Flock (9 page)

She pulled the disposable diaper’s plastic tape snugly across Leira’s concave belly. “I’m not sure I know the name of it. It’s something I learned from your
amma,
something I sang to you when you were a baby.”

“I don’t remember hearing the words before now. They’re pretty,” I added. “Do you know where Amma learned the song, or how old it is?”

My mom looked up and out the window, as if trying to pull memories from the sky. “No, and no, though I suppose it’s quite old and that the English is a translation. Almost all of Amma’s lullabies were. Leira seems to like it, anyway.”

Indeed, she had settled and was bicycling her legs in a more playful show of vitality. Another good sign, if you asked me.

“Now that you’re up,” my mom continued, “Stanley said there are some news reports you might be interested in. He’s been glued to the TV all morning.”

Uh-oh.

“What kind of news?”

“More sinkholes like the one out at the Snjossons’ property.”

I didn’t stick around to hear it from her. I headed downstairs and straight for the family room, where Stanley was — coffee cup in one hand and remote in the other — camped out in front of the television.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“The weirdest thing,” he said.

Again, the
weird
word. I almost growled.

“Three more very large ones, like out at Jack’s place, have been reported: one in Australia, one in Chile, and another in British Columbia. The timing is odd, almost like a cluster, but they’re too far apart to be related. Luckily, they’ve all been in remote areas. No injuries, thank goodness.”

I left Stanley channel surfing and grabbed my phone out of my backpack. Jack picked up on the second ring.

“Have you heard?” I asked.

“Yes. We’re crawling with reporters again. My dad’s at the site with a news crew as we speak.”

“So what’s their angle?” I asked.

“There isn’t one, really. Just that it’s a coincidence.”

His mom called him outside, cutting our conversation short. Next I retrieved a text from Penny. Her
More holes. Freaky huh?
message didn’t do much to muzzle the sirens going off in my head. Jack claimed Midas had never liked that area. What if it had been a power place? What if they had all been power places? Were they portals? Vulnerable portals? If Marik was to be trusted and it wasn’t Vatnheim, no need to ponder who else would try to get through. The fury we’d wrought in Brigid had been apoplectic, a word that shared a whole lot of letters with apocalyptic. And I left nothing to coincidence anymore.

That evening, as I gazed through Afi’s front window about to flip the sign to
CLOSED
, a face pressed up against the glass.

“Jesus!”

I stumbled backward, twisting my ankle in the process.

Jinky opened the door and stood in front of me, while I braced myself against the nearby newsstand and rubbed at my already throbbing foot.

“What the hell?” I said. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

“Hardly. Just thought it was time we spoke alone.” She swallowed a smile, obviously oblivious to my colorless cheeks and physical injury. “Can we take a walk?”

To my way of thinking, “a walk” was the prelude to bad news, a breakup, or the pirate’s plank. Besides, my ankle hurt. “We’re alone here.”

“There’s somewhere I have in mind,” she said.

Stranger Danger 101: Never willingly go to a second location.

“And you’re done here, right?” she continued.

“Yes.” My hesitance made the word sound like more of a question than a reply.

“Then get your things and let’s go.”

A few minutes later, I was following Jinky down the darkened Main Street.

“Should we take my car?” I asked, struggling to keep up.

“It’s nice out,” she said, which — as far as I was concerned — was a non sequitur.

An evident proponent of the work-it-off school of pain management, she took the corner at Fern gaining speed. Something in her long, purposeful strides announced that conversation was curtailed until arrival. It set an ominous tone. I was surprised, therefore, when our destination turned out to be . . .

“Big Turtle Park?” I asked, which wasn’t the name of the dead guy on the playground’s official sign, but it was what townies called the place, owing to the large, green, climb-on structure that was its main attraction.

“I have my reasons.” Jinky dropped into one of the swings facing the concrete turtle.

I took the one next to her. She seemed content to drift back and forth gently. More relaxed given our location, I pumped my legs a couple of times to get a little momentum going. Growing up, I was a swing kid. You could keep your slides, your seesaws, and your merry-go-rounds; give me a sling seat and a starting push and I was sky-high happy.

“I am here,” Jinky said, “to complete what began in Iceland.”

I planted my feet so suddenly that I retwisted my bum ankle. “Uh, could you be a little more specific?”

“When I first spied you at the festival, I knew you were different. With just a simple rune reading, I saw that a journey lay ahead of you. And, of course, a true vision quest is the mark of one with strong ties to the other worlds. And even my grandmother, a powerful shaman herself, was stirred by your visit.”

“Uh. Thank you, I think.” Stirred was one of those hazy words. You stirred up trouble, resentment, and the occasional martini.

“Soon after, Marik came to see us on his own voyage.”

“Voyage?” I bristled at the suggestion that he was on some kind of pleasure cruise or adventure. My tone earned me a look from Jinky.

“Look, I may not be privy to all the particulars. Neither one of you is exactly an open book, but, as my grandmother has strongly advised me, as a shaman, I’m to act as a conduit only.”

“A conduit?”

“A shaman is an intermediary. One who can communicate with the spirit world, and if the magic is strong enough, beyond.”

“Beyond?”

“I do know that Marik isn’t from Iceland, you know.”

“I guess you would.” I ran my hand up and down the swing’s chains. I was getting into dangerous territory here.

“Occasionally, I assist him to
visualize
his natural habitat. It’s therapeutic, he claims.”

“So you’re a shaman in your own right, then?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly. That’s kind of the point.” Jinky unwedged her butt from the swing and stood in front of me. “This is my initiation, my rite of passage.”

“What?” I was up out of my swing now, too. “I’m your test run?” Her role was becoming clear to me as well. And she wasn’t just a conduit, she had wings to earn.

I walked in the direction of the immense green turtle.

Jinky followed. “Hey. You, more than anyone, should get it.”

“Get what?”

“That it’s not a choice. As spiritual beings, we have to act on our premonitions. To ignore a gift, to not rise to the calling, is a willful defiance of our true purpose. For us, there is no coincidence, no chance.”

That last bit got me. It’s what I’d thought yesterday about the holes. I turned my back on Jinky and braced my arms against the monster turtle; my fingers landed in something sticky, the residue of some kid’s snack, no doubt. I stepped back, wiping my hands on my jeans. When I looked back up, Jinky was holding something highly suspicious in my face: a bundle of weeds and a lighter.

“I’m not into that stuff,” I said, holding up my still-gooey hands.

“It’s sage, for smudging,” she said, communicating both her impatience and condescension with a shake of her head.

“And what are you going to do with that?”

Jinky ducked down, way down, and crawled below the turtle. “I felt a strong vibe that I had to connect with you tonight. Around here, this was the closest thing I could find to a domed sweat lodge. I’ll have to improvise.”

“What, here? Now?” I had to stoop and address the underside of a big green turtle.

“Have you got somewhere else to be?”

I sighed, a big huffy thing. And though I couldn’t believe I was doing it, I bent down and scrambled below the belly of the concrete reptile, jettisoning a juice box out of my way.

In the cramped and dark space, Jinky sat cross-legged. I did the same. With a click, she lit the bundle. I coughed; she shot me a look. All was proceeding normally. Even her motions were just like last time. She held up the smoking bundle, waved it over her head and around her shoulders.

“We pass the smudge wand,” Jinky said, “to cleanse the space and to purify our bodies and minds.”

She handed me the burning sage, and I copied her smoke-bath routine.

I remembered there had been more to the giving of thanks that first time. Improvising meant the abridged version, I assumed.

The smoke collected under the curve of the turtle’s back. It burned my nose, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“We call to the spirits on behalf of one whose journey crosses into the ancestral realm and beyond.”

It was clear to me why I was not a smoker. The stuff was nasty. My eyes were watering. I couldn’t clear my throat. And I was getting light-headed.

Next thing I knew, Jinky was two inches from my face, asking, “What about Frigg?”

I coughed and rubbed my eyes. “What?”

“You said: ‘From the goddess Frigg, one seeks forgiveness and the other offers life.’ And that ‘within
them
lies a solution.’”

“I did?”

“Yes. Do you remember anything else?”

“Frigg?” I repeated groggily.

“Do you know what that means?”

“That I need to get some
friggin’
air,” I said, crawling from under our improvised sweat lodge. I took a deep, cleansing breath of clear air and staggered to my feet.

Jinky followed me.

“Do you even know who the goddess Frigg is?” she asked.

“No.”

“Frigg is the queen of Asgard. Only she and her husband, Odin, sit upon Asgard’s highest seat and look out over the universe. She is the goddess of marriage, childbirth, motherhood, and wisdom.”

“Now, that’s a résumé,” I said, “but are you sure I said Frigg?”

“Yes. But it was only a moment of clarity. Obviously we need to find a real
savusauna,
and a place of concentrated ancestral energies, if you’re to walk with the spirits again.”

I was on board with the walking part. I wanted out of there.

“Can we call it a night?” I said. “I think I’m quested out for now.”

We headed back in silence and at a humane pace. My ankle felt better, but it was my head’s turn to twist. Had I said Frigg? Did I have a brief vision? Despite my confusion, it felt like progress. And I now knew Jinky’s role. But what did Frigg have to do with it? And where would we find a
savusauna
around here?

I had only the vaguest recollection of arriving home Sunday night. Either I was already half asleep or whatever altered state shaman Jinky had enabled had been more powerful than we’d thought.

The next morning, I woke early and went straight to my computer to Google Frigg. Jinky had been correct in the goddess’s basic bio: Queen of Asgard, home of the Warrior Gods. Scanning a few different sites, I found a few more details of interest. She had an inner circle of nine faithful handmaidens, a tenth — Idunn, the Goddess of Eternal Youth — had been booted for incompetence. I also focused on Frigg’s role as the goddess of childbirth and motherhood. In one saga she is said to have sent a magic, fertility-boosting apple to a childless King Rerir and his queen. It seemed important, given Marik’s claim that apples were the “life-giving fruit of all the realms.” Nor was it lost on me that a third queen (after Brigid and Safira) was making her presence known. Great. At this rate, I could host a state dinner. Except I feared I’d end up as the main course.

Leira’s crying jarred me back to the here and now. I closed my laptop, walked to the closet, grabbed a pair of jeans, and ran a hand across the selection of tops. I elected to go with a peasant blouse; it seemed to mirror my predicament.

Thankfully, school was uneventful. In Design, Ms. Bryant handed me a chaperone form that my dad needed to fill out and return — by tomorrow. I sighed and jammed it into my book bag. At least it was one of Ms. Bryant’s assignments where neatness didn’t count.