Norse Mythology Book

Chapter One



I was bored.



The end of the school year was creeping closer every moment, and my best friend Carson and I were hiding from it in the library. She was busy drawing flowers all over her filled-up trigonometry notebook, and I was trying to read a book about King Arthur and the traitorous Lancelot. I couldn’t keep my attention on the book, though, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that my life was withering away in the tiny place my mother had decided to settle in with my stepfather. Appomattox was a beautiful little town, and most days I loved it, but I had always longed for adventure and romance, and it seemed like I would only ever get that from reading and watching movies. I wanted nothing more than to have a story to tell, something interesting and worth listening to. To be a shieldmaiden of Rohan, or a princess who fell asleep at the hands of a witch and was awakened by true love’s kiss... but reality said that I was a boring, ordinary high school student who’d never been kissed, and likely never would be.



I tried to read, but my eyes only scanned the page, not really seeing words. A shadow flitted across the window, and my eyes instinctively glanced over. The raven was sitting there on the windowsill!  I pointed to it silently, and Carson looked at it, her eyes wide.



As she sat in shock, I began to wonder how the raven was still alive and knew where I was. The only time I had ever seen the raven was across town at the House. The House is what we’ve always called this really dilapidated old house over by our school that our bus passes by every day. It still has furniture and curtains and stuff in it, so the best we can guess is that some atrocious crime was committed there. Anyways, every single time Carson or I rode the bus alone, the raven was sitting there on the roof, watching the bus. The raven had been doing this since we were in kindergarten, and we had always assumed that it had died a long time ago, since we'd made a pact a few years ago to never ride the bus alone.  It was really strange that the raven would seek us out now and actually know where we would be in the school.



Even as we watched, it hopped through the window and opened its beak.  I half expected it to say "nevermore", but instead, a sound unnervingly like human speech came out of its mouth.  It wasn't quite close enough to English for me to understand it, but its tone was urgent, and it soon realized that I couldn't understand and began to peck at the bookshelf.



When I went over to shoo it away, I noticed a small gold cylinder clipped to its leg with a tiny scroll of paper tucked inside.  My hand reached out to grab the scroll, and the raven stuck out his leg for me to do so.  Stunned, I gently unclipped the cylinder and unrolled the paper.  I tried to read what was inside, but it looked like a bunch of gibberish to me.  I looked at the raven.



“What do you want?” I asked, puzzled.  “I don’t understand.”



He cocked his head to the side and stared at me with one bright, beady eye.  He let out a raucous laugh and took the cylinder in his beak.  The croak he let out sounded like a last attempt to communicate with me, then he realized that it was no use and flew off.



I looked over at Carson, who was white as a sheet.  She was mumbling incoherently, and I waved my hand in front of her face.  She slowly began to fade back to her normal color and started to breathe again.  I stared her directly in the eyes and asked, “What is wrong?”



She looked at me with fear in her eyes.  “I... I don’t know.”  She faded back to normal completely, then asked, “What just happened?”  I can tell when she’s lying, and I knew she wasn’t now.  It totally creeped me out that she’d forgotten that quickly, though.



I figured I didn’t want her to do the creepy white-as-a-ghost-and-completely-unresponsive thing again, so I lied, ignoring the twinge of guilt.  “Uh, the football.  It landed in my lap.  Remember?”



She appeared confused for a moment, like she was trying desperately to remember something she should know, then relaxed.  “Okay.  That’s weird.  I just totally forgot what I was saying...”



I shrugged.  “Yeah, weird.”  I promised myself that I would get to the bottom of this, and the dismissal bell saved me from having to say more.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Carson had softball practice that night, so I didn’t get to talk to her until after eight.  In the meantime, I Googled the characters on the note.  It turned out they were Nordic runes, but since they were basically obsolete, I didn’t understand why anybody would write me a note with them.  I thought about it all night and got hardly any sleep because of it.  The next morning, I was completely exhausted and had no idea how I was even going to survive my fitness tests in gym.



When gym class started at ten-thirty, I was terrified that I would pass out in the middle of running or something, but we ended up having a substitute. Because we had a sub and it was the end of the year, we just had one of those fun days where you can “play” any sport you want with your friends and talk the whole time, so Carson and I played volleyball with a couple of other kids from our class.  I accidentally hit the ball backwards over the fence once, and when I went to retrieve the ball, I overheard the substitute, Anya (she wanted us to call her by her first name), talking on her phone.  Something about “Well, Huginn said he gave her the message” and “No, she hasn’t figured it out yet”.  I wouldn’t have listened except that I heard her mention Carson and me twice.  I resolved to talk to her afterward, but the wind started blowing really hard and picking up stuff to hurl around.  The soccer ball that some of the kids were playing with got sucked up into the air and thrown into a boy’s face by the wind, and leaves were fluttering everywhere.  In addition, the grass began to blow in strange patterns that resembled the runes on my slip of paper.



Anya hung up her phone and muttered something that sounded like “Thor’s bunions”, which I thought was kind of strange.  I mean, who talks about Norse gods anymore anyways? Aside from Marvel comic enthusiasts, I can’t think of anyone.  And what was with the runes, anyway? Who was Huginn? I needed answers, and I needed them as soon as possible.



So I watched in horror as a raven flew over and perched on her shoulder.  It opened its beak and started talking to her quietly.  I couldn't hear a word it was saying, but Anya seemed distressed by the message.  Her face paled, and her eyes widened; I wasn't particularly excited about all the weird crap that was going on either.  She protested whatever order the bird had just given her for a moment, then nodded.  The raven flew back in the direction from whence it came, and she returned to her teacherly duties with no sign of the recent freakish occurrence registering on her face.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





For the rest of the day, I couldn't avoid the strange feeling that someone was watching me.  I kept turning around and looking over my shoulder, but nothing was ever there.  During the rest of gym class, I caught Anya staring at me no less than four times, and I couldn't shake the feeling that she was watching me much like a cat would watch a trapped mouse.



I was sitting in my fourth period biology class and doodling strange, deformed koalas and unicorns with Carson when she got called up to the office. They called me up a moment later. I wasn't sure why, and I got that extremely pleasant nauseous feeling students get when the administration doesn't care to enlighten them as to why they've been called to the scariest place in the whole school. I hesitated for a moment, then stepped into the office quickly and shut the door a little too loudly.



I looked around, but didn’t see Carson anywhere. The secretary, Ms. Clive, wrinkled her nose at me disdainfully. I didn't mind, partly because her nose looks like a crumpled-up piece of sausage all the time anyway, and partly because I was certain I smelled absolutely fine. “What do you want?” she squawked.



I stared at her. “I was called up here. You tell me.”



She scowled. “Mr. Thomas is expecting you in his office.”



I rolled my eyes at her, then turned the corner and went down the small hallway to the principal’s office. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but my stomach still had that squirmy anxious feeling it always got when I was called to the office unexpectedly.



The door was open, but I knocked on the doorframe anyway. I heard a male voice tell me to come in, andI did. I didn’t close the door behind me, because I felt extremely uncomfortable with being in that office without anyone outside being able to hear what was going on.



Mr. Thomas ordered me to take a seat, then stood and walked over to the open door. He looked peeved, and I half expected him to slam it, but he clicked it shut instead, which was somehow more unnerving.



He walked back and settled into his chair. I could feel his eyes boring into me, but I wasn’t sure if it would be better to make eye contact to avoid showing fear, or cower and not speak unless spoken to, to lessen the punishment for whatever crime I’d committed. I decided against the latter, and slowly lifted my gaze to his eyes, which were dark and unreadable.  We sat in silence for a few moments before he spoke.



“Aimee, it has come to my attention that you have been neglecting your studies. Your mother has requested that we send you to a special center for those who are, ah, struggling in their academic lives. You will stay there through the summer, and as long as it takes to reform your habits. Ms. Parker is here to take you to the facility, along with your friend, Miss Edwards. I am quite certain that this will be an extremely beneficial experience for you, and─”



“My mother would never do that!” I cried. She and I had an extremely close relationship, and I knew she would have told me if this were the case. Furthermore, my grades were exemplary, and straight As didn’t exactly seem like a good reason for shipping me off to some remediation program for students who couldn’t pass their classes.



He glared at me and opened his mouth to speak, but the phone rang and cut him off. He snatched it up and growled an unfriendly “what do you want?” into the mouthpiece.



I just stared at him. This seemed like some bad Disney channel movie, where the principal was an evil villain bent on destroying his students’ lives, and they were powerless to stop him...



He said something else, then slammed the receiver down again. The door opened a moment later, and Anya stepped in. Her hair was a different color and style, and her eyes seemed to be a different shape, but it was definitely her. Mr. Thomas stood up quickly from his big, overly fluffy chair, and seemed rather more red than he had before her entrance. “Ms. Parker!” he exclaimed.



She smiled prettily. “Yes, I’m here to pick up Aimee and Carson.” She turned to me. “I suppose you’re... Aimee?”



I nodded. I found myself unable to speak, which was strange for me, considering my extreme tendency towards loquacity. In fact, when I tried to talk, I realized that I was truly unable to say anything: I could think of plenty of things to say, but my lips and tongue would not cooperate. It scared me to have such a lack of control over my own speech, and I wondered what had caused it.



Mr. Thomas sent us on our way quickly, and we found Carson waiting out in the hallway. Anya took us outside to her car, which had VIRGINIA INSTITUTE FOR THE REFORMATION OF DELIQUENTS AND IMBECILES (oh, how politically correct and accurate!) emblazoned on its side. I rode shotgun, and Carson sat behind the driver’s seat. Anya started the vehicle, and as we pulled away from the school, I couldn’t help but be slightly terrified.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



We stopped at a restaurant in Farmville for lunch, then passed through Cumberland to get to wherever the “facility” was supposed to be. The trees and winding roads seemed to stretch on forever... that is, until Anya began to slow down and finally stopped on the side of the road. We were in the middle of nowhere, with no way to tell how far away civilization would be, or even if it still existed. Carson and I hadn’t spoken the entire time we’d been in the car, and I knew I still couldn’t.





(Please note: this is only the beginning of a story. It's a work in progress, and I'm adding to it as I have an opportunity.)