Astrid Soulweaver's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Astrid rode hard to the widow's cottage. Too late. A circle of ash sat in the yard, an oath-ring half burned at its center. Three others had gathered to learn. When she begged them to stop, they only stared. She had no rite of her own, no way to pull a soul back once it crossed. She could warn. She could plead. She could not undo. Souls kept slipping free while she talked. She went to Hjördís. The seeress sat outside her dwelling, antlers black against the gray sky, cloth bound over her eyes. "You cannot stop a door by shouting at it," Hjördís said. "You need a key of your own. Freyja has one. Go back and finish." "I left her temple unready," Astrid admitted. It was the temple she had fled from in fear. "Then you are ready now," Hjördís said. "Fear does not wait." Astrid walked the road to Freyja's temple. Carved wolves and hearts framed the door. Inside, Hófgyðja Steinsdóttir, the high priestess, was binding dried herbs into bundles for the coming festival. She looked up with amber eyes. "You came back," Hófgyðja said. "Most do not. The goddess has been waiting." The air shifted. Freyja stood where no one had been, golden-haired, blue eyes steady. "You ran from my trials," she said. "Why?" "Because they asked me to let go," Astrid said. "Of a man who drains me. I came to save souls, but I can't even save myself." "Then save yourself first," Freyja said. "That is the trial." Freyja held up a tear of amber on a chain. "I loved a man who stopped being worthy. I cried over him until I could forge these tears into something hard. Love yourself above him. Then you may carry it." Astrid's jaw clenched. She thought of Thorolf sharpening blades the night she left. She breathed into the fear instead of away from it. "I choose myself," she said. "And I choose him only because I am whole, not because I am empty." Freyja placed the amber amulet around her neck. The light warmed her chest. Then the goddess lifted a staff, tall, tipped with glowing amber, carved with runes. "These are my tears made strong. With them you work seiðr." Hófgyðja guided her hands. Astrid raised the staff and spoke the counter rite Freyja taught her, the words that call the dead back to the dead and hold them there. The amber flared. She felt the three loose souls far off, pulled gently home across the threshold. "Now you have a rite of your own," Freyja said. "Go close the door." Astrid rode back to the widow's yard. She planted the staff in the ash and spoke the rite. The air tightened, then stilled. The breach sealed. No more souls would slip. But she knew the rite spread faster than she could ride. She had the power now. She did not yet have the hands to reach every grieving heart in time.