicked over my shoulder to a low-lying chest sitting at the base of the next shelf.

I lifted my finger off the old bone and made my way over to the chest.

Sinking to my knees in front of the box, I motioned toward it with my chin and asked, “May I open it?”

áma watched me intently, squinted her eyes, then said, “You may.”

I didn’t hesitate to pop it open, sticking my hands inside the mounds of old scraps and odd trinkets.

My knuckle grazed something hard and cold, and the instant it did, I felt a strange sense of familiarity.

áma made an odd, strangled sound as I pulled a small wooden box free.

I glanced up at her, box still in hand, and she motioned for me to come forward with it.

Sitting down at the table once more, I ran my thumb over the indents of the box’s wood and stared at her for answers.

“How interesting,” áma mused, licking her dry lips. “Open it, and tell me what you see.”

The box creaked open, and hidden within was a totem wrapped in a strip of linen. I carefully unwrapped it, and as I did, I could feel an odd pulsing in my fingertips. When the fabric was gone, all that remained was a small piece of wood carved with a series of small runes.

“That’s one of the few spells in this place that was not cast by me, or in Asgard, for that matter.”

“Where was the totem made?” I asked.

“Helheim, with seidr of the underworld, carved from a fallen branch of a rare pine tree grown within its soil.”

I stared down at the totem for a long while, turning it over in my hands, as if I would somehow understand my own seidr more if I did. I knew what áma was getting at. The thoughts were connecting in my mind too fast to keep up with, but somehow, I still managed to find doubt.

“With a curse like the one you have,” áma started, “it wouldn’t be all that odd that your seidr would have been tainted by it.

Kari, I don’t believe you’ve been performing earthly seidr at all.

That may have been why your mother’s spells didn’t work for you, and you adjusted them using seidr of your own. Seidr of the underworld.”

“But why wouldn’t my mother’s have been tainted in the same way? She was talented at casting spells on Midgard. I don’t see how mine would’ve been any different.”

“I have no way of knowing, but it could have something to do with the original curse. Any word out of place or misused could change the entire spell. Or, maybe, it was something Hel wrote into her curse, and this was all intentional. You won’t know until you speak with her, child.”

I blew out a deep breath, trying to read the runes on the carved pine but failing. “Well, what now?”

“Now that we know your seidr may be of the underworld, why don’t we try this spell?”

She pointed to a scroll, then handed me some more elder roots. The incantation looked unusual, reminding me of the ones on the scroll Rune had given me. “Do it as it’s meant to be done. Don’t make any changes to it.”

I shrugged and read the runes of the spell a few times before I began bending the roots to my will, muttering under my breath as I went. It took me half as long to place the spell, and when I was done, there was no rotten stench. áma took it from me with a smile.

“Ah, there you are! It only took using seidr of the underworld to get it right.”

I swallowed hard, glancing back down at the elder roots I had just placed a protection spell on. The tips of my fingers felt warm, and I noticed a faint line under my nails, like I had residual charcoal shoved under them.

áma stood and headed over to her chest. “I want you to stay with me for the week and learn more about this power of yours. I do believe it’s unlike anything you’ve seen on Midgard, and I have the resources here to help you understand it, at least a little more than you do now.

You’re in no condition to travel with a wounded shoulder like that anyhow. ”