It felt like aphelion.
Outside, the sun was caught behind a veil of clouds that leeched all the color from the world. Dawn broke, and the bare limbs of the skeleton trees shone silver, then faded to gray. It was hard to find the energy to move out of bed, and she watched the pale green shadows of Yggdrasil climbing up the wall.
Checking the time, Freya found she had woken too early. Dan wouldn’t be here for fifty-seven minutes. She wished she could blink and just make an hour disappear. It was a superpower she’d wished for again and again at Grayson. She remembered she’d thought the same thing when this all began, sitting outside the cafeteria a lifetime ago.
What if she could? Freya imagined her eyelids fluttering as fast as they could go. She threw off the sluggish thoughts of sleep as she calculated. Twenty-four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour. 438,000 hours of being alive left.
Even if she blinked a hundred times a minute, forty hours a week, it would take months to finish the job. It was just so much time to endure, and she was awful for not appreciating it when better people didn’t get the chance. Freya dragged herself out of bed on the strength of the thought. She remembered the Waltzes and their geas, the awful Atlantean burden they expected Freya and Dan to shoulder.
Freya shrugged and went to the kitchen to fetch a pot of water. Yggdrasil was thirsty and it was up to her, there was no Hvergelmir in her bedroom. When she turned off the tap, the air in the house was too still. Lassa was already gone, the driveway empty, but the rifle remained, resting in the corner.
“Very good rifle,” Freya said, mimicking her mother’s accent to break up the emptiness in the air. She wondered if she ought to put it in a closet so Dan didn’t freak out, then she realized it was a stupid thought. There was no hiding anything from Dan. They would be one again.
Unity was all Freya could think about as she watered her tree. Afterward, she turned the taps of the shower until it was nearly scalding. Her skin absorbed the heat, piping it to glowing thoughts in her mind, Dan’s mouth on her neck, his hand running across her breasts, slipping down her stomach.
Her hand followed the imaginary one, and she felt she was slick, wetter than the water. She had to stop herself from going further. He would be here soon.
After she pried herself out of the shower and got dressed, Freya still had twenty minutes to wait. She looked at her guitar case, her fingers aching to play, but she didn’t have enough time. Ten minutes before Dan had promised to arrive, she put on her coat and stood outside.
The morning was stunningly cold, but she didn’t care. She wanted to see him the moment he arrived. If it wasn’t a crazy thing to do, she would have climbed down to the road and started trudging through the piled-up snow to see him sooner.
Dan arrived five minutes early, bounding out of the car with a puppy’s eagerness. Freya dashed up to him, and they crashed together like two waves, each driving the other higher. Dan lifted her off the ground, and she laughed, overjoyed.
When her feet touched the ground, she pressed her cheek against his chest, feeling whole for the first time all morning. He was water to Freya. She’d been parched by his absence. With her eyes shut tight, she tried to remember every detail of the feeling, wanted to give it to him later.
“Feels like a year,” Dan said, and she nodded in agreement.
“Come inside,” Freya said, and his eyes flicked back to the car. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but he couldn’t resist her.
In a blur of kisses and discarded clothes, they made their way through the house to her bedroom. It was all so urgent. As he tried to slow down, she had her hands on his hips, moving him faster. She pulled him down and clenched him tightly until his entire weight pressed her against the bed. His breathing was ragged, and she knew he was almost there.
“Come inside,” she asked again, and he did at once, and it brought her over the edge. His mouth was locked on hers as they cried out together. Seeing she could barely breathe, he went to lift off her, but she pulled him back.
“Stay there,” Freya said, and he twitched inside her at the words.
“Sorry, that was so fast. I couldn’t stop,” Dan apologized.”
“That was exactly what I wanted. Just stay inside me. You feel perfect.”
His face hung over Freya, adoring her, and he gave her a thousand tiny kisses along the ridge of her eyebrows, the tip of her nose, the line of her jaw. He drew back and stared into her eyes, burning with want, growing hard again inside her. They made love a second time without ever slipping apart.
“Did you…” Dan asked afterward.
“I came too hard the first time to get off again. It’s okay. It still feels amazing for me.”
She saw doubt on his face, and she ran a hand along his cheek. He was so new at this, so vulnerable.
“You’ll feel it when we’re together again,” she reassured him.
“I love you,” Dan said, and Freya said it back. She smiled so hard her jaw muscles ached.
“That was so good!” Dan said. “It was almost—” He swallowed the sentence. It wasn’t something he should say.
“Almost as good,” Freya finished for him. Their eyes shot to her jeans. The Starball was in her pocket.
“Soon,” she said, hoping it was true.
* * *
Too soon, they untangled and dressed again. Dan watched her from the bed. His eyes ran over her legs and lingered between them as she wiped herself off with a tissue.
“We can take a shower if you want,” he offered, and she was about to agree before she stopped herself.
“I want to feel you inside of me all day,” she said, patting herself. He shivered, the words turning a key in him, and Freya smiled at him as he sat on the side of the bed. She glanced down, wondering if she could get him off again. When she kneeled, he knew what she intended.
“Freya, we’ll be so late,” Dan protested.
There was something in his voice that told her she could insist, and he would go along with whatever she wanted. She smiled back at him. Just knowing she could was enough.
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Freya relented, and they managed to get dressed without tumbling back into bed. On their way to the car Dan stopped abruptly, staring at the rifle in the corner.
“Woah,” he said. “What’s that all about?”
“Lassa doesn’t do anything halfway,” Freya explained, shaking her head.
“That’s insane.” Dan’s expression was clouded. He stared at the Sako through narrowed eyes, his head leaned back like it was a serpent.
“So is Malcolm,” Freya countered.
“Jesus.” Dan was shaken. “Maybe we should leave town.”
“We totally should. Malcolm threatened you, too. We can get a leave of absence or something. I can talk to Mr. Evers about it. It doesn’t have to be Paris. We can go to New York!” Freya’s excitement rose as she spoke, but Dan looked uncertain.
“My mom was so upset with me. I don’t know how I’d get her to agree. I wish I’d introduced you to her sooner. She’s going to be so predisposed against you.”
The thought was like a yawning pit. Freya hadn’t even considered the problem of Samantha Gregulus yet. She would have to meet Dan’s mother, who now thought Freya was hell-bent on ruining her son’s life. Freya shut her eyes and covered them with her hand. Staying the extra day had been a such a mistake. She felt Dan’s hand on her shoulder.
“It’s not that big a deal. I told her it was my idea. She’s mad now, but she’ll get over it.”
“I thought you didn’t lie to her ever?” Freya questioned.
“I mean, it was ultimately my decision. I wanted to.”
“I leaned on you hard. I’m sorry.”
Dan had been half-joking, but his face grew serious, and his expression reminded Freya he was two years older than her.
“Freya, this weekend was the greatest experience of my life. I will never regret it.”
“I love you,” she said. They felt like magic words that could fix anything.
In the driveway, the Toyota had idled diligently the whole time they screwed. When they climbed in, Dan had to turn down the heat. Their bodies still ran hot from exertion. They buckled in, and Dan took it very slowly down the driveway. He was afraid they might slide into the street.
“Is there something nice I could do for your mom? Do you know what flowers she likes?” Freya asked, trying to solve the problem.
“Black-eyed Susans,” Dan said, “but she hates it when people spend money on her, and she doesn’t like cut flowers.”
“I could give her a sprig of Yggdrasil,” Freya said, not being serious and, soon, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She had to explain it was the name of her tree, then the myth behind it. It left her feeling simultaneously like an incredible nerd and a little outraged she had to explain all this to Dan. How could he not know? She set her palm over the Starball in her pocket, wishing in vain.
“What about if I made her some cookies?” Freya asked.
“I bet she’d like that. She’s allergic to chocolate, though.”
“I can make her joulutorttu!” Freya said, excited. “They’re Finnish Christmas tarts.”
“It doesn’t have that salty licorice in it, does it?” Dan made a face.
“Oh, God no. You make it with prune jam traditionally, but you can use anything. It’s a ricotta pastry crust with lemon zest, and you make them in the shape of a windmill. They’re like the only Christmas thing my mom likes to do.”
“That’s a great idea. I’ll totally help you bake them. If we can find blackcurrant jam, that’s her favorite.”
“I love blackcurrant! They’re my favorite kind of winegums. I don’t know why they’re not more popular in the states. Europeans love them.”
“They were illegal to grow for a long time. There was some fungus they were afraid trees would get. I think my mom has told me that about ten times,” Dan said, his eyes rolling for a split-second, and then shooting back to the road. “Anyhow, that’s such a good idea. Want to do that tonight?”
“Absolutely. Can we go for a run first?”
“Yeah! Sounds like a good night. Run, make cookies, make up with my mom,” Dan said.
“Make love,” Freya added.
“You’re insatiable,” he said with a little smile at the corner of his mouth.
“I want you,” she said. “The whole you,” she asserted.
“I hope so,” he said, and there was a needful edge in his voice that hung heavy in the car. There was only the sound of the engine as they climbed the hill to Grayson, they would have to part soon.
Freya had meant to have more time for them to talk. Dragging Dan back to her lair had been unplanned. Suddenly, she realized she had completely forgotten she and Lassa were going to investigate the Starball after school. Her stomach twisted. This was exactly what had kept delaying her from investigating the Starball in the school lab.
“Speaking of mothers,” Freya said, and she stopped. That was how Lassa talked, that unnatural-feeling use of segue to guide a conversation. Focused on finding a parking space, Dan didn’t seem to notice her conflict.
“Yeah?” he finally asked, as she struggled to figure out how to say it.
“Wait, let’s park first,” she said.
“Wow, okay,” Dan said, sounding a little concerned. He found a space between two Jeeps; one had parked too close to the line, and they were going to have to get out of her side.
“What is it?” Dan asked.
“I meant to tell you this, but it got pushed out of my mind or I forgot, I don’t know which. Lassa knows. She got jabbed by the Starball, too.”
“Oh, shit,” Dan said under his breath.
He turned the key and killed the Toyota’s engine.
“Is she okay?”
“She took a CAT scan, and there was a tiny speck in her brain. We probably have the same thing. That’s how it’s doing this,” Freya said, waving her hand from her to him. Dan’s face grew pale. In her pocket, she held the Starball, expecting it to grow warm. When it did, she saw the change in Dan’s expression, his mind icing over.
Working on you.
“What the fuck,” he said, and the word slipped away into a hiss.
“I mean, we knew that, right? All the things it’s doing, it makes sense it needs to mess with our brains, right?”
“I guess so. I kind of… Did I not want to think about it, or would it not let me think about it?” Dan struggled to get his words out.
“I don’t know. It just calmed you down, I could tell.”
“I felt that. I was, um, getting upset.”
“What were you thinking when it did it?” Freya asked.
“That I want out. I don’t, though, do I?”
Her mind flashed forward to the locker, and Freya felt the beginning of nausea, but it was just an inkling, she had no real of intention of sealing the Starball away. The pained look on Dan’s face twisted in her worse than being starsick. She’d gotten him into this.
“Are we going to start hearing her thoughts too?” Dan asked.
“I don’t know. It would be so weird. She wants to run some tests on the Starball, we’ll try and learn more about it. She might come pull me out of school depending on how her meeting today goes.”
“Can you text me if that’s happening? I’ll come, too,” Dan said.
“Absolutely,” Freya agreed, relieved at the thought of having him with her. Lassa might balk, but Freya would demand it. She stared at his face, wishing they were United.
Beneath his apprehension, she could tell he was curious about this. When Freya looked at Dan, she could read his expression in layers, the thoughts behind his thoughts. Flickers of the way he thought about Lassa, the suspicious feeling they needed to be guarded, the greedy desire for more, more experiences, more sensations, more self.
As Freya read Dan, he read her right back, a whole silent conversation leaping between their faces. She saw him shut his eyes and knew he was checking for Unity. It wasn’t there. This was something new.
“I didn’t know we could do that,” Dan said, and she nodded in agreement. Freya pointed her finger from herself to him, and then closed it into a fist, meaning they were one. He reached out and held her hand.
“We’re getting closer,” she said. “Something is happening.”
The five-minute bell rang as they tried to get used to the strange feeling. They would both need to run to get to class on time.
“I want to talk to you more about this, but let’s not text about it okay?”
“Okay. Did anything else change?”
“Lassa’s talking with Hiidenkirnu today. Maybe someone’s listening, I don’t know. It could all get crazy.”
“Whatever happens, I love you,” Dan said, and Freya said it back. They squeezed their way through the narrow gap between the cars and ran to class.
Magic words.