“I’m all right.” I wave him away. “Maybe more sore than I thought. I should have stretched more.”
Baldur is frowning at me in confusion. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no. We should get going anyway.”
Astrid is beside us. She touches my ribs, right over the bruise, then pulls away sharply. Ignoring me, she asks Baldur, “Did he tell you we have no idea where to go?”
“No.” Baldur glances at me. “He said you did know where.”
“I meant,” I say, to Astrid as much as to Baldur, “that we know we have to take you to Idun’s apple orchard, where you can eat one of the apples of immortality. But we don’t know where it is or how to get there.”
“Ah.” His expression brightens and he puts one hand on her shoulder and the other on mine. “So it’s both things.”
Leaning closer to him, Astrid says softly, “We have a more immediate problem, however.”
I spin in a circle, searching for trouble. The highway is quiet, the sky clear, and there’s nothing in sight but a few cars. Even the gas stop is dark.
Astrid says, “We have no money. Just enough for some more gas. I don’t want to ask my uncle to wire more, because it matters now that we aren’t tracked easily. The front page of the newspaper in the lobby said an old woman was killed in Mishigam yesterday because her neighbors decided she was hiding something about Baldur.”
I crouch, balancing with my fingers splayed and barely skimming the asphalt. It makes me feel less like I’ll fall over. “And they closed the gate to Bright Home because a man killed himself there,” I add.
“My god,” Baldur says, horrified. He doesn’t even know about the trolls.
Astrid touches his arm. “It’s bad, but not your fault,” she says. “The way to fix it is to get you home.”
Baldur hisses through his teeth.
From the ground, I say, “I don’t have money. All my father’s went to his victims, and I have a state trust that pays for school. I can’t touch it.”
Baldur and Astrid stand so close their shadows are one thin blur reaching toward me. He asks, “Do I have marketable skills?” It makes me laugh. Just once, and with little humor. Baldur shouldn’t need money. But we do.
Fortunately, Astrid has an idea. “We only need to find a market or festival site where I can perform a seething. A few hours, and we’ll have enough to last a couple of days.”
I raise my head. The sun glares just over their shoulders, a brilliant silver light between Astrid’s head and Baldur’s, turning them into dark silhouettes.
Baldur and I shower and pack, then we’re on the road with empty bellies and the half-full bottle of mead left over from Astrid’s dinner.
We head north, edging along the red-and-gray foothills of the Rock Mountains, which stretch from the center of the USA into the Canadia Territories and Trollhome. Astrid remembers traveling between Bright Home and the great Dragon Geyser in Montania, and that there were plentiful campgrounds and trading posts. We’re bound to come across a likely venue sooner rather than later. I only hope people are calm enough to admit us.
The sun shines through white clouds that billow tall like a separate range of sky mountains. Astrid turns on the radio. We need to know what’s happening, and as the news reels off dire warnings about trolls, about angry people and desperate pilgrims, Baldur grows paler in the backseat. He scoots to the passenger side, where there’s a hint of sun coming through the window, and presses his forehead to the glass.
The news hour ends on an upbeat, though, with a story of a girl in Philadelphia who climbed high into the New World Tree in order to tie a prayer card in among the bare branches. People saw her and reached in through the iron fence to hand her their own prayers, tied with ribbons and bells, which this girl then took with her back into the tree. For two days she’s been papering the tree with colorful prayers, and the reporter says it has made the New World Tree blossom with hope.
Signs for Ashdown Fairground begin to appear before we cross into Cheyenne, but it’s almost two hours before the flat grassland curves toward foothills again. The highway’s not crowded, thanks to the troll warnings no doubt, and most people are going south, against us.
To distract Baldur from his dark thoughts, Astrid climbs into the back with him and begins telling him the story of how Freya agreed to teach Odin her magic only if he lived a mortal life as a woman for seven years. She mentions her mother, and Baldur interrupts to ask, “Where are your parents?”
She tucks a curl behind her ear. I struggle to keep my eyes on the road and not constantly stare at her reflection. “My father I never met,” she admits, “though Mom made up stories about him whenever I asked. I’m not certain she knew his name, or his family. They spent a Yule night together, and she told me Freya herself arranged it, under the sacrificial banners, to enjoy the feasting and dancing, and to bring me into the world. Then my mother disappeared one night, Baldur, and no one has seen her since. They believe she’s dead; everyone does. But I’ll find her again someday, when fate allows.”
“When fate allows,” he repeats, making it more true. After a pause he says, “And you, Soren? Your parents?”
“Father dead. Mother … gone.” I don’t elaborate, and neither pushes.
We’re nearly to a town called Laramie when the Ashdown turnoff beckons with its cracked sign. Someone has erected a temporary plastic arrow declaring the Half-Serpent Trading Company is in town for the semiannual bazaar.
A haze of dust billows behind us as I veer off onto the poorly kept county highway. Baldur leans forward, his arms hanging over the passenger seat. Through the windshield all we see is scrub and the wide-open sky, with snowy peaks far in the distance, until suddenly the ground drops away and we’re curving down into a pocket valley full of color.
Cars loll in the bright sunlight like painted lizards, sprawling haphazardly in a field of crushed grass. Beyond is a gathering of trailers and tall tents, ringing a central open space that’s been filled with booths and blankets. Surrounding it all is a high loop of green cloth, strung on poles and fluttering in the wind. It’s representative of the World Snake, and this is a caravan of Lokiskin.
I slow the car and stop in the middle of the road.
“What’s wrong?” Astrid asks.
“I haven’t been inside a caravan like this in a long time.” I stare down at the flapping green circle, pushing back memories of my mom, of long nights surrounded by firelight, drums, laughter, the sweet smell of leaf sticking to my clothes.
“You lived with a caravan?” Her voice is dry with shock.
“For a few months after my father died.” I glance at Baldur, the only person in the country who doesn’t know anything about Styrr Bearskin. He’s watching me with those sky-mirror eyes. I wonder what will happen to them when it rains.
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll wait in the car with you.”
“No.” I grip the steering wheel and touch the gas. Astrid needs me to catch her when she dances. “I’ll be fine. They’re just memories.”
It’s only ten in the morning, but already the bazaar is running at full strength. I pull the Spark into a crooked line of parked cars and Astrid says, “I’ll need to find the matria and make sure we can set down.”
“Don’t promise her more than ten percent,” I say, handing her the key before climbing out.
I strap my father’s sword across my back and untie my spear from the roof. Though they’re incongruent with my jeans and T-shirt, I’m not willing to leave anything valuable in the car. Besides, there are likely to be plenty of armed Lokiskin, and I have a god to protect.
Astrid hands Baldur a pair of gray-tinted sunglasses she bought with our gas, and tells him to keep them on. “It’s your eyes that really give you away,” she says softly, her fingers brushing the back of his hand.
“We’ll scout a decent spot.” I take Baldur’s elbow and steer him off.
“I need at least three circle meters,” she calls after.
>
Together Baldur and I explore the bazaar. The Half-Serpent Trading Company sells everything from clothing to woven baskets, dipped cinnamon fruit, and used auto parts. Women, and men dressed as women, call out to us, offering deals for steel-polishing cloth for my sword and a new sweatshirt for Baldur. After we have money, we might need to take the girl up on that last offer. Mountain air is cold in spring, and Baldur, without immortality, is as subject to the cold as the rest of us. They all want us to buy food, and my stomach is in perfect agreement. Baldur leans over a table of carved idols, caressing the soapstone ravens and pigs and cats, and the woman selling them flirts with him until he laughs. It’s such a bright sound, and the sun flashes suddenly from behind the clouds. Her eyes widen and she hushes. I guide him away before her suspicions take root.
The noise of tin whistles and twanging six-string banjos, smells of sandalwood and sharp cheese, all the colors and yelling and good-natured bargaining are both familiar and overwhelming to me, reminding me of times I’ve left long behind. It clutters my head, and the press of people makes my fingers twitch to close around the handle of my sword or grip my spear defensively instead of holding it loose as a walking staff. My shoulders tighten, and I can’t settle my eyes from the hectic way they dart everywhere. I focus on my breath, on finding a location for Astrid to seeth. Baldur appears content to walk at my side, drinking it all in without touching.
The only thing I’m grateful for is that the Lokiskin seem to be less paranoid and desperate than the rest of the world. Maybe they assume, despite his alibi, that Loki stole Baldur, and so they have little to worry about. It wouldn’t surprise me.
They do miss Baldur, though. A space has been created in the center of the caravan, where often there would be dancing as the sun set, a large fire, and much laughter. But this space has been covered with a wide blue cloth, and children are painting bright yellow suns on it with their fingers. Candles have been lit around its border, and two women stand, one with a bowl of paper scraps, the other with chalk and pencils. People take time to stop and write on the scraps, then hold them over this or that candle to burn the prayers. They whisper Baldur’s name, every one of them.
Baldur freezes when he notices what’s happening. He grips my hand and whispers, “They are praying for me.”
I hustle him away.
“Soren,” he continues urgently, “I am stripped down to my very core. There is nothing I can do for them. But I feel like … I should. I should reveal myself.”
Pushing him against the red-checked side of a hotpig stall, I say, “Don’t think about what you aren’t doing. Focus on what we need.”
“What of what they need? How can I be hope if I stand here and ignore them?”
His distress flickers off his skin, dancing up my arms to find my frenzy. I take a deep breath. “Baldur,” I whisper, “please don’t. Please stay with us. We—Listen.” I hesitate, because I realize I didn’t want him to know this part. “Your father offered a boon. To whoever brings you safely home. We need it, Astrid and I.”
For the first time, Baldur studies me with something shadowed. Or maybe it’s only the sun in my face, making me wince. His eyes fall to my tattoo. “I’m supposed to be with you,” he says, as though it will always be the answer.
We find an open space on the edge of the bazaar where once there was a booth to flatten the grass. The space has been abandoned, probably because directly beside it is an animal pen. A dozen small ponies share a water trough and bales of hay. Their rough braying and musty smell aren’t anything I’d like to be trapped beside for long. Fortunately, we only need a couple of hours.
Astrid finds us there, with a tall Pan-Asian man in a long green-and-blue robe at her side. His skin is only just darker than mine, and gold hoops decorate his eyebrows, one nostril, and both ears. Green plastic jewels dot his forehead in the twisted figure eight of the World Snake. He smiles, and behind red lipstick his teeth gleam. “Greetings,” he says.
“This is Jon Shandrasdottir,” Astrid says. “Matria of Half-Serpent.”
Jon crosses his ankles in a short curtsy. It’s long-held tradition that the leader of a caravan be a woman or put on the appearance of one, because of Loki’s fondness for traveling the world in the guise of mother or maid. “Pleasure, friends,” Jon says.
Astrid introduces us as her circle keepers, Soren and Paul, and says we’ve been welcomed to seeth for the morning. Fifteen percent of the take goes to Jon in return for the space, mead enough to begin, drummers from his family, and a basket of food. I raise an eyebrow at Astrid, but she waves me away. “I’ll need half an hour,” she tells Jon, “and then I’ll be ready to begin. I’ll seeth until the last seeker comes, or until I fall over, so long as your hospitality holds.”
Curious eyes watch our company as Astrid begins her preparations—children of Loki with their green makeup and snake bracelets, as well as shoppers come from nearby Laramie. A small boy, about five years old, dashes through the pony pen and climbs the fence to hang over and stare at me. He’s in muddy clothes and his dark hair needs a trim, but his smile is true and his eyes wide with wonder. He curls his fingers in a wave. My favorite thing about the caravans was the other kids. We played hand-toe throw and always had enough for stoneball pickup games. That was before the tattoo. I didn’t stand out. I was normal.
“Sam!” a girl calls from the shadow of the trailer attached to the pen.
“Is that you?” I ask him.
The boy nods his head.
“Your sister’s calling.”
He holds out his hand. It shines with some kind of sticky substance, but I take it. He uses my strength to haul himself up onto the top of the fence. Carefully, we pick our way around the pen, me on the outside, Sam walking along the thin wooden rail as though it’s a balance beam. His bare feet curl easily around it. Several of the ponies trail after us, snorting and whuffling as though we might drop carrots out our back pockets.
We reach the far side where the trailer backs up against the pen, shading a second circle of fish tanks and terrariums, crates and cages with rats and rabbits. Instead of hopping down, Sam grips my shoulder and doesn’t let go. I move away, holding my arm out. He dangles from it like a monkey, laughing and kicking his feet. A smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it.
“He isn’t bothering you, is he?” It’s the same girl’s voice, and I lower Sam to the ground as she climbs out of the trailer. She’s about fourteen or fifteen, I guess, in loose pants and a tight green tank top. Her coloring is pure Asgardian: white-blond hair, pale green eyes, skin so light I see veins. The bridge of her nose is pink with sunburn.
“No, maid,” I say respectfully. “Sam here is only using me for what I’m best at. Support.”
She begins to smile, but her eyes find my tattoo and she stares.
“I’m Soren Rebeccasson.” I offer the matronymic, hoping it will comfort her. We don’t need frazzled nerves today.
“My name is Vider Lokisdottir.” She squares her shoulders; her voice is even and she tears her gaze off my tattoo and brings it to my eyes.
“Snakes!” Sam says, taking my hand and dragging me toward a terrarium settled against the crunchy grass. He flips off the lid and reaches in. Two small snakes, both dark gray and green, crawl up his arms. He draws them out and allows them to twist half around his shoulders and into his hair. His mouth is open and he’s giggling the whole time. Vider slips a hand into a separate terrarium and removes another, slightly thicker snake, with markings more golden and tan.
She offers it to me. “She’s just a python, won’t hurt you.”
“Royal, isn’t she?” I hold out my hand and let the snake make her own way onto my wrist. Her head is light as a feather, skimming against my palm, and her scales dry. As she slides up my arm to curl around my elbow, I run a finger down her back. The texture is both pebbly and smooth.
“You know snakes?” Vider leans back on her heels, lips pursed.
“I used to travel with a caravan. W
hen I was a boy younger than you.”
“But you’re Odin’s.”
“My mother wasn’t.”
Sam skips over, offering Vider one of his snakes. She gently uncoils it from his neck.
I settle down onto a pile of dusty rugs. Here, in the lee of their trailer, the noise of the bazaar is muffled. Beyond the pony pen, I have an excellent view of Astrid as she weaves her circle. Baldur’s hair gleams in the sun; he’s found a chair somewhere and stretched out to soak in the heat. They’ll call for me if they need me. Here I draw less attention, and the less attention we attract before she begins her seething, the better. I ask Vider and Sam, “How long have you two been in Half-Serpent?”
“Always!” sings Sam. I assume his parents have long traveled with the caravan. He probably was born here.
Vider shrugs and sits beside me. “A couple of years is all for me.” Her shoulders relax, and she strokes the python on my arm. She said her name was Lokisdottir, suggesting she doesn’t know her family, or else chose to put them aside when she joined the caravan. There are no good reasons for such a thing. But nor are there ways to ask.
Sam says, “Do you know how snakes were born?”
I do, of course, but say, “Tell me.”
He embellishes a version I know well: Loki’s belly squirming larger than the world with a hundred million snake-babies ready to explode, but when Freya cuts him open, only Jormundgandr, the giant World Snake, emerges to wrap around the earth. Sam’s version includes gushing blood and birth fluids, and shrieking minor goddesses. The little boy cackles like an old man and wiggles his fingers like snakes. He pats my chest as he assures me it’s the best story in the nine worlds. But Vider says, “Oh, so?” and after slipping the snake in her arms back into its glass cage, she gestures for his attention. Sam shouts and stamps his little foot in preparation for a fit, and I quiet him by promising him a bear ride if he listens. After twisting his face and considering, he climbs onto my lap.