Thief Eyes (5 page)

Right. Katrin really did want to get rid of me, though I had no idea why. I shook my head firmly. “Not unless you plan to put my mom and dad
both
on that plane home.”

Dad flinched, but Ari looked up with interest. Of course—his mom probably knew what had happened, and she’d probably told him. At least he didn’t look like he felt sorry for me, the way some of my friends at school had.

“Very well. If you insist on staying, there are some things you need to know.” Katrin’s expression turned businesslike. She handed me a small yellow spiral notebook from the pile, like one of Dad’s waterproof field notebooks. “For you, Haley. Had you grown up here, you’d have had a copy years ago, but there’s no helping that now.”

I flipped through the pages. They were filled with a mix of cramped writing and strange symbols—squiggles and circles and lines. The waterproof paper felt slippery against my fingers.

“Read it through,” Katrin said. “Let me know if you have any questions. Your mother—”

I pressed the notebook shut. “What do you know about my mother?”

Katrin drew a long breath. “There is no easy way to say this. Your mother got caught by a sorcerer’s spell.”

I stared at her, not sure I’d heard right. Dad set his hands down on the table. “Not this again,” he said in his quiet angry voice.

Katrin’s fierce gray eyes reminded me of the woman on the seawall. “Yes, this again, Gabe, and perhaps now you’ll listen.”

I
was listening. I shoved the notebook into my pack.
Magic seemed as good an explanation for this morning as anything else. “There was this woman, I saw her on my run—” I stopped, realizing how stupid I sounded. If I mentioned my missing six hours, I’d sound stupider still.

“You didn’t mention any woman before,” Dad said.

“With long hair,” Katrin said. Her face pinched into the same worried look as yesterday. “In a red cloak.”

“How—who
is
she?”

“Who is
who
?” Dad demanded. Ari looked back and forth between us, opened his mouth as if to say something, and closed it again. A waiter walked up, left menus at the edge of the table, and quickly departed. Ari grabbed one and disappeared behind it.

Katrin laced her hands together. “
Hallgerdur Hoskuldsdottir
—Hallgerd, you’d say in English. Hallgerd was—some say she was a spoiled child who didn’t get her way. Others say she was just a woman seeking a way out of an unwanted marriage. A thousand years ago, Hallgerd’s father betrothed her to a man she didn’t care for. Everyone knows this story—it’s in our sagas. Only the sagas don’t tell that Hallgerd was a sorcerer, and that she cast a spell to get out of her first marriage. She meant to find someone—some descendant of hers—to change places with. In doing so she hoped to escape to another time.”

“And leave someone else stuck with the guy instead?” I asked.
What does this have to do with me? Why am
I
seeing this woman?

“Hallgerd called on power deep within the earth for her spell,” Katrin said. “That power echoes on to the present day, in the patterns of the plates that shift beneath our feet and the fires that stir the earth.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Or the plates could be shifting because Iceland is located both atop a hot spot and on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, making it one of the most geologically active places on the entire planet.”

“The spell failed,” Katrin said, as if she hadn’t heard, “so Hallgerd sent her—her foster father, that’s the best translation, though it’s not quite right—to kill her husband Thorvald instead, after Thorvald slapped her during a fight. Her foster father killed her second husband, too, though it’s less clear Hallgerd wanted that. As for Hallgerd’s third husband—he died when she refused him her hair to make a new string for his bow.”

Gunnar died, of course
. I remembered the tour guide saying that. How much did you have to hate someone to refuse him a few strands of your hair?

“She was quite the charmer,” Ari said from behind his menu.

Katrin glanced at Ari, then back at me. “But all of that was later,” she said. “First Hallgerd cast the spell on her descendants—on her daughter and her daughter’s daughters, all the way down the line. Not many of her descendants remain, but I’m one, and your mother was another, only I didn’t know that when she came here.”

“Wait—we’re related?”
And Dad just happened to wind up working with Mom’s long-lost cousin?

Ari snorted. “No more related than most Icelanders,” he said. “This is not a large island, Haley. I’m more closely related to the prime minister than to you.”

“The common ancestor was some twenty generations back,” Katrin said. “You’re probably more closely related to your president, too. And we probably have other common ancestors closer than Hallgerd—but that is not the point. The point is that Hallgerd searched for one of us to possess. For thirty generations, we all knew to turn away from her spell. Until your mother—” A pained look crossed Katrin’s face. “She probably didn’t even understand what Hallgerd offered her.”

Dad shoved his menu aside. “We don’t have to listen to this.”

I ignored him. “What happened to Mom?”

Katrin swallowed and looked down at her laced fingers. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know Amanda was one of Hallgerd’s daughters—that she was part of the line that had left for North America—until it was too late. I would have warned her, but—she ran, and so the spell consumed her.”

“Consumed?” My throat tightened around the word.

Dad grabbed my hand. “I won’t have you upsetting Haley with this nonsense.”

Katrin glared at him. “Better for her to be upset and alive. What you need to know, Haley, is that you’re one of
Hallgerd’s daughters, too. And while the spell should have ended with your mother, it hasn’t. I don’t understand why, but the power Hallgerd called upon is with us still. You felt the earthquake yesterday. I think the problem may be—there’s a coin that Hallgerd used to cast her spell. And that coin hasn’t been found.”

My hand fell limp in Dad’s hold. My stomach did a little flip.

“It’s possible,” Katrin said, “that the coin was consumed as well, but—”

“No. It wasn’t.” I drew my hand free and reached into my pocket. I was only a little surprised to feel warm metal there. Sweat trickled down my neck. I’d thrown the coin away—in my room, and by the water, too. Somehow it always found me again.

I pulled it out and set it on the table. The symbol on it looked a little like the symbols in Katrin’s notebook.

Katrin’s shoulders stiffened. She grabbed my hands, not noticing the scars there. “You’re unharmed?”

I nodded, frightened by her intense gaze, feeling a headache starting up. I forced myself to focus on Katrin’s words.

“The coin must be returned to Hallgerd, at Hlidarendi in the east, where she used to live,” Katrin said. “Thorgerd—that’s Hallgerd’s daughter—left instructions for her descendants, and they were very clear on this point. Perhaps the spell will not be done until we follow those instructions.
There’ve been too many small quakes this past year, and the pattern they form is unsettling. Yet if we return the coin, maybe the pattern will be ended.”

“Enough.” Dad’s chair scraped the floor as he shoved it back. “Amanda
ran away
.” Did I think his voice was quiet before? It had been loud compared to how softly he spoke now. “We fought, and she ran, and no one knows what happened next. I’ll regret that fight—and other things, too, Katrin—for the rest of my life, but there was
no magic involved
.”

I stared at the coin, afraid it would find its way back into my pocket if I dared look away. Katrin picked it up, then dropped it as if burned. The coin clattered to the table. “You’ll have to carry it,” she said, frowning. “We should go now. I don’t know how much time we have, but I’ll do what I can to save you from your mother’s fate.”

“Bullshit.” Ari threw his menu down. He looked
furious
. “You use magic as an excuse for everything. Tell Haley what really happened.” He glanced at Dad, then back to his mom. “Tell her the real reason neither of you followed Amanda when she ran.”

I looked at Katrin. “Wait—you were there?”

“That’s enough, Ari,” Dad said.

“It is not enough!” Ari said. “I cannot
believe
you did not tell her.”

“Tell me what?” The stomach-clenching, I-don’t-want-to-know feeling returned, stronger than yesterday.

Katrin said something to Ari in Icelandic. It sounded like a warning.

Ari answered her in English. “Yes, well, if you and Gabe had kept your hands off of each other, maybe Amanda would not have run.”

“What?”

Dad let out a breath and sank down into his seat. Katrin said something sharp in Icelandic and pointed to the door.

Ari answered her in Icelandic this time, his scorn clear enough. “I am sorry, Haley,” he said to me in English. “But it is not sorcery I am sorry for.” He grabbed his leather jacket and notebook and stalked out.

I looked from Katrin to Dad. My chest felt tight. “Is it—” The words stuck in my throat. “Did you—”

Dad shut his eyes. He looked utterly, completely lost.

The room felt too hot, too close. I didn’t
care
how lost Dad felt, not if he—but he couldn’t have—he wouldn’t have. I stood, grabbing my own jacket and backpack as I did.

“Haley,” Katrin said. “Until the coin is returned, you remain in danger. Hallgerd’s spell could consume you yet.”

“You—” I couldn’t get enough air. I couldn’t stand to even
look
at her. Had she and Dad really—I whirled away and bolted down the hall, pulling on my jacket as I did.

“Haley!” Katrin shouted, right across the restaurant. “You must
never
run from magic!”

I burst out the door and across the hotel parking lot.
Sun shone off the asphalt as I ran, pack bumping against my shoulders. Katrin ran after me, Dad close behind. I didn’t slow down. If I ran, I didn’t have to think—about Mom, about magic, about Dad and Katrin. My sneakers crunched as I turned onto a gray gravel path. The gravel gave way to dirt, and gray geese flew up from the river to my right. Ahead of me I saw the blocky walls of the rift valley outlined against a bright blue sky. Dad and Katrin both shouted after me, but they were too slow. Their voices quickly faded.

Gulls flew in circles high above. The path sloped uphill, through green grasses.
I’m running now, Dad. Are you happy?
Anger made my eyes sting. The coin flared hot in my pocket, though I’d left it on the table.

“Haley!”
a woman’s voice called, somewhere inside me. Had that voice cast a spell that consumed my mother, like Katrin had said, or had Mom really just run away because she knew that Katrin and Dad—

I ran faster, breathing hard, up some stairs and past the tourists at the Law Rock. By the drowning pool, Ari was scowling into the water. Anger pulled me past him, up the trail and toward the waterfall. I heard more words in my head, but they weren’t in English, and I couldn’t understand them. The pulling grew stronger. My anger burned hotter.

Fear trickled down my spine. I tried to stop running; my feet didn’t listen. A pair of small birds flew out of my
path. I heard the rush of the waterfall, but I couldn’t slow down.

“Haley! I’m angry at them too, yeah?” Ari sounded very far away. He panted, as if he was running after me.

I reached the rocks and felt the cold spray of the waterfall. The pulling urged me around behind the stones, toward a dark cave within them. A raven cried out. Hot wind began to blow, and the scent of sulfur tinged the air.

The fear grew like fire beneath my skin. The cave mouth drew closer. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even turn around. I grabbed on to the stones. I couldn’t turn back, so instead I tried climbing upward—anything to avoid going around the rocks and into that dark cave. The pulling fought me, but not as hard. I kept climbing, my sweaty hands sliding against the stone.

The voice inside me began yelling. My headache flared sharper. Down below, Ari called after me. I couldn’t hear his words above the water. I could only keep climbing the slick rocks. Water soaked through my jeans and jacket, but I wasn’t cold—I was stiflingly hot.

The world spun and went dark. I smelled smoke and the sour stench of old meat. I blinked my eyes open and found myself crouched in a dim cave. Long hair fell around me like a veil. I squeezed my eyes shut. The girl climbing the rocks seemed a distant vision. The ground trembled beneath me, a low murmur that began to build.

I didn’t dare open my eyes. I knew when I did the vision would be gone, and I would be the long-haired woman in the cave.

Hot wind stroked my cheek. I jerked away from that burning touch. As I did, my sweaty fingers lost their grip on the stones, and I returned to my own body with a jolt. I was falling, falling—I reached for the rocks and missed. I screamed, even as fog filled the air. A hand grabbed at my pack and fell away. Cold wind whistled past my ears; wings beat the air. I braced for the pain that would take all other thoughts away.

I slammed into the rocks below, and the world went black.

Chapter 4