Nauthiz

Skadhi stood over Yolanda's corpse, like a bog body in an estuary of the Maroon Sea bay. She held a single tallow, the wax dripping onto her thumb.

"All is not as it seems, and the dead are far from rest," Skadhi said ominously, then lit Yolanda's corpse on fire. It burned with sickly green helafire. The goblin fire scorched her free of rot, and from the waters, Yolanda's spirit emerged, a sylph of a Valkyrie, shielded and helmeted, aback a winged steed. She raised a spear high and then, struck me through my rotten heart.

For the first time in three years, I bled – red, like the pomegranates of Latinium. Like their Devil Jahi's crimson heart as she was exiled from Eleleth's Heaven.

But it was only a dream of lost love.

I awoke to Gullinkambi's crowing. Bleary-eyed, I stretched lazily, then opened my eyelids to find Fylja bouncing on the tips of her heels. She opened the blinds to let in the mountainous dawn.

"Ah, your cockerel heralds the day, how delightful! Today is the Discipline ball, where you and your two sisters shall choose your Disciplines. Oh, I remember my Discipline ball, fair as a rose that it was, dancing ceaselessly to a fossegrim's fiddle in that fine plum dress of mine..." Fylja cradled her head in her hands and smiled dreamily. "I chose singing - but of course, all mara do. Now, I am the finest singer of all my sisters." Her black eyes opened wide as quarry pools. "Whatsoever shall a witch like you choose? What Discipline tickles your fancy, Turry?"

I sat up and pet Gullinkambi, who nuzzled my thumb with his soft gold beak. His silky flames warmed my hands. "Perhaps art," I said quietly, smiling.

Breakfast arrived with much fanfare after Fylja had bathed and dressed me as my handmaiden. I was in a crimson gown of silk from Periland and black cloak of wolf's fur. We ate fried duck egg and sizzling bear bacon that Queen Jarngrimr had hunted herself, coupled with fresh baked bread from Maren's oven.

Rosy played with her runny egg and squinted her eyes at her feast, biting her lower lip as she sized the large eggs up and squirmed in her seat. "The duck eggs here are thrice the size of Arcadia's! Wow, if only I could get into Queen Jarngrimr's kitchen and steal a laying hen, then tame it, then ride it."

She side-eyed Maren to pester her with more begging. I choked down laughter at Rosy's wily, predictable ways. My youngest sister burrowed like a worm into the wood of her chair, dirty fork askew in her fist, runny with yolk.

Maren smiled, dipping some rye bread into her egg and snarfing it up. Like Rosy, she had no dignity about eating. "I am the Cook, little Rosiel. Would you like to visit the kitchen with me before the Discipline ceremony today?"

Rosy beamed, her eyes blue moons. "Oh, oh, oooooh, in all of the nine realms: yes!"

They high-fived.

Yuri arrived on Dominic's arms, Silje laughing with the three of them. They sat down across from me as I cut the bear bacon up and mixed it with the egg and toasted rye.

"Silje, tell me again how you are the designer of all of the Isa's wardrobes!" Yuri said enthusiastically, her golden eyes bubbling over.

Dominic pulled out chairs for Yuri and Silje, and they began to eat. "My Yuri is a seamstress. Every time my waterskins fray, I take them to her straightaway. She has the finest sewing hand in all nine realms, to rival Mother Freida's own work."

Silje's small, narrow eyes lit kindly. "You shall have to teach me all about the fashions of Arcadia, Yuri and Domni - why, your kingdom has fabrics so fine, I would trade all my toe claws for them, sigh..."

"But you: how do you reconcile the huldre's free-flowing garments with the Isa's tribal attire?" Yuri asked, curious.

"Yes, how?" Fylja said through a mouthful of Periland coffee. It seemed Jarnja had it imported directly from the mara's homelands.

Silje smiled secretively. "That is a trade secret that only Yuri shall be privy too when she becomes my apprentice, and I become hers!"

We all laughed.

Entering into the long hall were Queen Jarngrimr and Heith. Heith waved at me, smiling lopsidedly, and Jarnja gave me a tender look.

I blushed.

In the stroke of a bat wing, Jarnja had taken to the air, then alighted by my side. "May I dine with you, dearest Turry?" Jarnja asked slowly, cautious.

I smiled downcast, sliding over on the bench to make room for her while an alfar set her place. "But of course, Queen Jarnja."

I was minutely aware of every thick muscle and whipcord scar on Jarnja's comely, beastly body. It made me delicately shake as her thigh glanced mine, through a rustle of fabric at my hips. She dwarfed me, it was true - and I wondered what a body like a bergresar's, her claws, and muzzle could do to me. Would she break me, or make me anew?

I flushed, nervously cutting some berry cake.

Gullinkambi sat between us, crowing happily, and rested his feathered cheek on Jarnja's furred thigh.

Jarnja smiled softly, petting Gullinkambi's orange gold crest.

"Your fetch has taken quite the liking to me," she said quietly. Rosy and Yuri and the others continued their loud conversation - it was like Jarnja and I were in private again, like we had been in the runic room last night.

"He's not the only part of me that has taken a liking to y- um, I mean, yes! Gullinkambi is quite agreeable," I muttered, flustered as Sif with her hair shorn by knavish Loki on an unfortunate morning of the harvest, straw gold snipped off in the sun by the Trickster.

Jarnja rested her head atop her knitted hands and peered at me curiously. "You are an odd one, Turiel. I do not know what makes you tick."

I mustered up the courage to meet her crimson eyes. "Determination, and a lot of pluck. It was rough-going, hiding my Magick with mama gone. Father would have had me killed if he knew I was practicing - Magick is forbidden in Arcadia, with Lord Eleleth and all that nonsense, but you already knew that..." My voice drifted off. "What you did last night, summoning my fetch: I have never worked a spell that powerful before. I want you to teach me, Jarnja, everything you know of Magick. I have not had a teacher since mama died... and you are kind, if quite rough around the edges. I - I - I believe we will become good friends."

Jarnja lightly brushed my cheek with the back of her furred hand. She smiled like sun on snow. I let the tracery of her soft filaments linger far more than necessary, and despite myself, instinctively reached out to gently pet her mane, us alone in a room full of people.

Jarnja closed her eyes and gave a deep rumble of a purr as I stroked her mane. I jolted back at the thick resonance in her throat, and Gullinkambi squawked.

"I - I didn't mean to - um, I'm quite sorry." I knitted my fingers together and bit my lip, angered at myself and beyond embarrassed.

Jarnja looked at me under lidded eyes with slow-boiling pleasure. "Why did you stop?" She gave a great laugh and pounded the table. "You are my apprentice, sweet Turry - I shall teach you everything I know of Magick and more. And first, it begins in my rose gardens, the seat of my Magickal prowess."

I found myself having eaten breakfast in a haze, bespelled by the Beast, and whisked away to the heart of Utgardr - an open air mountain palace garden eternally enchanted to be in spring. We had walked, Jarnja and I, away from the crowds, on perilous cliff hewn paths where eagles roosted and the rocks were sharp, for a near hour, to come to this secret place. No one but the birds above us and the bugs below us knew its location, and Jarnja along the way asked me of my family, my passions, my hopes, my failings.

I found myself giving, telling, bending over in the cradle of her words. Soon, we had arrived at the iron gates to the rose garden. The fragrance of the Beast's roses was as heavenly as Folkvangr, Lady Freida's sacred halls, itself. With a tender touch, Jarnja undid the latch, and ushered me in before her, her merry red eyes gleaming with Logi's fire.

"This is the seat of my power, where my father Wotan laid my mother Sithgunt down and they dreamed me up," Jarnja said softly, taking my hand as she towered over me and winding our way through the neatly pruned yet abundant rose bushes. "There is a spell in each one of these petals, a curse in each thorn, and salvation in the rosy hips' fruits. To you, my garden, my life. May it bear us fruit."

"There's so many colors!" I gasped at the rainbow of florid blooms, taking my whale ivory dagger to a blue rose. "May I take a clipping, as a - as a keepsake?" Gullinkambi pecked at the dirt, an otherworldly cerulean worm at his beak which he gulped down, delighted, then shuffled on his blazing chicken legs and let loose a cock-a-doodle-doo.

"That is a powerful blossom..." Jarnja crooned, closing the gap between us and parting my hair with her claw. I leaned into the curve of her palm, closing my eyes in surrender. My heart lurched as she stroked my cheek. "Ice. It could summon winter in the depths of summer, set the fjords to freeze in the height of spring. You chose well, Aslaugh's daughter." Jarnja gingerly took the rose from me, dethorned it with her claws, and tucked the leaves and stem behind my ear. "Picture the Isa rune in your mind," she said softly.

I did, then began chanting it in clear galdr.

"Isa… Isa… Isa!"

The spring air iced over, the clouds knitted together, and as the petals of the rose withered, a snowstorm began, gracing us with drifts of white that gathered in Jarnja's black fur and iced my flaxen hair.

Jarnja hugged me to her breast to share her warmth. She plucked a yellow rose softly.

"And now, to warm it, my sweetheart, and melt that icy heart of yours, hurt by first love lost..." Jarnja purred, running her hands down my back. I knitted my hands in her mane, then reached up to trace her long ram's horns.

She crushed the petals in her hand and shouted Sowilo with a voice like a gorge.

The snow lifted, and summer came to our garden.

I looked at her, wreathed in sunlight like a dark Valkyrie. My Beast smiled with the power of a waterfall.

"There," Jarnja glimmered, her filaments now polar bear light again as the summer Magick flushed her fur white. She wrapped her wings around me to shield us from the harsh sun's rays.

The petals sang all around us, bumblebees buzzed, and petrichor was lifted to the air from the early snow.

I looked up into Jarnja's deep pools of alizarin, mystified. "What is this place?" I murmured.

Jarnja bent down to kiss my brow, then pressed me to her breast, rhythmically petting my head.

"My heart," she simply said.