“We’re running from the repo man?” Skyla asked, her voice high and squeaky.
Gróa laughed and jerked the steering wheel again. The Winnebago lurched and recovered its balance. “Better than running from the wolf, though, isn’t it?”
She followed the highway for a while before turning into the driveway for the Rolling Hills RV park, a few miles outside the city. She twiddled her fingers at the front gate guard, and he waved her by.
“Is this where you’ve been staying?” I asked. “Won’t the repo man look for you here?”
“Nah,” Gróa said. “That’s Nathaniel on the gate. We go way back. If anyone comes looking for me, he’ll throw them off my trail.”
She slowed, bumped over one speed bump and another before she pulled into an empty campsite and killed the engine. Thorin unhooked his seatbelt, rose, and squeezed through the narrow passage between his seat and the driver’s. A frown sat heavy on his face, and I nearly choked on the urge to laugh. How could I not? The whole thing was the setup for a cheesy joke: a fortuneteller, a Viking god, a Valkyrie, and a reincarnated sun goddess are riding in a Winnebago...
He motioned for me to move over, and I made space for his big frame. He said nothing but set his fisted hands on the tabletop and cracked his knuckles. Gróa climbed from behind the wheel and joined us at the table, but she didn’t sit. After several tense seconds of listening to Thorin’s knuckle popping, she reached out and laid her withered hand over his massive fists. He stopped and sat still, although his bunched shoulders and clenched jaw indicated his annoyance.
“I understand you’re out of your element,” Gróa said, “and it’s probably doing funny things to your nerves, judging by those rain clouds that have been following us since we left the city.”
I glanced out the window beside us and noticed, for the first time, the ominous darkness blanketing the sky. Thorin exhaled and rubbed a hand over his face. “Until I’m certain of you and your intentions, the storms will stay.”
She sniffed and rolled her eyes. She turned from the table and stepped into her compact little kitchen, where she pulled a teapot from a cabinet and filled it with bottled water retrieved from another cabinet. “Good thing I don’t mind the rain. Sets the right kind of atmosphere for what we’ve got to do anyway.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Accessing the energies fueling our visions requires concentration, focus, calmness and complete self-control. A gentle storm”—Gróa arched a meaningful eyebrow at Thorin—“can put me in the right mood for divination.” She set the teapot on the stove and turned on the flame.
Skyla snickered. “Did you hear that, Boss Man? Gentle.” Thorin frowned at her, but Skyla returned his stare with a wide-eyed look of obstinacy until he snorted and turned away. To Gróa, she said, “This sounds a lot like the sort of things I had to do to invoke a spirit once.”
She was referencing the time she contacted the spirit of one of the Valkyries who had perished in the fire at the Aerie. The information from that spirit had led us to the recovery of Surtalogi, the fire sword. It had also led us to Thorin’s brother, Grim, and his ice cave on Mount Rainier. Ultimately, that confrontation had all worked out to our benefit, but not before we all waded through a flood of pain, heartache, and betrayal. Should I expect this experience to be any different?
Probably not.
“That was all about control and focus, too,” Skyla said.
“And innate ability.” Gróa searched her cabinets again until she came up with a box of tea and a canister of sugar. “Solina, you have the ability, but you lack experience. I can help you with that.”
“When do we get started?” I asked.
The seer’s gaze flickered around the table to Thorin then Skyla and back to me. Her shoulders bobbed once. “Now, I guess.”
“One more question, first. How did you find me?”
Her shoulders bobbed again, a dainty shrug. “I saw you.”
Skeptical, I arched an eyebrow. “You had a vision specific enough to lead you to the River’s Edge Hotel on the right day at the right time?”
“Wellll...” Her nose wrinkled, and her green eyes sparkled. “So maybe someone told me about the message on that bulletin board on the Interwebz or whatever you call it.”
“I didn’t leave my real name in that message.”
Gróa rifled through her dishes until she found four mugs, none of them matching. “I had seen enough to know I needed to be in Portland for some reason. After I got that call about your message, a lot of things became clearer, including your identity.”
If I believed her, it seemed ringing that cosmic doorbell had worked after all. “So it’s still a guessing game? Even with experience and guidance, I still won’t know everything.”
Her face crinkled into a diffident smile. “The future is a puzzle. With our abilities, we get a lot more pieces of that puzzle than the average person. With training, you’ll get almost a complete picture.”
“Almost.”
She nodded. “Almost. We are not omniscient. That’s too much for any one person to handle.”
“Not for the ravens,” Thorin said.
The old woman glanced at the RV ceiling as if she could peer through the aluminum roof and look into the sky, as if she expected to see the ravens circling above us right that minute. Maybe they were up there. Not that it mattered. It might have been good for them to know I didn’t need their help, after all.
“Hugin and Munin are a powerful force, for sure,” she said, “but they can’t know the future. They can only know what has been done or is currently being done.”
The teakettle whistled, and steam erupted from the spout. Gróa flinched. She laughed at herself and turned off the flame under the pot. Using a rooster-shaped potholder, she pulled the kettle from the stove and poured water in four mugs. “The ravens can only know a thought once it’s been made, and not a moment before. The ravens’ lack of precognition is their greatest weakness, their fatal flaw, so to speak.”
She passed out mugs and set the tea box on the table along with a sugar canister painted with scenery from the Grand Canyon. She slid into the seat next to Skyla and fished teabags from the box. “Afraid I only have chamomile, but I was raised to offer refreshments to my guests, so there you are. Take it or leave it.”
I took one of the offered teabags and dunked it in my Niagara Falls mug. Skyla also accepted the tea and added it to her Wild Wonderful West Virginia! cup.
“You travel a lot, huh?” I motioned to the mugs.
“That’s the life of the völva,” Gróa said. “Go where the visions take you.”
“From what I’ve read, the völvur were once treated like queens, given the best accommodations in the village, food and drink. People generally didn’t bother them when they were on the road but respected their autonomy.”
She smiled wistfully and leaned against the counter. “Those were the good old days. Now, I’m mostly treated like a roaming sideshow. I have some regular clients who keep me going, but I have to eke out a living wherever and whenever I can.”
Skyla finished shoveling sugar in her cup and passed the canister to me. I spooned in a heap and stirred until it dissolved. “Why do you do it? You could live a more conventional life if you wanted to, right?”
Gróa shrugged. “Never wanted a conventional life, honey. Besides, the visions are my calling. Things get... uncomfortable for me if I try to ignore them.”
“Uncomfortable? How?”
“Headaches, problems with my regular day-to-day vision. I haven’t tried to deny what I am since I was a kid, so it’s mostly not a problem.”
I had run out of questions, and stilted silence filled the Winnebago’s cramped interior. I blinked at Skyla. She blinked at me. Thorin popped his knuckles again. Gróa sat up straighter and exhaled a breathy, dramatic sigh. She jabbed a knobby finger at Skyla and Thorin. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to help. You don’t get to ask questions, and you don’t get to be cynics. If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave anytime, understand?”
Skyla nodded. Beside me, Thorin huffed. I elbowed him, and he shot me a dark look.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “And I won’t interfere unless you do something that jeopardizes Solina.”
The seer’s face crinkled into an ocean of wrinkles as she smiled. “You got nothing to worry about, hot stuff.” She clapped her hands, and the gust of air generated by the gesture set her frothy hair atwitter. “Now, finish your tea so we can get this show on the road.”
Chapter 12
“This is mostly a mind game.” Gróa had arranged a ceremonial spot for me in the center of her cramped little RV after folding away her dining room table. I perched on a stool atop an uncomfortable cushion stuffed with hen feathers that crackled whenever I shifted. The seer had unearthed the pillow from a closet in her bedroom and swore she used it whenever she undertook particularly difficult divinations. She had also dressed me up in a ridiculous costume: a blue velvet robe trimmed in rough-cut stones. On my head, she’d set a soft, furred hat, and I refused to ask what animal had sacrificed its life to make it. As she dressed me, she vaguely explained that the costume had something to do with honoring the goddess Freya, who was the first völva.
“All of this ceremony is symbolic,” she said. “But symbols exist for a reason. They have an uncanny ability to accumulate power. And when they are evoked under the proper conditions, they can unleash that power and bring chaos and destruction, or unity and peace. I think you can guess which effect we’re going for here.”
