Joseph Lewis - Freya the Huntress

Wren stepped back. “Erik?”

The reaver dashed at her, snarling and snapping its fangs. But the chains drew taut and the creature crashed to the floor, twisting and kicking as it struggled to get free of the chains. Wren stumbled back into the blood-soaked wall and felt something soft under her boot. She looked down at the shredded remains of a sheep’s leg. The reaver scrambled up to its feet again and stood at its full height, head bent against the ceiling, arms straining against the chains locked to its wrists.

Choking on the stench of blood and viscera, Wren turned toward the door and again her foot found a strange shape in the blood. She didn’t want to look, but she heard a metallic scrape so she glanced down and saw a long steel spear lying against the wall. She looked at the spear, and then she looked at the reaver, and then she ran outside and vomited in the stream.

When her belly was empty, she sat by the water, washing her face and rinsing out her mouth. After a few moments she leaned over the rippling waters and saw the dark smudge on the end of her nose and the tips of her ears poking through her hair. And then she looked at her cold, dripping hand.

It was bare skin.

The fur is gone!

She yanked off her shirt and stared at her bare, fur-less, hair-less arms and she felt their smoothness until the chill air made them dimple with gooseflesh. Then she stood and found that her skirts hung to their proper length against her boots. And as she pulled her shirt back on and reached for her blanket, she realized she could no longer feel the pounding of her heart in her chest, though she could hear it faintly.

She wrapped the blanket around herself and sat with her back against the wall of the mill and watched the little bone and leather paddles turning in the sparkling water. The sun was up now and the sky was pale blue and soft white clouds stretched across the heavens.

She shivered.

“Thank you, Allfather. Oh, thank you, thank you. I take it all back! You’re a perfectly lovely god of seidr-magic and death!”

And as the sun warmed her face and the stones at her back, she felt her fears melt away, draining out or her weary bones, and she slept.

Wren awoke slowly. She was lying on her side in an awkward heap, tangled in her blanket. The sun was high and the air was mild, and aside from an empty belly and a pleasant warmth between her legs that reminded her of the dream she had just left behind, she felt wonderfully solid and whole and safe. She touched her ears and found them just as tall as before, and she gently stroked the soft hair on them, feeling the way it swept up either side of her head to two downy tufts. It was a strangeness, to be sure, but it did not frighten her.

They’ll go away, or they won’t. But I’m still me.

She leaned over the stream, trying to see her reflection clearly in the rippling waters, and she saw that her eyes were far more gold than green.

That’s hardly even a change, is it?

A low shuffling sound rose in the mill behind her, and she turned to look at the blank stone wall. Then she went to the door and held the leather curtain open, letting the light fall on the furry form hunched in the far corner.

It must be him. He hasn’t growled or barked or anything. He can’t make a sound, even like this.

“I’m sorry, Erik. But Freya is all right. She made it back. And she said she found another man called Omar. Did you meet him? I think he might be able to help. They were supposed to find a cure, you know. And just look at me. I’m getting better all on my own. Look.” She held out her bare arm. And gradually, as she stood there looking down at Erik, she remembered the bloodfly that bit her as she crept out of the city in the morning gloom.

A bloodfly. In winter?

Her jaw dropped and a fresh tear came to her eye.

Is that possible? Well, for a god, most certainly. It really was Woden. He sent me the cure in a bloodfly!

She smiled at the reaver. “There is a cure.” She touched one of her tall, hairy ears. “Well, sort of. But it’s going to be all right. I’ll stay with you until Freya comes. Then we’ll find the cure for you too, and then it’ll all be like it was before.” She knelt down and picked up the spear on the floor and dragged it out into the light, and then she washed it as best she could in the cold stream and scrubbed the blood away with a fistful of dead grass.

And then Wren sat back down at the door of the mill with the spear standing between her legs, leaning against her shoulder. “Well, Woden, it seems you managed to redeem yourself again, this time. And thank you again for that. But I just want to know why I can’t have a simple, normal friend? I mean, really, Gudrun and that woman in the cellar and poor Erik here. Am I really such bad company? I know I shouldn’t complain. I’m alive and well, and free, with the hearing of a fox, no less. But it’s hard not to feel sorry for myself when all I want is a sane person to talk to, like Freya, for example. I know you understand, Allfather. After all, you made me this way. So really, it’s your own fault you have to listen to me now. So I don’t want to hear any complaints from you about it.”

Wren rested her chin on her knee and closed her eyes. From the distant north came a cold and lonely howl, and she tightened her grip on the spear.

Freya stood in the cold morning light staring at the rusted door of the cell half-buried in the earth under the castle’s south wall. She could hear Katja shuffling about inside, the noises echoing in the confined space. And she heard a pair of boots crunching toward her across the trampled, icy snow.

“Good morning, fair lady.”

“Morning. Is there any sign of Wren yet?”

“I’m afraid not. Is your sister down in there?” Omar asked.

Freya nodded. “I slipped her some meat this morning. I hope it was enough.” She hesitated. “That was you shouting over the water last night, wasn’t it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know who that was. I heard it just as I was coming inside the south wall.”

“Any idea who it was?”

“I do not. Perhaps some poor fisherman was out on the water, fighting with a reaver in the middle of the bay,” he said. “Did you sleep last night?”

“Like a corpse,” she said. “Thank you for keeping watch by my room all night.”

“It was the least I could do,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device of shiny brass and blue-tinted glass, which he unfolded and then placed on his face, with the two brass hooks wrapped around his ears and the two blue lenses resting in front of his eyes to shade them. He smiled at her. “I got them in Tingis, a lovely little seaside town in Marrakesh. Do you like them?”

She smiled. “You look ridiculous.”

He smiled back. “You know, I brought that nest here to use on your sister, to test my vaccine on a fully-turned reaver and to prove to everyone that it would work as a cure, to some extent. I wanted to meet the sister of the fearless Freya.”

“I’m sorry that you won’t get to. She’d like you.”

“Ah, she likes handsome men?”

“She likes funny men,” Freya said. “But the only ones bitten with the vaccine were me and Leif. Small good that will do. I’m sorry I lost all of your hard work.”

“Lost?” Omar grinned. “Those bloodflies are out in the city somewhere right now, nipping away at people one by one.”

“Maybe. But how much good can half a dozen flies do before they’re all swatted to death?”

“Half a dozen?” Omar glanced toward the courtyard where the guards were standing beside a burning brazier, and then he leaned in closer to the huntress. “That nest I brought to the castle was just a sample, as I said, to test on your sister. Skadi was right to search the city as she did, she knows me too well. I scattered the other nests everywhere, and I doubt the guards will find them before they hatch today.”