Chapter sixty-two

Flight of the Valkyries

Ingrid arrived at the house with Matt and the pixies, who were a little nauseated from being turned into frogs. She found the family gathered in the living room, told them what had happened, and was brought up to speed.

"It's him," Freya said. "Of course. It has to be."

"What do you mean? Who's 'him'?" Ingrid asked.

"What Anne said earlier ... that Loki was only biding his time. Loki can move between the worlds. He took the power of the Bofrir for himself; he was the one who destroyed the bridge all along, then pretended to discover its destruction with Freddie. He was the one who stole Freddie's trident. He must have intended for Freddie to take all the blame, but something happened ..." She looked at Killian. "Maybe it was because you were there. You stopped him somehow."

"I remember it now - just a little bit," Killian said. "I tried to change the timeline, to bring back the bridge, but I couldn't ... But I had enough power to hold him until the Valkyries came. I'm sorry I couldn't save Freddie, though."

"Loki? Skinny fellow? That rings a bell," Val said.

"Loki! That's right! He the one who made us steal the pretty pitchfork and place it at the Bofrir!" Kelda said.

"We told you he was an ass." Sven smirked.

Freya nodded. Like Killian back in Asgard, she had been able to hold Loki for a while: as her lover Loki had been temporarily put under her spell, but he was too powerful for her spell to hold. While Odin's ring had made it easier for him to navigate through the universe, he did not need it to achieve his goal. Even if Freya had ordered him to destroy it while he was under her command, it had only succeeded in slowing him down, not stopping him.

"His power is growing," Freya said. "And ours are fading." It was as Jean-Baptiste, the god of memory, had told her - by sending the bridge into the abyss, Loki had weakened the powers of the gods, hoarding them all to himself. After the Restriction was lifted, there was a tremendous surge of magic from the Beauchamps. They had held their magic in check for so long, they had stored up a reserve, but now the well was about to go dry. She had felt her magical powers diminishing for a while - more than one customer claiming that her potions were bland and flavorless. Soon they would all be running on empty. She could especially see it in Killian's drawn face, how he had become weaker after the time shifts, how his nose had bled.

"Freya's right." Ingrid nodded. "The transformation wiped me out," she said. "I almost couldn't turn the pixies back to their real form."

"Well, that's good to hear," Sven muttered.

Anne spoke again. "Loki wanted Fryr and Balder to be forever at war. He was jealous of their friendship, and it was not only the Bofrir that he wanted to destroy that day. He is a serpent in our midst, nibbling at the roots of the Tree of Life, seeding doubt like a poisonous snake."

"He must have put the trident on the Dragon," Killian said.

"Of course - so that you would have the mark." Freya nodded. "And Freddie would be convinced of your guilt." She shook her head. "What I don't understand is that I turned the Dragon upside down and never found the trident. Freddie told me it would be there."

"It wasn't," said Killian. "I was wondering what you were searching for, so I searched myself - after you tore my boat apart."

"Of course it was not there." Sven smiled. "I remember now. We took it. Loki made us do it. Then he sent us to Midgard to steal it again."

"So that was you guys!" Freya said. "I heard you!" She remembered waking up one night on the Dragon. She had sensed a presence on the boat, an intruder.

"There was just one problem," Irdick said. "We dropped it."

"Into the sea ... and it disappeared. We all jumped into the water but couldn't find it," Kelda said. "We have no idea where it is."

Killian pushed himself off the mantel of the fireplace. "We've got a lot to do, and I don't know if I have enough in me to do it, but we need to get Anne back to her rightful time. Maybe if we do it together, it will help push her through the passages."

Joanna pulled her hair back. She was concerned about her fylgja. Anne had done so much for them. "We need to send her back before this whole witch-hunt began, before Loki even caught sight of her. We'll give you gold, Anne, and you and John can get away, start a new life somewhere safe, far away from the Isle of Wight. You'll have your time with him."

Anne looked up at her, a smile on her lips, the fire's soft light flickering on her face. "It would be lovely to start again with John ..."

They walked to a spot on the beach near where John Barklay's house had been and formed a circle around Anne and helped her into the portal. After the fylgja - the goddess of present, Veroandi, the healer of the Tree of Life - vanished into the passages, they collapsed in the sand. Freya woke and saw Norman and Joanna coming to, but Killian was still out. She had no idea how long they had been passed out on the beach. It was cold and damp.

She dragged herself to Killian and took him by the shoulders. "Wake up, darling! Please!" She shook him and his head rolled. His eyes wouldn't open.

Freya's parents rushed over. Norman felt for Killian's pulse. "It's slow," he said.

"Do something, Mother!" Freya pleaded.

Joanna had begun to rub Killian's body to warm him, as she said an incantation, and they all frantically did the same.

"We need to get him back to the house," said Norman.

They began to lift Killian's limp body, Norman swinging an arm over his shoulder, Freya doing the same at her lover's other side, as Joanna strained to pull him up.

"Stop right there!" came a voice. They were surrounded by several tall strongly built young women, each wearing a gray ΚΚΓ sweatshirt. One of them looked slightly familiar to Freya, and she wondered where she had seen her before, then she realized. It was Hilly Liman.

Brünnhilde was a Valkyrie, and so were the rest of her sorority sisters.

"We're here to take him to Limbo," Hilly said, pointing at Killian. "He bears the mark of the trident. He destroyed the Bofrir. He will be held in Limbo for eternity."

"No!" Freya yelled, but she was pushed back as if by an invisible force and thrown to the ground.

"You have no right!" Ingrid said. "He deserves a trial. The White Council shall know of this."

"The White Council is the one who ordered us here," Hilly said with a smug smile.

"Where's Freddie?" yelled Joanna.

"Who cares?" said Hilly. "That son of yours is a total dweeb. He'll never, ever have me. He didn't even make it into the tales of my last rescue from the ring of fire."

Joanna was helping poor Killian stand upright, but it was all she could do not to run straight at the girl and rip out her eyes.

Freya crawled over to Killian and clung to him with all the force she had left in her as the Valkyries began to pry him away from her grasp. She was dragged in the sand, holding on to him, screaming at them to leave her and Killian alone, as they pulled at his near-lifeless body, her parents and Ingrid running after them.

Soon Freya was alone, weeping and howling at the sky where they had swept Killian away. She collapsed into her mother's arms as she gestured to the sky, like an infant trying to grab at something slightly out of reach, as if she could still get a hold of her darling who had been violently torn away from her.

Chapter sixty-three

Pocketful of Dreams

Norman paced the living room in the large colonial house. The whole family was present, including Matt Noble, who was comforting Ingrid. The pixies tried to make themselves useful, offering drinks and food. Freya was pacing furiously. She was no longer heartbroken. She was furious. "What can we do? We've got to get him back. He's innocent. When I get my hands on those girls, I'm going to - "

The knock on the door interrupted her sentence.

"I'll get it," Matt said helpfully.

Freddie walked in with a tall blond girl who had a sensible air about her. "Hey, guys, what's up? This is Gert. Gert, this is everyone."

"Freddie! Thank gods! You're all right!" Joanna said, rushing to embrace her boy.

"What's wrong? What's happened?" he asked, looking around.

They told him. Killian had been sentenced to Limbo, but there was no guarantee he had survived the trip, while the Beauchamps were teetering at the edge of their own abyss, their powers fading - their line threatened to extinction.

"There is only one way we can help Killian and end all this," Ingrid said. "We need to find Loki. He's out there somewhere; we need to find him and bring him to justice once and for all."

"The trident - if we can find the trident, it will lead us to the bastard," Freddie said.

"The pixies said they lost it in the sea, but if they weren't able to find it, then it must have slipped into something else ... like a black hole," Freya suggested.

"Or something else," Ingrid said. She began brainstorming, making associations. She looked to her father. "What makes one forget?"

"Well, there's Lethe, the river in Hades in Greek mythology, which causes its drinkers to forget the past," Norman said.

"Yes!" said Ingrid, again recalling her dream in the library. It held a portent that made everything appear to coalesce for her. "Water. The silence of forgetfulness. That's why the pixies forgot everything: they drank from the silence!"

Joanna began reciting the Thomas Hood poem: "There is a silence where hath been no sound / There is a silence where no sound may be / In the cold grave - under the deep, deep sea."

"'Deep in the silence!' Deep under the sea!" added Freddie. "I was there. They needed me to retrieve the trident - of course. It was inside a gold case, which I didn't recognize. I had forgotten what it felt like to have it in my possession - crap! I gave it to Liman. It's probably halfway to Loki by now."

Everyone let out a grunt in some form or another. It looked grim. But Ingrid hadn't lost hope. She was tenacious and knew there was always a way - and some problems just fixed themselves, as hers had with Matt. Also Ingrid was in love, and a witch who had fallen in love for the very first time was a particularly optimistic witch, and there would be no stopping her. She could still feel there was magic within her.

"I know how we can get the trident!" she exclaimed. "The pixies can steal it back. After all, they were the ones who stole it in the first place."

Chapter sixty-four

Time After Time

The pixies volunteered for the mission with glee. "We like stealing things. We can find it - wherever and whenever it is," Sven said. He seemed to be their leader, Ingrid noticed. Funny how that was. Freya was still furious, but she was placated by the knowledge that there was a rescue plan forming.

Freddie said he had an announcement to make, and he cleared his throat and looked suddenly happy. "Well, there is a bright side to all this," he said.

"What bright side?" Freya snapped. Had she finally found her one true love only to lose him forever?

"Well, for starters, Gert and I are engaged," he said. Gert smiled shyly.

The family was shocked into silence.

"Congratulations?" Freya said.

"I thought her name was Hilly," said Joanna, looking suspiciously at Gert.

"No, that's Brünnhilde, one of the Valkyries who took Killian away," Norman said. "The one Freddie's been keen on since the Ring of Fire challenge. I always thought she was too much trouble for you," he told his son. He held out his hand and Gert shook it.

"Look, I know you've all been through a lot, but I'm on your side. I've despised Henry Liman since he adopted me and my sister after we were orphaned in Midgard when the bridge fell," Gert said. "He never treated us the same as his precious Brünnhilde."

"Her real name's not Gert. It's Geror. I think you might remember her now, yes?" Freddie asked.

Ingrid nodded and hugged her future sister-in-law warmly. "It's nice to see you again, too."

"Well, then!" said Norman, blowing his nose, while Joanna still looked perturbed. She had her son back only to lose him again, she thought. A mother's love was tested in so many ways. But she remembered this Gert and that she had been good for Freddie. She would calm him down, she thought. She had pieced together a little bit of his life here, with the video game addiction and the harem, and Gert was just the antidote he needed.

Freya nodded. "We'll need all the help we can get," she said.

Joanna patted Freya on the back. "I think I need some fresh air," she told Norman, who nodded.

Without consulting each other, they walked out of the house and through the forest toward the place where Anne had been buried.

To Joanna's satisfaction, neither the burial mound nor the blank tombstone appeared underneath the oak tree.

"Good." Joanna nodded. "I hope they had a happy life."

"As happy as one can be with a mortal," Norman ruminated. "A brief happiness. I hope Ingrid knows what she's doing with that detective of hers."

Joanna took her husband's hand and squeezed it. "She'll make it work. I have a confession to make. You know, come to think of it, I never really liked French food."

Norman smiled.

They walked back to their home to find Ingrid and Freddie standing in shock in the living room.

"What happened?" Joanna asked, alarmed. "Where's Freya?"