Page 22 of Soul of Shadow #1

After dropping Lou and Abigail at home, Charlie drove to Elias’s house in the woods. Her Bronco bumped and jostled its way through the trees until it could go forward no more. Then she put it in park and went on foot.

As she trekked through the forest, she looked for signs of the creatures she’d encountered on her last visit to the woods. Though she heard a few shakes and rustles in the bushes, nothing presented itself to her. Scared into hiding by her car’s engine, perhaps.

Still, the forest was undeniably beautiful.

The leaves glowed a subtle green. Pulsing vines decorated with delicate white flowers wound their way up the trunks.

She saw the same sap as before, sparkling amber nestled into the cracks in the wood.

Charlie ducked beneath branches and stepped over bushes.

Her eyes darted over the landscape. Should she look at the ground, in case something slithered over her feet?

Or up in the sky, in case something swooped out of the air?

Just behind her ear, she heard the sound of her backpack unzipping and felt the tiny movements of the v?tte clambering up onto her shoulder. It squeaked once, but Charlie put a finger to her lips, telling it to stay quiet .

They moved through the forest until they came upon two white pines clustered tightly together.

Turning sideways, Charlie wiggled through the branches.

The v?tte ducked low, trying to hold its tiny arms over its hat—but they were far too short.

After a tight squeeze, Charlie stepped out into a clearing.

A clearing filled with light.

At its very center, flying in a chaotic cluster, were the same purple fireflies she saw on the night she ate the eyaerberry.

Only this time, there were hundreds of them.

Maybe even thousands. They buzzed around each other like bees in a hive, emitting a low droning sound.

Charlie walked toward them, mesmerized. Their formation reached upward like a tornado, tighter at the bottom, looser at the top.

They couldn’t possibly be fireflies, could they?

Their flying pattern was too precise, their buzzing unfamiliar.

It almost sounded like voices. Like the low chatter of a thousand—

“ ?lvor ,” said a voice behind her. Charlie startled, turning around to find Elias leaning against a tree behind her.

“What?” she asked.

“?lvor. Fairies, as the humans call them.” He pushed off the tree trunk and started toward her. “Fickle little things. Seem perfectly harmless one moment, then decide to lay a curse on you the next. Easily offended.”

She edged back from the beautiful purple creatures. “What are they doing?”

“Preparing for their dance,” he said. “Every dawn and every dusk, the ?lvor gather to sing and dance. I imagine it’s beautiful to witness, but I can’t know for sure, because I’ve never stuck around long enough to watch.”

“Why is that? ”

“Fairy dances can be fatal to those who pass. They risk getting sucked into it and losing all sense of time. They might finally relax only to find that a century has gone by, or longer. And if that doesn’t do them in, the fairy song will.

” He waved his hands around the air beside his ears.

“?lvor music gets stuck in your ears. Drives most people out of their minds.”

“God.” Charlie drew away from the fairies, back toward the safety of the trees. “You weren’t kidding when you said there are dangerous creatures out here.”

“These guys?” Elias waved a hand and set off in the opposite direction, across the clearing. “They’re nothing. Wait until you see the draugar .”

Charlie jogged to catch up. “The what?”

“Ghastly things,” he said cheerfully as he ducked under a tree branch. “Like ghosts, only much worse, because they only form when a truly wicked person dies. Someone full of hate and misery. They turn into these tall, monstrous, cloaked skeletons, all claws and jagged teeth. Absolutely terrifying.”

“Why do you sound so happy about it?”

“Anything that inspires fear is something to be happy about. Now.” He led Charlie over moss-covered rocks and through bramble bushes that clawed at her legs. “It’s time we get rolling on this investigation. And I know exactly where to start.”

“At the tree where they found Robbie’s shoes?”

“Well deduced. You’re a regular little Velma.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised you know what Scooby-Doo is.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’re all”—she waved a hand toward him—“mysterious and hermit-y. You’re a shadow being who lives alone in a creepy house. How am I supposed to know what the rest of your life was like?”

“You aren’t,” he said, with the implied follow-up of Nor do I want you to . “But I didn’t grow up under a rock. I had a mostly normal childhood—including watching Scooby-Doo .”

“And another question,” Charlie said, hopping over a patch of moss. “What are you even doing at Silver Shores High? It’s not like you’re there for the education.”

“No, I’m not,” he agreed. “But I needed to be here, in this town, and I needed a pretense for why. I’m eighteen. I certainly wasn’t going to get a job, and there are no nearby colleges. So. High school kid with a foster family it is.”

She hesitated, not wanting to push him too far but desperate to know more about his background. “How long have you been a mare?”

He studied the ground as they walked. He seemed to be weighing his answer, deciding whether he wanted to give her the truth. Deciding whether he wanted to give her anything at all.

Finally, he said, “Seven years.”

“Jesus. You mean you became one when you were eleven?”

“I did.”

That was all he gave her, and she could tell it was all she would get.

She changed the subject. “Do you know what the markings on the tree mean?”

“I know,” he said, holding aside a prickly pine branch for her to duck beneath, “that they were not made by a human.”

“Wait.” She held up a hand. “You think they were made by one of these… Nordic spirits?”

“I do. ”

“But that’s not possible. Humans can see the markings. If they were made by a spirit, shouldn’t they be invisible?”

“They should.” Elias climbed up onto a large boulder and leapt off the other side. “Which is exactly why we’re so worried.”

“We?”

“Of course,” he said quickly. “Me, myself, and I.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t just refer to yourself with the royal we .”

“Do you want a history lesson or not?”

“Yes, please.” She paused atop the boulder and added, “Start by explaining what you meant by This is Asgard .”

“Right.” He offered his hand for Charlie to take as she stepped down from the boulder. She ignored it. “Well. For many, many millennia—for most of its existence—Earth was known as Asgard.”

“That is not what I read online,” she said. “All the myths say there are nine realms and that Asgard and Midgard—that’s what they call Earth—are separate.”

“Sure.” Elias reached up and plucked a leaf from a maple tree. “And I read online that Secret Service agents are really giant lizards masquerading as humans.”

Charlie shot him a look.

“I know, I know. Not the same. But I’ll explain why humans believe there are nine realms, not the correct number, which is eight. Just give me a minute to get there.”

“Go on.”

“So. Earth, whose real name is Asgard, was once a realm of great power, rich in history and sorcery. Magic flowed freely. Warriors fought great beasts. Gods walked alongside men.” He gestured out with a hand, as if Charlie was supposed to imagine the forest around them filled with monsters and gods.

“It was only ten thousand years ago that the gods laid the spell that cut humans off from all forms of magic.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they abhor fun,” Elias said.

Charlie raised her eyebrows.

“Sorry. Reflex.” He shrugged. “No. In reality, they said they were doing it for the protection of mankind. By laying the Seal, they cut humans off from the wonders of magic, but also the dangers. The beasts. The curses. Everything that put their lives at constant risk.” Elias looked up, as if searching the sky for the gods.

“Generational memory is short. It took only a hundred years for everyone who remembered Asgard to die off. Evidence remained in history books, but with every century that passed, those books began to sound more and more preposterous, like the ramblings of heathens. The past grew distant. Truth and history became myth and folklore. And in time, the humans came up with their own theory: that Asgard was a land far, far away, and the realm they inhabited was known as Midgard—a place of science, not magic, ruled over by humans, not gods.” He looked back down at Charlie.

“Thus, an additional realm. Nine instead of eight.”

“Is the Seal like… a planetwide spell?”

“Well, the Seal itself is said to be a physical object. Legend has it that Odin gave up his most precious weapon, the spear Gungnir, for the task.”

“Odin.” She nodded. “I read about him. They call him the Allfather, the most powerful of the gods.”

“That’s right. Odin gave Gungnir to a trusted volva —which is like a Nordic shaman—who took the spear to a secret location and drove it into the earth. In doing so, Odin laid a spell that spread all throughout Asgard. The Seal exists all over the planet, but it is held together by that spear.”

“Does Odin know where it is?”

Elias shook his head. “None of the gods do. The volva insisted upon it. The Seal is, in essence, protection for humans against the gods. All of the gods, Odin included. And the spell stipulated that only a human being could pull out the spear, since it’s humanity’s safety that’s at stake.”

“Damn. And they did this all just to protect humans?”

“That was the party line, anyway,” said Elias. “Doled out by the Allfather himself.”

“You don’t believe he was telling the truth?”