The wind picked up, turning icy, and the blue sky darkened—not with clouds, but like the sun was setting in a matter of a seconds. Not that there was even a sun in the sky. I shivered from the cold, and the seagull calls came out warbled and screeching.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“The lysa’s breaking. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at it.” He rubbed his hands on my bare arms, warming me.

“No, don’t be sorry. I’m just happy I got to see you.”

The song that’d been playing changed to something haunting and strangely familiar. It was a language I didn’t know—Nordic but more guttural with elongated vowels—but somehow . . . I knew exactly what it meant.

ennlindanna fjeur seern densolla

den orn av gullat svoavva ennung

on i ennsommora morgana guovssahas

doai fulla i vallihanna

the linden flower watched the sun

the bird of gold soared over the meadow

and in the summer morning light

the two fell in love

“Where’s that coming from?” I asked Pan.

His brow furrowed. “I thought the Carpenters were something you were listening to?”

“That is. But what’s the other one? About the flower and the bird?”

He shook his head. “I don’t hear anything else.”

The ground was shaking and the waves receded, leaving us floating on an island in the middle of nothing. The starless indigo sky engulfed us, and I grabbed Pan, holding him close to me while I still could.

Everything was rumbling, but still the song bled through—junggar enns morgda visavilla / singing his mourning song—I kissed Pan, fully, deeply, mouth on his and my fingers in his hair, holding him to me.

And then I felt him evaporate from my arms, his warmth replaced with cold air. I was alone in the darkness, with only the final words of the song hanging in the air—enn morgana fjeurn on ennsommora orn / the morning flower and the summer bird.

I sat up, alone in my bunk on the train, gasping for air. My foot still stung, and I pulled back the blankets to see it bleeding—exactly where the rock had pierced it in the lysa.

14

North

As the train slowly crept toward the station, I watched from the window, and lyrics from the song in the lysa repeated in my head. When I’d woken up, I’d written it all down in a hurry so I wouldn’t forget. But the song lingered in my mind, and when I closed my eyes, the words hung in the air, like the fading aftermath of fireworks in the night sky.

grotta insa ihkku

anda cieri insa saddjavvi

on fjeurn kvavarrid enn orn vandavar