It's been a little while - I know - but finals are done and I've got plenty of time now. I think I've got a cold coming on, I've been coughing most of the day, but that isn't getting in the way of writing, thank goodness.

No more dilly-dally, onward!

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Chapter 13:

The mysterious woman gave them no chance to speak. Astrid and Hiccup followed her quick steps through the deserted streets. She moved with an ease of someone who had come to know them by heart. She zigzagged through alleys and across streets, and once through what looked like a bakery, as if to confuse unwanted followers.

She took them to the edge of the village where the thick jungle of the island took over. Thick vines twisted upward in clumps that resembled tree trunk, leaves draping like leaves, webbed together like a canopy. It looked beyond impassable. But the mysterious woman took them along the village to a massive tree that jutted upward and outward to resemble the size of a house.

Sitting at a sizable fork in the tree was a house built onto the massive limbs. A narrow set of stairs wound up the tree to the house's perilous porch. She climbed the stairs with the same strange ease in which she moved. Astrid glanced at Hiccup before she followed. He was looking up at the house with both dislike and distrust.

The stairs creaked underfoot but were held with a sturdiness that Astrid hadn't foreseen. She could hear the same creaks behind her as Hiccup climbed after her. They came to the porch, which reminded Astrid of Gothi's rickety home, and the woman began to mumble to the door. Her old hands moved over the wooden surface with grace and care and it was a moment before she pulled it open. She ushered the two of them inside.

Astrid could see the firelight as soon as the door opened and didn't hesitate to rush inside. The ice immediately began to dissipate on her skin and the air seeped into her chest and lungs. She took several deep breaths of the warm air to experience the relief again. Hiccup was behind her and she heard the door close. The woman began to mumble to the door again, only on the inside this time, hands moving in practiced motions on the wood.

Astrid noticed as she watched her mumble that the entire inside of the door had been covered with symbols. The crisscrossed the doorway and the creases. They covered the walls of the entire house and several were on the ceiling and floor. The windows were sealed shut with the same symbols.

"Are what these?" Astrid asked.

"Protection." the woman said simply.

"Astrid? Hiccup?"

Astrid turned to the hearth. There were several people sitting around the fire. A man had stood among them, his eager yet weathered and worried face twisted in a tired smile, gratefulness in his open arms.

"I didn't know if you would get my letter in time."

"Chuck?" Astrid asked. Now she could remember his face. She had only seen him that one night quite a while ago.

He nodded.

"Please, sit down and warm your souls." the woman stepped between Astrid and Hiccup, urging them toward the glowing hearth.

They joined the hearth and the woman reach for a kettle that warmed in the fire. She poured two cups of the steaming tea and handed them to Astrid and Hiccup. She inhaled the fumes and at once it was as if a magical warmth had surged into her nostils and up into her head. She sipped it and the same warmth spread down her throat and through her limbs. Soon, it was as if the cold had never touched her skin.

"I am glad that you came." Chuck said after a short reprieve.

"What happened here?" Astrid asked Chuck, but the woman answered.

"The malice has spilled." she said grimly. Her words brought a dark silence among the hearth's people.

"But I don't get it. What does that mean?" Astrid shook her head.

But she shook her head.

"It's the darkness." Chuck answered. "It came from the temple like a flood and covered everything. I was out fishing when I happened. When got back to the docks people had retreated into their houses. I tried to get into the temple to see Esol but the doors wouldn't budge. I hate leaving her in there with all this…happening."

"But without your efforts many would have perished." the woman said with a hand on Chuck's shoulder.

"That is true." a man from the hearth's side said with a nod. "If you hadn't found me I would still be trapped. When the darkness came I was repairing a wall and with the surge the wall collapsed on me. Chuck here found me and saved me."

Chuck nodded but did not brag. He held his hands tight in fists. Astrid understood. It didn't matter how many people he saved if Esol wasn't one of them. No amount of lives could equal hers to him.

"You see? You have helped, even if you don't think so." she said.

"Thank you, Lydia." Chuck said.

"Lydia?" Astrid asked.

"Yes, my name. I am sorry if I never properly introduced myself." Lydia nodded.

It seemed that since the darkness had come horror stories were in short demand. As they sat around the hearth they shared their stories with Astrid and Hiccup. A little girl had been attacked by an angry spirit of a woman with a horribly twisted neck. She cried and wailed and the little girl hid in a closet. She head Chuck calling from the street and he brought her back to Lydia's house.

They talked until Lydia softly interrupted. She placed a hand on Astrid's shoulder.

"Astrid, will you follow me upstairs?" She asked.

"Of course," Astrid nodded.

Lydia stood up with Astrid. Hiccup stood up as well, following them to the stairs, but Lydia did not stop him. They went into a little partitioned room, a vanity and dressed on one side and a cushioned bed in the other. Lydia sat down in the center and Astrid and Hiccup joined her.

"Is there anything bothering you?" Lydia asked her in a calming tone that was as strange as it was refreshing.

Astrid couldn't stop her eyes from glancing at Hiccup, whose face was unreadable, and eyes dark. She turned back to Lydia and shook her head. "No. Or at least nothing that's not bothering everyone else."

Lydia studied her for a moment and then nodded. "If you change your mind I'll listen."

"Thank you." Astrid nodded.

"Now, I know that Chuck contacted you because he believed you capable." Lydia said. "Tell me, do you think you can?"

"I don't know. But I can try." Astrid said. Lydia leaned in to her and Astrid began to tell her all that had happened since they had last met. She told her about how she and Hiccup had tricked Richard and returned to Berk. She tired to ignore Hiccup's whitening knuckles. She told her how she had started to use her gifts to help lost spirits pass on by entering their memories, how the darkness had descended on the spirit world, and how she kept falling back into the spirit-sleep. She came to the visions of the temple and she paused.

"You saw our temple in the other world?" Lydia asked.

Yes, I know that is what I saw. I kept going back and it was… it was as if it was pulling me back to it. Like it wanted to show me something. It was weird, I know, it's hard to explain." Astrid shook her head.

"What else did you see?" Lydia asked, a new urgency in her voice.

Astrid told her about the temple, the angry priest that chased her, the girl in the robes, seeing the dance and the darkness surge forth from a pit in the floor. As she recalled these things she could see the effect it had on Lydia. Her calm face dropped into amazed disbelief.

"What does all that mean?" Astrid asked as she finished.

"It means that your connection with the other side is much stronger than I first believed." Lydia said, a mixture of admiration and uncertainty. "To be able to commune with the spirits in their own sanctum to not unheard of but to be able to enter their minds is something I've never heard. You have been given a great gift by the gods, dear."

Astrid swallowed. Sometimes she wished they'd given it to someone else. "But what can I do to help?"

"I think, there is a chance, that if you fully understand what sin has offended the spirits, you may be able to appease them and return their veil between here and there." Lydia said. She sighed. "You know that this paradise did not come without cost. A deal was struck, thousands of years ago, with the gods and spirits. The payment has long since been fulfilled but the temple holds many ceremonies to uphold the honor of the promise. But I can say no more."

"Why not?" Astrid asked.

"I have been sworn to secrecy as a shrine maiden. And this is a secret that I cannot break." Lydia shook her head with dire seriousness. She reached forward and took Astrid's pale hands in her own. "But I may be able to show you. Through memories, much like you would a spirit."

"But you're alive, and on this side," Astrid said.

"Yes, but like you, I have a connection to the other side. It is unsure whether it will work but it is worth a chance." Lydia said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes." Astrid swallowed and nodded. She loosened her shoulders and widened her sitting poise. She took a deep breath of the warm house, the hearth's fire drifting upward, carrying whiffs of the tea and smoke upward. It filled her lungs and she relaxed.

She hadn't gone into memories without being in the spirit world. She tried to trick herself into thinking that she was there, and that Lydia was another spirit, but it wasn't as easy as she'd hoped. She inhaled the warmth, focused, and at last, as the world loosened and faded, she finally felt the pull of her spirit into another.

She felt the space around her change and she opened her eyes. She was no longer in Lydia's house. Lydia and Hiccup were gone and she was standing in another house. A young girl, four or five, sat at a table that was too tall for her. A man, she assumed the father, worked at the hearth to stir the dying fire, while a plump stomached woman kneaded dough.

It took a moment to realize that the young girl at the table was the mysterious woman. Her dark hair was wild and tied back into a bun. Twigs of hair stuck out and unevenly trailed around her face. Her dark eyes were reading a aged texts and her graceful small fingers flipped a page carefully.

The edges of her vision were blurred. They changed rapidly, colors shifting, blending, rearranging into new sights. The little Lydia was joined by another young girl, blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and Astrid couldn't help but feel the familiarity.

"Gothi?" Astrid asked, but her voices was muffled, as thought under water, and did not disturb the scene before her.

Gothi and Lydia shared a childhood, sharing a family. Lydia's mother had a brother, Gothi's father, who traveled as a trader. Astrid saw his boat with troves of exotic treasures, him standing on the stern, looking as much the weathered seaman as Johan. He had brought back a blonde wife, Gothi's mother, who stayed with Lydia and her parents while her husband was away.

Occasionally the two girls would travel with Gothi's father and Astrid was astounded at the glimpsed of the island she knew well. Berk's mountainous scenery was as much a part of her as her own skin. The village looked the same, houses were in different places now, but the Vikings themselves were much the same sturdy drunkards as they were today.

They ate in the Great Hall and Astrid couldn't help but look around at the ancestors, wondering if she was looking at her own relation without realizing it, a great grandfather or grandmother, perhaps. She could see the red hair and broad shoulders of the Chief, Hiccup's own.

And as fast Berk had materialized, it vanished, replaced by the island's temple. Gothi and Lydia were older, eight or nine, standing in the temple's doors. They joined other girls whose faces were blurred. They wore cloaks and robes as the shrine maidens that she had seen before, heavy old fabric that swallowed them, making them look like very old shrunken statues.

A man in ancient robes appeared, in a classroom of sorts, the girls sitting before him patiently. His words were muffled and distant as he addressed the girls, "We are here to honor the promise of the gods. You gave been given one of the highest honors of the island. You are to uphold the ceremonies to honor the gracious gods and spirits that have given us paradise. Long ago this island was nothing more than a hopeless rock. Our ancestors made a pact with the gods for a paradise."

Astrid felt an impact with those words. Human sacrifice? Is that what she saw? The girls listening had similar reactions. They looked at each other, questioning, as thought they shared a mild regret of their honorable position in the temple.

"The ancient people took this price and willing participants gave their lives for the betterment of the people. For one hundred years, as per the agreement, a virgin sacrifice was given to the gods. But one hundred had been the cost, and it has been paid. We no longer have to give life to the gods."

Astrid felt time pass in blurs as the girls practiced the rituals, preformed the daily ceremonies, and prepared for the annual protection. Lydia and Gothi among them, they went down into the rocky underworld of the temple that Astrid had visited so many times. Down the stairs they marched and into the wide dark chamber they went. They stood, danced, and bells rang in the village. She had seen the same dance before. It was the same as Esol and the maids trapped in the temple had done.

Only Gothi and Lydia were not swallowed by darkness. The pit at the far end was silent. In this memory there were no harsh feelings emitting, but one of peace, of sound mind. Astrid had seen the dance enough to know its steps. It came to and end and the girls retreated back into the temple's upper floors.

Astrid knew, somehow, what she could do.

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I wanted to end this chapter (because I'm lazy) before Astrid goes into the memory-thing but I knew that it'd be a dry chapter opener for the next one so I threw it in on the end of this one.

Thanks for reading! I really appreciate the support!