I catch my eye on an oddly posed family portrait of Evan Bell and two young women with blond hair as pale as his. There was no mention of sisters in his file. Perhaps they’re cousins. Could Bell’s family somehow have gotten a hold of Soren, to exact a blood price instead of going through the court system? They might legally call holmgang-to-the-death for this, and any lawspeaker or tyr would grant it.
It doesn’t make sense they’d break him out and imprison him in a cave.
I skim along to the pantry door and open it easily. But it’s no pantry. A narrow stairway leads down to a basement, smelling of damp stone and saltwater. Leaving the door wide open, I make my way down into the darkness, barely touching the rail. A cool, damp draft curls about my ankles like fingers.
“Hello?” I call, shivering as I step onto the uneven concrete floor. Man-sized shadows hang tight in the corners, huge and black like furniture covered by sheets. I reach to the sides, fumbling for a light switch along the dank wooden wall. I find one and flick it on.
Trolls loom around me.
I scream, stumble back onto the steps, and reach for a weapon, but I’ve nothing! Whirling, I scramble up two steps before I realize the trolls aren’t moving. They’re calcified, thank Freya. My pulse is wild, breath harsh, as I collapse back onto the staircase, elbows and knees splayed and ridiculous.
Upstairs, footsteps shake the ceiling, and Amon yells my name.
I stare ahead at the trolls statues collected in this basement like museum artifacts. They’re bulky and large, wide-shouldered and squat, with no necks, but pig-noses and tiny eyes, blunt tusks, square teeth. Dark gray and iron-red like the Rock Mountains. Hill trolls, I think. Or replicas of them. Man-made statues because they’re too perfect to be real, calcified trolls as I initially thought. Trolls turn into boulders for better camouflage.
Among them, scattered haphazardly, are lesser troll statues. Both cat and iron wights, crouched and feline or gangly as monkeys. Half are broken into pieces on the earthen floor.
Amon pounds down behind me, Sune at his heels. “Astrid! Skit, did you fall?”
I point at the statues, leaning to the side so he can scoot past. He doesn’t, scooping me up instead. I squirm, irritated at myself for being afraid of statues and him for thinking I can’t stand on my own, and he sets me on my feet. Sune hops the final few steps to land in the center of the troll statues.
He crouches and picks up the head of an iron eater. Its sail-like ears and wide-open baseball eyes are the smooth orange of rust. Sune tosses it between his hands, scuffs his boot against the severed leg of a hill troll. As I look, I realize most of the statues are missing pieces of themselves. Some are only torsos and arms, others missing fingers or entire limbs, and there are heads everywhere—too many for the bodies. I shake my head in denial, my skin crawling.
“He was a professor of etin-physiology,” Sune says. “He must’ve been studying them for his classes.”
I stomp down to the largest hill troll to prove I’m not scared. Its eyes are gone from its sockets, pried free with a chisel of some kind. “Why would an etinologist sculpt such lifelike things?”
There’s a pause, and Amon says, “These are real trolls.”
“They can’t be real trolls,” I say.
Amon thumps onto the bottom stair and stretches his legs out. “Oh yeah?”
Frowning, I glance at Sune in the corner of my eye. He’s angling between two of the trolls toward the worktable behind. I say, “Well, first of all, there’s no UV down here, no sunlight, so they shouldn’t be calcified. And second of all, I’ve seen calcified cat wights, and they look like little boulders, not perfect statues of themselves.”
Sune pauses, hand on the shoulder of a hill troll, and slides a glance of disbelief at Amon.
The godling shrugs massively. “It’s the Stone Plague, Astrid. The summer after Baldur went missing, just before the solstice, there was that wild month where all the trolls were gathering, do you remember?”
“Because of the Vinland troll-mother,” I confirm. Soren told me she was an ancient old troll-mother who’d called the lesser ones to witness her battle with the Valkyrie Signy.
Amon and Sune share a look. Then Amon shakes his head. “That’s news to us. We don’t know why, just that they were all migrating and appearing in cities in huge numbers—more than we thought existed.”
Sune leans around the broad shoulder of a hill troll. “We don’t know, but maybe the gods do?” he says pointedly at me.
I attempt to hide my surprise. Soren hadn’t mentioned that the troll-mother’s connection to Signy’s ascension was kept from the public. Did the country even know what Signy had done? How do they believe she won her title?
“What does it have to do with this plague?” I ask. Sune narrows his eyes, but turns his back to me and keeps maneuvering through the statues toward the worktable.
“Just that it started at that same time as that migration. One day, the trolls just started to calcify. And not normally, either, but in perfect form like this. That’s the eerie part. Even at night, they stayed trapped. They seemed dead.” Amon’s eyes trail toward the broken limbs and heads. “It swept across the country, east to west. The lesser ones especially, but prairie and hill trolls, too, and even plenty of greater mountain trolls.”
“Oh my,” I say, touching my mouth. The chunks of marble surrounding me seem to take on a sheen of oily tragedy. “Did any survive?”
“Some of the mothers. There’s a theory that if the mother was strong enough, some of her herd lived.” He shrugs. “Most people stopped caring why and just decided we were lucky not to have to deal with them anymore. Troll wards and walls are pricy, as is the damage to bridges. So now, after a year and a half, there are just piles of calcified troll parts, mostly broken. You can find them in the wild, too. Just statues, day or night.”
Sorrow weighs my fingers as I touch the cool chest of this eyeless hill troll. Nicks in its stone flesh seem to be scars. This is what that sign in Eureka meant by plague rocks. Chunks of dead trolls. The poor creatures. “Why would Bell have these? I thought there were laws about destroying the bodies of dead trolls.”
“Yep, but there are so many now Thor hasn’t been so keen on it. Technically, Bell’s collection is illegal, but nobody cares.”
From the corner of the basement, Sune snorts.
“I’m surprised you didn’t know any of this,” Amon says, pushing to his feet.
I’m surprised, too. I don’t seek out news, but this seems like a thing somebody would have mentioned. Though when it was happening, I was still adjusting to life in the orchard. “Do you think this might have had something to do with why Soren confronted Bell?”
“You’d know better than me.” Amon puts both hands on the eyeless troll’s chest and shoves.
I grab at his wrists, but it’s too late. The troll teeters back, hangs off-balance for a moment, and topples backward in slow motion. It crashes into the hunched troll beside it, both cracking into pieces, crumbling into the rest as troll statues fall like dominoes. Sune yells as the basement fills with stone dust and crashing noise. Amon blocks me from the worst of it, and I hide my face against his chest. The floor trembles like it’s a cave-in.
When everything settles, I shove away to see the damage. Only a third of the trolls have broken over. Sune is crouched up on top of the worktable, covered in gray dust, his coat spread around him like a wedding dress. He scowls. “What was that for, Amon?”
In answer, Amon moves into the wreckage, nudging chunks of troll with his boots, and stoops to roll over larger pieces. “Sometimes they break along organ lines. If you see any hearts or kidneys or stomachs, let me know. I’ll take a few of the heads, too.”
Sune’s scowl hardens.
I understand finally: Amon will sell the pieces as relics or black-market remedies.
“It’s too easy to find troll dust these days,” the godling continues, “and unidentifiable pieces, but whole internal organs still sell lik
e cupcakes if you can find them.”
“Disrespectful,” Sune mutters, flattening his hand on the worktable to leap gently off. His coat flares out, and when he hits the floor, dust puffs off him. He rubs his bald head, smoothing away a layer of pale grime, but then his hands freeze and he sucks in a breath. I push my way toward him, stumbling over broken marble. The tiny drawers stacked along the wall behind the worktable are askew, and one hangs open. I see only a dim silk bag inside, but the moment I’m as near as Sune, I have a sharp urge to snatch the bag up and run.
“Amon,” Sune says carefully, and then he stretches his arm in front of me, barring me from the table. I shove at his arm, but he shifts so his back is to the drawer and takes my shoulders firmly. “Amon,” he says again, as sweat pops at his temples. I crane my neck to see around him to the drawer with its dark treasure. I want it. Badly. My fingers curl into fists, and I close my eyes, take a deep breath against this foreign desire.
Amon knocks over two more trolls to get to us. “Oh, rag me,” he mutters, pushing Sune and I aside. He grabs the silk bag and upends it onto the rough surface of the worktable. I strain forward. Sune turns with me, arm ridged around my shoulders.
Dull yellow metal clatters onto the wooden table: rings roughly beaten into shape, a pyramid ring with a tiny garnet at the tip, an oval pendant, and several bean-sized hunks of raw gold. Or rather, it’s like gold, but such a rich saturation of color I can hardly think it’s real.
Sune lets out a long, thin sigh. “This is more likely to have something to do with Soren and Evan Bell’s coming together.”
“Why? What is it?” I ask.
He says, “Elf gold.”
And Amon says, “Trouble.”
NINE
The stories we tell of elf gold are always tragic. There was the Rhine Gold, which could only be touched by renouncing all love, and the Gift of Andvari was an elf ring that cursed any who wore it with death. Elf gold tempted Ardmore of Deutschland to chase it until he lost everything else he owned. There were elf rings that caused madness and gold hoards at the center of wars. It’s illegal to distribute in the United States of Asgard and illegal to hide, if you can hide it at all. They say it hums a song of seduction you cannot hear, but only feel.
I tuck against Amon’s van as cold wind blasts off the ocean, snaking up my legs and ruffles my skirts, finding the slits between the buttons of my coat. But the sun is shining, bright off the water and white panels of Evan Bell’s house. I watch through narrow eyes as Amon hefts a box of troll parts down the porch steps. Sune follows him, pulling the front door carefully closed.
They approach me and create a fine wind block. I squint up at them. “Soren wasn’t tempted by elf gold to hurt Evan Bell,” I say.
Sune folds his hands behind his back, and Amon shrugs the shoulder balancing the box. The troll parts crunch and rattle around as he says, “You’d know best.”
“This gold can tempt the finest of men,” Sune says.
“Soren is finer than most.”
Sune flicks his eyebrows in a shrug.
The casual nature of his dismissal infuriates me. “Soren Bearstar fought his berserking nature for years. That is madness far more powerful than any mere elf gold, however highly you think of yourself, Sune Rask.”
“I am well aware of my own worth,” he says dangerously.
“But not his.”
“His worth has nothing to do with my job. I am here to find him, not judge him. And right now, this elf gold is the best clue we have. Unless there’s anything you haven’t told me?” His tone demonstrates he knows very well how much I keep to myself.
I bite my tongue, simmering.
Amon gently moves me aside and opens the sliding door. He sets down the box of troll pieces—gray and orange chunks of rock with smooth edges, strangely organic-looking. He pulls the silk bag of elf gold out of his pocket and tucks it into a concealed pouch beneath the driver’s seat.
“It’s lined with iron,” he says. “Harder to tempt you from in there.”
“Convenient that you have it,” I mutter, still angry at Sune’s accusations. “Explain to me, Sune, exactly how this is a clue if we don’t know that Soren’s got anything to do with it.”
But Sune is distracted by the strip of dark skin revealed at Amon’s hip where his shirt stretched up as he leaned into the van.
Amon straightens and answers me slowly, “This is bad business, and elf gold is always responsible for bad business. We can look into Bell’s possible associations with the gold trade and see if Soren crossed paths with him through it. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”
Sune snorts. “Seems like it can’t be a coincidence you’re here, too, Thorson.”
“And a good thing.” Amon flexes his hands. “Since I can handle the stuff better than you.”
I walk away from their bickering and toward the ocean. Its sharp and cold, the waves like broken glass, cutting their way onto shore. A few scraggly trees cling to beach’s edge, and brown grass whips in the wind. There are no cars here, and that neighboring house is a hundred meters south, windows dark. The highway pulls away, ducking in and out of rugged black rock cliffs. What a lonely place. No reason to be here accidentally.
Soren had to have come on purpose.
Turning slowly, I scan the property again. It’s empty but for the van and Jeep and an SUV zooming toward town. How did Soren get here? Did they impound his truck? I don’t recall any such mention in the arrest report.
“Amon,” I call over the wind. He’s looming over Sune. I hurry toward them, boots crunching on the sandy yard. The godling steps back from Sune, who slouches against the van, looking away from both of us with a hard jaw.
“How did Soren get here?” I say excitedly. “He wasn’t with Bell — the witnesses saw him stop Bell’s car. But Soren’s truck was never here, right? It’s a silver pick-up, registered to him. He’s been driving for over a year. There was no report of it being found on site or impounded.”
Sune shakes his head. “I’ll double-check, but no.”
“So did he walk here? From where? The truck must be nearby. Soren avoids people and hotels when he can, so we should see if there’s a campsite — for tents only or trailers, he uses either. If we can find his truck, maybe there’s a clue in it.”
“There are campsites all over.” Amon waves an arm. “The Jotunwood stretches all along the coast and a couple hundred kilometers inland. Some are open this time of year.”
“I’ll find the nearest.” Sune snaps to and hurries toward his Jeep.
Amon shoves the box of troll parts father into his van and climbs in after. I rub my hands on my arms, hopping against the chill. If we can find the truck, I can sit where he was, touch his things. There might be something that, along with the web of yarn, I can use to seeth better, to find more details of his future. I believe Sune is good at his job, but I’d rather find Soren’s new prison sooner than later.
Perching on the edge of the van, I ask Amon what he’s doing.
“Sorting the best specimens so I can wrap them for safer travel. Most of this stuff is damaged enough it doesn’t matter if I leave it in this box, but there’s this…” He lifts out a recognizable kidney. “…that I want to put in cloth.”
For a moment, I watch him expertly dig through, setting out a heart and stomach and several perfect stone teeth beside the kidney. He’s crouched on his knees, but folds smooth cloth from a different box around the specimens as gently as he might a baby.
“How much is that heart worth?” I ask.
“A couple thousand.”
“Impressive.”
“Three years ago, it would’ve been worth ten grand. Before the plague.”
I pull my knees up to my chest and hug them. “Nobody knows what caused it, truly? Not even among the gods?”
Amon shoots me a look spiked with mockery. “Think I’m the one of the two of us they’d tell if they did?”
Helplessly, I glance away. He’s right
. I should be the one to know. To ask any of my godly visitors for answers. But I never sought out real news or anything to remind me of the outside world. Just gossip and old history, nothing that mattered to the present. It felt easier, but I can’t go back to that. I can’t let my place in the world shrivel up again, my dreams fade. When I find Soren, I want to make new choices, find a path that serves my dreams and my orchard. But I don’t see it yet.
• • •
Sune finds a campsite three kilometers away where Soren’s truck was registered on a week pass. Because it’s so near Eureka, it’s remained open to accommodate the regular winter population of predominantly Lokiskin travelers. When we arrive, the ranger tells us Soren made his way to the tents-only campground called Stumpsite because of the massive redwood stump at the center. I lean across Amon to ask if the ranger’s noticed anything out of the ordinary, and he removes his earmuff from one ear to better listen. But he shakes his head and says this time of year there are only a handful of folk out, easy to keep track of. There haven’t been any problems or issues aside from one of the RVs backing into a picnic table yesterday. Soren’s truck still has two nights on its pass, and until that time, he could come and go as he pleased. The ranger doesn’t seem to realize Soren is the Sun’s Berserk or that he was arrested on Yule.
We make our way along the paved road through towering redwood trunks, some glistening with melting frost. Little sunlight pierces the canopy; it dapples the low undergrowth, keeping the evergreen air cool and strangely intimate given the scale of the trees.
The site opens up around a stump taller than me and grown over with a blanket of moss. There’s one lonely red and yellow family tent and the shine of Soren’s silver truck. Amon barely stops his van before I’m out and dashing across the crunch of dead, frosty ground.
The truck’s door handle sticks with cold, but I jerk hard, guessing correctly Soren didn’t leave it locked. The seats are cloth, the dash dusty, and a small glass apple dangles from the rearview mirror. My breath catches.