Sif walked through the piled drifts, moving towards the woods without haste. The storm had stopped blowing after Ulfrun had commanded it, but the sun had not come out until the next day, and Sif had not felt like leaving the fireside while the clouds still hung overhead. She trudged through the snow, knowing she could easily call the wild magic to clear it away for her, but there was something powerful in a different way to make her body do it without magic. She smiled to herself, thinking she possessed a sort of tame magic too, the kind of tame magic that resided in the power of her physical body. She thought of Leif and the other men whose bodies were powerful beyond what she could hope to achieve for herself. Ulfrun thought men were weak. The spirits did not want men, but that did not mean men were weak.

               Up ahead, she felt the stirring of the wild magic, and the presence of someone else at the edge of the woods. She connected with the other’s spirit, the feel of her. Fear gripped her guts momentarily, but she pressed onward. She needed to speak with the Skuld. She would not turn back because of a Bairn.

               When she reached the edge of the trees, where the path that led to the Skuld’s grove began its winding descent, she saw her. Mjoll had her back turned to Sif, her long hair white with power, her white robes billowing with the flow of the wild magic. Sif listened. The spirits were chattering. There was one who was louder than all the rest. She deepened her dive into the words.

               It is a gift…a gift that was given to us as well.

               Another spirit cried out. No!

               Sif was familiar with the confused bickering among the spirits. She had learned how to decipher it in her short time as a Bairn. Sif touched the pouch at her belt, itching to cast her rune stones. She restrained her impulses. Mjoll would know of her presence if she used the wild magic. She shifted quietly around her, trying to sneak by, and also trying to make it seem that she was not sneaking by. She stepped past Mjoll’s stiff body, narrowly avoiding being whipped by her billowing cloak. She moved forward, stilling her nerves, wishing to run down the winding path away from Mjoll’s terrifying presence.

               “I see you Sif,” Mjoll whispered, a hiss among the hushed air of the forest.

               Sif stood stone still, her body rigid, as if dead. She did not turn around.

               Mjoll laughed, a husky chuckle deep in her throat. “You go to seek answers about the fire.”

               Sif did not reply. Mjoll was not her superior or her teacher. She did not have to engage with her if she did not wish.

               “Ulfrun will be burned by the fire,” Mjoll whispered. Sif felt the wild magic circling, condensing. Now, she did turn, to watch as Mjoll cast her rune stones along the snowy path. They sank into the knee-deep drifts, hissing with steam as the wild magic burned the runes on them. Mjoll stepped forward, her eyes wild, white, filled with electric magic. Sif waited, holding her breath, curious and afraid of the reading.

               Mjoll only laughed, a wild, unhinged laugh that brought the chill creeping up Sif’s back. Her flesh prickled as she watched. Mjoll’s laughter went on and on, sending the chattering of the spirits to the background. Sif tenderly took a step forward to peer at the rune stones.

               The eagle. The flame. The river. The tree.

               “I will climb the great tree,” Mjoll said, laughter finally spent. Her too white eyes fell on Sif’s, and Sif felt the fear melt from her. Mjoll was not afraid of this fate, whatever it was.

               “The great tree?” Sif asked.

               Yggdrasil…the spirits called. These were old spirits, spirits who were old before the Freezing. These were the women who had first believed, who had died the first death before there was a name for it. Sif had learned how to know the age of a spirit from the sound of their whispers. The young ones sounded like rain. The old ones sounded like bones. These ones sounded older than that. The voices that chanted the strange name sounded like the earth itself.

               Sif frowned at Mjoll, feeling the wild magic slither and glide between them. “You will be carried off, Mjoll,” she said flatly.

               Mjoll’s teeth looked like fangs as she smiled. She picked up her rune stones from where they had sunk into the snow. “No, Sif,” she drawled. “I will ascend. My hair is already entwined in the roots.”

               Sif swallowed the bile in her throat. She had no response that seemed appropriate. She took a step backward, then another, not taking her eyes from Mjoll.

“You retreat from me?” Mjoll asked, amused. She tilted her head like a bird, regarding Sif with curiosity. “You are a chick, Sif. Let me show you the things I have learned in my long life.”

“The things you teach my sister?” she asked, finding her nerve. “You’ve taught her to be reckless, Mjoll.”

She hummed, her expression pleased. “Perhaps she is also destined to climb the great tree.”

The great tree…the branches stretch out forever…I climbed the tree…we are waiting for you, Sif…NO! They will try to trick you…Dangerous…It’s dangerous.

“I must see the Skuld,” Sif said, though she did not know why she felt the need.

               Mjoll let go of some of the wild magic that danced around her, her hair returning to a dark golden blonde streaked with gray. Her face did not betray her age, but her hair always did. Mjoll was the oldest of the Bairns. Helga believed she was even older than the Skuld. Her eyes held a strange look—the same look Sif had seen in Ulfrun’s eyes after she had dismissed the storm. Fire from another realm.

               “The Skuld will tell you that the answers you seek are dangerous. This is also what she told your sister,” Mjoll said.

               “What do you know of it?” Sif asked. She felt her ire rising. Her face was burning with the anger that always accompanied her confusion.

               Mjoll snickered. She was beautiful, in a terrifying kind of way. Sif did not wish to hear the answer, but her feet refused to move.

               “I know because Ulfrun told me when she came to me to learn more about the fire,” Mjoll said. “The Skuld does not want you to know these things, little chick. She does not want you getting too powerful.”

               Sif was not surprised that Mjoll would think this way, but it angered her nonetheless. “And why should the Skuld want to keep us from becoming powerful? By your own words, you will ascend into this…great tree…then you won’t even be here with us, will you?”

Mjoll smiled. “The Skuld does not want to lose us all to the branches. Then who would remain to heal the sick? To clear the snow? To tend the farms?” As Sif thought through what Mjoll was saying, she realized that Mjoll didn’t care about living in the world. The Skuld, on the other hand, was helping the Bairns learn how to harvest the power of the wild magic so that Soledge would survive. Without the Bairns, without the wild magic, they would starve, wither and die.

“You can ascend if you want,” Sif said plainly. “We can carry on without you.”

Mjoll laughed in her face. She was not undone by Sif’s anger or dismissal. “I’ll remain long enough to show your sister how it is done,” she said.

“Why would Ulfrun ask it of you? You’re reckless. You’re teaching her to be reckless too.” She felt the tingling of the wild magic. Her hand went to the pouch for her rune stones.

               Mjoll noticed the movement. “Cast,” she instructed. “Read the runes for yourself.”

               Sif did not take the bait, pushing aside the taunt for what it was. “I will do as the Skuld instructs. As should you.”

               At her words, Mjoll began to call the wild magic to her again. Her hair lost its color, fading to white. Her eyes went wide, then grew heavy, her lids lowering as her mouth opened in an expression of pleasure. Sif held in a scoff, moving down towards the grove at a quickened pace.

               The Skuld’s grove was free of snow. She squatted in the center, her long white hair and spotless white garments both draping over her to the grass. On the ground before her were the scattered bones of a hen. She studied them in silence.

               Sif approached reverently, feeling the holy power of the wild magic at this, its temple. She let the wild magic touch her, shivering with delight when it did. Sif took three steps towards the Skuld, who had not moved. Sif waited just at the edge of her vision to be called.

               The Skuld continued to study the bones. Then wordless, she lifted a hand, beckoned her. Sif moved forward, stepping carefully on the dry grass. It crunched under her boots as she walked. When she reached the Skuld’s side, she squatted next to her, studying the hen bones too.

               “What do you see, Sif?” she asked softly.

               Sif’s eyes moved over each smooth, sun-bleached bone, taking in the angle, the pattern, the distance, the number. A rib touched a part of the beak, and the vertebrae were scattered in what looked very nearly a circle around the long bone of the wing. The foot, with a claw still attached lay next to the femur, and the pelvis was speared through with another rib. The rest of the bones did not touch one another. Sif noticed a third rib further away than she thought it would have been possible for it to bounce.

               “New knowledge mixes with old. New voices to add to the circle. New women to teach,” Sif answered.

               The Skuld smiled. “I know their names,” she said, “but I will not call them until they are ready.”

               “How do you know when a woman is ready?” Sif asked, a question that had always drifted within her.

               “The spirits tell me. Once the spirits can reach a woman, then she is ready.”

               Sif remembered the first time she had heard the spirits chattering. She had not been afraid. They were familiar, like long-loved friends. “How many new ones will there be?” she asked.

               The Skuld pulled the rune stones from her pouch.  She stood, took two steps to her right and cast the stones to the ground. Sif stood to see the markings, watching the stones smoke with wild magic. The leaf. The woman. The river. The star. Sif knew what it meant, but it was the Skuld’s casting, and so she would wait for the Skuld to give the reading before she said anything.

               “The new women will not appear until after we lose another,” the Skuld said.

               This was not an answer to Sif’s question, but the wild magic did not always give the information they wanted. “Someone will be carried off,” she said. She thought of Mjoll, laughing at her own destruction, and Ulfrun, white and smiling at doom.

               “There are two who skirt dangerously close,” the Skuld said, turning her eyes to Sif.

               Sif wanted to shrink under the Skuld’s gaze but managed to hold her head higher in defiance of her own anxiety. “Mjoll and Ulfrun,” she said.

               The Skuld agreed, nodding her head slowly in affirmation.

               “Does it have to do with the fires?” she asked.

               Skuld picked up her rune stones, moving with determined slowness. The soft crack as she dropped one atop another into her pouch sent an echo their the near silent grove. A raven cawed. Sif heard the flap of its wings as it lifted into the air. The sun came out from behind a cloud, sending a single ray streaming into the grove between the two women. The Skuld reached for her hands and Sif took them.

               “There are spirits who have learned how to use the fire to reach us,” she said, as she squeezed Sif’s hands. “But we can also learn how to use the fire to reach each other.”

               Sif wondered at that. “Why don’t we do this?”

               “The fire is wild, Sif. It is akin to the essence of the wild magic. It is not like the rune stones, hard and solid. It varies. It changes. The messages we can send and receive through the fire are the same.”

               Sif heard the wisdom in her words. “Ulfrun said that learning to read the fires can help you carry more of the wild magic.”

               Skuld dropped her hands, turned away and began to gather up the hen bones. “Ulfrun and Mjoll have learned how to carry more of the wild magic than is safe,” she admitted, “but this is not because they have learned how to read the fires.”

               Sif’s skin prickled, remembering Mjoll’s words. “Is it because their hair is already entangled in the roots of the great tree?”

               The Skuld smiled just for a moment, long enough for Sif to see that she was pleased with her reasoning, but not so long as to let her think that she encouraged Ulfrun and Mjoll’s recklessness. She picked up the last of the bones from the grass, then she raised the femur to her lips, kissed it, and tossed the whole bunch into the air. They rained down around her, and she let them fall still before she moved from their midst. Sif scanned her eyes across the grove, reading the patterns.

               “What do you see?” the Skuld asked.

               “I see a hole in the future,” Sif said, looking at the way the wing bones were stacked. The vertebrae were clustered together, nearly piled one on top another.

               The Skuld nodded her head. “Let the bones speak,” she whispered reverently.

               Sif’s fingers itched, crackling with wild magic. The bones do not lie…your sister…danger…