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Liz is trembling.
She hasn’t eaten, she hasn’t rested, and she’s been through quite an ordeal. It’s time to go. You need sleep.
“I need to go back to that volcano,” she says. “We should go right now. Your dad won’t wait.”
Absolutely not. You will sleep now. We can go tomorrow, with allies in attendance.
She wants to argue. I can see it in the set of her jaw and the flashing of her eyes, but she inhales, her nostrils flaring, and then she sighs. Her entire body deflates when she does. “I should check on Sammy, Coral, and Jade.”
Yes, you should.
“I should like to come,” the woman says. “When you go tomorrow.”
“It won’t be safe,” Liz says.
“Do I look like I fear death?” The woman’s smile is a little off. Even I can see that. “To witness the lava-burned, to be there when you approach Eyjafjallajökull, when the cursed are restored, it would be the highlight of my entire life.”
“When the cursed are restored?” Liz asks. “What does that mean?”
“Those who were doomed to wait on redemption are all there, hoping for someone to release them.”
“But then, where will they go?”
“I assume they’ll go to an afterlife, but I don’t know, girl. That’s why I want to see it!”
I don’t like her. The woman feels almost like a ghoul—desperate to experience something horrible. She may be in awe of the events happening before her, and she may be sharing what she’s read, but it still makes me uneasy.
“The other word the cursed were saying,” Liz says, “was Vera. Is that a girl’s name here too?”
The woman shakes her head. “Nay, vera means stay. They were begging you for your help, and now, so am I. Those cursed souls have been punished long enough, and you may be the only one who can free them.”
As Liz mounts my back, an idea occurs to me. Could their calling her Gullveig be a message? What if the only way she can help them is to be burned and die, like Gullveig before her?
The crone’s laughter makes me want to incinerate her on the spot.
“But Gullveig didn’t stay dead,” Liz says.
“And you aren’t Gullveig,” the crone says. “All good deeds require sacrifice, and not everyone comes back stronger.”
No. Absolutely not. I launch into the sky, swinging in wide arcs. You are not going to sacrifice yourself to save a bunch of demons. I forbid it.
Liz laughs. “You won’t get any argument from me, but we do need to find the heart.”
I’ll go with you tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can discover about the volcano.
“Where’s my family?”
They’re waiting on word of where to settle.
“So we need to pick a building to stay in, because that storm’s coming, right?”
I’ve been searching as we made a sweep, but the buildings here are much more limited than in Houston. None of these homes are large enough.
“What about that?” Liz points at the sprawling building next to the large open fields.
That’s some kind of athletic facility, and the strike blessed have already asked to use it and been granted permission. My understanding is that it didn’t have adequate facilities for personal hygiene for a large number of humans. I’m on my second sweep, just passing near the home of the crone, when Liz points again.
“It’s not a skyscraper, but for Selfoss, it kind of is. The sign says Hotel Selfoss, and it’s a few stories high. Let’s check that one out.”
