The Great Hunt (Oslo, Norway)

[Rowan Finnegan]

Yggdrasill shivers,
the ash, as it stands.
The old tree groans,
and the giant slips free.
- The Poetic Edda

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Grand Hotel
Oslo, Norway

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To Rowan, it seemed as if years had passed since their little group had ventured forth from Siberia into the west – when in fact it had been less than a week. They had started out on foot, assuming that their target was less than a day’s walk from that clearing. The frustration was palpable after their twelfth hour of aimless wanderings. West. They had to go west; that was all they knew. The Eyes saw, as they always had and always would.

It had been Armande that had pushed Rowan and her sister deeper into the visions – urging them to seek out the finer details, urging them to give him something to work with. They had struggled to move past the pillar and the lightning, moving out behind the vision of Rowan and into the west.

After the third day and the seventh vision, they found it. Keeping Armande and the Holy Father out of the trance had been key. Vale and Rowan had to slip away from the men. They had to find a safe space where neither could hear or see them. After the men had fallen asleep, the two had slipped away and into the endless forest. They used their Eyes to find it, that small pond under the bower of aspen trees. It was there that they had stripped down and waded into the shallow depths. The world seemed to freeze as they embraced, not even the swollen Moon interrupted them with her diaphanous light.

 
The Eyes saw.

The pillar filled their vision, but they were quickly pulled through Rowan and into the western skies. They soared above the continent and through the clouds before descending slowly down onto a familiar peninsula west of the CCD. They fell upon the back of a raven and soared with it as a wooden longship sailed below in an ice-covered sea. The bird went up as the peninsula’s coast drew close, soaring higher and faster before descending once more upon a frost-covered forest.

A hole seemed to grow from the center of the forest; its border widening with every flap of the raven’s wings. A gigantic ash tree shot up from the hole and unfurled beneath the star-spattered night sky. The tree seemed to breathe as its form swelled a hundred-fold. The raven landed on the topmost branch and looked down.

A dead man with one eye missing swung from a noose tied beneath the raven’s claws. In his hand, he held a key. The raven swung down to take hold of the key, but as its beak touched the dead man’s fingers, the key slipped from his grasp and shot down into the deep darkness that surrounded the tree. The raven shot down and gave chase, but as it went into the shadows below, the Eyes were pulled from its back and up into the sky. They arced back towards the night sky, the peninsula retreating from their vision until the clouds smothered them.

With a slam, they were forced back into their bodies still entwined in the small, secret pond.

 
They told Armande and the Holy Father of this, of course, and it was by sheer luck that they had found their way into a small town the next morning. The place was not so remote that they could not make arrangements to be taken to Bratsk. From there they had been able to charter a plane to Zurich and then on to Oslo. Rowan had run the risk of discovery when she drew money from her personal account to fund the entire expedition, and so she had taken out a small fortune in cash before they departed for Zurich.

Rowan had been convinced that the peninsula in the vision had been the Nordic countries; the imagery of Odin and Yggdrasil only further cementing this logic. None in the group had protested when she had put this forward, indeed, it seemed to be the only option. The problem was that they had not known what forest in the Nordic countries that they had to go to. Starting their search in Norway had only been chosen because Rowan and Vale had been thrown so far west in their trance.

And so, they had chosen the capital of Norway. Rowan had poured over maps of the area during their twenty-nine hours in transit – straining to remember the space in the visions that she had been thrown from as the raven found the darkness. Oslo seemed to be close enough, in so far as she could tell. No one wanted to fight her on this point either.

A bit of the old Rowan had come back to the surface as they checked into the Grand Hotel; accommodations that strove to live up to their name. The place was grand, and its luxe décor invoked images of the Bottom of the Cup Café in Rowan’s mind. Strangely enough, she did not miss it as much as she had anticipated. Too much had changed for her to go back now. Perhaps in the future, but not today nor tomorrow. Now was the time of revelations. Now was the time for change.

Their group had been placed into one of the finer suites and Rowan had paid in cash, making them all the harder to track. She did not know what she would do if Gareth had shown up. It had been unfortunate that Aiden had crossed her path. It would have been so much simpler if they could have just forgotten about her entirely.

Rowan sat in the parlor of the suite, her maps laid out across the breakfast table. A burner wallet was clasped in her left hand as she went through a list of the forests that surrounded Oslo, marking them all out on the map of the area. The Eyes would see again in a few short hours, just as the moon reached its apex in the sky. If it had gone like the last one, Rowan would simply have to figure out which direction the raven pulled them towards and then compare it to the map she was now making.

The plan wasn’t as solid as she had liked – there were too many qualifiers in the equation. Part of her was worried that things would not unfold as easily as she had planned, but where else were they to start?

“Seven nature reserves,” Rowan murmured to herself as she plotted the last mark on Grytdalen, “Seven again. Can’t be a coincidence.”

Telemarkskanalen, Hardangervidda, Ostensjovannet Lake, Lillomarka, Haldenkanalen, and Fronsvollen had also been plotted on the map. Rowan set the wallet down and felt her stomach turn. Few of the plotted points were small areas to cover. Even if the raven showed them the proper direction within their visions, how were they to know where the site was once they figured out which park it was in? The visions would be the only way and that would probably take days.

“I fear we will have to pack enough resources for a week if tonight is a success,” Rowan announced in a resigned tone.