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               Edda sat at her table, looking at the stone with her true name. It held power, but it was a power she no longer wanted. Yet, power was a tricky thing. The thought of giving it up gave her pause. She plotted how to unlink the wild magic from the spirits. She wondered why the wild magic had given her this name. What had the Skuld meant that she would do what the Skuld could not?

Someone knocked at the door. She tucked the stone into her pocket and moved the three steps from the table to the door. She pulled it open, revealing Hrothgar. He stared at her blankly, waiting. Edda took a step back, opening the door wider. Hrothgar entered her house and she silently shut the door. She wanted to embrace him, but he looked almost wild with anger. She considered him, delving into his emotions with the wild magic. “You confronted Astrid,” she said evenly.

               Hrothgar looked cornered, uncomfortable, on the brink of flight. “Yes,” he answered shortly.

               She nodded without judgment. She knew Hrothgar, like most men, dismissed the Bairns, thinking their work and their power unimportant. “Why are you here?” she asked tenderly. She reached for him, pressing her hand against his cheek.

               He wet his lips, hesitating. “What did you read in the runes last night?”

Edda stroked his black beard, twirling her finger through it as she considered her answer. “The spirits are not our friends,” she said slowly. She ran her hand over his shoulder, down his arm.

“They keep us from having boys,” Hrothgar stated, eyes filled with fury.

               Edda nodded. “They want to keep their sisterhood,” Edda explained.

He was silent for a moment. She smelled his nervous sweat. “I want you to read the runes for me,” he said slowly, voice shaking.

               She smiled. “Why?” she inquired, feeling smug. “I thought you didn’t believe in their power.”

“I don’t,” he answered. “But you do.”

“I will read the runes for you,” she said. The wild magic surged through her limbs. She felt the warmth of its glow.

               Hrothgar took one of the chairs, sitting at her table with his elbows propped on the tabletop. He clasped his fists together, pressing his mouth into them. His eyes hadn’t left hers. His nervous energy was infectious.

               Edda untied the pouch from her belt, then called the wild magic. She held the stones in her hand, letting it glow with the inner fire, before scattering them across the floor. The wild magic burned the runes onto their faces, the smell of burning stone stinging her nostrils, clinging to the back of her throat. She considered the runes one by one. The river. The mist. The man. The branch. She stared for too long, too excited tell him what she read. She stared for so long that he had to prompt her to speak.

               “Edda?” Hrothgar asked tenderly. “What do the runes say of me?”

               She lifted her eyes from the ground, warmth spreading through her. “You can make boys, Hrothgar.” Her voice was low and tender. She allowed a smile to creep across her features.

               She watched his eyes widen with hope and fear. “I can make boys?” he whispered, his question filling the silent places inside her. The spirits chattered but she didn’t listen to their words. “Who is the mother?” he asked.

               She already knew, but the power inside her was itching to flow again. Cast!…No!…Edda, cast!… Read the runes…Edda, stop! The conflicting wails began to make sense, considering what the Skuld had revealed in the Grove the previous night. She picked up the rune stones one by one, caressing them softly before calling the wild magic again. She scattered them onto the floor. The heavy sound of them clacking across the wooden beams broke the spirits’ wailings. The circle. The dove. The well. The womb.

               She closed her eyes. She had known before the casting. She understood what the Skuld had meant. This reading was more exciting than the one she had just given. This reading sealed her fate, gave her a future.

               “Edda?” Hrothgar asked, tentative and soft. “Who is the mother?” His breath was like summer’s breeze, sending heat through her chest. It spread downward to her belly, to her womb. She tingled with excitement.

               She opened her eyes, regarding him for a moment that felt too long, too slow. “I am the mother,” she whispered.

               Hrothgar frowned. “You?” he asked, barely understanding. “You’re the mother?”

               She nodded as the spirits wailed in dismay and laughed darkly in delight.

               “Edda,” Hrothgar said, standing up and coming forward. “You…” he cupped her face. “Are you sure?”

               She nodded, feeling giddy, feeling drunk with power and love. She tried to release the wild magic but couldn’t let it go. It felt intwined into her in a way it hadn’t been before. “Tell me when my eyes aren’t white anymore,” she said.

She held his gaze, staring until her eyes hurt. Edda counted the seconds in her head. She lost count around 300.

               “They aren’t going back, Edda,” he finally said. “They’re still white.”

               Raw power slithered through her. She stooped to pick up the stones again. The spirits were all talking at once. She couldn’t pick out any coherent thoughts from them. She cast the rune stones again, smelling the fire of the wild magic as they burned new runes into the surface of the rocks. The fire. The circle. The star. The tree.

               She smiled widely, gleefully. Then she laughed heartily, but it didn’t sound joyous. Even to her it sounded wrong. “I will be the Skuld,” Edda said. Hrothgar backed away from her. She watched him, drawn to his terror. She moved forward, but he continued to move backwards, until he was standing against the wall, and she was pinning him in place, her hands pressed against his chest. She tipped her face upwards. “I will be the Skuld,” she repeated, whispering hoarsely, “and the mother of your boys. And I will have everything I ever wanted.” She pressed her lips to his and she felt Hrothgar trying to squirm away from her. She held him in place with the strength of the wild magic until he succumbed to her, running his hands over her back as she kissed him. Inside her mind the spirits argued. No! Edda, no!…Yes…Yes…   

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               Hrothgar stroked Edda’s white hair as they lay on the pallet, snuggling together under the thin blanket. Edda’s head rested against his chest. She traced a finger down his sternum, his belly. The wild magic danced between them. “How do you stand it?” he asked, feeling it slide through him.

               “I like it,” Edda replied, and he could hear the smile in her words. “You don’t like it?” she asked.

               “I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “It feels…uncontrollable.”

               “That’s because no one has taught you how to control it,” Edda said.

               Hrothgar didn’t want to learn how to control it. He frowned. “Could you give it up?”

               Edda lay still. He could barely feel her breath. “No,” she finally decided.

               “Astrid said that too,” he replied, remembering the confrontation from earlier that morning.

               Edda lifted her head, her white eyes boring into him, her white hair hanging in a curtain over his chest. “You think we should give up the wild magic,” she assessed, and when he didn’t confirm her guess, she continued. “I think we should use the wild magic.”

               “For what?” Hrothgar asked.

               Edda smiled but it seemed forced. She didn’t look entirely human. “For whatever we need to use it for.”

               “What about the spirits?” he asked, fear returning to his belly. “What we’re doing…Edda, I don’t want them to take you.”

               She laughed at him and glowed with an internal light. “They cannot take me,” she said. “They are weak.”

               His body felt alive with energy. “Edda,” he said hoarsely.  “Are you saying, you can defy the spirits?”

               “I thought you didn’t believe in the spirits?” she asked. She threw off the blanket and Hrothgar’s eyes trailed over her body as he watched her dress.

               “I don’t believe in the runes,” he clarified.

               She turned her white eyes on him, and he felt the icy stab of fear. “The runes are what told me to carry a boy for you. If it’s in the runes, it’s true.”

               “You also said the runes told you that I taint you,” he argued. “And you said you didn’t believe it.”

               Edda narrowed her eyes at him as she tugged her white kirtle over her head. “You said I didn’t believe it.”

               Hrothgar didn’t want to fight with her. They had had enough fights about the spirits and the wild magic. “What do you think they meant?” he asked, though he was unsure he wanted to hear her answer.

               She closed her eyes for a moment, tilting her head as if in inquiry. “That you would help me break their power over us,” she said.

For a moment, he couldn’t understand what she meant, but then it all came together for him. “Will we still need the wild magic to make boys?” he asked.

               She sunk to the pallet, and leaned forward, kissing him slowly. He pulled her down to him, and she lay halfway on him as they kissed. When he pulled away from her, she had a mischievous grin. “We don’t need the wild magic to make boys, Hrothgar. The spirits use the wild magic to dictate who can make boys. We need to break the spirits’ control.”

               Hrothgar sucked in his breath. “Can that be done?”

               She rose from the pallet. She reached for the white bag of rune stones she had laid on the table. She drew them out carefully, giving them a loving gaze before she cast them to the floor. The hiss of their burning was loud in the silence of the room. Hrothgar looked to Edda as she read them, waiting for her to speak.

               She lifted her eyes to meet his. “It can,” she whispered.