Freya, sadly, shakes her head.
“I’m going to try to carry you, but brace yourself. I’m no good at this.”
“Clearly.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” I say.
“You kind of did, though.” Freya’s scowling as she climbs on my back, carefully avoiding my wings. “Why did you ask Jörð to make it so I could understand you? I already do.”
I don’t argue. We have no time for it, even though she’s wrong. Having sympathy for someone isn’t the same as understanding them. But this time when I take off, Freya’s there whispering in my ear. “Pump harder on the left. Now on the right.”
With her help, I manage to round the bend and head up the tunnel, only grazing the wall once.
“Bank right here, sharply.”
Just in time, I manage to shoot to the right and she yanks back on my shoulders, which lets me go almost straight up like I need to. This route is insane. We go around three more turns, only ramming into one wall. My knee was already injured, and this hit tears the gash open wider, but I grit my teeth and keep flying, the muscles in my wings burning. I’m pretty proud of my improvement, made possible by Freya’s guidance. We’re better as a team than we are alone.
But then I hear it. A loud, full-throated scream. I’ve been with the vanir long enough to recognize that it’s coming from her father.
Freya swears loudly in my ear. “We need to. . .”
Neither of us is sure what to do, because that scream’s still going, and it’s coming right at us. Sadly, the stupid tunnel’s both small and steep where we are, so there’s not even a place we could easily land. “I can’t stop, not right now.”
“There.” Again, Freya yanks on my shoulders, hard, and rams us into a wall. I strike it full-on, and I worry that I’ve broken everything. But my feet catch on a very narrow, very sloped edge, and Freya slides off, scrambling to the side and grabbing the outcropping herself. Her easy agility in this brand new form might annoy me if I wasn’t so terrified.
“He’ll see us for sure.” Apparently when I’m nervous, I point out the obvious.
With Freya’s stabilizing hand, I turn to the side, my wings keeping me from being able to stand like she is, back to the rock wall. “At least pull your swords out and have them ready.”
Because I’d have some hope of what? Wounding her massive and magical father with my abysmal sword-handling? “Uh, okay. Maybe you can take one.”
She shakes her head. “Jörð blessed them for you.”
It’s hard, what with the wings, and the steep tunnel, and the almost plunging straight down, but I manage to get out one sword and then the other. I clutch them in my trembling hands while my heart beats loudly in my ears. The screaming has finally stopped, but that hardly seems like a good sign.
“Hey, you still have the heart, right?” I whisper. It would be terrible if we dropped it in all our haste to leave.
Freya’s eyes widen, and then she pats on the strange billowy clothing Jörð shifted her into, sighing. “Yes. It’s in this pouch.”
“A pocket,” I whisper. “That’s called a pocket. Keep it there. Perhaps your father will be so busy looking for you and checking on the heart that he blows right past us.”
“Your wings are bright white,” she says. “There’s not much hope of that.”
But with all the times I rammed into the wall, and with the blood stains, they aren’t very bright anymore. “I’ll be praying he doesn’t see us,” I say. “Crouch closer and?—”
But then it’s too late.
There’s a whooshing of air, and then a strange sort of almost popping sound, and then Bjorn’s enormous form rockets past. I hold my breath, and Freya does, too. I think, over and over, Don’t see us, don’t see us, don’t see us.
At first, it seems like maybe he didn’t. But then he throws his wings out straight and a wall of air shoots back toward us, and he stops. He crashes into the angled wall of the tunnel and scrabbles around, but he manages to turn, and unlike us, with his massive clawed feet, he’s able to climb up the side wall of the tunnel.
His nostrils flare. His eyes frantically search the dark, almost black side walls of the tunnel. Perhaps he can’t see well in the dark? Maybe—but he would still smell us. As he creeps closer, my heart hammers in my chest. This is it. It’s how I’m about to die, all my efforts, even committing treason against my own people, all for nothing. I’ll be nothing more than a frozen lump of feathery flesh, stuck to the side of an old, barren tunnel. . .forever.
But there’s a slight glow coming from Freya’s pocket, and I realize that even my swords are glowing softly, and Bjorn still hasn’t done a thing. He’s close enough to lick me with his massive tongue, and still, his eyes are unfocused and his nostrils flaring as he sniffs us out. I’m not sure how long we shake and tremble against the wall, but eventually, Bjorn lets out a gust of air, spins around, shearing massive chunks of rock away from the wall as he turns, and then launches back into motion and shoots down the tunnel toward the chamber we vacated.
“How did we. . .” Freya has no idea either.
“I think the heart, or maybe the swords. . .” I trail off, unsure what happened.
