The Strange Maid

TWENTY

MY SHOES BURY themselves in thick grass and I dash across the circle lawn, past a couple in intimate conversation and a group of old men debating something with flailing gestures. Past waxy-leafed magnolia trees and boxes breaking open with early summer flowers. I duck under a trellis crowded with vines and into a narrow path lined with conical trees blooming purple. At the end is a marble bench. It glows welcome to me.

I sit, grateful to the cool stone seeping up through the layers of my dress, grounding me here in the center of this garden. Against the red silk skirt my fingers are pale sticks, heavy with Unferth’s rings. Furiously I tear one off. I throw it into the dark foliage.

If Unferth knew what was coming, it can only be that he was in league with Freya. She sees the future. She stole Baldur’s ashes, and told him what to expect. But why?

“Hello?”

My head jolts up at the intrusion. A girl stands beside one of the purple trees, certainly not clad for a fancy ball. Her dress is light and cottony, not quite knee-length, her cardigan pale blue, and dusty thin sandals tie up her ankles. She has a mass of dark curls messily pulled into a bun but with tendrils everywhere. A necklace of obviously plastic pearls falls against her collarbone, and there’s no makeup to accent her pretty face.

I’m staring rudely, and she sighs before joining me on the bench. “You seem upset,” she says.

“I was here to catch my breath, privately.”

The girl’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “I see.”

I smell sharp, sweet flowers I don’t recognize, but not like any perfume, and I look more closely into her pale brown eyes. She widens them for me knowingly and tilts her face up to mine. Worked into the tawny wheat flecks in her left eye is the rune youth, and in the right, god.

A disir! But she’s nothing like Baldur and has none of the awesome charisma of Freyr the Satisfied or the wicked magic of my Alfather. She does not even affect me as my sister Valkyrie do. But there’s a simplicity to the way she holds herself, a calmness like the breeze cannot touch her, nor heat lick up sweat at her temples.

I breathe slowly out, collecting myself. “I apologize, lady.”

Her shrug is graceful but nothing near godlike. “I surprised you.”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”

It pulls a little laugh out of me. “Maybe. Yes? I’m not sure.”

“Can I help?” the disir asks, then glances hurriedly away as if she wasn’t supposed to offer.

When she looks back, her expression is drawn in peaceful lines. I ask, “Do you know anything about dreams?”

She laughs, a pretty noise like birdsong. “I venture to say I know quite a bit about them.”

“How do I tell if my dreams are true ones?”

“Oh.” The disir girl strokes her neck thoughtfully. “It’s hard to remember, but I think … you just know. You can feel the difference, or you see evidence of it when you wake.”

“Why would I have true dreams at all? I’m no seethkona; I don’t pray to the goddess of dreams.”

“Because you’re walking along a strand of fate, or because she wants you to.”

“Do you … know Freya well?”

“As well as any.”

“Do you trust her?”

“Oh,” she says again. Her head cocks as she thinks. “I trust that she acts for the good of the world.”

“For the good of the world.”

“She sees everything. The future and the past, and everything in between, all possibilities and outcomes, and she alone can discover which threads of fate knot together best, which will destroy, which will bring peace or strength or happiness.”

I ball my rune-scarred hand into a fist. “Does your goddess use men to change the course of the world’s fate?”

“There is no other way to do it, than to use us. She gives us prophecy or dreams for a guide, but we are the actors. The gods may not so directly interfere.”

It’s the Covenant the disir means. Jefferson’s Covenant, keeping the gods on a leash.

She touches the back of my hand with cool fingers. “What does she want from you?”

“To kill a troll, I think.”

“There are worse things she could ask than that.”

We sit quietly, hands together, listening to the distant music from the ball. It’s some energetic dance and I think of Baldur’s Night again, spinning and drinking with Peachtree until I found Ned in his goblin mask. That brief moment he kissed me back. All his rules, all the truths he would not tell me. Why, why, why?

The disir girl says to me, “In the end, it doesn’t matter what she wants. Sometimes you must stop thinking about the gods and think about yourself and the people you love. What do you want the world to be like? What can you do to make it that way? You don’t need to know what Freya has done or wants done; you don’t need to know what Loki or the Alfather or Tyr the Just wants. What is in your heart? Let that be your guide and it will bring you to those moments when you can change fate or the entire world. That’s why the Covenant is in place: so that we make our own world.”

Though her sad smile has nothing of power behind it, though her pale brown eyes glow only with tiny reflected lights from the party, her words bury themselves in my skin as deep as any charge of Odin’s.

This disir girl is right: What Freya wants doesn’t matter. Unferth’s loyalty and lies only matter because I trusted him. What matters is my god gave me a riddle to solve, and to do that—for myself, not for the Valkyrie or even Odin—I have to find and destroy the troll mother. That is what I want. That is who I want to be.

The heart. The heart is what matters.

I stand. “Thank you for your counsel, lady. Do you have a name? That I may thank you properly at a shrine?”

Every part of the disir girl goes still. “Oh. I had one once. But no one remembers it.”

“Tell me and I’ll remember.”

She shakes her head.

Unwilling to press her, I start to go and am three steps down the tree-lined path when it hits me: god and youth. Idun the Young, whom Soren prayed to this afternoon, and a name nobody remembers.

“Astrid,” I breathe, spinning around.

But she’s gone.

My head buzzes as I return inside. I’m desperate to find Soren, to run and whisper Astrid’s name in his ear. But Soren is trapped by Glory, dancing. Baldur sits at the high table with a handful of shining guests, eating some pink sorbet. Conversations rise and fall like the ocean waves. Precia and Rathi’s preacher friend Ardo Vassing share a plate of the dessert at the round table nearest the dais.

I climb up to Baldur, steadying myself with a hand on the table. “Signy, there you are!” The god’s face is bright with anticipation. “I’ve a surprise for you, if you’re ready.”

It’s a struggle to form my expression into anything resembling pleasantry. “Of course, my lord.”

Baldur takes my hand and lifts it. “Friends!” he yells. The music dies on a downbeat, as if they’ve awaited his cue. Dancers turn to us; faces lift. Cameras flash. Soren and Glory are just below, she with an arm draped around the berserker’s shoulders.

The god of light gestures at the Mad Eagles still standing so solidly behind us. Two at a time from either end, they break off the line to jog around the perimeter of the ballroom. Guests titter and whisper, shifting together, some keeping their eyes on Baldur, others watching the berserker progress. When all twelve have reached the far end of the room, they stand on either side of a wide blue curtain, a mirror of the one behind us. Thebes on one end and Gabriel on the other reach out and grip the edge.

“Friends, these are the very good Mad Eagles,” Baldur calls. “Those brave warriors of my father who hunted down the Vinland herd, who slaughtered them in a holy frenzy, who brought vengeance on behalf of the dead.” He glances at me, squeezes my hand. I lower my eyes to the streak of sorbet melting on my plate. “The berserkers have brought a surprise for all of us.” He pauses and, when he continues, sounds amused. “Go ahead and ready your cameras.”

My heart clangs like a smith’s hammer and I glance down to Soren. A great frown creases his copper face as he stares back to the curtain. I follow his gaze in time to see Thebes and Gabriel tug it away. It falls in slow motion, wafting loose and easy. Behind it is a set of doors. The two berserkers push them back with a massive groan of wood. Wind blows out from the corridor, sweet and burnt.

Red Stripe.

I hear the creaking wheels first, then see the light. It’s brighter than the sun, false white UV light glaring out like a spear, making the star lamps of the ballroom seem faded and old.

Odd-eye, what is Baldur up to? Why this production to return him to me?

Captain Darius and four other berserkers walk out, two with massive ropes over their shoulders, dragging the wagon while sweat pops on their foreheads. The rest have long, thick troll-spears pointed at Red Stripe’s collared neck.

There are gasps and even tiny screams from the audience. Most push up and move to the edges of the ballroom, shoving over chairs and spilling drinks. They don’t realize that the grimace twisting his marble face is fear, not fury. The purple gash is still unhealed, trickling with flakes of amethyst.

“What are you doing?” I ask Baldur softly.

Surprise slackens his pretty face. “Giving you your troll. Blood price, Signy, and the stone heart—your riddle! This is a troll of the Vinland herd,” Baldur calls clearly. “A monster with a heart of stone. It’s Disir Day, the day we celebrate our goddesses and mother-spirits, the day we remember the Valkyrie. There can be no more suited moment or sacrifice: take down this beast and claim your throne, Signy Valborn.” His voice rings with excitement and pride.

“He is not the end of my riddle,” I say, softly enough for only the god, then I grab up Unferth’s sword, swing it over my arm, and push past him, aware of the Lady Fenris’s low laughter. The crowd parts for me.

Baldur says, “The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart.”

Silence answers him, all eyes on me as I stride directly for Captain Darius. They titter and whisper, and a few cheer for the troll’s blood to cover the dance floor.

“Lady,” Darius says, looking serene despite the monster hulking in stone beside him. His dress uniform highlights the sharp lines of his goatee and leaves his shoulder bare to display his family crest tattoo.

I hold out my hand. “Do you have a knife or dagger?” I ask quietly. He pulls one from the small of his back and offers it hilt-first. I curl my fingers around the warm wooden grip and say, “Turn off the UV.”

He snaps around and points at Thebes, who rushes into the corridor. A moment later, the lights click off. Breathing and murmurs fill the space. A camera flashes from the left. Blood roars in my ears, like the ocean in a seashell.

I step before Red Stripe. My shoes are too delicate and heeled so I toe them off, standing instead in bare feet and all the layers of red silk dress.

Red Stripe’s stone body fractures; a web of hairline breaks scatter out from the center of his chest. I see fate marked clearly, as if he’s a man, and choice, and my old friend chaos again.

Someone screams behind me. I focus on Red Stripe’s eyes, waiting for the little yellow beads to open, to see me. Dust puffs off of him as the fine layer of stone sloughs away, hitting the marble like hail. The other berserkers shift on their feet, putting the tips of their spears against his throat.

“Move back,” I order without looking. Red Stripe’s head turns to my voice and there is his massive jaw opening, there his blocks of yellow teeth. His bluish lips curve out and he moans. It’s like a rockslide, a long rumble, and the floor trembles. I sense movement behind me. “Red Stripe,” I croon.

His eyes open and he wrinkles his snout at me. And he roars.

It flutters the banners and grows to shake the crystal chandeliers. I don’t flinch, despite the sweet breath blowing past my ear, despite the flashing memory of the troll mother, of the herd crouched about their fire, glancing up one by one to see me charging toward them.

I’m standing in a circle of stone dust, and it tickles my nose and throat. My belly burns with adrenaline, and the eyes of the crowd abrade. “Down,” I say. Red Stripe hunkers onto his heels and the knuckles of his single ape-like arm. His beady eyes don’t leave my face. Bent this way, those eyes are only two meters off the ground, nearly my height, and I smile for him. “Help me up.”

He lifts one knee and holds out his arm. I grip it firmly in my free hand and step up onto his knee. His skin is smooth marble but hot under my toes. I put a hand on his shoulder and manage to turn gracefully toward the audience.

I stand on his knee, nearly encircled by his wide blue arm, and look back out over the audience. At the high table, Baldur the Beautiful gapes and Glory slides her finger across her plate, then licks the last of the sorbet off her skin, her eyes on me. There’s Soren, creeping around the side to arrive with Rathi at the edge of my performing circle.

But it’s Precia of the South whose eyes I meet. She’s come after me, standing in her pristine gown a few meters away. Her head tilts to look up at me. It’s anticipation and excitement I read in her face, if it’s anything.

“Here is Red Stripe,” I call out. “He never did hurt anyone on Vinland and owes the world no blood price. This is no martyr, but a survivor. Like me. He has sacrificed already, his arm, his family, his freedom. In his chest a fire burns. His heart beats as mine does, both of them formed into stone by our losses. Before I would cut out his heart and offer it to the Alfather, I would cut out my own.”

I touch the tip of Darius’s black knife to my skin, just above the collar of the red silk gown, between my breasts. It sinks through my skin and pain flashes across my chest, in time with my quick pulse. I think of Valtheow.

A hot streak of blood slides down toward my belly.

Precia spreads her arms like wings. “Signy Valborn, the Alfather knows the state of your heart.”

Glory the Fenris Wolf begins to clap slowly. It rings out, once, twice, and three times. I tap Red Stripe’s shoulder with my forefinger and he lowers his hand to act as a step so I may spring onto his shoulder. I sit and he holds me there against his round head. I raise the knife and unsheathe Unferth’s sword.

Red Stripe roars. I do not close my eyes.