Flock Read online

  More and more, it was sounding to me like the Bleika Norn was a former Stork. I’d guess she was the group’s flamingo. Quite possibly she had been first chair pre-Hulda. The way Penny described her as having a “following” would suggest as much. The “healing” I’d witnessed myself among our current flock. And Hulda had once described a Stork as a type of good or white witch. But pink? Regardless, none of it rattled me.

  “How is that spooky?” I asked. “Doesn’t your amma make you a special hot drink when you have cramps? It could very well be something she learned at the garden club.”

  With the sight of Jinky and Marik heading for the car, Penny sat back, pulling at the shoulder strap of the seat belt. “I never really thought about it, but she does have quite a few home remedies.”

  “What happened to the cameo?” Jack, Mr. Practical, asked. He’d been so quiet during our talk, I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  “My amma has it,” Penny said with an apologetic roll of her shoulders. “She says it’s part of my inheritance.”

  Jinky and Marik piled into the backseat with Penny, bringing all talk of pink witches to an end.

  We met my dad in front of the Pizza King, one of Walden’s most popular eateries, even if the king was a fat guy named Nick, who didn’t take credit cards or reservations. With a thirty-minute wait quoted, we opted to head outside, where King Nick lined the sidewalk with plastic chairs for his lords- and ladies-in-waiting.

  Jinky, I noticed, had given my dad a full-body scan. Whether he noticed or not, it didn’t deter him from singling her out for a chat. My dad always said he liked a conversational challenge. He didn’t get a smile out of her, but she had partnered more nouns and vowels for him than she had for the rest of us. She may have even thrown in an adjective or two. My dad had a way of oiling modifiers out of the rustiest of hinges.

  Marik, on the other hand, was a spew of words. He talked nonstop about the pleasant evening, Walden’s busy streets, the sense of community he felt in Norse Falls, and about how much fun being neighbors would be. That particular remark made my tongue swell. I couldn’t help think it was a rather lucky turn of events for him — my bounty hunter — that I would be right under his nose. I also wondered about what Penny had said about the house. Did its odd history have anything to do with the feelings my mom had claimed for the place? Needing a moment to think, I stood, stretched, and walked to the corner.

  “Ms. Bryant,” I said, catching a glimpse of a belted red coat go by.

  “Kat, how nice to see you,” she said, slowing and turning.

  Penny, another of Ms. Bryant’s biggest fans, jumped up from her chair. “Hi, Ms. Bryant.”

  Ms. Bryant noticed Marik and Jinky and stepped toward the rest of our group.

  My dad soon recognized Ms. Bryant, too. “Sage, right? We met last year when Kat was in the musical.”

  “Of course, Greg, nice to see you again,” Ms. Bryant said.

  My dad eyed the shopping bags in Ms. Bryant’s hands, possibly also taking in her bare left-hand ring finger. “I see you’ve been busy. Have you eaten? Our table should be ready any minute.”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Ms. Bryant said.

  “You’d be doing me a favor, really. I’m solo here with all these kids. A little help with crowd control would be welcome,” my dad said.

  Crowd control? He was smearing it on thick, but who could blame him; it was Ms. Bryant.

  “Please,” I said, turning to her. A chance to see her outside of the student-teacher setting intrigued me.

  “I have built up an appetite,” Ms. Bryant said, lifting her packages with a couple of bicep-curling motions.

  I sighed. She was smart, funny, and gave shopping the cred it deserved. It was official; Ms. Bryant was perfect.

  Our name was called and we, Ms. Bryant included, were shown to a table.

  The restaurant was one of those places that encouraged smack-talking employees. The waiter, a small guy with a chiseled soul patch, took one head-back, eyes-up look at Marik and pulled from his large apron pocket a roll of paper and a fat blue crayon. “I see a children’s menu is in order,” he said, unrolling the sheet to reveal a place mat with a crossword puzzle and a long list of word scrambles.

  We all had a good laugh, and Marik picked up the menu to return it to the waiter.

  “I’ll take that,” my dad said, reaching across the table.

  “And you called us kids a few minutes ago,” I said.

  “It’s not the chicken nuggets I’m after,” he said.

  I recognized his cheeky grin, the one my mom called his “game face,” except in his case the “game” had nothing to do with a field, court, or diamond. He took both the crayon and menu, and before I even had time to formulate another thought, never mind sentence, he whipped through the list, a dozen at least, of word scrambles.

  “Done,” he said as if it had been a race or we’d been timing him.

  “That’s impressive,” Ms. Bryant said, leaning over in her seat next to him to scan the list. “Some of those words were tricky: kingdom, knighthood, majestic. I remember this talent of yours.”

  “You’re so funny, Mr. Leblanc,” Penny said. “I never even knew Penelopa scrambled to one apple before I met you. Though I’m not too sure Tina liked her Kerstina becoming a stinker.”

  “And I reworked Sage into ages,” my dad said. “I remember it was interesting, given your talent of guessing how old someone is.”

  “You guess ages?” Marik asked, sitting forward in his seat. “How do you do that?”

  “I don’t really know,” Ms. Bryant replied. “I just . . . know somehow.”

  “How about me, then?” Marik asked.

  Ms. Bryant bit her thumbnail, watching Marik closely. She didn’t answer for a long time.

  “Well, you’re a senior, so seventeen or eighteen is logical. But for some reason I want to guess older.” She paused, steepling her hands. “I’m going to say eighteen.”

  She hadn’t specified years. I personally thought it was more like centuries.

  As if confirming my suspicions, Marik chuckled through his reply: “An excellent guess.”

  The waiter returned, asking, “So are you people gonna order, or what?”

  I was grateful for the interruption; I had become wary of the previous topic: one that could have led to Leira’s name being an anagram, the back-to-front spelling, even, of Ariel. Nor did I want Marik to expound on the fact that although he appeared to be an eighteen-year-old senior, he was, in fact, an ageless, soulless creature from another world.

  “I for one am starving,” I said. “Pepperoni–green pepper, anyone?”

  The green pepper earned me a grumble from my dad until Marik suggested anchovies, which got a groan from everyone.

  We ordered, going with a few different combinations, after which my dad turned to Jack. “What’s this about the earth moving out at your place?”

  Another topic I wasn’t crazy about.

  “One of those things, I guess,” Jack replied.

  Ms. Bryant had heard about it, too. She and my dad focused on the loss-of-trees aspect of the story. Only Penny, so sweetly oblivious to who she ran with, had a “weird the way the earth just opened up like that” comment. Weird was not one of my favorite words anymore.

  I was relieved when the conversation meandered to much more generic topics: disgusting pizza toppings like hamburger, the disgusting hamburgers at our school cafeteria, and then the perennial adult-to-child safe subject: school in general. My dad had started this one; the rest of us — Ms. Bryant included — were on weekend-avoidance mode.

  “So what do you think of Norse Falls High?” My dad singled out Jinky with this question.

  “I like it,” Jinky said.

  “Do you have any classes with Kat?” my dad asked.

  “Ms. Bryant’s design class. We all have it together.” Jinky gestured to me, Penny, and Marik.

  “Who’s your partner for the project?” J
ack asked Jinky.

  Earlier, when I had shared that Marik and I were assigned team members, Jack’s “that should be entertaining” comment had said it all.

  “Penny.”

  “You got lucky,” Jack said.

  “What project?” my dad asked.

  “The one for which we still need parent volunteers,” Ms. Bryant said.

  “Where and when?” my dad asked.

  I inwardly cringed. The volunteer form, smashed at the bottom of my book bag, had been neglected — abused even — for several reasons. First of all, although I was keenly aware that I was fortunate to have two involved parents, I was a senior now and felt a little independence was healthy. Second, I would be plenty busy keeping an eye on Marik — and Jinky, for that matter — and didn’t need my dad underfoot, too.

  “At Pinewood High School for the By Student Design Show. Because the show itself is off property, I need chaperones the day of the event. I’m also looking for some help with a few basic building projects: easels, a display case, etc. Mr. Derry, the Design instructor over at Pinewood, is in his fortieth year of teaching. Suffice it to say, he’s left the entire undertaking up to me.”

  Ms. Bryant could sell a school outing just as much as she could an upturned collar.

  “I’m your man,” my dad said. “Sign me up.” This without ever getting the “when.”

  I swallowed a big gulp of root beer and my hopes of the show being uneventful. Something about my dad thrown into the mix — another player on the field — foretold of complications. And, the “I’m your man” comment was cheesier than the still-bubbling pizza that had just paraded past us. Ms. Bryant hadn’t seemed to mind it; she was all smiles at the prospect of having snared a parent helper with construction experience, a factory, and its full floor of handymen. How had I — given the turmoil of my life — ever thought that uneventful was in the realm of possibility? Realm: another of those loaded words I was coming to seriously hate.

  I woke Sunday to Leira’s plaintive cry, more of a bleat, really. I hadn’t closed my door. With Leira’s open, every sound resonated with intensity. Already I was painting the pink house white and reveling in my one-floor-above hideaway. Singing soon replaced Leira’s mewlike wail, and I drifted in and out of consciousness to my mom’s high and clear voice. The lullaby was familiar. I was sure she’d sung it to me, and she’d hummed its tune — one reminiscent of the John Peel hunting song — for years:

  While you sleep, my sweet,

  Wrapped in love so tight,

  May your watchman be

  The brave gale of the night

  And the lark your reveille

  At dawn’s first light

  Be thee safe in my love until morning.

  Leira continued to fuss. My mom then went into a second verse, one that was less familiar to me.

  Do you know, my pet,

  What the wise ones say?

  That the swan’s snowy span

  Is but a wish away.

  May this comfort you

  As you wake to this day

  Full of love, full of hope, full of glory.

  I sat up with a bolt. It was such a beautiful song. Was this the first time I’d really listened to the lyrics, the second verse in particular? If I had heard them, how had I not processed them before? I quickly padded into the hallway, pausing at the door to Leira’s room. My mom had her on the changing table; her tiny legs kicked in defiance. I took it as another sign of her strength, a quality that would come in handy: later rather than sooner, if I had any say in the matter.

  “Mom, that song you were just singing, what was it?”

  She pulled the disposable diaper’s plastic tape snugly across Leira’s concave belly. “I’m not sure I know the name of it. It’s something I learned from your amma, something I sang to you when you were a baby.”

  “I don’t remember hearing the words before now. They’re pretty,” I added. “Do you know where Amma learned the song, or how old it is?”

  My mom looked up and out the window, as if trying to pull memories from the sky. “No, and no, though I suppose it’s quite old and that the English is a translation. Almost all of Amma’s lullabies were. Leira seems to like it, anyway.”

  Indeed, she had settled and was bicycling her legs in a more playful show of vitality. Another good sign, if you asked me.

  “Now that you’re up,” my mom continued, “Stanley said there are some news reports you might be interested in. He’s been glued to the TV all morning.”

  Uh-oh.

  “What kind of news?”

  “More sinkholes like the one out at the Snjossons’ property.”

  I didn’t stick around to hear it from her. I headed downstairs and straight for the family room, where Stanley was — coffee cup in one hand and remote in the other — camped out in front of the television.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “The weirdest thing,” he said.

  Again, the weird word. I almost growled.

  “Three more very large ones, like out at Jack’s place, have been reported: one in Australia, one in Chile, and another in British Columbia. The timing is odd, almost like a cluster, but they’re too far apart to be related. Luckily, they’ve all been in remote areas. No injuries, thank goodness.”

  I left Stanley channel surfing and grabbed my phone out of my backpack. Jack picked up on the second ring.

  “Have you heard?” I asked.

  “Yes. We’re crawling with reporters again. My dad’s at the site with a news crew as we speak.”

  “So what’s their angle?” I asked.

  “There isn’t one, really. Just that it’s a coincidence.”

  His mom called him outside, cutting our conversation short. Next I retrieved a text from Penny. Her More holes. Freaky huh? message didn’t do much to muzzle the sirens going off in my head. Jack claimed Midas had never liked that area. What if it had been a power place? What if they had all been power places? Were they portals? Vulnerable portals? If Marik was to be trusted and it wasn’t Vatnheim, no need to ponder who else would try to get through. The fury we’d wrought in Brigid had been apoplectic, a word that shared a whole lot of letters with apocalyptic. And I left nothing to coincidence anymore.

  That evening, as I gazed through Afi’s front window about to flip the sign to CLOSED, a face pressed up against the glass.

  “Jesus!”

  I stumbled backward, twisting my ankle in the process.

  Jinky opened the door and stood in front of me, while I braced myself against the nearby newsstand and rubbed at my already throbbing foot.

  “What the hell?” I said. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

  “Hardly. Just thought it was time we spoke alone.” She swallowed a smile, obviously oblivious to my colorless cheeks and physical injury. “Can we take a walk?”

  To my way of thinking, “a walk” was the prelude to bad news, a breakup, or the pirate’s plank. Besides, my ankle hurt. “We’re alone here.”

  “There’s somewhere I have in mind,” she said.

  Stranger Danger 101: Never willingly go to a second location.

  “And you’re done here, right?” she continued.

  “Yes.” My hesitance made the word sound like more of a question than a reply.

  “Then get your things and let’s go.”

  A few minutes later, I was following Jinky down the darkened Main Street.

  “Should we take my car?” I asked, struggling to keep up.

  “It’s nice out,” she said, which — as far as I was concerned — was a non sequitur.

  An evident proponent of the work-it-off school of pain management, she took the corner at Fern gaining speed. Something in her long, purposeful strides announced that conversation was curtailed until arrival. It set an ominous tone. I was surprised, therefore, when our destination turned out to be . . .

  “Big Turtle Park?” I asked, which wasn’t the name of the dead guy on the playground’s offici
al sign, but it was what townies called the place, owing to the large, green, climb-on structure that was its main attraction.

  “I have my reasons.” Jinky dropped into one of the swings facing the concrete turtle.

  I took the one next to her. She seemed content to drift back and forth gently. More relaxed given our location, I pumped my legs a couple of times to get a little momentum going. Growing up, I was a swing kid. You could keep your slides, your seesaws, and your merry-go-rounds; give me a sling seat and a starting push and I was sky-high happy.

  “I am here,” Jinky said, “to complete what began in Iceland.”

  I planted my feet so suddenly that I retwisted my bum ankle. “Uh, could you be a little more specific?”

  “When I first spied you at the festival, I knew you were different. With just a simple rune reading, I saw that a journey lay ahead of you. And, of course, a true vision quest is the mark of one with strong ties to the other worlds. And even my grandmother, a powerful shaman herself, was stirred by your visit.”

  “Uh. Thank you, I think.” Stirred was one of those hazy words. You stirred up trouble, resentment, and the occasional martini.

  “Soon after, Marik came to see us on his own voyage.”

  “Voyage?” I bristled at the suggestion that he was on some kind of pleasure cruise or adventure. My tone earned me a look from Jinky.

  “Look, I may not be privy to all the particulars. Neither one of you is exactly an open book, but, as my grandmother has strongly advised me, as a shaman, I’m to act as a conduit only.”

  “A conduit?”

  “A shaman is an intermediary. One who can communicate with the spirit world, and if the magic is strong enough, beyond.”

  “Beyond?”

  “I do know that Marik isn’t from Iceland, you know.”

  “I guess you would.” I ran my hand up and down the swing’s chains. I was getting into dangerous territory here.

  “Occasionally, I assist him to visualize his natural habitat. It’s therapeutic, he claims.”

  “So you’re a shaman in your own right, then?” I asked.