Thief Eyes by Janni Lee Simner
Haley,
I’ve done my best to translate these pages. Your father will tell you the words written here are nonsense, but you must believe me when I say the danger is real. If we are lucky, that danger will not find you—but I will not rely on luck. I will not let you face this magic unarmed.
I am sorry you could not stay home. I am sorry for what happened to your mother. I am sorry for many things.
By the time you read this, we’ll have already talked. But call if you need to talk more.
Whatever happens, you can always call me.
Katrin
Another name. Another person I couldn’t remember. Had Katrin tried to rescue me, too? There was a phone number beneath her name.
What had happened to my mother? How could I forget something like that? I turned the page.
Warnings from Thorgerd, daughter of
Hallgerd and Glum, passed on to her daughters in turn:
Never run from magic.
When offered escape, turn away, no matter how deeply you desire it.
Take some of the fire if you can, but do not take too much. Do not let the fire consume you.
If the spell lands on you in spite of these warnings, you must cast it back again. Go to Hlidarendi to return the coin from whence it came.
The means of the casting, plus other useful spells, follow.
The rest of the pages were covered with strange symbols—squiggles and circles and lines—with smaller writing scrawled among the symbols.
Had I run from magic? Was that why my life had needed saving? I reached into my pocket and drew out the coin, hoping that holding it would help me remember, like before.
Heat shot through my palm—too hot! I dropped the thing and it clattered to the ground. I pressed my hand to my mouth as the burning cooled.
On the floor, the silver coin shone in the lamplight. I didn’t dare lose it, no matter how much it burned. I reached into my other pocket for the cloth. A white handkerchief streaked with dried blood. My blood? I used the handkerchief to pick up the coin. The heat was fainter through the cotton.
I felt a powerful tug, as if the coin was trying to pull me from the room. For just a second, I caught an image of a boy with shaggy hair and a wool hat jammed down over his ears. The coin kept tugging. Leading me toward Ari?
My heart pounded. Not letting go of that coin for a second, I loaded everything into my pack. The wineskin Freki had brought me still lay beside the bed. No way was I drinking the mead, but if I found more water, I could use the skin to carry it. I tugged the cork free, meaning to empty it out.
Freki let out a single sharp bark and rose to his feet. “Don’t spill that! My master would not like it!”
“I thought your master didn’t walk in this world anymore.”
Freki made a strange sound, low in his throat. “And if you’re wise, you’ll not draw his attention back to it. If you spill his mead—if you deny his hospitality by letting it touch the earth—he will know.”
Right. No point pushing my luck. I corked the skin and put it into the pack. Maybe I could empty it later, when I got out of here.
Memories or no memories, I’d get Ari and myself both free. I zipped and shouldered the pack, took Ari’s flashlight in my other hand, and followed the coin’s pull into the dark.
Chapter 6
The tunnel was colder than the room. I pulled up my hood and zipped my jacket to the chin. The flashlight’s thin beam cast eerie blue light on the tunnel walls. Water dripped somewhere up ahead, and the air felt thick and wet.
Freki followed at my heels, to guard me or provide companionship, I didn’t know. Either way, his presence was comforting. Was that a sort of magic, too?
The tunnel branched left. The wrapped coin pulled me forward. I followed, but as I passed the branch, a gust of icy air blew toward me. A child’s voice whispered, “Three shells in return for my poem, poem, poem.” The words echoed off the stone walls.
I stopped short and peered down the side tunnel. “Hello?”
“I’ll toss my silver at them and watch them fight, fight, fight.” An old man’s voice, carried by the same cold wind. I turned left, though the coin urged me away. There were pictures on the tunnel walls. They skittered like nervous lizards out of my sight as the light hit them. A boat torn apart by the sea. A coffin washing to shore. I squinted into the distance. I saw no old man, no young boy.
Teeth nipped at my ankle. I looked down and saw Freki’s mouth around my leg. “You hear memory, nothing more.” He drew back, the tip of his tail brushing the floor.
“The sea has stolen my sons.” The echoing voice sounded real—real and incredibly sad.
“Muninn holds all the island’s memories here,” Freki said. “Follow them without purpose, and you’ll wander to the end of days and still not find your way back to where you began.”
I clutched the handkerchief-wrapped coin tighter. Bad enough to lose my memories—I didn’t want to spend my life lost among other people’s memories instead. “That’s a lot of tunnels.”
The fox’s whiskers twitched. “Only Iceland’s memories lie here. Other lands have their own guardians and their own mountains.”
A brief image flashed through my thoughts: jagged brown mountains beneath a hot blue sky. My mountains, I somehow knew. I tried to remember, but the mountains sank into the muddy darkness of my missing memories, leaving behind empty shells of words—mountains, desert—with no images to go with them. My eyes stung. Muninn had no right to take who I was away from me.
I brushed my eyes, turned my back on the voices and the images on the walls, and let the coin lead me on, back to the main tunnel. Freki walked alongside me, his gait smooth and liquid. The tunnel branched again and again. Sometimes the coin urged me left, sometimes right, sometimes straight ahead. I counted the turnings, repeating them to myself to make sure I could get back.
“I have spun twelve ells of wool. You have killed a man. A fine morning’s work for us both.”
“I already must grieve for my brother. Is it not enough for you that I set a bowl of porridge before his killer?”
My hand clenched around the coin. I fought the urge to stop, to listen closer, to try to stare longer at the moving pictures on the tunnel walls. Scraps of mist drifted through the air, raising goose bumps beneath my jacket. Were all the memories in this place of sadness and loss?
“My father gone, my brother gone, only this price upon my head remains.”
“Yes, the girl is beautiful, and men enough will suffer for it, but I do not know how the eyes of a thief have come into our family.”
The coin flared suddenly hot. Smoke rose from the handkerchief. A woman’s voice, not in the tunnels but in my own head. “How dare Hrut speak of me that way!” Anger in those words. A moment’s silence, then, “Haley?”
Dizziness washed over me. The other one, I thought. The one whose spell had caught me. I ran from that turning, not sure what I was so scared of. My legs trembled, then settled into an easy lope, as if I was used to running. The light bobbed ahead of me. The coin cooled from hot to warm. I kept going, enjoying the feel of my feet hitting stone and cool sweat trickling down my neck. Had I liked to run before?
In the distance, I heard a roar. I quickly slowed back to a walk. I was breathing hard, but that felt good, too. Freki caught up with me as the coin pulled me sharply left.
Up ahead, the tunnel ended abruptly. The bear—Ari—huddled against the far wall, his nose hidden beneath his enormous legs. My blue light shone on his white fur. Two terns perched on the ledge above him.
He looked up, through eyes that seemed more blue than green by my light, and growled.
“You may want to stop here,” Freki said.
“Yeah. Good idea.” I stopped, though the coin kept pulling me toward the bear. Did it want to kill me? Mist curled past the beam of my light. Around me I heard the memories of other roars and growls. The hair on my arms prickled at the sound.
“Are you still in there???
“Any ideas?” I asked Freki.
Freki wrapped his tail around his legs. “I am no spellcaster, and even if I were, it is not my place to interfere.”
I remembered something from the notebook in my pack. Other useful spells follow. Freki was no spellcaster, but what about me?
The coin kept urging me on. I stuck it in my pocket, keeping only the handkerchief in my hand. The pulling continued. It wasn’t the coin that wanted to kill me—it was the handkerchief. I should drop it and run away. How could I make a bear remember who he really was when I didn’t know who I really was?
Was I the sort of person who would run away? I seemed pretty good at running. Was I the sort of person who’d abandon someone who had tried to rescue me? Who maybe cared about me, and who maybe I cared about in turn?
To hell with who I was. That’s not who I am.
The bear kept growling. I shoved the handkerchief into my pocket and pulled the notebook from my pack. Freki lay down and buried his nose beneath his fluffy tail, watching me all the while.
By the flashlight’s blue beam I flipped past the pages I’d already read. A spell for restoring one’s own memories, the next page said. I hesitated, but the spell required a raven’s feather. Maybe I could find some way to steal one from Muninn—later. I turned the page.
A spell for returning berserks to their true form, whether they will it or no. “Berserks?” I said aloud. “Like crazy people?”
Freki lifted his head. “Warriors with animal shapes. Very powerful. My master valued them. Fearsome in battle, ill suited to life outside of it.”
The bear didn’t look like a warrior, pressed against the wall like that. I quickly scanned the spell.
Berserks do not respond as readily to runes and chants as others do to magic. Still, you may try reciting these words and see if the shifter wishes to change back.
The words that followed were a mix of familiar and unfamiliar letters. I had no idea how to sound them out. There was a bit more English at the bottom of the page, though: Alternately, you may offer the berserk some item that belongs to him, and see if it reminds him of his human life.
I dropped the spellbook and yanked the charred, bloody handkerchief from my pocket. “Was this yours?” Was that why it had led me to him? Had my backpack led Ari to me, too? Did objects remember, in some strange way, who they belonged to?
I started toward him, holding the handkerchief out in front of me, while the birds on the ledge watched through tiny eyes.
“You have a warrior’s soul,” Freki said, but he made no move to follow me.
Here, kitty, kitty. I kept walking, fighting nervous giggles, until I was close enough to reach out and touch the bear’s nose—if I had a death wish. I reached toward him. Ari snarled. I dropped the handkerchief at his feet and skittered back.
With surprising care, the bear drew the thing between his paws. He sniffed it with his long nose, as if it were a book he was reading. He made a questioning sound and looked up.
“You still there, Ari?”
A ripple ran along his body, like wind on water. Fur retreated into black bear skin, claws into paws. Skin turned to clay once more, and beneath it the bear shrank, paws melting into human hands, snout into a human face. That skin drew away from legs and arms and face—
All at once Ari knelt gasping before me on hands and knees, wearing his leather jacket and jeans. He looked up at me, his eyes wild, his whole body shivering. The hair beneath his wool cap was bright white, not brown like before. The birds took off from the ledge, chittering harshly as they disappeared down the tunnel.
Ari tried to get up. His legs wobbled and he crumpled to the ground. I knelt to take him in my arms, my own body trembling with relief. Holding him felt familiar and right. Surely I knew this boy. “You’re all right.” I held him tighter, until his shivering eased.
He looked up at me. “Thank you, Haley.” He had an incredibly sweet smile. Our faces were just a few inches apart.
I felt like I was still being pulled. I did what felt right, even if I couldn’t remember why. I pulled my hood back, leaned down, and brushed my lips against his. Surely—yes—I’d done this before.
Ari drew away a moment, as if still frightened. Then he drew closer. We pressed our lips together while the damp air raised more shivers from us both. I reached beneath his hat and ran my fingers through his hair. It felt coarse and soft at once. I shrugged off the backpack and let the flashlight drop from my other hand. That hand brushed my pocket. The coin felt warm through the denim.
A fragment of memory: A dark-haired boy—the boy in my wallet photo. We kissed beneath the bright desert moon while hot wind blew all around and we promised we’d e-mail each other every single day. The boy was shorter than me, and my hands cradled his head. I drew back to look down at his quiet brown eyes—
I jerked abruptly away from Ari and groped for the flashlight. I shone it toward him. He smiled, but then his green eyes grew uncertain.
“How long have I known you?” I hoped he’d be hurt that I could possibly forget him.
Ari looked down as if embarrassed, and my stomach knotted up. “Time passes so strangely in this place. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been here a few hours, sometimes like years—” He shut his eyes. “That is not what you are asking.”
“Before we came here.” More than anything, I wanted to draw him closer again.
“Yes, of course. That would be—perhaps a day.”
“One day?”
“To give me some credit, I did not start that kiss.”
My cheeks burned hot. “You could have stopped it!”
A sheepish smile crossed his face. “Yes, but I am not stupid.”
“And you think I am?” I scrambled to my feet. Freki looked up and cocked one ear quizzically.
“No, of course I don’t think that. …”
My lips still tingled. I feared if I spoke at all, I’d begin kissing him again, and that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. Or maybe it would be fair. Maybe I’d broken up with the desert boy months ago.
I had to get my memories back. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life like this.
“I did not stop because I did not want to stop,” Ari said slowly, “but also because I thought you did not want to stop. I am sorry.”
Great. He had to go ahead and be nice about it. I grabbed his handkerchief from the floor, wiped my stinging eyes, and handed it to him. He shoved it into his pocket. I stuck the spellbook in my backpack and pulled the pack over my shoulders. “You said you know a way out of here?” Once we were out maybe I could find a raven’s feather—a normal non-talking raven’s feather—and try the memory spell. Or maybe my memories would return on their own once we were away from Muninn.
“There are some problems. But yes.” Ari got to his feet, gave a small gasp, and fell again.
I helped him back up. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, I—”
“It’s not your fault,” I snapped, doing my best to ignore the warmth of his arm as he leaned on me.
Around us, the memories of other bears, of other times, growled softly. “I think I am not quite used to being human again.” Ari’s white hair—and eyebrows and eyelashes—made his face seem very pale. He shuddered. “I did not know it was possible to forget such a thing.”
Apparently it was possible to forget all sorts of things. I steadied him as we hobbled down the hallway. At least he was okay. We’d deal with everything else later.
“If you can get us back to the place where you slept,” Ari said, “I can find the way from there.”
I shone the flashlight back the way we’d come and played all the turnings in my mind. “This way.” I
Ari kept leaning on me as we walked. Freki followed at our heels. Ari gave the little fox a suspicious look, then shrugged and walked on. Memories whispered around us, none of them mine.
An old woman’s voice: “I must to bed, but ale for all, and enjoy yourselves as you will.”
A young woman’s voice: “Take me abroad with you, for it is not Iceland that I love.”
A small smile crossed Ari’s face. “I know that story.”
“Did he take her?” It was clear enough the young woman spoke to a lover.
Ari stopped and turned to me, his expression strange. “I did not think you knew Icelandic. Have you been—how do they say?—holding out on me?”
“It’s not in Icelandic.” But I listened harder. The words were different from the words Ari and I spoke with each other, even though they made just as much sense.
Ari scrunched his pale brows together. “Can you hear me now?” he asked, all trace of accent gone from his voice.
“Sure.” Only after I spoke did I realize we’d both used that other, not-English language.
“Did I speak both languages before?” I asked in slow, careful English.
“Not that you told me,” Ari answered, still in the other language. “You tried to speak Icelandic once, but your accent was terrible. Now it’s just—a little odd. Old-fashioned, maybe?”
Freki nudged the back of my knee with his nose. “It is my master’s mead.” The little fox spoke Icelandic, too, though something about his intonation was different from Ari’s. I realized I’d been speaking Icelandic with Freki, as well, and with Muninn—automatically answering in whatever language I was spoken to in.
“Your master—” Ari stopped short to stare at the little fox.
“My master no longer walks in this world,” Freki said.