She knew it was a dream when she saw the Skuld smile—a pretty smile, not her typical sad, boney smile, stiff and sugared with regret. No, this smile she was given was one of pride, without any accompanying guilt or grief. A warm smile. A smile that illuminated all her dark places.

               “You did it, Astrid,” she said, her voice singing like the rain.

               Astrid was at complete peace, drifting like a hawk on the breeze. “I did?” she asked.

               “Of course you did,” the Skuld said. Now she sounded watery, and the smile wavered before the woods around them went dark.

               The voice, the spirit, that had been calling her sounded clear. Protect the boys!

               “Protect the boys, Astrid,” the Skuld said, her smile now just a flash in the dark.

               Astrid woke in a cold sweat, her heart racing. Spirit dreams did not typically come to her, but how could it have been anything else? She steadied her breathing, pressing her hand to her chest, tuning to the rhythm inside her. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. It slowed as she exhaled, a long release. She let the tension flow from her body. She opened her eyes, and shivered in the morning air.

               Protect the boys. She wondered how.

               There was a knock at her door. “Astrid?” Sigmund called from the other side.

               “Come,” she said. She had slept in her dress, too tired to remove it. She swung her feet to the floor.

               Sigmund opened the door slowly, peering in through the crack before he opened it fully. “We heard you calling,” he said.

               “I was asleep,” she explained. She had a habit of talking in her sleep. The whole house was used to it.

               Sigmund nodded, though his forehead was creased in worry. “You sounded…” He searched for words. “You sounded afraid, Astrid.”

               She wrestled with how much to tell him, but in the end decided she couldn’t tell him any of it. She didn’t understand what was happening herself. She didn’t think she could explain it to anyone else. “I’m fine, Sigmund. Just a bad dream.”

               He didn’t move. He didn’t nod. He shut her door, sealing them inside and came to sit on the bed next to her. He offered his hand to her, and she took it, though she frowned in suspicion before she did. They sat together in silence for a moment before he said, “You said you were almost carried off?”

               “Oh,” she said, trying to dismiss any of his concern with a slight laugh. “Yes, I…we did a hard task, and it…well, I wasn’t carried off.” She smiled. “Still here for you to worry over,” she said. She squeezed his hand.

               But Sigmund was not smiling, nor was he charmed by her dismissal of the situation’s seriousness. “What were you doing?” he asked. “You’ve never come home looking like that.”

               She stiffened. “What do you know about Lodvik and Eylaug?” she asked.

               Now he stiffened, and pulled his hand away from hers, rubbing his palms down his pantlegs. “Aelric said he put a babe in her belly.” His eyes met hers, looking for confirmation. “It’s true?” he asked.

               “You know the house where they say this wild magic lives?” He nodded. “We took Eylaug there yesterday, and we…looked inside her. At the babies.”

               “Babies?” Sigmund repeated, his face dropping in surprise.

               She nodded. “Girls.” Astrid sighed, and rubbed her forehead, feeling emptied of all her strength. “I almost was carried away looking at girls.” She could not keep the sneer from crawling across her face.

               Sigmund seemed to shrink away from her. “I did not know you could do such a thing,” he said, awe and terror mixed up in his words.

               “It’s not worth it to try,” Astrid said. “It took all five of us, and what did we gain from it?” She scoffed, then closed her eyes, centering herself so her anger would not catch up to her. “We leveled the house,” she said.

               “You what?” Sigmund asked, breathy with disbelief.

               “To prevent stories from spreading,” she said. “That place will not help us make more boys, Sigmund. It was a false hope.”

               He swallowed down a question that was on his lips, taking a moment to think before he spoke. “Is there any real hope, Astrid?”

               The spirits chattered. She closed her eyes, listening to the arguing. One of the voices was chanting softly to her. Edda. It’s Edda.

               She smiled to herself before opening her eyes. “There is real hope, Sigmund,” she said, allowing a slight smile to part her lips. The spirits chattered around her. Protect the boys! She listened to the call, thinking of her white stone. She closed her eyes, meditating on the words, drowning in the arguing of the spirits. Someone was screaming, long, devastated, agonized screams of terror. Who are you? She asked into the misty realm where the spirits dwelled. The screaming stopped, then the voice repeated the familiar instructions. Protect the boys! The same voice?

Astrid opened her eyes, and her brother was eyeing her cautiously. “What do you know Astrid?” he asked softly.

The wild magic was not for him, and she was always careful not to reveal what had been revealed to her. Unless he asked for a reading, she would not tell him what she suspected. “I know many things that I would not know without the spirits to tell me,” she said, ignoring his question by giving him an indirect answer.

Sigmund sighed. “Astrid…” he began, but she turned her face away from him, distracted by Sif’s swirling power. She was far away, accompanied by a deep groaning that sounded like the earth swallowing her. Astrid concentrated, pulled towards the power, towards the emotions that were not her own. She stood, hair prickling on the back of her neck.

               “What is it?” Sigmund asked, standing as quickly as she had.

               She shook her head, then, forgetting Sigmund, allowed herself to be hooked by the call, pulled out of the house and down the street towards whatever trouble had enclosed around Sif.

               The streets were empty, which Astrid thought was unusual. She felt an unnatural sensation in the air as she passed the houses, moving towards the center of Soledge. She moved with purpose, slowly, feeling each of Sif’s threads growing taut with tension. Astrid paused momentarily as she passed the apothecary. She could feel the girl, Edda, slippery with love for her man, bouncing from uncertainty to clarity. She lingered too long. Edda reached out, felt her presence. Astrid melted away quickly, not wanting a distraction.

               But a distraction found her anyway. At the end of the lane, just as the dirt road disappeared into the grass and old rock that led to the edge of the woods, Aelric was standing with his hands on his hips. He looked stormy, his face overcast with fatigue and fear. Fear. There was always fear.

               “What are you doing?” she asked her brother, approaching at a snail’s pace.

               Aelric grimaced, rubbing a hand over his mouth to wipe away the expression. “I was…” His eyes shifted away from her. “Astrid, can you…” Whatever it was, he didn’t want to say it. She could feel Sif in the woods, filling with wild magic. The groaning she had heard she now recognized as Aelric’s fears. She stepped nearer to him, closed her palms over his arms. Her touch drew his gaze back to her.

               “Aelric,” she said tenderly, soft as air. “What are you doing out here?”

               “I couldn’t sleep—listening to Sigmund and Magnhild…” He seemed embarrassed, but she nodded to indicate he didn’t need to explain any further. “I feel sick, Astrid,” he confessed as he brought his face closer to hers. “Like a future is coming for me that I don’t want.”

               Lodvik had also expressed this fear—the fear that his life would be chosen for him, without his say. “What do you want, Aelric?” she asked.

               “I want to be rid of my fear,” he said. He dropped his eyes, frowning. “I don’t want to be a tool, to used by the spirits and women just to get what they want.”

               Astrid remembered the feelings of fear that had taken her when the spirits first began to call her. “I know what you mean,” she said.

               Aelric grew angrier, which surprised her. She withdrew her touch, as he spun away, pacing back and forth before her with his hand to his temple. He was thinking furiously, his emotions spinning in a chaotic swirl. She sucked in her breath, resisting the dizziness they brought.

               “You don’t know, Astrid!” he yelled, though he didn’t look at her. “You and the other witches think you know, but you don’t know anything!”

               For once she didn’t correct him about his choice of descriptor for her and her sisters. “What do you want, Aelric?” she asked again.

               He stopped pacing, and looked at her hard, his eyes a sharpened blade of fear. “Sigmund told me to have you read the runes,” he said, deflating as the words left him.

“Is that what you want?” she asked tenderly, reaching for him again.

               He pulled his hands away so she couldn’t touch him. “It doesn’t matter what men want, Astrid.”

               The words pierced her, brought a flood of tears to her eyes. “There is one who will be called to make it better for you,” she confessed, surprised at the free flowing admission.

               He frowned, but his anger cooled. “Who?” She should not have told him anything at all, so she kept her mouth shut. He scoffed, and waved a hand between them, dismissing the conversation. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

               Astrid could feel Sif moving towards them. “Do you want me to the read the runes for you?” she asked.

               “And what would you ask?” Aelric said.

               She shrugged. “I’ll ask whatever you want to know,” she said.

               He considered her for so long that she felt she would grow roots. “Okay,” he finally said, the word a sigh of resignation. “Ask if my sister can find me someone who won’t care so much about what’s between a baby’s legs.”

               She swallowed her surprise, blinking back any questions that might have crept into her eyes. She nodded, then retrieved the runes stones from her pouch. She called the wild magic, let it slide through her, twirl around her. She felt warm in its smooth embrace. It filled her, and her she knew the moment that her hair and eyes lost all color, because Aelric took a step back from her. She raised one of the blank white stones to her lips, kissing the smooth surface. She cast the stones to the ground.

               The woman. The river. The roots. The grain. She listened to the chatter of the spirits. She knows the land…she farms the lands…she will take him…his chain will be light…She smiled. She did not know the woman well, but a smile crept over her face at the imagined pairing.

               “Well?” Aelric asked, his tone a mix of curiosity and suspicion.

               “Ljót,” Astrid said, the name sliding easily off her tongue.

               Aelric raised an eyebrow. “Why her?”

               “Boys and girls both can tend to farms?” she offered.

               Her brother nodded, thinking it over. “The runes don’t lie?” he asked, uncertainty creeping into his voice.

               Astrid nodded. “If it’s in the runes, it’s true,” she said, repeating the often cited reason for why one should believe the message from a reading.

               Aelric was about to ask her another question when Astrid’s attention was drawn to Sif coming out of the woods behind him. Her brother noticed, and sucked in his breath when he saw the other Bairn. “I’ll see you at home,” he said, as he almost ran from the scene. Astrid watched Sif’s approach. She was ecstatic with power—too much, Astrid thought. She looked unearthly, like the Skuld.

               “Sif,” Astrid called, reaching out her hands to her sister.

               Sif released some of the wild magic. Her eyes were wild with delight. “She’s ready,” she whispered, her face close to Astrid’s.

               “Protect the boys,” Astrid whispered compulsively. Sif did not seem to understand what she meant. Astrid didn’t know why she had said it. It had come out of her almost on its own. “I’ll go with you,” she said.

Sif led the way.

The man, Hrothgar, was leaving the house as Sif and Astrid approached.  She could feel Freya moving towards them. Hrothgar paused on the doorstep, scowling in their direction. He hadn’t yet shut the door. “Are you here for me?” he called. Fear. Astrid could taste it in the air.

Sif shook her head. “Edda,” she said.

She appeared in the doorway as if summoned. Astrid noticed her unkempt hair, the way her clothes seemed to move on their own. She was holding wild magic, but she likely was not aware that’s what she did. “What do you want?” she asked. She sounded like thorns, like a crashing stone from the cliff, like ice.

“You,” Sif said.

Freya was behind her, and Astrid took a step to the side to let her slide between her sisters. Freya too was delighted. The threads of wild magic linking them passed her emotions to Astrid. Sif ran her tongue over her bottom lip, and Freya pressed a hand to her chest, stilling her heart. Astrid let the heightened emotions of the moment carry her forward. She took one step, but paused as she watched Edda and Hrothgar draw away from her.

“You’ve heard the spirits,” she said.

Hrothgar whirled around, staring at his woman with confusion and panic. Astrid tasted the salt of his dread. “Have you?” he asked.

Edda’s eyes beaded with tears. She nodded. “I don’t want to…” she began.

“You cannot say no,” Freya said. She took a step forward. “It takes more than a man to keep you from the spirits.”

Hrothgar blazed with anger. He shouted at Freya. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? Call someone else!” The echo of his bellows filled the corridor.

“We don’t choose. The spirits choose,” Astrid said calmly. She took another step forward. Hrothgar recoiled further, nearly retreating into the house.

“Choose someone else,” he said.

But from over his shoulder, Edda caught her eye. She was swirling with anticipation, with curiosity, with fear. They were always afraid. “We’ll teach you. You will be safe,” Astrid said.

Edda looked almost willing, but then frowned, and clutched Hrothgar’s arm. “Not if I lose Hrothgar,” she said. “Nothing is worth that.”

“He’s a man, Edda,” Sif said, laughing. “He’s only good for one thing.”

Astrid knew it was the wrong thing to say before Sif even finished. “Go away,” Edda said. “Leave us alone!”

“The spirits will keep calling you,” Freya said. “And we will keep waiting for you.”

Hrothgar pushed Edda back into the house, shutting them inside. The click of the door’s latch seemed eternally final. Astrid did not think it would be easy to convince her. Perhaps her no would be the end of the call, just as Skogul’s had been.

Freya and Sif were smiling though. “She thinks she knows better than us,” Sif said.

Freya’s laugh was sinister. “She will learn,” she said.

Astrid swallowed the fear. There was always fear. Protect the boys, she thought, though she wasn’t sure if it was directed to herself, or to Edda. She thought of Asmund, dipping his finger in the puddle as she had, trying to touch the wild magic, and she had a sudden revelation. It shot through her like lightning. The spirit calling for her to protect the boys had not been calling her. It had been calling Edda.

“Are your sure?” Freya asked, intruding into her thoughts, as if she knew them.

Astrid slowly turned her head to regard her sister. “Whatever needs to happen to restore balance, it will begin with her,” Astrid said, nodding her head towards the house.

The three Bairns all turned their eyes, just in time to see Edda drop the curtain and vanish from the window.