When Astrid woke, she was in the grove. Her body was cool and stiff. She sat up, trailing her hand across the dew gathered on her skirt. Mist rolled over the ground. The Skuld was not with her.

               She had come to the grove after Lodvik stormed away from her. It pulled her in, the spirits calling and chattering. She didn’t try to sort out their bickering. She followed the threads of the wild magic. It was a beacon summoning her. She never asked why, she simply obeyed.

               In the grove, she and the Skuld had read the bones late into the night. The spirits had argued, screaming about boys and men, screaming about new Bairns, screaming for the sake of screaming. The bones told stories of what might be, stories of what could be, stories of what would be if all the right choices were made. Some of the futures did not please her. Some delighted her. Not a single one did not fill her with dread.

               Everything would change. Everything. And soon.

               “The woman that Freya has been watching,” the Skuld began.

               “Edda,” Astrid said, looking out across the bones that foretold change and upheaval.

               “She is ready,” the Skuld said.

               “She has a man,” Astrid said. “It’s always harder when they have a man.”

               The Skuld smiled. “He will not keep her from us,” she said.

               Astrid looked out across the bones. She realized the Skuld was right. She had not seen it before. “Good,” she said. “I think we need her. We need her almost as much as we need boys.”

               The Skuld took her hands in her own, staring deep into her eyes. “And those boys will need you, Astrid.”

               Astrid nodded, thinking of the name on her white stone. Her true name. “I had thought I knew what my true name was when it was given to me,” she said. “But now I see that it goes deeper than what I thought.”

               “What divides our people has never been about whether we are men or women. It has always been about power, and who can wield it.”

               “Men like my brother Aelric know that there is too much that is out of balance,” she said. “And women like Freya like it that way.”

               “That is why we need women like you. Women like Edda, who want to make this world better for our men,” the Skuld said. Astrid squeezed her hands hard, hoping to keep her in the world longer, coveting her wisdom. She tasted further revelation in the air, but the Skuld was already fading. “I must go,” the Skuld said. “I have work to do.”

               Astrid watched her fade from the world, melting into the ground like water. Her anticipation fizzled. She was too tired to return home. She picked a spot under one of the trees and laid her head in a pile of fallen needles strewn with old leaves. She was asleep as soon as her head touched the ground.

               Astrid hugged her knees to herself, remembering the previous night, the bones, Lodvik’s anger. She shook her head, still appalled. A girl of fifteen should not be a mother. Neither the Bairns nor the Skuld would have ever instructed such a thing. But could she blame him, now that she had heard his reasoning? She brushed the dead needles from her hair, deciding she could not. He had done it out of fear.

               Protect the boys! The spirit’s voice cut through the chatter. She stood, shaking out her skirts, wondering at the Skuld’s words. How could they ever make this world better for their men if the spirits were so set against them? She began her trek back through the forest, and her thoughts drifted to Asmund. Would there ever be a world where he could use the wild magic?

               When she emerged from the woods, she stopped for a moment to sense where the wild magic was gathering. She could feel it swirling around someone. She watched a black bird sail overhead, dipping to alight in the open field before her. It was a graveyard, she always thought. Rows of empty houses, old and dangerously disrepaired, each site a tombstone for those who had lived there. Her eyes went to one house among the rows, the place where Lodvik said Eylaug had taken him. Astrid began to walk stiffly towards it, pulled by whoever was in that place.

               When she pushed open the door, she saw Ama, Freya and Sif standing in a circle around Eylaug, who was sitting on the floor with her eyes closed. All four turned their attention to her, but then turned away without greeting. Ama and Freya shifted, making a space for her in the circle. They waited. The wild magic curled around her. She watched Eylaug, listening to the spirits calls. They were angry with Eylaug, just as the Bairns were. Not long after, Helga came through the open door as well. Without prompting, she joined the circle.

               Astrid did not know what they were doing. From past experiences, she knew that no one would tell her until after it was done.

               Fear. That’s primarily what she felt through the currents of the wild magic. Eylaug’s fear. She reached for Freya’s hand, compelled by the power stirring in the room. Freya took hold of her, and the power within her doubled. Freya’s body glowed. At her other side, Ama grasped for her. She took hold of Ama’s hand and nearly lost herself in the current that surged through her. She begged the spirits not to carry her off. She was holding entirely too much. Fear. Her fear, now. It tightened her throat.

               Let go. It was Ama, speaking to her across the flow of the wild magic. She loosened every muscle, and felt the embrace of the power. Then she understood what was happening.

               In the center, she saw Eylaug, translucent as glass, and within her, three bright red beating hearts. One was her own, near her chest. The other two were much lower, in her abdomen. One had an orangish hue. The other one was almost pink. Two babies. She looked harder, at the blood, at the runes it carried. All the same. Every rune identical. Two babies. Two girls.

               She fell out of consciousness for a moment, drifting in the power, there was a light coming for her, and they were calling her name. Their voices were rough, like gravel. You don’t know what it is you’re doing to us, Astrid! You should not listen to the Skuld. In the distance, watery and ethereal, she heard the other spirit that had been calling to her for days. Protect the boys! She swallowed hard, her mouth like sand. She could taste the age of the earth on her breath.

               She blinked and she was on the ground. She felt cold, but she was covered in sweat. Someone nearby was groaning. Freya was angry. She could hear the heat of her fire.

               “This is why we’ve been told not to do this,” she said. A hand pressed against her forehead, and then her head was being gently lifted, laid in the skirts of someone’s lap. She opened her eyes, though the effort made her swoon. Freya’s dark hair enveloped her vision. “Stay with me, Astrid,” she said, pleadingly.

               Someone else began rubbing her legs. The groaning on the other side of the circle continued. “Eylaug?” she asked.

               “Helga is attending her,” Freya said crossly. Astrid’s eyes floated shut again but Freya snapped at her. “Keep your eyes on me, Astrid!” Fear. Freya’s fear had her heart racing. The rubbing continued, the hands moving up her body. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, though they were now stinging with tears as the hands worked. The cold faded from her, replaced with a shuddering nausea. “Keep working, Sif!” Freya called.

               “Freya, I’m sick,” Astrid whined. She tried to roll off Freya’s lap, but Freya held her tightly in place. She gagged, then wretched, the bile and sick bubbling from her mouth. Freya allowed her to tilt her head, and she spat on the floor of the house. She recognized now it was Sif who was massaging her, working her arms now, and her neck. Sif’s face was red and slicked with sweat. Freya wiped the edge of her dress across her mouth.

               The vomiting had taken away the nausea, and whatever Sif had done to her had worked to bring her more solidly back to the world. The spirits were now just a faint chatter, as they typically were. She sat up slowly, expecting to be dizzy, but she was only fatigued, like the first day up from a sick bed. “What happened?” she asked. She eyed Eylaug, who was still prone. She was crying noiselessly. Ama whispered in her ear.

               “Something that we aren’t supposed to do,” she said. “You were almost carried off because of it.” Freya’s words were icy.

               “I had to know,” Ama said. “She is my blood sister.”

               “And it nearly cost you the life of another of your sisters!” Freya hissed.

               Sif’s face looked like ashes, like a clouded sky before the rain. “It was too close,” she murmured, sitting back on her heels and hugging her knees. She wiped a tear from her face, shuddering.

               Astrid knew Sif’s greatest fear was being carried off. Her blood sister had chosen it freely, and she had been forced to watch it happen, helpless to stop it. The scar broke open sometimes. Astrid reached for her hand. “I’m safe, Sif. You brought me back.”

               Sif wiped another tear from her face. Her color returned. “We can’t do this again. It’s too dangerous. It costs too much.”

               All four of her sisters carried their weariness in plain sight, in the way they slumped their shoulders and breathed heavily. Astrid wanted nothing but sleep. “What exactly did we do?” she asked.

               Ama and Helga had Eylaug on her feet now, all three straining from the effort, leaning into one another to keep themselves aloft. “You saw, didn’t you?” Ama asked.

               She had seen. She had seen the runes in the blood of the babes that Eylaug carried. The runes that marked them as girls. “But why take the risk?” she asked, anger lighting her words. “What good is it to know before the birth?”

               “Because I wanted to know if this house is what they say it is,” Helga said.

               Astrid drew back in surprise. She did not think of Helga as a risk taker. “Why?” she asked.

               “To see if it could solve our problems,” she said.

               Freya was steaming beside her, and Sif looked like she would fall over at any second. Astrid itched for the wild magic, her palms tingling. Unconsciously she reached for the rune stones, but Freya stayed her hand. Astrid swallowed down the craving, letting go a long sigh. She looked from Sif to Ama and Helga. All three of them were like stalks in a stiff breeze—swaying, bending, bowing. She felt the idea bubbling up from her depths before she had time to think about what she said. “Destroy the house,” she said. The wild magic swayed, swirling around her, but she ignored it. She looked from one sister to the next, and then to Eylaug, who was staring at her in disbelief. “There is no magic here that can make boys. It is worthless to have it tempt others to try.”

               The spirits were pleased with her. She drunk in their delight.

               Freya was the first to speak. “We should do as she says,” she said. She felt Freya pulling her to her feet, and she in turn reached for Sif. The three stood uneasily. The weariness was set deep inside her. She was not sure they should use the wild magic at all in their current state.

               Freya and Sif were stronger than her though, and they led the way out of the house, Ama and Helga trailing, supporting Eylaug. They set Eylaug gently on the ground outside, then the five Bairns gathered in a line about the house. It was the only one in the row that had not caved or collapsed yet. Freya called the wild magic first, then Sif. Astrid was the last to call, afraid of what it would do it her. But she found it gave her some strength and eased the desperate heaviness in her chest.

               Freya pushed the room of the house in, and Sif kept the dust from blowing over them. Helga pushed in the south wall, and Ama the north wall. Astrid scattered the timber away from them, across the field. When they were finished, it looked as if the house had exploded from within. She drained herself of the wild magic, then, overcome with fatigue again, sat down on the ground and closed her eyes.

               It was night when she awoke. She rolled over in the grass, finding that Helga was asleep next to her. Her breathing was steady and even, and Astrid felt no fear for her. She sat up slowly. She was still tired, but not in the deadly way she had been before. Ama and Eylaug were nowhere in sight, neither was Sif. But Freya was standing watch over them, a statuesque protector.

               “Freya,” Astrid croaked, and Freya reached for her, helped her stand. Their eyes met and she found herself wrapping her arms around Freya’s neck, hugging her close. Freya embraced her, her touch an anchor to the world. Her hair smelled like smoke and earth and rain. Astrid rested the weight of her head against Freya’s shoulder.

               Freya released her, and gently rubbing her hands down her arms said, “Go home, Astrid. I will wait with Helga.” Astrid nodded and pulled herself away from the wreck of the house, from the scene that had almost been her death. She went slowly, moving at a snail’s pace through the town, then up the hill to her family’s farm. Each step she took grew heavier as she walked, her muscles aching as she neared the top of the hill. She could see the house and barn, their silhouettes dark against the night sky and the shining moon. One more step, she repeated to herself. Her stomach growled. She had not had any food since yesterday.

               She opened the farmhouse door, surprising her mother, father, Aelric, Sigmund and Magnhild, who were all still sitting at the kitchen table drinking ale and playing cards. The fire in the hearth was burning, logs freshly stacked. The smell of fresh bread hung in the air. She leaned against the doorpost, too tired to go any further.

               “Astrid!” Sigmund gasped, jumping up and racing to her aid.

               “I need food,” she said weakly, as Sigmund walked her to a chair. “And a drink. I’m so thirsty, Sigmund.”

               Her mother and Magnhild were moving almost as soon as she had requested sustenance. Soon there was a plate of buttered bread and bacon in front of her, along with a bowl of stewed vegetables and beans. Magnhild brought her a mug and a jar of honey. She thanked them softly and began to eat. The food gave her energy almost immediately, and then she was devouring the meal like a ravenous hound. The family said nothing as she ate. She could feel their confusion and awe through the wild magic. And their fear. Always there was fear.

               “Where have you been?” Sigmund asked. Aelric huffed under his breath, and her father turned his eyes away from her.

               “I’ve been doing my work,” she said, purposefully cryptic. “And it takes a great effort sometimes.” She began to cry then, which she had not expected at all. “I was almost carried off,” she said. She wiped the heel of her hand across her eyes, shuddering.

               None of them moved to comfort her. They did not know how. She finished the stew by tipping the bowl, the broth sliding straight into her mouth. She blotted her lips on her sleeve, and smiled when the garment did not stain. She used the sleeve to dry her face as well, still wet from the tears she had shed. “Thank you,” she said, pushing the bowl and plate away from her. Then she left the table.

               No one called goodnight to her as she ascended the stairs.