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?”

Ambush

"Yeah, uh, just." Autumn felt troubled by the apparition. Almost every other ghost she had seen was native to the Vancouver area. First Nation warriors, Russian Fur trappers, Anglo and French Canadian settlers... she'd seen older ghosts. But this one had looked like he was on the wrong continent. And he'd seemed to know about her, and want to talk to her.

"It was another ghost?" Tori asked, suddenly curious. "They're appearing more often, aren't they? That's why I think we should be looking for a portal to another world. We already know one exists, right? Maybe we can figure out how to get the ghosts to stop bothering you."

"It was different this time," Autumn said. She shook her head. "It's fine. But don't go doing anything crazy without telling me first, okay?"

"Okay," Tori answered, but she didn't sound sincere. Autumn looked at her sharply, but didn't say anything more. Tori's phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her pocket, "Oh, hey, it's my foster mom. I'll text you later!" And Tori sped off to the edge of the field, where a large dingy van had parked. What seemed like a two dozen kids had piled out and were now busy chasing each other or wrestling on the manicured grass strip in front of the school. Really their were only seven, but they moved around so much that it seemed like twice that much or more.

Autumn kept jogging her last lap. She hadn't even realized practice was over, but she wanted the time to think. At last she headed back inside, took her fifth and last shower of the day in the dark, abandoned locker room, and headed out.

Just when she was about to leave, another viking-like warrior appeared. This one's face was impassive, his beard gray where the other had had red, his eyes dark like pits. In his had was a dagger, covered in silvery blood. Before Autumn could react, he'd stabbed her.

Autumn gasped and convulsed as a cold chill wrenched through her body. She pulled the dagger from her abdomen. It disappeared like a wisp of smoke as she let go, but the pain was real enough.

The warrior was already moving again, his eyes like stone, hist movements quick and efficient. He brought up an old, chipped sword to slice through her skull. But Autumn was already moving.

Two ghosts, so similar in one day, so different from any others. And although this wasn't the first time a ghost had tried attacking her, it was the first time that one succeeded.

Autumn dodged out of the way of the warrior's sword, sweeping her hand up to block him. She gripped his wrist in one hand and jabbed at his elbow with the other. The move was meant to break bones, and sure enough she heard a crack, although distant and muffled. This ghost was more solid than any she'd encountered before, and where she'd never really noticed the way it felt to touch one, the warrior's skin was icy cold, burning cold. Autumn got up under the ghost's guard and smashed her elbow into his nose, then whirled away to catch her bearings.

The ghost didn't seem to react to a broken bone, merely adjusting his grip. Silvery liquid dripped from his nose, and his eyes seemed to glow darker.

Suddenly the other ghost appeared, clutching his side, the one from earlier. He bowled the gray-bearded warrior aside. Brutally they wrestled on the ground, a dagger between them.

Autumn wanted to run, but she didn't want to expose her back either. She checked her side, where the dagger and pierced her. The skin wasn't broken, but a strange sort of dark-gray bruise had spread tendril-like feelers, a cold burn emanated from the spot, and her breath came in gasps. A film covered her eyes for a moment, so that all the world shimmered in clouds of gray silk. in shock she realized that she could hear the two ghosts clearly, shouting at each other in a language unknown to her and yet familiar, grunting in pain as they struggled. Finally the gray-bearded warrior succeeded in kicking the younger ghost off and drove the dagger into his heart. In a sudden up-rush like a sandstorm the younger ghost disappeared, leaving Autumn abruptly alone again to face the menacing being.

Autumn's vision wavered, between the gray-silk world, a world tinged with green and gold and red lights, as if lit under the branches of many trees, and the real world. At last her stomach settled, and she reached desperately the the meditation exercises they taught at her dojo. She pressed her hands together before her and bowed slightly to her opponent. With every focused breath the pain left her consciousness, and the three-viewed world congealed. Before her was a graying warrior, probably early forties, with stringy black hair. Jagged scars cris-crossed his arms. He picked up his sword from the ground and pulled a shield forward onto his arm.

Autumn breathed, focus, she told herself. The world gave a slow pulse, like a heartbeat, and at last she felt ready. Time seemed to slow down. The gray-bearded warrior was rushing her, but Autumn had moved to the side, sweeping his legs out from under him as he passed. His boots connected painfully with her shin, but she ignored it. Before he could regain his balance, Autumn had smashed his sword arm, his collar bone, his knee. The warrior tumbled to the ground. Autumn kept her distance; her floor work wasn't the best, and besides she remembered what had happened to the other warrior.

Somehow the man had kept hold of his sword, but as he stumbled back to his feet, Autumn's eye caught something on the floor. She could see the dagger again, the one that had destroyed the first ghost and sliced through her side. She lurched forward and picked it up, turning and blocking the sword swinging towards her face just in time.

The last light of day was just fading, and the ghost seemed more solid, if anything, in the growing darkness. Autumn knew she had to end this quickly. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps, and their was only so long she could ignore the pain in her side before she knew it would cost her concentration and leave her open.

The warrior came forward once more, slowly, slowly waiting for her to go down. Autumn couldn't afford that. She engaged the warrior, forcing him to bring his shield up against her dagger thrust. His sword swung round on a diagonal as he blocked, but Autumn caught his elbow. The dagger skittered over his shield, but she held on and kicked his knee, the one she had weakened earlier. The warrior fell, and switching her on his sword-hand, she managed to knock the sword out of his grasp. He clawed at her face, but Autumn ducked away to avoid it, then switched the dagger to her left hand and plunged it into the ghost's side.

In the seconds before her, too, disappeared in a sudden uprush of particles, Autumn caught a disturbingly satisfied look on his face, the only emotion he'd shown the whole time.

Silence is loud

            “NO, no just an um… a thought.” Autumn felt like her cheeks were on fire. And a cold sweet had broken out over her entire body. She did not like being put in these situations, even with her best friend Tori.

            That wasn’t exactly true either. There was a guy on the boys’ basketball team named Alexander Hironaka. He was tall, 4 inches taller than Autumn at least, and he was very attractive. His father was Japanese and owned a business in town. Alex’s mother was Italian and had a nice little Italian restaurant in North Vancouver. It seemed he had inherited only the best qualities from his parents. He had angular features slightly softened by his Asian heritage with slanted brown eyes that were almost olive. Yes, Autumn groaned inwardly, she had looked at him for a long time.

            It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell Tori about him. It was just it didn’t feel right to talk about it right now. It was her secret crush and she was afraid as soon as she told someone that the magic of it all would just go away. Also those who found out she liked them in the past tended to avoid her. She really liked and trusted Tori. She also knew Tori, and trusted her to go up and tell Alex to ask her out.

            Autumn was about to say something else to Tori when she saw something that completely made her forget about everything else. A warrior stood in back of Tori. He was huge, no he wasn’t he only looked huge. He was a little shorter then Autumn but was wearing armor and leather and fur that seemed to make him bigger. Scale mail peaked out from under a large cloak. He carried a wooden shield, a serpent on the front of it. An intricate axe was in his other hand. His face was covered by a helmet a long yellow beard poked out from under it. Some of the beard was braded. If his helmet had horns on it he would’ve looked like a Viking, and her was yelling at her.

            He was a ghost, Autumn knew that much, but she couldn’t understand what he was yelling at her. He threw down his shield and axe and used his hands to try to help his cause. He kept making so many strange motions that Autumn couldn’t make anything out of it. If there was one thing that Autumn could tell it was that warrior was desperate. He picked up his axe and slammed it into his shield. It looked as if the axe blade neatly cut of the serpents head. He turned to he still franticly yelling. Autumn went around Tori so she could touch him and see if she could understand what he was saying. She reached out a hand but before it touched anything the warrior disappeared and Autumn was left grasping at air.

            “Autumn… are you okay?” Autumn looked back at Tori. She could see worry in her eyes.

Track Practice

"I said we can sneak in tonight once you're done with all your practices," Tori was explaining. "I already put a piece of tape on the door so that it won't lock."

"Not tonight." Autumn shook her head. All the practices today had made her tired, and she wanted to be at her peak for another of Tori's plans. She knew Tori had been pressing for the break-in to occur that night, in typical Tori fashion. She always wanted to rush into things as soon as she thought of them. Still, Autumn was pretty good at delaying her to a more reasonable time frame. "Weekend."

"Why not tonight? You're right I suppose, we could use a little more planning besides just the usual breaking and entering. I bet she has all kinds of security. Oh! You know who has some awesome security? Claire's dad. I bet Claire could help us figure out how to get into the office. But anyways, it's the Librarian we're talking about. And I bet she has all sorts of magic spells or alien technology or some such guarding her lair."

That was something Autumn liked about Tori. She could carry on both sides of the conversation by herself, so Autumn didn't actually have to say much.

"Besides, I remember your grandma has some sort of thing planned tonight. What was it again?" Tori asked. Autumn opened her mouth to reply, but Tori kept going before she said anything. "Oh yeah, I remember. That gardening show thing. She was going to show off her black roses, and some lilies or something."

Autumn nodded her head. They headed back to the locker, where the other girls were already finishing. Final practice of the evening was track. Autumn liked track the best. She didn't have to worry about outshining the other girls too much, or never getting passed to and still making all the shots. She could concentrate on her own efforts. Besides, Tori was on track with her.

Autumn kept the door of her locker nearly shut as she changed. She didn't like letting people see the inside, which was decorated in a pink biker lady pattern her grandmother had got her. If she let them see, the other girls would probably laugh.

Tori was already changed and out the door in the time it took Autumn to dial open her locker for the third time that evening, waving a hurried "See you on the field!"

Autumn followed more slowly, behind the rest of the girls. Maybe the reason she couldn't get a guy to ask her out was because of her smell? But Autumn took 3 showers a day, so much it dried out her skin a little. Sometimes she felt like she lived on the field and in the shower, with short rest periods for school and sleep. It was the beginning of the year, but already she was looking forward to spring and summer, when she could have a little lazy time. Besides, ghosts came out more often in the fall.

Tori was already jogging laps, and Autumn joined her as she came around the track the second time. Maybe Tori would know how to get a guy to ask her out? But no, Tori was always moaning about David. She'd gone out with a couple other guys, but never any second dates. Anyways, Autumn didn't want David asking her out. He was too popular, too public. She'd have liked a nice, quiet, undemanding guy she could feel comfortable around. Not have people staring at her constantly. And taller than her. Although, that last bit was a little difficult. Maybe, as long as he didn't mind that she was taller, and probably better at sports...

Heck, pretty much any guy that had the guts to ask her out would be nice. Autumn tossed her hair. She didn't need a guy. Still, it couldn't hurt to ask Tori for some pointers.

"Tori," She huffed, interrupting the elaborate plans Tori was making. "What do guys like?"

"What?" Tori asked. "You like someone! Tell me!"

Autumn blushed. Then again, Tori might not have been the best person to tell after all.