Free Foresworn by Rinda Elliott Page B

different kinds of terrain—especially further west toward the park. But we strictly run on gas modes of transportation around here. The hay is for the greenhouses. The bales add thermal mass inside that helps regulate the temperature. Sounds crazy, but it works. Unfortunately, they’re very flammable.” He looked around the partial greenhouse we were in. Six of them had survived, and we were about to start shuffling things around so everyone could bunk inside one or two. None of the kids could afford to get a hotel in town and like most of the ones I’d tried to stop in on the drive up here, they were full, anyway.
    Altogether, Arun had found ten backpacks. They were the huge kind I’d seen in documentaries about backpackers. I was pretty curious about seeing inside them. I’d grown up camping, but we’d never had tents small enough to go in a backpack. Sleeping bags, either, for that matter. Arun had explained these were specially made to be lightweight yet handle cold temperatures.
    Ten backpacks weren’t going to be enough. I hadn’t met all the kids here, but from the way everyone talked, there were more. Maybe if no one else with souls showed up. I looked at Arun as he rubbed his hands over his arms.
    “Yeah, they’re prickling,” he said when he saw where I looked. “There are more coming, and at least one or more has to be close because it feels like electricity is running through my body.”
    “How do they know to come here?”
    He shook his head. “That, I don’t know. Most of them follow the music. You met Sky?”
    I nodded.
    “She can hear it. But she’s powerful and even knows what goddess she has. Skadi.”
    “Oh gods,” I breathed, impressed. “She’s the one who picked Loki’s punishment, right? The one who sent him to be tied up in a cave with a poisonous snake?” I shuddered. “Hope she doesn’t run into Loki.”
    “That’s the one god I don’t understand in this whole mess. His curse was to last until Ragnarok. So, if he was just recently freed and all this is happening so fast, he wouldn’t have had time to reincarnate inside someone like ours did. Every kid who’s showed up here has a birthday within a month of each other, so my mom and I believe that’s what’s going on. The gods knew when this was to happen and joined with us. Unless this has been in play since we were born, Loki would just now be getting out. He has such a huge part in the prophecies of Ragnarok, he has to be around somehow.”
    “When’s your birthday?”
    “In a couple of days. I’ll be eighteen. Tyrone turns eighteen a few days after me. Gillian’s was yesterday.”
    “Well, I’m different. I turn nineteen in three months.”
    “Really.” He pulled Gullin into his lap when the little pig walked into his thigh. He scratched its head and the thing writhed in happiness.
    I couldn’t help but grin.
    “That makes you about nine months older than the majority of us. There has to be something to that.”
    I shrugged, thought about telling him about the prophecy and how I wasn’t supposed to live past my nineteenth birthday, but I didn’t want to bring the mood down. It was already hard enough watching him sit here and try to stay strong.
    Alva walked into the greenhouse carrying one of the big backpacks. “I found two more,” she said. “I’d forgotten I’d stashed a couple behind the seat in my truck. These don’t have the sleeping bags and food, but we can go into town tomorrow and pick up whatever else we need.” She sat next to her son, coughed, then took a sip of bottled water.
    “Bottled again, Mom?” Arun nudged his mom with his shoulder, then grinned at me. “She actively campaigns against bottle water usually.”
    “Don’t give me a hard time. Some people from town showed up with supplies. Lots of water bottles and canned goods.”
    “Oh!” I covered my mouth as I remembered something Arun had said earlier, then dropped my hand. “Was all the food you guys canned in that