Freya Valdis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Freya Valdis knelt in a herdsman's frozen field, digging through snow for the name of the god who threw her out of the cosmos. Frost spread from her hands as she worked. She had walked out of the stars three days ago, alone, remembering everything but the face of the one who exiled her. Without a name, she could not hunt him. So she dug, hoping the ground remembered what she could not. Her cracked lantern burned cold blue beside her. Its light showed the ruin she carried. The grass under her knees turned white and hard. Behind her, a line of black footprints refused to thaw. She had frozen half this pasture already, and she had found nothing but dirt. "You're killing the sheep's grass." Freya turned. A girl stood at the fence, maybe ten, with brown braids and a leather bag slung across her chest. A herdsman's daughter. She did not run. She stared at the cold lantern the way most people stared at fire, as if she had seen it before. "You should be afraid of me," Freya said. "I saw you fall," the girl said. "Three nights ago. A crack opened in the sky. Something threw you down through it." She hugged the fence rail. "I told nobody. My father would say I dreamed it." Freya rose. Snow slid from her torn white furs. "You saw the sky open. Did you see who opened it?" The girl nodded slowly. "There was a shape in the crack. A man made of light. He said one word before it closed." Freya crossed the field. Ice cracked under every step. She stopped an arm's length from the child, close enough to see fear finally reach the girl's eyes. "What word." "Your name," the girl whispered. "He said, 'Freya.' Then he said another name. His own, I think. He was angry when he said it." She bit her lip. "I'm Elsa. Elsa Meadowbrook." "Say his name, Elsa." Elsa looked at the frozen ground, at the dead grass spreading toward her father's flock. She looked back at Freya. "If I tell you, you'll leave. And you'll never fix what you did to our field." Freya knelt again, level with the girl now. The lantern's blue light lay between them. "I can't fix the field. I don't know how to warm anything anymore. But that name is the only thing I have. Give it to me, and I'll owe you a debt no god could pay." Elsa studied her a long moment. Then she leaned close and spoke one word into Freya's ear. Freya went still. The name landed like a key turning in a lock she'd forgotten she carried. She knew that god now. She knew where his fire burned. She stood and looked north, past the ruined pasture, toward the place the name pointed. The hunt had a direction at last. But behind her, Elsa's father was shouting across the dead field, and the girl had just tied her small life to a fallen thing.