Endure (16 page)

“Devyn replacement,” Issie whispers.

I snort and keep staring at the mountain.

“It just looks like a mountain,” Nick says, speaking my own thoughts, “not like a gateway to Hel.”

“Immediately after the mountain’s eruption in 1104, Cistercian monks told many stories claiming exactly that,” Amelie says.

I remember something from my own research. “Benedict, this monk guy, said that Hekla was the prison of Judas.”

“Judas?” Issie asks.

“From the Bible. Judas was one of Jesus’s apostles. He was the one who betrayed him,” I tell Issie, who is Jewish in descent, but the nearest synagogue is in Bangor, which is super-far away from Bedford, so they tend not to go. I have a logic jump, an aha kind of moment. “And if you think about it, that’s weird because Loki is the god that betrayed the other gods in Norse mythology and he’s trapped in Hel.”

“Unless you free him,” Nick says.

Amelie turns in the chair and stares him down. “The queen will not free him.”

I smile to myself. I like how Astley’s people are my people now too, and even though they know I have total goofball tendencies, they still have faith in me. Becca told me that when I risked my life for Astley, when I voluntarily gave him my energy, it sealed my place as queen.

We are going to stay at some hut in Landmannalaugar, and then snowcat to the mountain. Landmannalaugar is miles from the mountain, and the road is usually closed in winter, I guess, but Astley has paid people to get us in. We have supplies in the trunk of the car. Through the use of insane amounts of cash, he has managed to procure the snowcat and a cottage called Gil, which holds twenty-four people and is heated with gas ovens. We will sleep in sleeping bags.

When we arrive, the cottage looks cute and smallish. Inside, it is full of wood and utilitarian bunk beds with solid permanent wood ladders.

“It’s adorable in a rustic-place-where-we’re-going-to-die way,” Issie says, plopping her sleeping bag down in the middle of a low bunk.

“Very.”

There are other cottages nearby, but all look abandoned. The wind whistles through the area, making it even more foreboding. I shiver and meet Nick’s eyes as he sets down a box of food on the little countertop in the kitchen area.

“You sure about this?” he asks. “Going to Hel voluntarily? We can still go home, Zara. Maybe start over. I feel like we’re just forging ahead without really being sure what is going on.”

I rub my hands together. “We need to figure out how to stop all this before it’s too late.”

But part of me knows that for some things it is too late. It’s too late for Nick and me. I just don’t want it to be too late for the world.

Amelie is her normal no-nonsense self as we gather together in the main area of the cabin. She reminds me of my mom when my mom does hospital business. It’s all agenda and steps and forward motions. Amelie talks about provisions and strategies in finding the entrance to Hel given the fact that it is so snowy and icy and the terrain is so treacherous that there are warnings posted throughout the area. I zone out a bit. Through the large front windows the mountains of Iceland loom, volcanic, angry, ready to erupt. Surprisingly different colors peek through in places where the snow has blown off. Some mountains are pink. Some are blue. It’s wild and wonderful and if I weren’t already so worried about everything, I would be happy dancing over the beauty of it all. The nearby lake is probably gorgeous, but it’s covered with ice. The Icelandic sunlight gives the entire landscape a sort of hazy appearance.

“Devyn texted me right before we left the city,” Issie says as she flops into a square, modern-looking orange chair. She grabs a white pillow and clutches it to her chest like it’s a shield that will protect her from the world. “We have no reception here though.”

I settle into a chair next to her and resist the urge to grab a pillow of my own. Instead, I cross my legs, fix the lace on my boot. Issie lets go of the pillow and starts trying to fix her own boots. She’s no good at shoe tying. Sad fact, but true.

“Let me help you,” I say, reaching down and taking over. I pause to check out the two people standing at the front door talking in Icelandic. They are tall and happy looking with blondish hair. The man has his arm around the woman’s waist. Issie looks over at them and sighs.

“You miss Devyn?” I ask.

She nods and wiggles her foot. “But I’m glad I’m here.”

“Yeah?”

“Very yeah.” She laughs. “It’s nice to not have to worry about you dying all the time without me. And I miss Devyn but you know . . . Guys or men or boys or whatever you want to call them are important but girl friends are just as or even more, you know?”

She smiles at me, revealing her tiny white teeth, and her eyes crinkle at the corners.

“I know,” I say, smiling back. “We haven’t had enough time together.”

“Too busy killing off baddies, saving rotten boyfriends, and trying to stop the apocalypse,” she quips. “It’s hard to get in enough us time.”

“So true.” She kisses the side of my head as I say it and I can’t help blurting, “You are the best friend ever, Issie.”

“Ha! You are.”

While we wait for Astley and Nick to finish talking to the Icelandic couple who run the snowcat, I think about stuff.

There are certain things that have to happen in order for the world to end. This is according to Devyn, who has had the dreadful task of trying to collate and make sense of all the different Norse mythology we’ve found in books and online. The problem with all the research is that it doesn’t all correspond. Myths contradict each other. But there are a few things that he thinks are right.

1. Loki has to be free.

2. There will be three winters without a summer, which we totally haven’t had, which is nice. Although Devyn thinks this might only be a metaphor. Devyn is a pessimist.

3. There will be huge battles around the globe, which is no abnormal thing. When have people ever not had huge battles? It makes me sad.

4. There will be natural disasters. This is always happening too, unfortunately.

5. A giant wolf, freed from his bonds, will swallow the sun and then his brother, the moon. I worry that this “sun” refers to my biological father, since Fenrir swallowed him. I mean, he
is
a son of someone.

6. This huge serpent, Jörmungandr, will break through land and the sea will collapse into the land.

7. A ship made of human nails will set sail.

8. The sky will break into two.

So all in all, it’s almost positive. That’s what I tell everyone now that the snowcat people are gone and we’re grouped together again.

“I mean, none of that has happened except for Fenrir being free, but he’s hardly eaten the moon,” I say to Issie and Astley as we walk through the snow toward an equipment cottage where there’s some cross-country skis for us to use. Amelie said it’s impossible to get where we want without them. The snowcat people gave Astley directions to get them and they are going to come back tomorrow to take us and our skis up the mountain because we’ve already used up so much daylight.

“It makes it all seem a little less dire, doesn’t it?” Issie asks as we all trundle across the uneven earth toward the green equipment hut.

Astley ushers us to the door as Issie continues, “I mean, it would be if giants hadn’t shown up, if that Hel woman hadn’t told Zara she was being tested, if the prophecy didn’t say that it was Zara who would stop or start it. I’d call that dire.”

I resist the urge to say, “Way to think positive,” and instead hold my breath as Astley says, “Actually in Old Norse, ‘Ragnarok’ is a compound of two different words.
Ragna
is the genitive plural of
regin,
which means ‘gods’ or ‘ruling powers.’ ”

“Fascinating,” I tease, but it actually kind of is.

Astley keeps going on. “The second part of the term,
rok
, has a multitude of meanings, including ‘development, origin, cause, relation, fate, end.’ This opens it up for interpretation, obviously.”

Issie jumps up in the snow. “He sounds like a Vulcan.”

We’re all standing outside this big metal door that says something in Icelandic and then
equipment
in English.

Astley keeps talking. “However, in the
Poetic Edda,
a different form twice appears,
ragnarök(k)r
.
Rök(k)r
means ‘twilight.’ This makes one wonder, especially since it means ‘renewal of the divine powers.’ ”

I’ve been reaching for the door, but instead I stop and stare at him, trying to figure out the kernel of worry that’s suddenly lodged inside of my chest. “That would explain it, wouldn’t it?” I finally say, terribly slowly.

“Explain what?” Issie asks.

“Why some pixies want the end to happen,” I start.

Issie finishes for me. “It’s because they think it will make them more powerful, I bet. Or maybe they are sick of hiding who they are, living in a world full of iron.”

“Exactly.” Astley smiles at us all like he’s proud that we have brain cells. Then his expression switches to something deadly serious. “And they obviously do not care who dies or what destruction occurs. Just that they achieve their goal.”

“Sounds like typical pixie behavior to me,” Issie says, and then catches my eye and adds, “You guys excluded, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Astley echoes, bitterness soaking his voice. He grabs the door and pushes it open. The hut is dark, but he steps into it. I follow right behind him. I’m barely inside when the door slams shut behind me, and Issie’s clutching my arm as my pixie senses try to figure out what’s going on.

“Zara,” she whispers, “everything just got very dark and very creepy.”

And then it gets worse.

FBI Internal Memo

Among the missing: fifteen male juveniles, eight female juveniles. Local cattle have been mutilated. Evidence is scarce. —A
gent
W
illis

Uttering an almost-swear, I flip around, grab the doorknob, and try to yank it back open. The air reeks of pixie and anger.

“Issie!” I have to protect her. My hand rushes along the wall, looking for a light switch. There must be a light switch. “Hold on, Issie!”

“It’s a trap,” Astley, aka Captain Obvious, sputters into the darkness.

As soon as he speaks, noises buzz through the air like arrows zipping toward us.

I scream his name, trying to warn him and at the same time trying to figure out what’s happening, which is pretty much impossible to do because it’s so ridiculously dark. I reach for my cell. If I can flip it open it’ll give us a little light, but before I can reach it, Astley slams his body over mine, covering it, protecting it with his own. And that’s when the arrows start hitting, one after another, after another. They slice through his parka and into his skin. I can hear the pain of it, feel it as he shudders from the impact. His body starts falling down, pulled by gravity onto the hard floor, which seems made of some kind of stone. Twisting around, I try to catch him, manage to wrap my arms around him a bit before the first arrow slams into my shoulder. Pain spirals out, but I’m so mad I can ignore it, so scared it seems like nothing. Then another hits, and another, and it’s like I haven’t slept in eight hundred years and I suddenly really, really need to sleep. They must have put something on the arrows, something to cause drowsiness. Just drowsiness, I hope, and not death. I don’t know . . . I just know the darkness is getting darker and my hands can’t find Astley . . . anymore . . . and I’m . . .

Gone.

It’s the smell of my own burning flesh that wakes me. It’s a nasty smell that can rouse you out of unconsciousness no matter how deep that unconsciousness is. My head is drooping and I’m staring at my feet, which are on a stone floor. There’s some sort of fluorescent lighting coming from above me giving everything a yellowish ugly glow. Only one of my boots is still on. My left sock stretches red and woolly as I cautiously move my toes, trying to regain my orientation, trying to remember what happened. There’s an arrow sticking out of my shoulder. There’s another in my arm.

“She’s waking up already, how quick,” says someone with a high, bell-like voice. It sounds familiar. It sounds like Isla, Astley’s mother. Lovely.

Lifting my head so I can actually see the room confirms it. She’s over by the sprawled-out form of Astley. She’s yanking arrows out of him. He doesn’t move. He’s bloody, unconscious, but I can feel his breath as if it’s my own, so I know that he’s still alive, my king. Thank God. I try to calm my breath as I look at the metal door that slammed behind us.

Issie is over by the door, tied up, with duct tape over her mouth. Anger grows inside of me as I take in the rip in her coat sleeve, her big scared eyes, the dirt on her face. An arrow sticks out of the forearm of her puffy coat. It’s my responsibility to keep her safe, and here I am freaking stuck to a wall, groggy and captured.

I don’t like this.

Okay, that’s an understatement.