The Strange Maid

SIX

SNOW CRYSTALS HANG off the troll’s blunt tusks, glittering in the thin morning light from the broken windows. Because he’s young, his calcified features are a rough sketch carved into the stone. He’s a beautiful pale blue, with darker blue veins like polished marble. His right arm is missing from just below the shoulder, torn away—recently, too, by the thick purplish blood now crystallized into amethyst. The edge of the shoulder is sharp and rough, like broken rock. A line of reddish lichen crawls down his spine. Unferth says it’ll get thicker as he ages.

We’ve waited until the sun arrived in order to take this next step in a more controlled fashion, so the troll is trapped inside the meadery just in case.

“Shut it,” I say, gripping my seax in my fist.

From atop a ladder missing several rungs, Unferth reaches out and swings the shutters closed. Snow puffs down. “He might be too young, and so even this ambient light could keep him calcified.…” His voice fades away as the beast’s entire body shivers.

I lift my seax to put the sharp tip of the broken back blade against the troll’s marble chest. Over his heart. I hold my breath, wondering why the entire world doesn’t pause for the occasion. Here I am, ready to slice into this martyr who came to me like a gift. The stone heart will be crusted with blood crystallized to amethyst.

As the troll wakes, dust flakes away from his skin and settles onto the mangy rug. The chain looped around his neck rattles. Tiny cracks appear all over his body, like the bed of a sun-baked river.

A fissure catches my eye: it looks like the rune child.

I suck in a quick breath and pull back the seax.

“The gift of mothers,” I whisper to myself. A kenning for sacrifice. Mothers always lose the most, they say.

A thin layer of stone sloughs off from his chest. The pieces clatter and clink down to the floor.

This is too easy. Here is a lost troll, crippled and weak, hardly ferocious, as trolls are supposed to be. I’m not even afraid of him. Defeating him barely counts as a triumph.

“Signy,” Unferth says softly from right beside me. “Why do you hesitate?”

The troll opens his mouth, revealing square molars, and he moans. His breath is sweet like rotten bananas.

“This is wrong,” I say, thinking of the rune sacrifice in Malchai Elizabethson’s iris. I will know my martyr when I see him.

Big yellow eyes creak open and the troll cries out, pushing away from us, but he’s chained to the floor and can’t go anywhere.

Unferth lowers his sword and says tentatively, “Wrong?”

The troll is at least a meter taller than me, thick and shaped like a giant gorilla. He winces from the light, one wide yellow eye on me. He’s awkward and broken and how can his heart possibly mean anything to the Alfather?

I spin and stalk away, kicking a dusty mead bottle. It skitters across the floor and shatters against the far wall. “It’s not right! I could never sacrifice a half-broken animal or man to my god. What honor could he bring to Odin? What could this heart possibly prove?” I jam the seax back into its sheath. “Rag me.”

The troll groans loudly enough to shake the shards of glass that litter the floor. I have a devastating urge to feed him.

“Here, stop.” Unferth thumps the troll on the chest, and the troll swipes at him with his one good hand. Unferth touches his sword to the troll’s stomach and presses lightly, but enough that the tip cuts in. The troll howls as tiny streaks of violet blood drip down his belly.

“This sword is an unhallowed blade and made to kill the likes of you, so behave,” Unferth says to the troll, then turns his back. The beast leans down onto his haunches, curls his only arm around his belly pathetically.

I stare at Unferth as he limps toward me. “Unhallowed? What does that mean?”

Eyes tight and leaning onto his good leg, Unferth wipes a smear of purple blood off his blade and onto his pants. “Cursed. A blade that has been used for ill. You have an imagination, little raven, use it.”

“How was it cursed?”

Unferth’s mouth opens, but for once he remains silent. There is no sudden mean cut of a smile, no disarming poem. He doesn’t want to tell me.

“How, Truth-Teller?”

His lips tighten. “I killed my brother with it.”

Like a hammer thrown down, the words hit hard.

Kinslayer.

Unferth goes fast, ungracefully, toward the stairs.

Something like anticipation thrills through me, hot and melting. I hug myself and take deep breaths; I turn to the troll. “Red Stripe,” I murmur, naming him for the strip of scarlet lichen. “Do you think it’s not you or me but Ned Unferth who has a heart of stone?”

The troll sings a low note to agree with me.

Unferth stomps back upstairs with a stained and many-times-folded map to lay out our new options for the winter. He says Red Stripe was probably alone only because he was thrashed out of his herd for being puny or for this groaning he does. We need to find safe ground because if this troll knows of the place, so will his mother. Unferth’s refrain is the same as it was at the ruins of Montreal: we want to be the hunters, not the hunted. We should leave the troll here and continue up the coast as was the plan. But I can’t shove Red Stripe back out into the harsh wilderness to face his tormentors already missing an arm.

Reluctantly, Unferth says we might find a safe haven among the northern homesteads, except there’s no certainty that other trolls, other herds, wouldn’t find us. We’d have no chance against an entire herd. If I insist on caring for the beast, he thinks it’s better to wait through the coldest, iciest months and go hunting again with the thaw. I’ve already waited this long; what’s four more months?

An eternity.

“You can always change your mind about this one,” Unferth says as he thumps his fist against Red Stripe’s solid belly.

But I know better. This troll’s gentle, needy gaze is too innocent, too simple. He’s nothing like the trolls in the stories, and it’s difficult to imagine him razing a city to the ground. More like he’s a doe-eyed cow or pygmy mammoth to be protected. Some of his groaning sounds like please.

Unferth nods tightly and says, “I spent last winter on an island nearby, where there are few people, an isolated tower for him, with ample practice grounds to continue improving your skills and hunting. They have electricity, running water, fine mead, and best of all they know me already and will trust me well enough when we drag this beast into their midst. We’ll be able to leave him there protected when it thaws if we position it well.”

I wait, expecting he offered such a long list of pros because it must have a rather hefty con.

Unferth smiles. “Jellyfish Cove, on the island of Vinland.”

My stomach twists.

Vinland is the northern territory where the Summerlings moved after I climbed the Tree. My wish-parents, Rome and Jesca, whom I’ve not seen in ten years. Who may hate me or, worse, have forgotten me. “That is not a good idea, Unferth.”

“Because you’re afraid of your family.”

“I’m not afraid of anything, you tick-eating old man.”

“Then give me your reason.” He smiles his challenge, for he knows I don’t have a better one.

Once the recent snow melts enough to drive—it’s early enough in the winter that the sun can still manage that—I wait with Red Stripe while Unferth returns to Toronto for a massive van we can pile the troll into without breaking the shocks. I follow behind in the truck. We make it to a tiny town named Seven Islands in about ten hours of very slow driving, and Unferth rents a ferry. Or rather, Unferth trades the van and two barrels of old wine for the winter’s use of the flat, sturdy boat. With ourselves, our gear, Red Stripe, and the truck all loaded up, we sail the Gulf of Lawrence. Unferth complains constantly but silently, and any time I think of cutting Red Stripe loose I can barely breathe. The beast looks at me as if I’m his herd mother now, and I won’t betray that, even if I should. We finally arrive, seventeen days before Yule, at the northernmost tip of Vinland.

An icy island of alpine tundra and inland mountains, Vinland was home to the oldest settlement of Vikers from Scandia. Gudrid Far-Traveler and her family landed here a thousand years ago, longing for new land to make their own. It was the ruins of her longhouse, found by archaeologists, that led to the National Historic Site the Summerlings currently run. I have vague memories of Rome’s excitement at being asked, Jesca’s worry that it would be too isolated for raising children. Rome thought it would be good for me especially—space enough to run wild if I liked and maybe drag Rathi out into freedom with me. But I never made it here until today.

Brisk wind blows across the ocean, making me think on the cold, deadly hand of destiny.

The island is untamed where we come ashore, no sign of people but for the signal tower. Boulders left by some ancient glacier tumble near the water, and the beaches are stone and pebbles. Cormorants and gulls hover in the salty wind. There are no trees at all, but tufts of dead grass and low, rough bushes cling to the shallow hills, and frozen streams cut through the valleys, shimmering with sunlight like diamond veins. Rathi told me about it last summer when we were together in New Netherland, about the detailed historical reenactments and elaborate theater of the Viker Festival, how he thought I’d adore the drama and poetry. He showed me pictures of the pennants and tents, the cobblestone lanes and whitewashed cottages. But mostly he showed me the wild land and loud ocean, the desperate beauty of everything. Rathi remembered I loved my beauty raw.

Unferth and I anchor the ferry as near the rocky beach as we can, using the butts of the troll-spears to shove chunks of ice out of our way. The bergs glare blue-white like the hottest of flames as they bob gently. We leave a sun-calcified Red Stripe on the ferry and jump into the water to wade to shore with bags held high over our heads.

My legs and hips grow so cold so fast I think they’ll shatter.

But we make it. Before we die of hypothermia, we head into the tower to strip and heat up the iron oven that warms the entire living space. It’s an old signal tower, three stories, with a giant bell hanging forgotten at the top. On clear days, Unferth says, there’s a view across Leif’s Channel to the Canadian coast. While digging around on the bottom floor last year he found fifty-year-old letters that claimed the bell was part of a troll warning system put in place after the Montreal Troll Wars. Leif’s Channel used to be one of the most dangerous crossing points for the greater mountain troll herds who wished to avoid the heavy patrols of the mainland.

And so it’s best not to show up unannounced in the Jellyfish Cove bay, even sixty years later, with a greater mountain troll.

Tonight we’ll take the rowboat leaning against the whitewashed side of the tower out to unchain Red Stripe and lead him through the water to shore. Tomorrow we’ll sail the ferry around to the eastern side of this long peninsula to the town of Jellyfish Cove. We’ll dock there and off-load the truck. Give them all warning about Red Stripe.

Unferth and I wrap blankets around ourselves and get the oven going. It’s a wide iron chimney up one side of the tower, with a hearth on the first and second floors. He claims the bottom-level bedroom on account of his leg and says there should be some old clothes up on the second floor. Out of fashion, no doubt, but made for the Vinland winter.

The metal stair winds around to the second story, which is divided into two rooms by a thin partition. One must’ve been an office or library, with a metal desk full of tiny drawers, a key closet, and one curved wall covered in old books and dusty magazines. I go into the next room, which has a twin bed and sink-toilet combo popular in army movies and prison. There’s a porthole window with a frosted view down the eastern coast. Against the aggressively blue sky I can just make out lines of smoke from Jellyfish Cove.

I dig through a trunk of discarded clothes, mostly heavy canvas pants and fishermen’s coats, until I find patchy thermal shirts and a long wool sweater that’ll come to my knees like a dress. Some men’s long underwear work as leggings, and I’ve practically got an acceptable outfit once my boots are back on.

In the mottled little mirror over the sink, the first I’ve seen in a month, I stare at myself. Precia of the South used to call me once a month and ask what runes I saw in my own green-gray irises. I answered for a few years, usually fate or choice or death, typical things one might expect of a Valkyrie’s heart, until it became clear none of them would tell me what they saw in me.

I lean in to focus close on my left eye. There I see torch, a rune of passion that burns destructively.

Rubbing my chest, I clomp down again, rattling the entire frame of the staircase. Unferth says, “We do have to live here, little raven.”

He’s looking fresh and devilish in a dark red sweater rolled up at his wrists, his hair loose from braids so it blankets his shoulders in a hundred tiny kinks. I don’t bother to hide my stare. When he turns away from the fire, hair sweeps away from his face and there’s something vulnerable in the loose smile he offers me. I’m too surprised to return it or say anything. He rubs the heel of his hand into his thigh and stands. I reach out to skim the feathery ends of his hair that dangle beside his elbow. It’s nearly as long as mine. Unferth slaps my hand away and swiftly twists all his hair up to the nape of his neck, tying it there in a knot.

He says, “It’ll take a few hours of work to get the water heater up and running again, so if we want real food we should go into town. It’s slightly less than two kilometers’ walk.”

I grimace; I’d rather stay here than play nice in a small town. Or face the Summerlings.

The sun is low in the west, though it’s barely past lunchtime, and we make our way along a narrow path that’s visible only because the gravel is paler in general; every once in a while a small wooden slat bridge connects it from one low hill to the next. We don’t speak, though our shoulders knock together frequently and the tattered edge of his coat flaps against my knees. My lips are chapped in seconds and my ears numb, but I imagine I can get help for such things in town. Balm and a thick scarf, mittens perhaps, since I’ve heard those keep your fingers warmer than gloves.

I think of the Summerlings as I tromp through the slush, wondering if they’ve changed at all. Rathi had, of course, growing from a sober nine-year-old into a brilliant young preacher with his father’s golden hair and mother’s ability to read my every thought. The last time I was with him six months ago, I got a bruise on my wrist from how hard he clung to me, arguing his point faster and faster as if it would make a difference.

But Rome and Jesca I’ve not seen in a decade. Since that final night together in their small hotel room next to the Federal Library, with a narrow view of the New World Tree. I had dinner with them at a fancy restaurant on the First Valkyrie’s coin, me jerky with excitement and them talking constantly as if that might make everything seem normal. Rathi spent the whole time silent, occasionally running fingers through floppy yellow hair.

Rome stopped us at a corner drugstore during the walk back to the hotel and pulled a cheap black Eye of Odin charm off the shelf. He bought it and braided it into his beard beside the Freyan horses and bright red beads. You’ll be a child of both houses, Signy. Jesca had tears in her eyes but only said my mother would be so proud of my bravery.

I said my mother wouldn’t recognize bravery if it introduced itself with song and dance. Jesca smiled a watery smile and shook her head in automatic forgiveness.

If I were returning to them triumphant now, surely I wouldn’t feel such trepidation. It would be a wonderful homecoming, a hero’s welcome for the errant Valkyrie arriving to honor her past life, her old family. I would have titles and accolades for a shield.

As it is, what will they think of me? I left them so hard and fast, without a second glance or thought. When Jesca kissed me goodbye and Rome pressed a Freyan hymnal into my hands, I thanked them, I smiled, but I never once looked over my shoulder for that final glimpse of their faces. I ran for the Death Hall like it was all I’d ever wanted.

My boot slips on loose rocks and crunches into slush at the edge of the path. Unferth takes my elbow, lifting an eyebrow as if to say, Clumsy Valkyrie don’t last long.

I jerk my arm free and stomp ahead before he guesses what I’m thinking.

Jellyfish Cove clings to the side of the island like a sprawling checkerboard. Whitewashed houses are shining barnacles on the long slope of the bay, their scarlet and blue and yellow roofs merry splashes of color. Cobbled streets curve toward the docks, which reach long, narrow fingers into the silver-capped ocean. Boats of every size sway with the tide, some with coiled sails and some complicated by rigging for nets and metal traps. Others carry sharp seal spears raised like fangs toward the sky, and there are at least two huge sea-buses painted with tourist slogans. Though it’s so near Yule, people move around in bright coats, mostly orange and blue and red, like elf-lights in clumps and pairs. A steady stream of them leaves town along an inland road, disappearing over the hump of a hill where I can just see the flicker of pennants from the valley beyond, advertising the Viker Festival.

Unferth leads me toward the center of town to a four-story hotel with three wings, dark brown thatching, and baby-blue shutters. The swinging, old-fashioned sign names it the Shipworm.

Inside is warm and wood-paneled, smelling of ale and fish chowder. Unferth asks for a table in the common room, where there are swordfish stuffed and polished on the wall, a roaring fire in a huge dark hearth, and exposed beams hanging with hats from around the world. Poorly hidden speakers play scratchy folk music. A few tables are occupied, though not nearly all, as it’s between lunch and dinnertime. We sit and I ask for whatever the cook likes best that’s hot, Unferth correcting my order by asking for two bowls of chowder and some of the fresh bread. Before I can glare, a woman in flannel and fingerless gloves bustles into the room and says, “Ned Unferth!” with a gleeful north coast accent. She plops down in an empty chair and grasps his hand. “We didn’t know if you were coming back this year!”

I suspect she ends every sentence with an exclamation and dislike her when Unferth smiles warmly, even though she’s at least Myra Quick’s age. He says, “Patty, here’s my apprentice, Signy. Signy, Patty runs the all-in store down the street.” His tone adds, so be nice to her.

“Signy!” Patty transfers her grip from Unferth’s hand to mine. “Aren’t you all washed up and salty! This one likely hasn’t let you feel like a girl in ages!”

My eyes narrow. “I try not to let him feel like a man, either.”

Unferth’s face tightens and Patty’s lips part as she works out my meaning. Fortunately, we’re saved by two more people who know Unferth. One man in coveralls claps him on the shoulder, and the other is the man’s son, with the sort of too-new haircut his mom probably did with safety scissors. “Go tell the king our poet’s back,” his dad tells him, and the kid scampers off.

Our poet? I mouth at Unferth, but he pretends not to see. He does answer the fisherman with a line from The Viker’s Elegy about returning to home port. Patty and the fisherman stay with us to share a round of local brew and fill Unferth in on the year’s events.

I fill my belly and let the beer warm my blood, leaning back in my chair with a loose neck. The names wash over me, births and deaths and who won the Summer Solstice war games, the lack of seals this year, how many more days of tourists we’ve got before the island is ours for three months of the off-season, yes we’ve got a welding mask so he can fix up the water tank, no Rome probably hasn’t given up on the idea of recruiting him as poet for the feast hall.

I sit up straight. “Who’s Rome?” I ask Patty, ignoring Unferth’s disapproval at my insinuation I don’t know anything. It’s the first thing I’ve said in fifteen minutes and the words smack with the yeasty aftertaste of beer.

Patty nods. “Rome’s the showrunner up at the festival. Mastery in history and preaching, and oh, darling, you wait until Freyrsday and his service. Will be glad you’re Freyan when he lifts your heart to satisfaction!” Suddenly she’s looking past me toward the door.

I shove out of my chair and spin so fast I knock a fork to the floor. It clatters on the wooden slats and I press back against the smooth edge of the table, gripping it hard to support myself.

Rome Summerling is as golden as I remember, even in my dreams. Big and bright, his reddish beard braided with tiny charms still, his hair shaggy around his ears, with thin streaks of gray. Hazel eyes and wide shoulders, hands on his hips, and a smile of greeting that fades into drawn shock when he sees me.

He wears a wool tunic and thick pants wrapped up the leg with more wool. Leather boots. A thick belt. Dark copper torc around his neck. Like he walked out of a painting of Old Scandan farmer kings. It suits him so much more than jeans and jackets and ties ever did.

“Signy.” His voice is as filling as ever, finding all my spikes and smoothing them out. My grip on the table loosens.

I don’t say anything, which is enough agreement for Rome. He’s here in three broad steps and laughing and hugging me in those bear arms, beard soft at my temple. He smells like smoked meat and charcoal. He releases me but cups my elbows to look down at my face. “You’ve got your mama’s eyes still.” His voice is husky with emotion. Deep wrinkles pull at his eyes and vanish into his beard. There in his left iris, like a beacon, I see the rune faith.

My tongue sticks in my mouth and I swallow. I try for anything to say. The inn around us might have vanished. I manage, “Rathi—he looks more like you than he used to.”

Rome chuckles and there’s an answering scatter of happy laughter from the room. My ears buzz. “My little son, Hrothgar, is not so little anymore,” he agrees.

“I saw him, ah, last summer in New Netherland.” That was the last time I was held like this, hugged in relief and also with expectation. As if I owe these men something. Which, of course, I do. And my wish-mother, too.

“He mentioned it. Said you were doing … well.”

I imagine he said quite a bit more than that.

“Want a beer, Rome?” calls someone. My wish-father nods absently, gaze roaming behind me. His eyes snap back to me and his eyebrows lift. “You’re the girl Ned brought? His apprentice?”

I twist around to shoot Unferth a hideous glare. He stands and spreads his hands. “Rome, you likely know better than I how our Signy resists labels like that.” He says it fondly, curse him. Rome laughs and so do all these people who don’t know a thing about me.

Ned Unferth is like a different person here. A good-old-boy poet.

For all the truth in his irises, he certainly is an excellent player. I say, “Ned wants to be part of the feast,” and watch Unferth’s eyes narrow. It goads me into adding, “We have a troll for your show, too.”

Two tiny spots of pink appear at the sharp edges of Unferth’s cheeks, but he doesn’t naysay me.

Patty exclaims and Rome asks for more details, proudly holding me under one arm as I tell them all about our Grendel. I weave a story that’s almost completely a lie about how we tracked and captured him, about the trolls we fought off to get him to safety, finishing with a wide grin just for Unferth. He smiles back at me, and there’s a clear promise of retribution in the pinch of his lips.

The thrill of battle raises elf-kisses up my arms.

Jesca Summerling arrives with a tiny cry like a songbird, and she feathers her hands up and down my arms, touches my tangled braids, and then presses a firm kiss to my lips. She’s small but sturdy, freckles staining her face unevenly. An apron dress as historically accurate as Rome’s tunic and leggings pulls in attractively at her waist. There’s a sheen of tears in her pale green eyes, but what catches my attention, what breaks me and remakes me, is the circle of tiny runes twining themselves like a bracelet around her pupil.

If I had any doubts about the past month, about my riddle or the specifics of the answer, about following Ned Unferth and learning his troll hunting, his bitter, beautiful poetry; if I had any doubts about my destiny finding me, they’re all shattered by that single rune in the eye of my wish-mother.

Home.