Outside the Winnebago, rain fell in a steady, calming patter, and the clouds filtered the afternoon’s thin sunlight, turning the atmosphere gray and ghostly. If I dismissed the absurdity, I had to admit I felt something—possibility or portent, maybe. Thorin and Skyla stood on either side of me, close enough to touch, and I refused to look at them in case I started giggling and ruined the mood.
Skyla shifted her weight and cleared her throat. Thorin stood still and stolid as a statue. He had adopted a similar stance when he meditated in the moments before his fight with Rolf in the field outside Portland. Perhaps he had more faith in what was about to happen than the rest of us. He was a magical being of sorts, after all. This was probably all run of the mill to him, or maybe he was just trying hard not to laugh.
“Now,” Gróa said. “This is the part where it gets really weird, but you’ve got to go with it if you want this to work.”
“Gets weird?” Skyla said. “Lady, it’s been nothing but weird since you showed up at the hotel.”
Gróa made a hacking, cynical sound in the back of her throat. “I said you could leave, remember?”
Skyla clamped her lips together, and the muscles around her eyes tightened, but she held her place at my side, demonstrating the loyalty Gróa had questioned whether I deserved. And no, I didn’t deserve it, but, boy, was I thankful to have it.
“I’m going to start with a chant. Don’t ask questions, don’t laugh, and most importantly, don’t interrupt. While I’m chanting, the three of us will form a ring, hand in hand, encircling Solina. We won’t break the ring until I say so.” The seer narrowed her eyes and looked pointedly at Skyla and Thorin. “Now’s your last chance to leave. After this, you risk hurting Solina and me if you don’t follow my directions implicitly. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to believe in it. You do have to obey me. Any problems with that, Valkyrie?”
Skyla shook her head.
“How about you, O Thunderous One?”
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh out loud when Thorin scowled.
“No problems,” he said. “Let’s just get on with it.” A distant clap of thunder rolled over us, still neutral but bordering on ominous and threatening. The God of Thunder was playing nice for my benefit, I suspected, but the storm outside suggested his nerves had worn thin.
“When I start the chant,” Gróa said, “I want you to picture yourself walking on a pathway. Any pathway. Put yourself on a trail, and stay on it. Don’t leave the path you make for yourself. It’s imperative, okay? Wherever it leads you, follow it. If it brings you to a doorway, a bridge, or a gate, keep going. Just don’t leave the path.”
“Don’t leave the path.” I nodded. “Got it.” I had almost drowned in a similar exercise with Thorin. If Gróa thought I could somehow lose my way in a mental forest, I would take her advice, and I would not stray. I peered at the Viking god beside me. “It’ll be all right. You’re my lifeguard, remember?”
“Vividly.” Thorin’s gaze pierced me until I felt it in my toes. I took his big, warm hand in mine and squeezed. His eyebrows rose, and he blinked, probably surprised by my gesture. He turned to Gróa. “It won’t go well for you if something bad happens to her.”
A crimson stain crept into the old woman’s cheeks, and her green eyes glittered like chips of cold emerald. “I know my business, Aesir. Don’t get in the way of it.” She turned to Skyla. “Light the candle, and hit the lights.”
Skyla snatched a lighter from the counter. At the same time, she brushed the switch on the wall, and the overhead light went dark. A moment later, the moody glow from the flame of a single fat white candle filled the tiny room. Gróa held her hands out at her side, palms up, and gestured to Thorin and Skyla. The three joined together, forming a ring around me.
“A circle like this usually acts like an electrical circuit,” Gróa said. “It amps up the energy, gives the völva in the middle more bang for her buck. But with two beings who already carry a great deal of otherworldly energy... I’m excited to see where this will take us.”
Excited, yeah, that’s the word for it. The cold ice ball in my stomach disagreed. “Let’s get going before I change my mind.”
“You don’t have to do this, Sunshine,” Thorin said.
I closed my eyes and exhaled. “Yes. I do.”
Gróa cleared her throat. “Imagine your path, Solina. Something familiar, but not too familiar. You need to provide the construct, but the vision will provide the details. Now, I apologize in advance. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
She inhaled and exhaled a long, low syllable, an unrecognizable word. She inhaled and let the sound out again, an eerie human-and-bagpipe-hybrid noise exited her throat. She repeated the sound again and again, increasing the tempo until the rhythm developed into a steady patter, like a drum beat.
I focused on bringing up an image, a forest pathway, but the collar of my robe scratched my neck. The fur hat had slipped and sat low on my forehead. The hen feathers in my seat cushion had bunched into irritating little lumps. Skyla shifted her weight and exhaled, and it sounded annoyed and skeptical. Or maybe I was projecting.
Gróa stopped singing, and I opened my eyes, meeting her perturbed glare. “What’s the matter?” she asked, her tone flat.
“I feel ridiculous.” I shoved the fur hat higher on my head, but it slid over my eyebrows again. Skyla coughed, but it sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Beside me, Thorin rolled his head on his neck and flexed his shoulders. Awkwardness and tension fell over the Winnebago’s interior, as palpable as the rain falling outside.
“Maybe I should have had a drink first,” I said. “Something stronger than tea... to help me relax.”
The seer’s face brightened. She released Thorin and Skyla’s hands and jabbed her index finger in the air like an exclamation point. “Great idea.”
She marched to her cabinets, threw open a door, and pulled down a square glass bottle half full of amber liquid. She took down a collection of shot glasses, enough for the four of us. She unstoppered the bottle, poured four healthy dollops, and passed the glasses around. “Bottoms up.” She sucked down her shot.
I peered into my glass. When I said I needed a drink, I’d mostly been joking. “What is this?”
“Scotch,” Gróa said. “Don’t question it. Just drink. All of you.”
I shrugged, tossed back my head, and swallowed the whiskey. It burned all the way down, and I coughed and gagged. Skyla and Thorin drank theirs with less dramatics. Gróa took our glasses, refilled them, and passed them out again. “One more time.”
“Really?” I asked, but I drank it down. The second helping slid down my throat, putting up less resistance, and the scotch lit a contented little fire in my stomach.
“Is that enough, or do you need one more?”
I turned to look at her, and the room spun. I wobbled on my perch. “Ah, I think that’ll do.”
She removed our glassware and, without a word, prompted Skyla and Thorin to take her hands again. “Eyes closed, visualization on, Solina.”
Without protest, I followed her orders. This time, as she sang, my self-consciousness drifted away. An image rose from the depths of my memory, sharpening into a specific place, a familiar pathway.
Mani’s favorite hike was a stretch in Grayson Highlands State Park in southwestern Virginia, from Massie Gap to Mount Rodgers and back again—about eight miles round trip. The hike ran over two bald peaks and delivered exceptional views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, rippling in blue-gray waves out toward the horizon. My brother had loved the hike for the terrain and vistas. I had loved the wild ponies roaming the glades.
I had taken that hike with him only once, and a half hour into it, clouds rolled in, rushing toward us like angry giants intent on making war. Mani refused to go back, said we’d make it to the Thomas Knob shelter before the storm caught up. He was wrong. Those black clouds had torn apart and dumped torrents of chilly rain over us. Mani and I humped through boot-sucking mud, slippery rocks, and a general state of soggy discomfort despite the best efforts of our ponchos. Eventually, we reached the shelter and hunkered down with several other unfortunate hikers waiting for the storm to pass.
When the clouds had dispersed, the sun turned the sky an unbelievable, ethereal blue, as if Mother Nature meant to apologize for ruining our day. For the remainder of our hike, the day came as close to perfect as possible. Wild ponies greeted us in the meadows, and the peaceable light filtering through the spruce forest—the trees so tall and proud and serene—restored my spirit. The wonder of it stole my breath, and for once, I understood Mani’s wilderness obsession. The hike was a holy and divine experience, a brush with the Creator God more spiritual and intimate than anything I had experienced inside the four walls of a church.
It was that day and that hike I recreated in my mind, there in the Winnebago’s tiny living space. Gróa’s chant, rhythmic and hypnotic, lured me further into the fantasy, until it all fell away: Skyla, Thorin, Gróa, the Honeywagon, Portland, and the rest of the real world. The chanting faded, replaced by chirping birds, susurrating winds, and the musical beat of my heart.
The imaginary day mimicked the one from my memory: the vivid emerald of trees and brush complemented skies as blue and crystalline as the old Ball jars my grandmother used for canning. The air smelled of growing things, clean and herby. A small herd of ponies grazed in the distance, where details faded into a ghostly blur of a dark spruce forest. The rise and fall of my chest as I breathed matched the rise and fall of my feet, marking my progress in a steady cadence.
A shadow brushed over me, and I looked up. A hawk had caught a thermal updraft and spiraled in lazy circles. I turned my attention back to the trail. Fear of losing my way kept me focused and intent. The path carried me into a wooded area, and the loamy smell of decaying leaves infused the air as it condensed into cool mist. Sunlight dimmed into a dreamy gloom, and the pathway descended on a steady slope, as if approaching a river or a creek bed.
I had guessed right. The trail bottomed out in a wooded ravine bisected by a shallow, rocky stream. Across from the creek, the path disappeared into a dark cave mouth. I was pretty sure none of the trails in Greyson Highlands State Park led to a cave, so my imagination, or the power of the vision quest, must have constructed it.
The cavern’s gaping maw beckoned, but my feet remained rooted in place at the creek’s edge. Goosebumps broke over my arms, and the fine hairs on the nape of my neck stirred in a prickly way. My stomach grumbled, voicing a protest echoed by my survival instincts.
Don’t go in there.
But Gróa had said no matter where the path led, I had to follow. Perhaps all the answers I needed lay somewhere in the cave’s depths, or maybe a nightmare lived in there. Or a little white rabbit with nasty, big, pointy teeth. If I turned back, it meant never knowing and giving in to doubt. It meant denying a chance to fully recognize an aspect of myself that had been a mystery for most of my life.
Would my fire work in this dream world? I examined my internal power source and felt it burning, as constant as ever. I cupped my hand, and a reassuring pool of fire filled my palm.
“Well then...” I plopped onto the bank to remove my boots and roll up the cuffs of my jeans. “What are we waiting for?”
After taking a steadying breath, I plunged into the creek. Stinging cold currents rose to my shins. I sucked in another breath, bit my lip, and forged through the frigid waters, ignoring how the arches of my feet cramped, protesting the cold. Once I reached the other side, I shook my feet mostly dry, unrolled my cuffs, tugged my socks onto my still-damp feet, stepped into my boots, and continued on before I could talk myself out of it.
The moment I stepped into the cave mouth, the air changed, dropping several degrees and collecting odorous notes of damp earth and minerals. Light dimmed, and the path led downward, steadily descending into murky darkness. Good thing I brought a light. I paused to center myself and focus on separating my light from my heat—fire without the burn. A phosphorescent glow lit my skin, providing enough illumination to move forward over rocky and uneven terrain.
