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.”
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.
