Frost (25 page)

Still in a crouch, I froze, terror icing me to the spot. The figure continued forward, and I knew I was in a vulnerable position: trapped on the edge of a dark rock on a remote stretch of beach with an icy fjord behind me. As the shadow grew near, its size came into perspective. A child? No. A girl. Long ebony hair. Mahogany eyes. Jinky.
WTF?

“A little cold for swimming, isn’t it?” Jinky, now within six feet of me, asked, though it sounded more like an accusation than a question.

I stood and scouted left to right, readying, but for what I didn’t know. “I wasn’t. I thought I saw something is all. Anyway, what are you doing here? How did you find me?”

“It’s a small town. And trust me, there are other places I’d rather be, but I’m the type who sees things through.” She removed something from her pocket — my pouch of runes — and jiggled the bag. The stones tinkled within. “These are yours. I’ve come to —”

“You stole them,” I interrupted, surprising even myself with the accusation.

“I borrowed them,” Jinky said.

“What’s the difference?”

“Their safe return.”

Well, damn. That was true enough.

“You could have asked.”

“I took the easier route,” Jinky said, her lips curling in a self-congratulatory smile. “For the record, I wish I’d left well enough alone, but I didn’t, so we can sit here and discuss the rocks themselves, or you can hear what I saw in them.”

In them?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When I touched them, back at the festival, I had a vision. Though it was brief, it stuck with me. I knew I had to hold them again, but I didn’t dare in front of my mother.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say my mother is a businesswoman, not necessarily a rune reader. And no more a gypsy than she is the queen of Denmark.”

“So the reading was fake?”

“No, because I wasn’t translating. She doesn’t speak English; I could have been reciting Shakespeare for all she knew.”

Jinky hardly looked the type to quote Shakespeare. Anyway, I didn’t think sonnets would be much help right now. Jack was missing, and she had seen something in the runes.

“So, then, you’re a true reader? What did you call it?”

“An
erilaz.
And yes. But the ability comes from my father’s side of the family. My grandmother is Sami, one of the nomadic peoples.”

“You mean, like, from Lapland?” So maybe I remembered a thing or two from that world cultures class, besides the international fashion capitals.

“They prefer Sami,” Jinky said with a sneer as if I had offended her, her grandmother, and a long line of ancestors.

“I’m sorry. Look, someone important to me is missing. I only just learned about it tonight. Earlier, your reading meant nothing to me, but now —”

“A loss,” Jinky said.

“Yes.”

“So my reading was accurate. This is not good. Not good at all.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t even know Jack, so her reaction had to be based on something else.

“Is there something more I should know?” I asked.

“When I held the stones the second time, I felt —”

“What?”

“
Fehu,
the loss symbol, was so strong it throbbed in my hand. And I sensed —” She hesitated.

“Just tell me.”

“A great loss, maybe even catastrophic. Crazy as that sounds.”

I hadn’t expected that. And was not much liking the word
crazy
these days.

“Listen,” Jinky said. “This is beyond my abilities. With your family connection to the
selurmanna,
with the power of your runes and the intensity of the reading . . . only my grandmother can help us.”

Great.
A bigger gun was being called in. And if Jack missing and the threat of a “great loss” already put me beyond the average
erilaz
’s capabilities, what would she think about the whole Stork thing? My secrecy vows precluded me from telling her, but how much would that up the ante?

Jinky pulled a cell phone from her pocket, punched in a series of keys, yakked in Icelandic, and snapped the phone shut. “I can take you to my grandmother. Let’s go.”

“What — now? I can’t just go. I need to tell my
afi,
or at least leave a note.”

“There’s no time,” Jinky said.

“But I’m not even dressed.” I gestured with open arms to my flimsy white nightie flapping from beneath my parka.

“You’re fine,” Jinky said, starting back toward shore. “Anyway, wait till you see my grandmother.”

Jinky turned and jogged over the breakers. I had no choice but to follow as she scrambled up the path. Jinky hardly looked like an athlete, but the girl could run. As much as I wanted to blame my by-comparison slow-mo on my UGGs, she was wearing heavy black boots. Engineered for hugging a muffler, or stompin’ a mosh pit, but not for a footrace. At the top of the trail to Vigdis and Baldur’s place, she turned in the other direction, cutting across a field and heading for the road. I clomped after her for Jack, and Jack alone.

Soon, thankfully, Jinky slowed. From under a pile of branches, she uncovered a motorcycle, which explained the boots, but hardly the fishnets, or the dog collar. She stood it upright and with a practiced move swung over the seat and down onto the kick start. It roared to life, and I understood then why she’d kept it down the road from the house.

“Get on,” she shouted above the engine.

“What about helmets?” I asked.

Jinky glared at me. “Now,” she shouted, revving the engine as a warning.

With a shake of my head, I climbed on behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and hoping that her road skills were better than her people skills.

They weren’t. As I should have guessed, she drove the same way she dressed: with abandon and no regard for rules. I had only been on a motorcycle once, and that was technically a dirt bike. If Jinky was older than me, it wasn’t by much, yet she drove like a stuntman — woman, rather — head down and leaning into curves. My job, I figured, was to hang on for dear life and scream anytime we were airborne, which was more than once. I was so scared, I forgot to feel cold. We were headed toward the sea away from Hafmeyjafjörður and along the fjord on the main access road. I don’t think we saw another vehicle; it was the middle of the night, but this was probably a lonely patch of road at high noon. Coming to a tiny village, Jinky slowed and turned right and down a small street. We were approaching a marina with ten or so fishing boats anchored for the night. She parked the motorcycle alongside a beat-up truck and cut the engine.

“My cousin will take us the rest of the way,” she said, swinging down from the bike.

I followed suit, looking around for the “cousin,” or any sign of life.

Jinky took off down a rickety old dock, her hands shrugged deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. Again, I had no choice but to follow. At the far end of the dark pier, the hum of a motor sounded.

“The rest of the way is by boat?” I asked, struggling to keep up. Not that I wasn’t thankful to have survived the first leg of our trip, but no one had warned me of a harbor cruise.

“Yep.”

“Where are we going? Not to Lapland, I hope.”

“Not Lapland,” Jinky said with a condescending tone. “Iceland. Just not the mainland.”

Mainland? It was already an island.

“What does that mean?” But Jinky didn’t answer me. She strolled ahead to what I could now make out was our destination. A guy was waving a lantern at us from the deck of an old fishing boat, circa
Moby-Dick.
Within moments, I followed Jinky aboard the trawler, no pleasure boat for sure. The deck was littered with nets and lines and gear, and I almost fell over a bucket of fish heads.
Old
fish heads, judging by the smell. Eeew. I didn’t want a ride on that boat any more than I wanted to get on the motorcycle. And a look at our captain, even in the dark, didn’t help. He was short, wiry, and bearded, with a stocking cap pulled down practically to his small, dark eyes. And he was smoking. Enough said.

“Katla, this is my cousin, Hinrik,” Jinky said. It was the first time she’d used my name. Odd that she’d called me Katla. I was sure I’d introduced myself as Kat; I always did.

Hinrik grunted a hello to me and then fired off a round of Icelandic at Jinky. It needed no translation. He wasn’t happy to be there, either. By my count, that made three of us.

Hinrik went silently about the business of getting the boat ready. I had a thousand questions for Jinky and was internally sorting them by urgency. For a moment’s peace, I went to the bow of the boat, where the headlight lit a shaft of water.

Hinrik called something out. I watched as Jinky performed a series of first-mate tasks with a practiced hand. She untied the lines securing us to the dock, hopped onto the departing boat at the last possible moment, and stored the ropes into a tidy shipshape spool. So the girl could read ancient runes, handle a Harley, and knew her way around a poop deck — big whoop. She still had the fashion sense of a vampire and as much personality as a zombie.

After that, Jinky disappeared below deck; I was not about to join her no matter how many questions I had for this unlikely companion of mine. Without Dramamine or a sick bag, I was an eyes-on-the-horizon sailing type. For the rest of the trip, I clutched the underside of the hard, wooden bow bench with the wind whipping my face and shooting my hair all around me like kite tails. I was freezing and shivering so hard I could hear the marrow crystallizing in my bones.

A hundred years later, as the sun burst over the horizon like a giant smashed pumpkin, land came into view. Jinky and Hinrik set about their mooring duties, while I scouted the scene. And I thought Vigdis and Baldur lived in a remote location. This was
seriously
out there. I found myself looking at a spit of shorn rock smaller than Disney’s Tom Sawyer Island. Hinrik pulled the boat alongside a warped and collapsing dock. I hopped off and onto the rickety square of planks. Jinky was right behind me, but to my surprise, Hinrik and his floating bucket of fish guts immediately began pulling away.

“Where’s he going?” I asked.

“Fishing.”

Well, duh,
I supposed. But what about us?

“He’s coming back, right?” I asked.

Jinky didn’t reply.
Hello
?
It’s a fair question.

I was about to say as much when something in the water caught my eye. Black heads bobbed in the surf, their shiny eyes watching me. Seals. I pointed, intending to call Jinky’s attention to our visitors, but she had already taken off. As usual, I ended up chasing after her. We hoofed it up a steep slope to . . . nowhere and nothing, by the looks of it. Soon, though, a tiny house came into view. It was roundish and made of stone, as if nothing more than a natural heave or knob of the island itself.

Something much more enticing had me bounding up the hill. In a clearing near the cottage roared a large fire. The boat ride had left me so cold I was still shaking. The promise of heat was a welcome relief. Drawing near, I noticed that the area containing the fire was ringed by a circle of very large stones. There was also a tiny structure, a domed tent of sorts, covered in animal skins. I was so cold and so glad to be off that boat that I skipped like some garland-bearing maypoler.

The moment, though, I crossed over the stone ring, I felt a familiar sensation. As if falling from a mountaintop, air whooshed past my ears like a 747, and then everything went black.

I came to lying on the hard, cold ground with Jinky and some old woman standing over me.

They spoke in Icelandic, though I was so disoriented that they could just as easily have been talking backwards or sideways, for that matter. And my mind was keeling with the memory of another experience of a single step that had felt like a fall through the looking glass. That time I’d woken up to Wade. Needless to say, I was suspicious, and more than a little weirded out.

Jinky extended her hand, an encouraging sign, but I was still operating on a code-red threat level.

“My grandmother welcomes you to her stone circle and says she knows now, after such a graceful landing, that you are truly one of the special among us.”