Wyrd: Book One of the Witch War Trilogy - WATTYS 2018 WINNER!

Chapter 4: When Laina Puts her Foot Down

           

The soft orange sunlight of an early dawn lit the screened-in cedar porch touching each of the four individuals with a warm glow. Laina studied Sky's wings as the group nursed their big mugs of milky Earl Gray tea. They were folded back behind her in the cramped space, the tops arching above Sky's shoulders and the bottoms falling below her hands, each exquisite detail of her feathers highlighted by radiant light. The plumage no longer looked dark gray but glossy lavender, faint emerald-green, and in places, a gradient from black to snowy-owl-white up this close. Long, defined and tapered quills filled in the body transitioning to soft down that danced and shimmered on the fringes.

If this wasn't real, Laina thought, the detail was intoxicating. It was so convincing. If this were real--and she was beginning to believe it truly was--the ramifications were...

The possibilities were...

"So you're an ... angel?" Will asked Sky, bringing Laina back instantly.

She had seen the look on Will's face when Sky had flown down from the heavens--not just awe, but something more. She had heard a resonant metaphysical click, like the teeth of gears locking into alignment within the machinations of the universe. She had no way to explain it or understand that or how she knew her brother had felt an immediate overwhelming connection with Sky. And it wasn't the dopey lovesick puppy look on his face that told her so.  Or even her twin sense.

Her brother was normally the cool one, the suave one, the one all her friends crushed on. He was as smooth as a teenage boy could be with the opposite sex, if mostly disinterested. Right now, he was acting like a smitten idiot.

On any other day, she might have kicked him in the shins to get him to stop embarrassing himself. It was clear Sky wasn't interested and that he was going to get his heart pummeled.

On any other day, she might have been embarrassed herself. She was sitting beside what could very well be an angel who was dressed in a battle-dress worthy of the gods, and of course, Laina was wearing pajamas. And Freudian slippers that had two bobble-eyes and a puppet mouth where her toes stuck out as the tongue.

On any other day, she'd have had a billion questions, would have been like that three-year-old standing in front of someone wise and perpetually asking why. Why? Why?

But today, Laina knew the answer to Will's question.

"You're not an angel," Laina said, finding her voice. "You're a Valkyrie."

A Valkyrie will dance on the bodies of the dead and drag everyone you've ever loved away from you.

The words echoed in her head like a refrain from a forgotten dream, taunting her, haunting her memories. How had she known what Sky was? She'd known it like when a word slips into your consciousness, when it's on the tip of your tongue and then you just know.  Laina felt a momentary chill and clutched her warm ceramic cup.

"Yes," Sky acknowledged, her speckled golden eyes assessing Laina.

"A Val-ky-rie," Will repeated, his awe apparent in the way he strung together the long drawn-out vowels like hesitations between sharp consonants. "What is that?"

"It's complicated," she said. "Our original job was to guide the souls of dead warriors to Valhalla for Odin. Now we guide souls of the chosen dead to wherever they are meant to go. And we make up the... shield maiden army of the Gods. Sort of."

"Wow," Will said, amazed, but Laina could tell that he hadn't fully understood just what the implications of that might mean. 

Watching the sorrow of goodbyes, feeling the weight of souls, being lost in the irate emotion and the clanging metal of war. It might explain the sadness and anguish in Sky's eyes, constellations of the worlds' pain reflected in their depths. Laina felt for her.