The Lost Sun Read Online Free Page A

not?” I ask, unsure I want to hear the answer.
    “You stand between the earth and the sky,” she says, echoing my own thoughts. “So do I.”
    That feeling of knotting fate my mom told me about is hot around me, and Astrid presents such a certainty, as if she knows all the possible outcomes. As if she’s really not afraid. I want to be unafraid, too. I want to, but I can’t. I remember what happened to my dad. I say, “It’s a dangerous place to be.”
    “Which is why I want help. Why I need you.” Astrid takes my wrists, curls her fingers around them. Her skin seems to send ropes of cold up through my bones. The frenzy leaps in my chest, or I tell myself that’s what it is: only the frenzy reacting to a seether, and not just me wanting this girl to keep talking to me. To keep holding my hands.
    “Soren.” She squeezes her fingers against my pulse. “Tonight will you help me build my fire, and stand ready while I dance?” Her voice is a whisper, mingling with the wind through the valley meadow.
    I nod, unable to speak the words pressing against my teeth.

    As the sun sets, Astrid and I sneak out of our dorm rooms and meet at Sigurd’s fountain. She carries a leather bag strapped over her shoulder and I have my own sharp spear. Together we walk into the darkness, toward the academy burial hill. As we climb the barrow, a slice of moon teases us with scant light, and the buildings of the academy below us are like dollhouses.
    I stand, watching the shadows that press toward the campus. Every window blazes. It’s a separate world in those school buildings, shallow and easy and full of hope. Normal. Nothing like the chaos out here.
    Unrolling the leather seething kit, Astrid removes two thin vials and a pouch of seeds. One vial contains lighter fluid, with which she lights a small fire made of yew branches swiped from the Great Hall. Their acrid scent sharpens the night for me. Astrid spills the oily contents of the second vial onto her fingers. She draws runes on her forehead and in the palms of her hands. I smell something heady and sweet like honey soda.
    “Be ready to catch me, Soren,” she says, and reaches into the small pouch of tiny red seeds. She tosses three into the fire and puts one more on her tongue. As she chews, she closes her eyes.
    I’ve seen seethers on TV. Usually there’s a grand display: drummers and attendants helping the seethkona up onto a chair raised high over her audience. She wears elaborate clothing: calfskin boots, a necklace of boar’s teeth, gloves from the skin of a cat. A feast is prepared, from the hearts of native animals. These things are to anchor her in the world, to firmly remind her physical body that she is of the animals, of theearth. When she’s ready, she begins her song, and her attendants pick up the tune, singing it in rounds while the seethkona dances. Seekers bring their questions and needs to her, crying them out from beside the high chair, and the seethkona answers as she can, or as she pleases.
    Astrid has none of these things. She has only her fire, her berries, and me.
    I wait, and she starts to sway. There’s no wind to rock her; it’s only the magic. My fever churns, flushing under my skin. Astrid brings it out in me. She’s everything I’ve avoided: desire and wild magic, like the embodiment of frenzy itself. Here in the dark, alone with her as she turns in the firelight, I can easily imagine her an avatar from the Alfather, sent to awaken his wayward berserker.
    And so, crouching, I ground myself firmly. She asked me here to catch her, not to dance wildly with her. Not to let go. The fever churns, but I dig my fingers into the frosty grass.
    She gives herself over to the wild darkness of the sky, dancing with her arms spread out, twirling and twirling. I remain solid, crouched on the earth with my spear for balance, watching her let go and dance. For the first time ever I wish I could do the same, but promise myself it’s enough to catch