Glittering Shadows (6 page)

Forget these pains. Don’t think. Let the world’s song beat with your own heart, and nothing you have seen on earth will matter.

All the dark memories that pulsed in Thea’s heart grew buoyant. If she just opened her hand, they would fly free, and she would be free of them.

Father—Mother—

Her jaw trembled with uncertainty. The motion of the saw reverberated up her arm as her bone split clean in two. The split was like the calm after the storm—the grinding gone silent, her
arm set free of ugly memories. Ingrid’s hand gripped her arm just above her wrist, and Thea felt her blood held back by Ingrid’s will. Then the wound began to seal, skin climbing over
blood and bone. Everything she saw and felt seemed far away, like reading a horror novel on a sunny day. It wasn’t real.

Her injured hand had dropped onto the cloths. It was just a dead thing now, like her father’s body with his soul gone out of it.

Scream. Scream! Please, scream! Stop her!

Ingrid seemed to notice her distress, and smiled at Thea, the sun streaming through the windows catching her fair hair so she looked radiant as a painted angel. And then she held up a new hand,
a splendid wooden hand with neatly articulated little fingers. Designs were burned into the wood, curls and patterns, the kind of dreamy images that might float in one’s head just before
falling asleep at night. Ingrid was like a
nightmare
—

A
dream
come to life, Thea thought, with her strange melody and her wise eyes.

Ingrid held the wooden hand to the stump where her old hand had been, and Thea could feel that this was not just any wood. It was alive. As soon as it touched her, it began to put out roots that
crawled through her skin, tickling beneath, wending their way inside of her. Filling her with everything she had lost.

All the pain was gone now.

Ingrid let the last note die softly. Then she cocked her head again. “Does your hand feel better?”

“Yes.” Another answer teased at her mind. But why? Of course she felt better.

Now when she looked at her left hand, she didn’t see the wood, but the perfect match to her right. The pale hue of her palms, the thin lines webbing across, the pinker shade of her
fingertips, the veins running beneath—it was all there. And the wooden hand moved exactly as she wished it to, even though it only had the ghost of sensation. No one would know it was wood,
except Thea.

“Even you will forget,” Ingrid said, seeming to read her mind.

Yes, I will forget
, she thought.
It’s better than new
.

“This wood is from my tree,” Ingrid said.

“Your tree?”

“My Yggdrasil.” Ingrid looked slowly at the ceiling, like she was following the line of branches above her head instead of a hairline crack in the plaster. “The sacred tree of
Irminau. It’s the most beautiful place, Thea. I wish we could go there now, so you could feel its magic running all through you. You would feel such serenity. But now you have a little piece
of it. Do you feel it?”

A vision flashed over Thea’s head: the bright spring green of a tree’s branches filling the room, blocking the ceiling from view entirely. It brought her back to childhood, to
summers in the forests outside the city visiting Uncle Peter or her mother’s dear friend Antje. But this was the tree of all trees. A tree so strong and magnificent that she almost thought
she heard the rustle of its leaves across the miles. “I do.”

Ingrid’s eyes dropped back down to meet Thea’s, and the vision broke. “But you mustn’t tell anyone. There isn’t enough magic to go around.”

“Like Freddy’s magic.” Thea understood. “We can’t tell anyone, because he can’t bring back every person that dies. And you can’t give everyone a piece
of Yggdrasil.”

“Yes. You understand.” Ingrid wiped away the blood smeared on Thea’s arm. “I’m glad you came. There are never many girls around here, and I’ve missed my
sisters. I hope you’ll help me protect my tree.”

“Of course I will,” Thea said, eager to have purpose. She was no longer just a sixteen-year-old girl who had left school and become a waitress, a girl who had fallen in with Freddy
by accident and could not match his power.

Ingrid had trusted her with something great.

S
ebastian showed Freddy and Nan to a dining room. Sigi was already there, eating a sandwich piled high. The remnants of lunch were spread across
one end of the grand table: breads, cold cuts and boiled sausages, cheeses, sliced potatoes, pickles, butter, horseradish, and mustard. Only a lifetime of manners kept Freddy from grabbing food by
the fistful. Thanks to his constant use of magic, he was always hungry, and last night he had worked some of the strongest magic of his life on an empty stomach.

“I hope the conversation went well,” Sigi said.

“It was…interesting,” Nan said, making a slight face.

Freddy quickly assembled a sandwich and folded it into a napkin. “I’m going to find Thea. I can’t imagine healing takes longer than this.”

“Good idea,” Nan said.

Freddy nosed around downstairs as much as he could without seeming overly suspicious, but only found common rooms—dining room, music room, a ballroom that was quite creepy in its empty
expanse, a front parlor and a back parlor, and a few miscellaneous rooms of chairs and paintings. The house overlooked a vegetable garden out back, and even now in November, a gardener was out
picking lettuce.
Magic,
Freddy thought, wondering how many other sorcerers worked for Sebastian.

He headed for the stairs and almost collided with Will on the second-floor landing.

“Oh—hey,” Will said. “I was just going to ask you—we have a few nice empty bedrooms. Want to come see which you’d like?”

Freddy frowned. Had Will been ordered to keep him from the third floor? The question was casual enough, but it seemed like Will had just been standing there—and choosing a bedroom sounded
uncomfortably permanent. “I want to check on Thea first. It’s been a while.”

“Ingrid will let you know as soon as she’s ready, I’m sure. I don’t want to disturb her. But Thea is in the best of hands, I can tell you that. Ingrid’s so
gentle.”

Soft footsteps were padding down the stairs. “How sweet to say. All in a day’s work.” A slight blond girl appeared in view. Her eyes fixed on Freddy. She reached out to touch
his silver hair before she was all the way downstairs. When he flinched back, she laughed gently. “No need to be shy. I’ve just never seen the like on someone so young!”

“Are you Ingrid? I need to see Thea.” He knew he sounded rudely blunt, but he didn’t care.

“And she would like to see you,” Ingrid said.

“How is she?”

“Wonderful.” She waved for Freddy to follow her up.

Thea was in bed sitting back on a pile of fluffy pillows, but her eyes lit when she saw Freddy. Her left hand looked good as new. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“A little drugged, but…good.” She smiled up at him. “Don’t worry. You look so concerned. Sit down.”

Freddy pulled over the wooden chair, picking up a bottle of medicine on the nightstand. It looked similar to the stuff the maid gave him when he had a headache, but he had never seen Thea look
dreamy. The room smelled very clean. “What happened?” he asked. “What did she do?”

She waved her fingers. “She fixed it, obviously. What about you, did you learn anything? Did you meet Sebastian?”

“Yes. He had a lot to say about Nan and the Norns. Ingrid is one, too.”

“She told me about the tree.”

“Yggdrasil?”

“I could almost see it, the way she spoke. To think we never even knew it existed! It must be the most beautiful place.”

“Thea, can you tell me more about the healing? Did she give you anything else to take besides this medicine?”

“Her magic takes the pain away. It made me dream.” Her expression shifted to something haunted, and then she reached for his hand. “I need a dream. It was nice to forget
everything for a minute.”

“I know.” He gripped her hand back. Her fingers felt solid and warm. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Freddy…”

“Yes?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I felt like there was something I needed to tell you, but I can’t even think of it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Must’ve been a dream I had after I passed out.”

This feeling of wrongness had been creeping into Freddy’s mind from the moment Max shot Thea. Could he have done it deliberately to provide a reason for Ingrid to be alone with Thea? If
they knew so much about Freddy already, they might also suspect he had feelings for her. That he trusted her. That he’d lost everything from his own bedroom to his cat to all the people
he’d known, and she was his only anchor.

And also, his weakness.

W
ho was Nan Davies?

According to Sebastian’s story, nobody. Her name and face were just a mask to put on for this life. She was supposed to help the Hands of the White Tree protect Yggdrasil. She must never
again dream of owning her own shop or go out at night to the Telephone Club to work with Thea and joke with customers.

She would never again be an ordinary girl.

“So what did Sebastian say?” Sigi asked. “Does it match what my mother told you?”

“He knows a lot more than Arabella did. There are three Norns, and one of them is here. He said I’m supposed to…” She hesitated.

“What?”

“It sounds stupid when I say it aloud. Actually, it sounds stupid even if I
don’t
say it aloud.”

“I’m sure it’s not stupid,” Sigi said, leaning on the table.

“I’m supposed to bring water to a sacred tree in the north called Yggdrasil.”

“That’s all? But why?”

“So the water can carry magic throughout the land to the people. It preserves balance. I told you it sounded stupid.”

“It sounds
mystical
. Where is this tree?”

“In Irminau. But—the tree was actually destroyed right before I was born.”

“So then there’s nothing to do?” Sigi poured a cup of tea from the pot on the table, although it had obviously gone cold.

“I don’t know. He says Ingrid planted a new tree. She’s another of the Norns. He called her ‘my sister.’ I suppose I should talk with her.”

“Nan.” Sigi tilted her head to one side. “Whenever you talk about this stuff, you know, you seem different…unhappy. Like you’re being shipped off to boarding
school.”

“Maybe I just need to understand it better.” She chewed her thumbnail a moment, remembering how her boss used to harass her about that habit. “I’ve always sensed I was
different from other people. If it’s my fate, how can I fight that?”

Sigi was quiet. She sipped her tea and made a face.

“You don’t believe in fate, do you?” Nan asked.

Sigi shrugged. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right that you have no choice about your own life. I mean, how do we know Sebastian and Ingrid are right?”

“I’ve tried to have a normal life,” Nan said. “I had a normal job, and I planned to be a dressmaker. I would still love to have that life, but it never works. I
can’t shake that feeling, telling me I have some larger purpose to fulfill.”

“But it seems like that feeling goes against your own heart. How could it be right?” Sigi stared into the teacup, now half-empty. “I guess it’s easy for me to
say.”

“No—you’re right,” Nan said. “That’s my problem. Everything Sebastian told me feels right and wrong at once. I have to find out more, even if it
means…losing a part of myself. The Nan part.”

She hoped Sigi understood that she would have given anything to have a normal life, to see colors and go to dances and yearn to be touched and kissed.

“You’ll always be Nan,” Sigi said. “Nan is already kind of strange, after all.” She shot her a quick, shy smile and started making herself a second sandwich.
“If you don’t want to lose these aspects of yourself, then I think you should fight for them, no matter what these people say. I mean, they aren’t gods, right?”

“Not exactly, but—there is a weight to all this I can’t explain. Yggdrasil feels important. And I have these memories of it….”

“New memories?”