Starling (11 page)
Authors: Lesley Livingston
Tags: #Young Adult Fiction, #Legends; Myths; Fables, #General, #Romance, #Lifestyles, #City & Town Life, #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance
Mason liked that idea. A lot. Her father rarely mentioned her bad nights—the ones where she would shake the house awake with screaming—but he knew all about them. Once she’d climbed the stairs and made her way down the long hall to her room at the very end of the north wing, she put her bag down and closed the door, turning the deadbolt and strangely reassured by the solid clack of the latch.
First things first: she went directly to the tall window and opened it, letting the breeze spill in and breathing the cool air of the countryside. And then, after untold hours spent wearing it like a shirt of protective chain mail, Mason shrugged out of her fencing jacket, leaving it in a heap on the floor beside her bed. She kicked out of her shoes but didn’t bother changing out of her tank top and leggings before she flopped down face-first on top of her comforter, and she was sound asleep in moments. She didn’t even hear Rory’s car as it roared out of the garage and sped past, underneath her window.
Rory’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel as he jammed his foot on the accelerator and blasted down a twisting road. When he reached a barely discernible side road, Rory turned and slowed down enough so that the rutted dirt surface wouldn’t take out the DB5’s undercarriage. The narrow lane, shadowed by a high green tunnel of overarching tree branches, came to an end at a little gravel clearing at the edge of Lake Rye, and Rory stomped on the brakes just in time to keep the car from rocketing into the water. The dust cloud from the car billowed past, out over the still surface of the lake. Rory watched it dissipate as he slowly forced his fingers to unclench the wheel and his breathing and heartbeat to regain a steady rhythm.
The train trip had been agony. Having to sit there the whole time with his father ignoring him—as usual—and Mason staring at him and trying not to. Having to pretend he didn’t know anything more than she did about what had happened to them in the gym. He’d felt like he was going to burst open, and all of the precious secrets he’d accumulated over the years would come spilling out.
Rory glanced in his rear- and side-view mirrors, just to make sure he was alone on the road, and turned off the car’s ignition. Then he unzipped his jacket and pulled out an old, thick leather-bound book he’d stopped at the house to collect and hidden under his clothing. The leather was dark with age, embossed with a knot-work scroll that was worn almost smooth. The pages within were yellowed, the ink faded in places.
And the handwriting was Gunnar Starling’s.
When Rory was young, he’d learned that the most interesting things in life were almost always kept hidden. Locked away in dark places. And the harder it was to break the locks, the better the prize inside. He’d been overcome with a fervent, abiding desire to ferret out those treasures, so he’d developed a talent for listening at keyholes and finding ways into places he was forbidden to go.
It had been over a year since Rory had last read through the diary pages. He’d almost convinced himself that it was best just to leave it alone. To forget about all the things he’d learned. But now, after the storm—after the attack by the draugr—he felt a savage anticipation. Maybe all the things he’d dreamed about would finally have a chance to come true. He flipped the diary open and began to read from the very first pages once again.
Gunnar Starling had begun to keep a diary after he had first stumbled across a trio of women who called themselves the Norns in Copenhagen.
If I am to be honest with myself, I must admit that this was no accident. I suspect they had been hunting me, though who knows for how long …
Rory ran his fingertip across that line on the first page of the diary, even though he almost had the passage memorized.
The Norns.
Three beings, clothed in the guise of mortal women, who—according to Norse mythology—were responsible for deciding the fate of men.
Rory’s father had been in Copenhagen on a business trip with
his
father, Magnus Starling; a young man learning the ropes of the family shipping business. One night, Gunnar had gone out into the city on his own. He’d been looking for something, anything, to alleviate his restlessness brought on by the tedium of the past few days.
And he found it.
As he walked through the front door of a dark, cavernous bar down near the canal, heavy velvet curtains parted and a man appeared: impeccably dressed, with deeply tanned skin, dark glittering eyes, and a head of perfectly coifed dreadlocks that fell uniformly to brush his shoulders.
He grinned at me—a gleaming, pointed grin—and said, “Welcome, Mr. Starling. You can call me Rafe. I’ll be your host for the evening.”
I cannot remember having given the man my name. He showed me to a table in a private alcove that was set with four chairs, as if he thought I might be expecting company. I wasn’t, of course. But company found me, nonetheless
.
At first, Gunnar thought they must be “working” girls by the way they were dressed, with their wild hair and heavy makeup and tight, revealing black clothes. He was about to wave them away. But then the man returned, bearing a tray of four stout clay mugs full of something pungent and murky—mead, maybe? The three women sat down at his table without invitation.
“On the house,” Rafe said, nodding at the mugs. Then he gestured to the women. “Gunnar Starling, meet Verda, Skully, and Weirdo.”
The women turned as one and glared at the man, and I felt a surge of apprehension. But he just grinned at me and said, “Not their true names, of course, but they insist on dressing like a Berlin dive-bar punk band.”
His mockery of them struck me as reckless. Dangerous. But then the woman he’d called Verda turned and gazed into my face with pale yellow-green eyes and said, “This is the one.”
“Sure he is.” My host laughed cruelly. “I’ve heard that from you before.” Then he turned to leave us alone. “Don’t take too long,” he said. “And don’t wreck the joint.”
He closed the curtain, leaving me alone with the strange trio, but at that point, I’d had enough. I swallowed the drink in one mouthful, fully intending to leave. But then something … extraordinary happened. And even though my eyes will be the only ones that ever read these words, I am almost afraid to write them...
.
Rory let the leather-bound book fall open in his lap as he leaned his head back and pictured the scene....
The women reached into small leather pouches that hung from their belts and spilled handfuls of tiny golden acorns, each one carved with a mark—a rune—out onto the table. Gunnar tried to pull his hands away from the table but suddenly found that he couldn’t. His fingers felt as though they were rooted to the surface. He felt the wooden chair beneath him shift and ripple, bending toward his spine, wrapping around his torso....
Rory opened his eyes, and his gaze drifted back to the page.
My feet felt as if they were spreading out across the floor, sending roots into the ground. I looked down at my hands, horrified—they were gnarled and barklike, and when I struggled to break free, my arms only creaked like tree branches in a storm wind. I opened my mouth to cry out but could utter only a thin, wailing moan
.
“Let go of your fear, Gunnar Starling,” the three women said in unison, their voices echoing like thunder in my head. “You are at the heart of Yggdrasil, the world tree. You will know your destiny. You will fulfill it.”
The acorns lying at the center of the table began to spin like tops, emitting rays of golden light, and I could not tear my gaze away. The world blurred all around me and I saw my life—branching out into several different paths like the limbs of a tree, each decision taking me in a different direction
.
One of those paths led to my most closely held, most sacred soul-deep desire...
.
The dearest wish of Gunnar Starling’s heart, Rory knew, had never been that of a normal young man. Most normal young men didn’t yearn to bring about the destruction of the world. They didn’t think that humanity was beyond redemption—had been for centuries—and didn’t seek an end to mankind so that the world could start over again from scratch. But that exact thing was the one singular ambition Gunnar had been nurturing secretly since he was a child and his own father had told him who—and what—he was. The secret history of the Starling family was a legacy that had been passed from generation to generation. Since before his ancestors could write down the stories of their gods, they had served them. The Aesir. Thor and Odin and Loki; lovely Freya; fearsome Hel, Mistress of the Underworld; and Heimdall the Bridgekeeper … the gods and goddesses of the Vikings were the guiding stars in the skies above the Starling clan’s heads. The prophecies of those gods demanded an eventual, catastrophic ending, and it was the duty of their devotees to help bring that about.
Until my own father betrayed that sacred trust
, Rory thought bitterly, his hand clenching into a fist on top of the diary page. But that was much later.
On that night in Copenhagen, Gunnar had found himself at the head of the path. He followed that path in his mind and was rewarded with a glimpse of the glorious horror he would bring down upon the world … but then, suddenly, everything went dim. A thick fog rolled across his mind, and the images were swallowed up in uncertainty. But it was enough. He knew what he must do.
When I came back to my senses, I was alone. I swept up the acorns that lay scattered on the table, put them in my pocket, and left the bar. The night air was cool and soft, and everything around me was brighter and sharper than it had been before. Down in the harbor, I stopped to gaze out over the dark waters. It was late enough that there were only a handful of people around, and no one paid me any heed. No one—except the famous bronze statue of the Little Mermaid, who sat out on her rock in the middle of the bay. As I gazed out at her, I swear I saw her lips curve in a wicked, beckoning smile as she flicked the tip of her tail fin
.
I nodded politely and continued on my way. My own eyes have been opened, and now I can see … but I realize also that such visions hold dangers of their own. I must be careful. But I must be brave—
Rory was jolted out of his immersion in his father’s story by the sharp, insistent ringtone of his phone. He looked at the number and decided not to answer it. His “business transactions” could wait. He turned his gaze back to the last lines of the entry.
This morning, Father asked me what I seemed to be so very happy about
.
“I have met my future,” I said. “I have met the woman I will marry, and she is wonderful. Her name is Yelena Rose. She lives in New York City. And she is as beautiful as I knew she would be.”
With her at my side, I will do what must be done
.
It is my destiny. Mine … and Yelena’s
.
“And mine, Top Gunn,” Rory murmured as he closed the diary in his lap and stared out over the lake. “Only I won’t give up on my destiny like you did, old man....”
If he was to believe any of what his father had written, then he knew that his ancestors had dedicated their lives in service to the Aesir—the gods of Norse legend—and awaited their return to the mortal realm.
Rory had also learned that there were other pantheons of gods, all with devoted clans of mortal followers. He knew that magick existed. He even knew how to use it after discovering the golden acorns hidden in Gunnar’s study.
Perhaps most surprising of all the things Rory had discovered was that Gosforth Academy wasn’t
just
a school. It was a safe house. Neutral ground. A place where the influential families—rival clans serving rival gods—could keep their children safe under the same roof. It was both a fail-safe situation and an insurance policy.
According to what Rory had subsequently learned about the school history, it had worked extremely well from the time the school was founded. No single family had ever gone out of its way to make trouble. Rites were kept, rituals preserved, but so far none of the old gods had come thundering back—either as nuisance or outright threat to humanity.