26

Present day

It took us longer to get through the woods surrounding the bridge stone and down the hill into the ruins of the city than I’d anticipated. Part of that, I attributed to the tangled undergrowth inside the woods and the tall, swaying grasses outside. No recognizable path remained to mark the way, although now and then I turned up broken bits of glass paving stones with the toe of my hiking boots. I was startled and dismayed at how difficult it was to recognize where things had once been.

More than dismayed. All the homesickness I’d suffered in the years since Alfheim burned hit me all over again, all at once. I stopped frequently to get my bearings. As often as not, my blurred vision was the problem and not my ability to decide what direction we should go. I managed not to outright burst into tears. But Claire maybe picked up on my mood anyhow, because she didn’t say much, either.

The sun stood higher in the sky by the time the grasses thinned and clumped around the lumps of cracked and melted glass that had once been city walls. Black soot and gray ash had been baked into its surface.

I should’ve been used to the memories that had assaulted me all morning, but a new one slammed into me. I remembered all over again how it had felt to step clear of the forest and witness Alfheim’s glass spires and gemstone mosaics vanish in a wall of crimson and black firestorm.

Abruptly, I longed for Heimdal to come now and haul me away from the ruins. To rescue me from this pain, just like he’d saved me from the fire. Just like he’d tried to keep me from Loki.

Of course, then Heimdal had betrayed me, too.

That thought cut as deeply as the memories I’d been suffering under all morning. But it brought anger as strong as grief.

Get your shit together, damn it.

I stopped yet again, but this time I really was trying to get my bearings. If the now-melted walls had once stood here, then the main thoroughfare through the city had run…

“That way.” I think. “The apothecary wasn’t far inside the main gates. The gardens were around back of that. If any plants survived long enough to go to seed, that’s where they’ll be thickest.”

While I stood with my head down and all my energy wrapped up in just keeping it together, Claire stood with her head tipped slightly back. She turned in place, apparently trying to take in all the sights at once.

When I spoke, she lowered her gaze to mine. She seemed to focus on me just fine.

“This plant we’re looking for.” Claire glanced around again, this time at the ground.

“Tansy’s Star.”

“Yeah, that. Do you think I really need it? I mean, if I was really in such bad shape, shouldn’t I have waited back there?”

Claire motioned vaguely in the direction we’d come. At the same time, she looked at me again.

I hesitated. Because honestly, Claire did seem better. She’d kept pace with me, she hadn’t wavered at all on her feet, and she spoke with perfect clarity now.

Except for her eyes. Claire’s eyes were a dark brown, but in full sunlight I could see that the pupils were bigger than they should be. Tiny lines creased her face as she squinted against the morning’s brilliance.

“If you have a concussion, I should keep an eye on you. Can’t have you dozing off or anything like that.”

“Probably shouldn’t be tromping around in the wild, either.” Even so, Claire started forward again, heading in the direction I’d indicated.

As I fell into step alongside her, I snorted, a mix of relief and amusement. Claire seemed to be feeling better. I could think about that instead of everything else.

“Maybe not,” I replied. “But this seemed like the best option.”

Claire shot a side glance at me. “You shouldn’t feel bad about the accident. Even if I do have a concussion. I’d have done the same thing, if it meant getting away from some creep.”

And yet she’d been mumbling semi-coherently about the boyfriend who’d maybe slipped something extra special into whatever else they’d been doing.

I bit my tongue and busied myself in prodding aside the grasses we walked through, watching for the tiny white flowers I was seeking. Now didn’t seem like the best time to pursue that topic.

Claire stopped and looked around again, this time shading her eyes with one hand while resting the other hand on her hip. “So, now that you’re feeling up to conversation again… Where exactly are we?”

I glanced up and around, too. I remembered glass walls shattering light into rainbow fragments. The freed colors had bounced from crystal paving stones and alabaster walls, dancing through awnings and pennants of purely-hued silk.

Now, a restless breeze soughed through stray saplings and the emerald grass in the process of reclaiming the ruins.

I sighed. “Home.”

“I caught that much, yeah.” Impatience danced beneath Claire’s attempt at gentleness. I abruptly realized she’d been holding her curiosity in check for a couple of hours now.

I smiled faintly and returned to walking. The apothecary gardens would have been further left, maybe. I angled that direction as I talked.

“Alfheim. The world of the light elves.”

Both Claire’s eyebrows lifted. “Light elves? Is that where your magic comes from? Because there are like, lights and colors and poof.”

A laugh startled me, bubbling up in my throat before I knew it was there.

“And poof”?

“Yes. Our magic involves the manipulation of light.” Around me, the memory of glass walls and silk streamers persisted. “But we were more than just that. More than just our magic.”

“Yeah?” Claire trailed me toward where the apothecary gardens had maybe been. “Tell me about it.”

Tell me a story. That was another memory that struck too close. I pushed it away and waited for Claire to catch up to me before beginning.

“The Alfar valued creativity. Sensitivity. Empathy. We lived to be kind to each other. And to the dwellers of other worlds, if their paths crossed ours. So many in the other worlds consider compassion a weakness—you have to be tough to survive, they believe. You have to look out for yourself, to the exclusion of all others. But my people considered compassion a good thing. A strength, not a potential weakness.”

Claire nodded. Then her brow furrowed. “Wait. What?”

“What?”

“‘Other worlds.’ Like, more than one. What?”

I tried to come up with the briefest possible explanation. “Have you read any Norse mythology? Odin, Asgard, gods and legends?”

Claire blinked. “What, like the guys in the movies?”

I stifled an exasperated groan. “Only vaguely.”

“The guy who plays Thor—so hot.”

“The real one is less so,” I muttered.

And looked up to find Claire staring wide-eyed at me. “You’re telling me he’s real? They’re real?”

“Asgard is real, yes. So is Alfheim.” I spread my arms, and Claire looked around like she was seeing it all over again for the first time. “Your world is known as Midgard. There are nine worlds altogether.”

“Wow.” She mouthed the word as much as spoke it aloud. “And your guys knew all about the other worlds?”

“Midgard is the only world that really doesn’t. And even there, mortals used to know. The gods of Asgard—the Aesir—lost touch with Midgard, and Midgard eventually forgot they existed.”

Claire pondered it all in silence for a few heartbeats. “And your Alfar and the Asgard gods—they hung out together and stuff, too?”

I snorted a laugh. “Not exactly. The Alfar are makers of the ways, so Asgard had to deal with us.”

I caught Claire’s blank expression and backtracked.

“The ways—lights and colors and poof. The bridges between the worlds.”

“Oh.” Again Claire mouthed the word more than spoke it aloud. “So you worked for the gods?”

My smile became forced. “They believed so, I think. In truth, the Alfar considered the use of our ways to be a duty of service to all the worlds. Not just the gods.”

I caught the bitterness in my tone, but not before it had already leaked into my words. Claire tipped her head.

I shrugged. “The ways of Asgard could be brutal. We served them, but we considered ourselves above their pettiness.”

Until their pettiness sucked me in, anyhow.

Claire walked in silence for a few steps. I waited for her to ask more questions. After a second, she gave her head a little shake, as if trying to clear it.

“So Asgard was the gods. And your people made the bridges that let them travel around from world to world. And the gods could be kind of naughty, but your people were all perfectly nice.”

“Not exactly how I’d have put it. But I guess.” I didn’t bother to correct Claire’s past tense in reference to Asgard.

“Yeah. No offense, but that sounds a little boring.”

I paused in my search and narrowed my eyes at Claire.

She lifted her hands in self-defense. “No offense.”

I laughed a little in spite of myself and then shrugged. “When I was younger, I’d have agreed with you, probably. My brother Willow—he was insufferably perfect.”

“And you weren’t?” Claire gave me an arched-brow looking-over that stopped me in my tracks.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Claire quirked a grin. “Nothing. Nothing at all. So what did you do about this annoyingly perfect brother?”

“I… nothing much, really.” I shrugged. “Papa nipped it in the bud before it could get out of hand. He was big on offering object lessons in empathy and compassion.”

And I couldn’t think of Willow now without thinking how his ashes were among those baked into the glass slump left behind by the fire.

“Huh.” The sound was more an exhalation from Claire than an actual word. “Your dad sounds like a good guy.”

Claire kicked one foot idly through the grass as she spoke. I resisted the urge to tell her to be careful, that she might crush the plants for which we searched. But that sounded so much like something Willow might have said to me that the words died in my throat.

“What was your father like?” Mostly I just wanted to stop thinking about my own past. But something wistful had lurked behind Claire’s words too, I thought.

“My dad?” Claire didn’t say anything more for a long moment. “He had a lot of troubles. Not really a bad person, he just… couldn’t ever stay out of trouble. Out of prison.”

Claire shrugged.

“Did you see him much?”

“No. He got out a few years ago. But by then things were…” Again, Claire shrugged. “He wanted to be better. I know he did. He wanted to be a better father.”

Father issues. The Joel situation suddenly made more sense to me.

“Yeah.” I straightened from peering at the ground and turned to look at Claire. “I’m sure you’re right. People are good at heart. They always want to do the right thing. Sometimes it’s just difficult.”

Did I even believe that myself anymore?

I opened my mouth to add a disclaimer, that compassion shouldn’t make you a doormat. Because the last thing I wanted Claire to believe was that I thought she should go back to Joel.

Claire caught my eye. A pained expression flitted across her face, and she looked away.

“So.” Claire swung her foot through another clump of grass. “You’re an elf?”

I sighed in exasperation. “That is what you took away from my story?”

Claire stepped forward, leaving a mat of trampled grass in her wake. The grin she flashed at me was pure mischief. I caught myself liking her, heavy eyeliner and all. Had we still been co-working at Cox Lake Resort, that would have alarmed me.

Then Claire took another step. And from the shadows beneath a lump of melted glass, exposed by the crushed grass blades, delicate white blossoms glowed, fragile as hope.