Poison Fruit

With that, I was dismissed.

Mikill drove me back through the transparent ranks of the watching dead. Thinking about what had transpired, I asked him to slow down and stop for a moment as we approached the Norns, engaged in the endless chore of drawing buckets from the spring and watering Yggdrasil II’s roots. They paused in their labor, but none of them spoke.

“Um, hi,” I said awkwardly to the youngest Norn, the one who’d laid the soothsaying on me in the first place. “I just wondered . . . that thing Hel just said about the tender heart of a mortal . . . that wasn’t what you meant when you told me to trust my heart, was it?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the Norn who looked like a maiden gave her head an infinitesimal shake. The Norn who looked to be about my mom’s age laid a hand over her heart, and the oldest Norn, the Norn who looked like a kindly grandma, pressed one silver-taloned finger to her lips.

All three of their misty, colorless eyes—well, all three Norns, all six eyes, you get the idea—began to shine with a bright white light, like those freaky angel schoolboys in “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which happens to be one of my mom’s favorite music videos from her tween years.

“The Norns can reveal no more, Daisy Johanssen,” Mikill said quietly. “Not without breaking the skein of time.”

I waited until we emerged under the starlit sky to ask him a question. “So . . . what happens if the skein of time is broken?”

“The entirety of existence would unravel,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“The entirety of existence?” I echoed.

Mikill gave me a brief glance. “Yes.”

“So what happens to the Norns if Yggdrasil falls?” I asked. “And what happens to the skein of time if the Norns pass?”

“It is as I have said. If Yggdrasil falls, it is the end for all of us.” Mikill gunned the dune buggy up the steep slope of the bowl. “I believe it is unlikely that the passing of the Norns would break the skein of time,” he shouted above the roar of the engine. “Even they are but one thread in it.” As we hurtled over the crest, he downshifted and lowered his voice. “Although I may be mistaken,” he added thoughtfully. “It is a deeply entangled thread.”

Wolves swarmed out of the darkness, their eyes reflecting green in the dune buggy’s headlights. Seeing it was us, they backed away. I stared at Mikill. “You believe it’s unlikely? You may be mistaken?”

“Only the Norns know for a surety, Daisy Johanssen.” Mikill put the buggy in park, letting the engine idle. “And they cannot say without—”

“Without breaking the skein of time,” I finished for him. “I get it.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “No offense, but this would have been useful information to have earlier, Mikill.”

“I did not realize you lacked it,” the frost giant said simply. “Nonetheless, you possess it now.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”

Mikill held out one massive pale-blue hand, gazing at me with his slush-colored eyes. “I wish you good fortune on the morrow.”

I clasped his ice-cold hand. “And you.”

      Fifty-two

It was quiet at the campsite.

There was no sign of the various trolls, ogres, and bogles. Stefan and Cooper were sitting and talking beside the campfire, which had burned low, but the rest of the Outcast had bunked down for the night. All of the Fairfax werewolves except Cody scattered after my return and headed for whatever dens they’d made for themselves, having relegated their camping equipment to the Outcast.

With wolf-Cody trotting at my side, I joined Stefan and Cooper.

“Do we have a strategy?” Stefan glanced up at me.

“Sort of.” Mrs. Browne’s teakettle was still whistling softly on the spit above the embers. I unhooked it and poured myself a mug of tea, then sat huddled on one of the surprisingly comfortable benches Mrs. Browne had fashioned out of deadfalls. “We need to protect Yggdrasil at all costs.”

“And the hellhound?”

“Will attack friend and foe alike,” I confirmed. “If Garm falls, four frost giants will take his place. The dwarves have laid traps beneath the sands. Oh, and there’s a slight possibility that if we fail and the Norns perish, it will break the skein of time, and the entirety of existence will unravel.” I blew on my hot tea. “I don’t suppose either of you were aware of that particular fact?”

Stefan’s incredulous stare probably looked a lot like mine had. With his nihilistic streak, Cooper looked less shocked, but apprehensive. The unraveling of existence sounded a lot like the eternal void of nonexistence.

Cody . . . Cody’s ears were pricked forward attentively, but I couldn’t tell what was going through his wolfy head or how much he understood.

“No,” Stefan murmured at length. “I was not aware.”

Cooper gave a humorless laugh. “It’s funny, innit?” he said. “This war . . . when you asked us to fight it, big man, I thought, why not? We all did. Loyalty’s important to our kind, and win or lose, the Outcast would survive.”

“According to Mikill, the broken-skein-of-time scenario is considered unlikely.” I sipped my tea, eyeing Cody. “Would you care to shift and join the conversation?”

Cody laid down in the sand and rested his long muzzle across one foreleg. Apparently not.