Lifthrasir

"Lif?", Autumn said. She felt stupid. Was this something they'd learned already in the Mythology section of Freshman English? But Emily had always been kind of weird. She could be making stuff up. Except, there was that blue stone that kept her paralyzed, and she didn't seem phased by ghosts, and... she lived with the Librarian. Autumn shivered.

"Yes, pay attention." Emily said. She pulled out a dusty old book from her backpack, bound in red leather and embossed with the picture of a tree like a celtic knot, all the branches curling and twisting in on each other. Stones of amber, jet, and pale blue stone studded the spine. Emily turned on the teacher's projector and set the book on top. Just in front of the whiteboard a 3d picture sprang to life with a blare of trumpets. "Let me just change the volume a bit," she said, twirling her hand on an invisible dial.

In front of them a series of twelve great beings on high thrones sat. "The old Gods. This was the ruling council, before the war that destroyed them all. Well, mostly." Emily typed in the air, and the picture zoomed in on two of them. "Do you know anything about Ragnarok? The Last Battle?"

Autumn gathered her thoughts. "The old Norse gods fight. They die." Autumn swallowed. "But it hasn't happened yet."

"Actually," Emily corrected, "It did. About five hundred years ago. It completely destroyed Asgard, where the gods used to live, and decimated the homeworld of the giants, and the groves of the Alfar. Imagine a war fought by gods and monsters the size of mountains. A war so horrible that it completely wiped out one world and sent two others back to the stone age."

An echo of the screams of dying horses and men, of fiery explosions and thunder from heaven, and howling, earth rending howling, echoed in the darkest corners of Autumn's mind, like the an ancient memory or a nightmare, she couldn't be sure which. For a moment she forgot where she was. The room seemed to glimmer dark, and Autumn felt dizzy, her heart rate rising. She clutched the edges of the desk until the moment passed.

"I've seen some of the archived footage," Emily muttered, almost to herself. Her voice was wooden. "I'm not going to put you through that, though." She shook herself, like waking out of a bad dream, and continued.

"A few of the gods survived." Emily pointed at the two figures in the picture. They were dressed in white and amber and pale  green, with clear bright eyes looking off into the distance. "That's Lif and Lifthrasir, minor gods, servants in the house of Odin Allfather. They escaped to this earth, Midgard, running and hiding along the trunk of the World Tree. Their children married into the royal families of northern Europe: Norway, Denmark, Sweden. It's been hundreds of years, and now their descendants have spread all across the world. Most of the time, they're regular humans, but every once in awhile, for some reason, the blood of the Lif wakes up. They find they can do things and see things that normal people can't do. Weird stuff happens to them because they let off a kind of static. Otherworlders can sense it."

"Like the ghosts." Autumn nodded.

Norse Born

"Hurry." Emily said reaching down she picked up a small flat blue stone off Autumns chest that Autumn hadn’t noticed before. Emily leaned over the desk and quickly slipped it inside. There seemed to be some kind of writing on the stone but it was gone before Autumn could make it out. Without the stone Autumn could once again move her body and she got to her feet. Emily went over to the door and stuck her head out checking from side to side.

"Follow me." Emily said "And don’t make a sound."

Autumn followed closely behind Emily in the dark library being careful to not make a sound. They passed silent lines of dark books and quickly made their way to the entrance and out the doors that Autumn now realized is where Emily must have found her. They went down a staircase and Emily walked up to a dark classroom door. Emily held a hand up to the door knob there was a brief blue light a click and Emily pushed the door open.

"Where are we going?" Autumn asked as they headed deeper into the class.

"shhhh, I said no talking" Emily replied curtly.

in the back off the class was another door. Emily again put her hand to the handle there was a blue light and the door opened once again. They went into the pitch black room. The door shut behind them and Autumn had one panicked thought of Emily trying to stab her when the light from the glowing magic words illuminated the room. The light seemed to make a bubble around them and then was gone. The light switched on and Emily looked over at Autumn cautiously.

"Okay." Emily said. “You can talk now. No one will be able to hear us."

Autumn looked around. They were in a teacher’s office. The desk was cluttered in unmarked papers. Books lined the shelves. Two chairs, one for the desk the other a padded and straight legged.

"Why are we in here?" Autumn asked. "What is going on? You said you knew what was going on."

"We're in here" Emily began, making it sound like everything was obvious. "Is because we don’t want the librarian knowing about you. Second is that I don't know everything and I'm not going to try and tell you everything that I do. What do you know about Mythology?"

"Ummm..." Autumn said stumped. Autumn was a little taken aback, she was not expecting such a question. "You mean the gods and stories people made up to explain what..." Deep breath, you can keep talking, Autumn told herself. "…happened around them. Like the Greeks."

"yes." Emily said with a smirk. She sat down in one set and indicated that Autumn should take the other. "although you are slightly right we won’t be talking about the Greeks. What do you know about the Norse gods?"

"Noththththing." Autumn stammered. Man she was getting a lot of weird questions. "Why?"

"Because, it concerns you. If I’m right you are a Lif, able to go between worlds. not only that you are a Norse Born and carry the blood of the elder Gods in your veins. Let me tell you a story, the true story of our ancestors."

Bound

Autumn shook her head, and licked her lips. Well. She could move her mouth, as well as her head. that was good. "What's going on?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," Emily asked. "Hurry, before the Librarian comes back. What are you?"

Images flashed through Autumn's mind, of dark things she'd seen, the constant ghosts, shadows that sometimes seemed alive, skittering on the edges of her consciousness. "I don't know," She answered honestly. She tried to move again, but she couldn't. Her body wouldn't obey her.

She felt her breaths squeeze out in gasps. She struggled against the power that held her tight, but she couldn't see anything. She could even see her body moving, although she felt like she was wrestling with an elephant. "Let me go," she gasped, eyes widening in panic.

"Calm down. I had to halt the spread of the poison, so most of your body is in stasis." At Autumn's blank expression, Emily sighed. "I put you on pause, except for your head and vocal system. You can speak and think, but the rest of your body won't move. If I hadn't, you'd probably be dead by now."

"Oh." Autumn shut her eyes, concentrating on her breathing.

"I'm sorry," Emily said. She held out the cup. "I got this from the Librarian's supplies. Firewort. It should heal you of the necrotic energy." Emily pursed her lips, shook her head, and sighed. She pulled out a string of small flat stones and cast them in front of her. Glowing lines connected the stones in a pattern of swirling spheres and orbits, like Celtic knots wound into the air. Emily touched the stones rapidly, like a keyboard. The glowing picture of Autumn appeared before her, an outline in pale green, with an angry deep red pulsing on one side and gray-tinged circles covering the body. Emily moved some of the circles to one side, and Autumn found that she could again move her left arm. Emily handed the cup to Autumn, who drank it quickly.

The taste was somewhat like cucumber, but more salty, with a tinge of lemon. Autumn felt a warm glow passing all through her body, and then concentrating on the right side of her torso where she'd been stabbed. Suddenly the heat turned to ice that got sucked out to slide across her skin and dribble down her side.

"That should take care of it," Emily said, "But no purely mortal human could have survived being stabbed by an Underworld blade. How you got it is also a mystery. And you didn't seem surprised when I activated the magic wards in front of you. So. What are you? Or maybe, who are you, I should ask."

Autumn blinked slowly. Emily was always asking questions, and they'd worked on school projects before. Emily had always had eyes that seemed to see too much. She shook her head. Of course Emily would be involved in weird stuff, if the Librarian was. But she couldn't understand why Emily was being so hostile. Why was she trapped? She hated being bound like this, but crying about it wouldn't help. And Emily had healed her, so that was a good thing. She probably wouldn't try attacking Autumn at least. "I see dead people. 6th Sense, or something. First time one attacked me. I don't know why." Autumn shrugged the one shoulder that was free. Emily seemed to know what was going on, and Autumn was tired of constantly being hounded by random ghosts that said or did nothing except make her feel like a freak. "Tell me what's going on now." Autumn winced slightly at the harshness of her own words, but there. She'd said it.

Emily had leaned back, the way most did when Autumn got grumpy. Most anyone except grandma and Tori tended to avoid her, actually. But Emily, it seemed, had nerves of steel. She seemed shocked by her own reaction, but nodded once.

"If I let you go, you won't attack me?" Emily sounded scared, and Autumn laughed despite herself.

"Just don't tell the Librarian." Autumn said. "You can't keep me like this. I won't hurt you. I promise."

Emily relaxed perceptibly. "Okay. I'll try to explain what I know, and you can help me figure out where you fit in."

What are you?

Autumn walked through the dark school halls in an agonizing haze not knowing where she was going. The invisible wound that the ghost had given her was getting worse. She fumbled against a locker and slid against a wall, the pain was getting worse and it was harder to think straight. Meditating didn’t seem to be helping; she just could concentrate long enough.

She tripped and fell onto the stairs. Stairs, it registered in Autumn’s brain muddily like waking up from a deep sleep. Have to get out Autumn thought desperately. I have to find help. She started to pull herself up the stairs one excruciating step at a time. When she reached the top she wasn’t able to pull herself up onto her feet instead she slid out across the floor. There was light streaming into the hall from the doorway. Slowly, so painfully slowly she moved to the door. After what felt like an eternity she reached it. Despairingly she realized it was shut. Why would the door be shut and light coming out of it at the same time, she thought muddily. Desperately she reached up for the door handle and pulled. Nothing happened, the door was locked. No, she screamed in her head. With her last once of strength she pounded against the door, praying that someone would find her and slowly slipped into unconsciousness.

Slowly Autumn regained consciousness and thought, and the first thing she thought about was how bight it was. She realized why a moment latter. She was lying on her back in the middle of a small room filled with books and other miscellaneous items. Some of the stuff looked very new and others looked ancient. Autumn was lying on a soft leather coach and had a blanket around her. It felt really comfortable until she realized something that really scared her. She couldn’t move her body. She tried to get up but couldn’t. The most movement she could produce was a slight wiggle. Thankfully she could still move her head and she used that to scan the room.

Almost immediately she realized she was in the library. She could tell that by looking out the glass windows that surrounded the room. Most of the library was dark except for the small room that Autumn was in the light from which was illuminating the rest of the library. Then the second realization hit her and she shuddered. This was the librarian’s office. The room that Tori had been wanting to break into. Unbidden she remembered what Tori had said about the librarian being an alien or something else. Images of sharp knives and probes flashed through her mind. All the while and evil grinning librarian was standing over her. Autumn squirmed and wiggled trying to get free. What was she even doing in here?

Autumn stopped squirming abruptly and listened. She could hear footsteps coming closer. Autumn waited in horror staring at the door sure that in any moment a purple librarian would be coming though it to perform all manner of experiments on her. A shadow passed in front of the glass and the door opened and… it was Emily, the librarians assistant. She stood in the doorway hold a cup in her hand and looking down on Autumn with a curious fearful expression. Slowly she moved over to the desk in the middle of the room and set down in the chair there. She looked at Autumn for a moment longer and then asked.

“What are you?”