Before I can correct her, Odessa is pulling me along. Mina and Mathilda are right on my heels. The moment still pulls on my heartstrings, and the little girl’s words continue to ring in my head. Savior. But more than that, though, thoughts of my own mother weigh me down.
“Mina, is this an afterlife? Like, are the warriors dead?”
She shakes her head. “No, they’re granted new bodies when they choose to come with us. They leave their human bodies behind and accept Odin’s gift of a new life.”
My mind whirls at the new information.
A caw from above has me swinging my head up. My eyes narrow on the raven perched atop one of the towering black street lanterns, the red banner attached waves slightly in the breeze, and the golden sword emblazoned with two large wings on either side of the banner. The bird clicks its beak at me, and a familiar sensation crawls across my skin.
That can’t be the same bird from the human realm, can it?
Odessa notices my stare and whispers in my ear while she continues to wave, “It’s one of our guards, Helena.”
“That’s not a bird?” I ask, my face pinched in confusion, before she nudges me. I plaster on a smile and begin waving to a family we’re passing.
She sighs, and I worry that my lack of knowledge is beginning to cause her some annoyance. “Shapeshifters, remember?”
“I thought that was just the wings to tattoos. I didn’t know they could actually turn into birds!” My voice rises out of the whisper and into a shriek. Mina giggles at my surprise.
But Mathilda casually says, “It’s a real challenge telling them apart in that form.”
Odessa ignores me as she continues to smile and wave to the people that we’re passing. I glance at Evander behind us. His wings absorb the light from above, but his smile glows brightly as he tilts his head in question. The movement is so familiar, like the raven that was once stuck in the chimney. The thought causes me to giggle.
Evander cocks his head even further, confusion marring his smile. He mouths, “What?”
I shake my head with a grin and turn back around.
Odessa nudges me and points to one of the buildings that’s painted a bright red. “This is one of our schools. We have two. One is on this side of the city, and the other one is on Scota, the next island over. The classes are divided by age groups and are taught by volunteers with a curriculum approved by the crown.”
The bright red building is lined with children out front, some smiling, some with perplexed expressions at the crowd.
“What is their curriculum like?” I ask, curious if the school in Idirhalla is anything like the schooling my parents gave me in the human realm.
“Our material is a bit dated.” She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “We haven’t been able to travel back to the human realm, or any other realm, to catch up on new theories, and we’ve restricted our history lessons, so mainly they learn languages, sciences, and math.”
“You haven’t let us teach our history,” Mina grumbles under her breath.
Her comment breaks through my thoughts.
Odessa whips her head in Mina’s direction, anger radiating from her posture.
Then she sighs, her anger melting into exasperation.
“There’s no need. There’s no war coming. We shouldn’tfrighten the young ones into thinking their purpose is to battle mythical monsters in a multi-realm war.” My mouth parts, clear disagreement on the tip of my tongue. History is important; history repeats itself if you don’t learn from it.
But Mina shakes her head. “Not now,” she whispers.
I don’t heed her warning.
“So you used to travel to the human realm a lot before?”
I hope it’s a subject she’s willing to talk about.
“Yes, of course, for centuries, we would retrieve the fallen that Odin had chosen. But as time went on, we received fewer and fewer directives. Then, we would often venture back and forth to learn the latest theories or technology we thought would be suitable for Idirhalla, but then that too ceased. We marvel at the human’s new inventions, but most are not anything we would like to introduce here,” she adds.
My curiosity grows.
Such a delicate balance of the old world meeting the new world. There are people here who lived in the human realm thousands of years ago. I wonder how much they marveled when the Valkyries brought them modern toilets.
