Cold Spell

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I explain Mora as best I can to Brigit. I lay out the magazine clippings, tell her about Kai, tell her about Lucas and Ella—though I leave out the details there, to keep them safe. Brigit listens, barely moving, and when I’m finished she sits back on the loveseat across from me. I notice there are tattoos on her arms and on the interior of almost every finger, symbols and shapes and words I don’t recognize.

“That’s everything,” I say when she goes an uncomfortably long time without speaking. “And it’s true. I swear.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Brigit answers. She reaches forward, flips around in the cookbook for another moment, and then speaks slowly. “I know about this girl. Your Snow Queen. Grohkta-Nap.”

She pauses and closes the cookbook gently. “She took your boy. Kai.”

“Yes. So you believe me?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Brigit says. “I can’t pretend I’m not angry. I thought she was only taking Traveller boys, lately. Didn’t know she wanted buffers.”

“Wait, what?”

“Grohkta-Nap. I won’t question her choices, of course,” Brigit says, casting her eyes to the ceiling for a moment. “I just hoped she’d choose another of ours, when she needed a new guardsman.”

“You… wanted?” I shake my head. “She steals boys. She turns them into wolves. She keeps them forever.”

“No—she keeps them till she finds better ones. And she does far more than make them wolves. She makes them gods,” Brigit corrects. “Like her. Well, not like her, but more like her than we are, anyhow.”

“Are you crazy? She’s the queen of beasts. She controls the other werewolves, the Fenris. They attacked me—”

“She’s our only protection from the Fenris,” Brigit says, and now her eyes light up angrily, as if I’ve said something deeply insulting. “And with the way you talk about Grohkta-Nap, it’s no surprise she didn’t protect you from them. It’s by her grace they didn’t kill you.”

I fall silent, though I can feel a thousand words at a thousand different volumes trying to rise from my lungs. Brigit stands and crosses her arms.

“The question,” she says, “is whether you’ve come to us as a blessing. Grohkta-Nap took your boy, let you live, and led you here. That’s gotta be something. Or… are you a curse she’s bringing down on my people? Sent to tell us she chose a buffer instead of my boys, to warn us about the Fenris coming…”

“I’m just Ginny,” I say, voice breaking. “I just didn’t want them to take the cookbook.”

Brigit shakes her head at me, as if she pities my stupidity. “Nothing happens because of ‘just.’ So, you’ll stay here until we work it out.”

“You can’t… I’m not just staying here,” I say shrilly.

“Oh, no one here just stays,” Brigit says. “Plenty of people here would kill for an extra pair of hands. It’ll be a nightmare deciding who gets to keep you.” She moves toward the tent flap to leave; I jump to my feet and sprint for the door. I’m running for it, I’m fast, I can make it somewhere. I burst past Brigit, stumbling from the darkness of the tent into the bright white world outside. My feet hit the snow, I don’t care, I step forward—

And realize there’s nowhere to go.

We’re in a clearing surrounded by trees, tall, bare oaks that stretch their fingers to the now-dark sky. There are campfires everywhere, and I hear someone playing an instrument, a guitar maybe, backed by a harmonica. But mostly, I see people. People everywhere, dressed in worn but colorful clothes, smoking cigarettes and fighting, laughing, and singing. Hundreds of them, spread out among dozens and dozens of RVs and tents and campers.

Bracelets is in front of me, leaning against a post that holds the tent’s “porch” up. He looks at me warily, silently asking me not to make him chase me into the trees.

“You can run,” Brigit says, “but see those people? They’ll stop you. And if they don’t—” She points into the distance, to the line of trees. “See the forest?”

I nod.

“Those trees are full of teeth and claws. Run in there and see if Grohkta-Nap protects you from the Fenris a second time. She may be a goddess, Ginny, but I’d rather not test her patience, especially after questioning her power.”

I sink to my knees.

“My parents will be looking for me,” I hiss at Brigit. “They’ll find me.”

Brigit studies me for a minute, then brushes past me, walking out into the snow. As she moves away, she calls over her shoulder, “Don’t lie to me, Ginny Andersen. No one’s looking for you.”

They’ve given me a pair of shoes to wear, and the fire is warm, at least. Everyone is gathered in a circle around it, a sea of smudged cheeks and bright eyes. A blonde girl with bright cheeks is wearing Mora’s coat proudly, modeling it so other children can admire her. Across the fire from the girl, Brigit and a dozen boys my age talk. The boys have thick muscles and tanned faces, and old T-shirts peek out from behind scarves and coats. I feel as if I’m trapped in a movie, a play that isn’t my life.

“Listen up,” Brigit calls out. The crowd quiets, and all faces turn to her. “This buffer is staying with us for a bit, till I work out what to do with her.” She pauses while two dogs get in a squabble, waiting for them to be calmed by their masters. When they are, she continues, sounding annoyed. “Name’s Ginny. Don’t know if she’s any good at cooking or cleaning, but she’s young, she’ll learn. One from each family who can afford another mouth, winner gets her. No knives, no chains, no brass knuckles. Clear?”

Her words are blunt, though I’m still not quite clear what’s about to happen. I look at her—she made no mention of the Snow Queen, of Grohkta-Nap, and from the way Brigit glares at me, I can tell I’m not to bring it up. I suppose that, if she ends up thinking I’m a curse, she’ll want to get rid of me easier, and if I’m a blessing, she’ll want to keep me without a fight. My lips firm—stop thinking like that. You aren’t staying here either way.

“Let’s get on with it then!” a portly man says loudly, and the crowd cheers raucously. Brigit motions for me to rise; I back up toward her, but Bracelets and Dreadlocks are once again blocking any escape route I might have taken. Boys from around the fire step out, tossing down their coats and hats. A dozen or so total, with a few stragglers opting in at the last moment, pushed by their mothers, who eye me greedily. The boys size one another up, rock back and forth on their heels. I see money being dug from pockets, exchanged between the crowd; small children push through the legs of adults to get a front-row seat.

Someone grips my arm, and I turn to see that it’s Bracelets. “You’ll want to step back,” he says. “These things take up a lot of space.”

“Ready!” Brigit shouts, voice ringing through the clearing. The boys vying for me tense. “Fight!”

They explode into motion, a flurry of hands and fists. The thick, slock sound of punches meeting heads resonates over the roar of the crowd. People are screaming, shouting, encouraging the boys that fall quickly to get back up, to grow a pair and keep fighting. A boy’s shirt gets ripped in half; another boy almost gets thrown into the fire.

I look over to Brigit—she’s watching patiently, as if this bores her, even as a pair of wrestlers tumble forward and narrowly miss knocking her over. A few boys are staying down now, heaving into the ground with bloody noses and mouths red from busted lips. The crowd changes pitch, from cheers to gasps and laughter. I snap my head around, hearing Bracelets chuckle behind me. I can’t see what’s happening through the fire, and my eyes start to water from trying to stare through the flames. Finally I see something—I don’t know what, but something—someone moving fast, darting around the boys’ arms, ducking under their swings.

“Who is that?” I ask Bracelets.

“That,” he answers, looking smug, “is Princess Flannery.”

My eyes widen; I look to Brigit, who, though still, I can tell is seething from the stiff, hard angle her jaw has taken. The men are booing, yelling at Brigit, throwing their arms into the air in frustration. She ignores them, her eyes narrowed and trained on the fight—on her daughter.

I rise to my toes and finally see some of what’s happening on the far side of the fire. Flannery moves fast, flickering around the boys as they wail on one another like clumsy giants. She ducks under a boy’s arm, black hair flowing behind her, then rises up behind him to bring her elbow down hard on his head. He falls, and she sprints to another boy, sliding into the mud and taking a knee to her nose. It bloodies instantly, but she doesn’t seem to notice, moving around the fire as she stoops and causes one of the boys to trip over her.

There’re only a few boys left now—most are stumbling back into the crowd, enveloped in a sea of men slapping their backs and offering them flasks. Flannery dives toward the two boys closest to Brigit; they turn and see her, alarmed, and duck out of the way as she swings a fist at them. One of the boys grins, catches her hand, and flips her to the ground. Bracelets makes a growling sound that ends when she springs back up, leaps onto the boy’s back, and wraps her arms around his thick neck. He flails and punches at her legs awkwardly, trying to shake her off, but she grits her teeth and holds tight.

The other boy runs at them both, hand clenched into a fist. He strikes the boy Flannery’s holding on to, forcing him to stop fighting off Flannery and focus on his male opponent. The two exchange fruitless blows—one, two, three punches that sail through the air. Finally, Flannery’s boy succumbs to the pressure she’s putting on his neck and drops to his knees, red-faced and wheezing. Flannery releases him and looks up at the other boy, and I can tell he’s thrown—he doesn’t want to be the one to hit her, the princess.

She clearly has no such hesitation; she punches him, so fast he doesn’t have time to flinch. He stumbles backward, rubbing his jaw, but before he can recover she’s landed a solid kick to his stomach, then another, then a stomp to his instep. The boy falls to the ground and holds up his hands in surrender as she runs at him, foot drawn back, ready to strike again. She freezes just before making contact—there’s no need. It’s over.

The crowd erupts in a chorus of cheers, of boos, of conversation and dog howls. People are milling around; men are shouting over the wagers they placed. No one seems to understand what just happened, what this means—least of all me. Finally, an older man lifts his hands into the air in celebration and laughter.

“Take that, mugathawns! Flannery Sherlock is the winner!”