I say to the cat-wight, “We ask you to allow us the use of your barn for one more night. We have magic to attend to that requires this sort of earthly privacy.”
It twitches one ear, and holds all its attention on Vider. She smiles and nods, affirming my statement. When the cat-wight holds out its hand, Vider does as well, and the troll wraps its thin fingers around her thumb. “Come, come,” it says in its sandpaper voice.
“Vider,” I say, concerned she’ll agree.
She ignores me just as the cat-wight did, and stands, bent over enough not to strain the little troll’s arm as it clasps her finger. “I will bargain with your mother,” she agrees.
“Vider,” I say again, taking her other hand.
“I’m a daughter of Loki,” she tells me. “And kin to such creatures. They will eat our cakes and drink our mead, and we will bargain. Wait here.” The last she says slowly and firmly.
I glance at the dark doorway. I don’t know if there are five more inside, or a hundred. I likely can’t kill them all, and it would be insulting to the land here to try. We came to their territory, oblivious and rude as crows. I clench my jaw and glare at her. But Vider shrugs. She disengages from me and says to the cat-wight, “I accept the hospitality.”
It leads her across the porch and she vanishes into the house.
For a moment, I don’t know what to do. I hear nothing but the wind against the eaves and through the barren tree limbs. I grind one foot against the ground, hands on my waist. My fingers itch for a spear, or at least to draw my sword.
If there’s a problem, Vider will scream. She’s fast and smart and spindly. Even if she can’t fight free, she will at least find a way to warn me.
I settle with my feet wide, my hands folded in front of me. Ready. Waiting.
I wait a long time.
The sun moves far enough in the sky that the shadow of the house comes noticeably nearer to me. I recite to myself the first seethkona’s prophecy of the creation of the world, from Ymir’s death to the naming of Ash and Elm.
Just as building anxiety threatens to crack my calm, and I can feel the frenzy spin faster, Vider’s voice calls out to me, “Soren, would you come to the doorway, please?”
I’m there in two leaps, one hand pressed against the torn hinges. I blink to adjust my eyes. It is dim in the house, but not dark. Gray light filters through threadbare curtains. I smell mildew, wet rock, and the thick, musty odor of rotten wood. The door opens into what was a living room, though the sofa has been hollowed out, wallpaper hangs off the wall in long strips, and there are the remains of a fire just in front of the actual fireplace.
Trolls crouch and sit in every corner. They bunch up in the destroyed sofa cushions, staring at me with lidless eyes. Some pick their teeth with tiny bone-needles; some wear scraps of clothing. They are tiny beasts, many with the features of a cat in face or fur or long curling tail.
And Vider sits cross-legged among them, with the original cat-wight on one side of her, and a three-foot-tall and nearly-as-wide troll-mother on the other. The troll-mother is mottled green and gray like a dead fish, and her cat eyes are silver as Vider’s hair. She wears what used to be an apron, and her flaccid breasts droop over a round stomach. But she smiles, and pats Vider’s knee with one thick hand. “Stay,” she says, and the trolls clap.
Before I can protest, a troll near a stack of rotting books rolls a red rubber ball at Vider. Vider catches it and rolls it back. A bent Slinky shines, strung between two of the trolls, and there are other toys scattered all around. Vider catches the rubber ball again, and rolls it toward another troll. Vider says, “It’s all right, Soren. I’ll stay here with them tonight, and they will not bother you and Astrid.”
My teeth are on edge. The trolls are small and childlike, but they have claws that could rip through Vider’s stomach, and teeth that might crush her bones. Any moment they might change their tiny minds. Any moment the troll-mother might take that thick hand and cover Vider’s mouth and nose so she can’t breathe. Then they will still have Vider to play with, and I will return in the morning to find her bones charred in the fire, and her intestines—instead of that Slinky—strung between two of the trolls.
The choice is between fighting our way out and losing the location for summoning my father, or allowing Vider to do as the trolls wish. I remind myself she’s a daughter of Loki. She’s as close to trollkin as a person gets.
And I remember the look in her eyes when she first saw my tattoo. When she homed in on it and never let go.
I clasp my hands in front of me again, and bow. I hold my eyes upon the troll-mother’s. “Very well, little mother. Our friend Vider Lokisdottir will stay the night in your den. At dawn, when the sun turns the world into stone, you’ll send her back to us whole and unharmed, and we will abandon your barn.”
She inclines her feline head and says, “Yesss.”
Vider, not moving from her seat on the carpet, says, “Please ask the others not to worry.”
“I will. Be safe.”
Her smile is shallow and her expression too still as she says, “I am in no danger. The trollkin are my kin.”
I back out of the doorway and touch my hand over my heart for her bravery.
FIFTEEN
WHEN I TELL Baldur of Vider’s decision, he looks past me toward the trolls’ house. “Are you certain, Soren?”
His eyes darken and I expect the sky to follow suit, but it remains sharply blue. I move so my head blocks his view, and say, “It was her choice. She’s Lokiskin, and the trolls will honor that for one night. We must have time to perform the ritual, and you—”
“Me,” he says with a heavy sigh. His eyelids shut and his shoulders droop. “When the sun sets, I will be useless.”
“We will do this for you. You’re not yourself without the apple.”
“I wish we could do it now.” The almost-god twists to glance south after Astrid, and bitterness flavors his words.
“We can’t.”
When he looks back to me, his eyes are sad. “Nothing is worth doing that cannot be done under the sun.”
I’ve heard stories of seethkonas raising the dead; stories of sorrow and loss. Odin has done it himself, and Freya, too, for no one knows the secrets of the earth as well as those resting within it. I want to ask Astrid to tell me a story of resurrection that ends well for everyone. Do such stories even exist? But when she returns from her meditations, she is quiet, her demeanor smooth as a deep pool. I tell her about Vider, and she holds her breath a moment before nodding peacefully.
As the sun sets, my nerve endings prick and tingle. For better or worse, we are doing this thing.
With Baldur tucked in sleep inside the barn, as hidden as we can make him, Astrid and I walk south along the creek toward a place she found in the afternoon. Here the water bends to create a natural U and will act as a barrier to hold her power contained.
We have no flashlight, and make our way by the low moonlight as best we can. Astrid tells me my father’s interment ship would be the ideal place for such a ritual, and barring that, a crossroads. But as neither is possible, my presence and our desperation will have to suffice.
We arrive, hopping over the creek to the opposite bank. Astrid says, “We need a small fire. Will you gather some wood while I lay out the rest?” She unrolls her seething kit.
Icy wind flows down through the trees, gentle and slow like the sky’s caress. I pick my way among fallen branches, gathering them, hoping they’re dry enough to burn without too much smoke. I take pinecones, too, and some of the top layer of needles for getting the fire started.
I kick clear a space where Astrid directs and build the fire, lighting it with starter fluid from her seething kit. It catches a little bit too eagerly. I decide to pretend it’s not an omen.
Astrid has knelt and opened her bag to pull out the remains of the thin yew branch she took from the ashes of the fire we made last week on the hill. With it, she draws runes of binding into the dirt. She
takes corrberries and chews them with her eyes closed. Then she drinks long of honey mead from a clear glass bottle, the last of those purchased with money from the caravan seething. When she lowers the bottle, she sighs mightily.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” I say, unable to bear the silence and not-knowing. Father’s sword is strapped to my back, and my hand twitches to pull it free.
She holds my gaze. With the fire to her right, half her face is lit by wicked orange light, and the other half is in darkness. I see the gleam of her shadowed eye, and think she looks just like Freya wearing her Hel Queen face: half-alive and half-dead. She says, “The corrberry and mead invite me to step between the worlds. I’ll call your father, and he’ll be bound here by these runes.” Astrid points to the nine runes she’s circled us with. “And the water.”
All her dire warnings from earlier flood around me. “But he’ll be … himself?”
Astrid takes my hand and squeezes it, as if unable to promise any other way.
With a tangle of nerves like razor wire in my chest, I crouch beside her in the darkness, forcing myself to imagine my father’s face, his wide shoulders and hard hands. Because he was a son of Odin, his body was burned upon a pyre and his ashes buried. That body is gone, but his spirit will remember the form, whether he resides now in the Valhol or in the depths of Hel.
A ghostly smile appears on Astrid’s mouth. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I say, but my head is shaking no. I don’t want to see him; I don’t want to hear his voice or pretend he isn’t long-dead. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“You will know what to do, son of Odin.” Her voice is breathy, already fading into the trance. Her eyes flutter closed. “I feel it coming.” She points at one of the pouches. “If I stop breathing for more than twenty-seven seconds, smear this onto my lips.”
Twenty-seven seconds is forever. “If you stop breathing.” I reach for her, to grab her arms and end this, to keep her safe and not let her step out between the worlds. I need her in this world, with me.
But Astrid takes another swig of mead and stands up. “It is time.” She drops the bottle into my waiting hands and then spreads her arms. “Freya, Feather-Flying Goddess, Queen of Hel. Hear me! Hear me!”
Astrid’s voice rings through the trees, rolling up and down the prairie like a peal of thunder. “I am Astrid Glyn, daughter of Jenna, and your child. Hear me!” The creek gathers her name and carries it away to all the rest of the world.
My heartbeat quickens as she cries, “My lady, my mother of magic, I call Styrr Bearskin from your embrace. I call him from his place beside your throne. I call him from his bed where he sleeps in your love. Styrr Bearskin. Styrr Bearskin. Styrr Bearskin.”
The flames leap high. They crack and pop, and sparks flare up. But nothing happens. My father does not appear. Astrid continues calling his name.
Now that we’ve begun, it has to work. The longer she stays in this wild place without him answering, the more likely we’ll be faced with complications. I look up at her, at the wind pushing back her skirt, at the glint of moonlight on the black pearls slicing across her throat. And I call on my war god, on the god of the hanged, for the first time in my life.
I whisper, “Odin, send him to us.” I kneel and bury my fingers in the earth. “He died with your song on his tongue. He died with your rage in his blood. We seek Idun, we seek her orchard, and we need my father to save your son.”
Astrid begins to stomp her foot on the ground in the rhythm of my heart. She continues to call his name. The wind shakes the pine trees and needles rain down over us. The stomping beat reverberates through my bones. I lean down and take out the tiny dagger tucked into its sheath in Astrid’s kit. With it I cut a small chunk of my already-short hair, and I scatter the hairs into the fire. I hold out my hand and slice open my thumb so that blood drips down and is swallowed up by the flickering orange flames. “Father,” I whisper.
Suddenly Astrid stills. Her mouth falls open and she collapses onto her knees. Her eyes are wide and unseeing. Harsh breath chokes in and out and her jaw twitches as though she is trying to cough something away. Her hands are rigid at her sides, fingers splayed.
“Astrid.” I move toward her, to catch her, to lower her to the ground, but there’s a shuffling sound from across the fire.
Twisting quickly, I see a figure rise from the earth, as though it was huddled there in a fetal ball. It stands tall, with braids falling over its shoulders and down a body clothed in jeans and a Silver Horse T-shirt. Dried blood is splashed hard across its chest.
Dad.
His eyes are black through and through, like chunks of coal. His face is stretched tight to his hairline and his lips are as white as his cheeks. But it is my father.
“Who calls me?” he asks, in a voice like dry sticks scraped together. His head tilts down. “My son. My Soren.”
Astrid continues to cough in her trance, mouth gaping wide, but I can’t move, because he says my name. My father says my name.
“Soren, why have you called me?”
He is so strong, so broad even in death. His hair is shaded gold by the fire, his face fierce. A perfect son of Odin.
“Soren, why have you called me?”
Stumbling to my feet, I stare at him. “Father,” I whisper. I’m as tall as he is now. “Styrr.” I wipe my sweating hands against my pants. “Son of Jul.” With each naming his eyes clear, until they are the same green I knew so well. I can’t speak past the hard stone in my throat.
“Soren.” He smiles, the mischievous smile that spelled fun for me and trouble for Mom. Next will come his laugh, and I want to go to him and put my ear to his chest the way I used to, to hear that laugh being born in his heart.
But if I walk around the fire, I will not be next to Astrid. Her hard breathing drags at me. I can’t leave her side, even to touch my father. Not when Astrid might stop breathing and I would be too far to hear. “Dad.”
“You called my name, son, and I came.”
I struggle to remember why we called. “Idun, Dad. Did you know her?”
And here it is: his laugh. “The Youthful Lady! Ah, what beauty and charm. Yes, I knew her.”
“Where, Dad?”
“She called me her gentle bear, and loved me.” Dad winks. “Don’t go and tell your mom that.”
His chuckles pace Astrid’s choking breath. I don’t have time.
“How do we find the orchard, Dad? How?”
His face freezes and he stares at me. “My son. My bear-son.”
“Where is the orchard? You have to tell me, please.”
“No one can find the orchard but one called by the Lady of Apples.”
“No, Dad, we have to. We have to find it!”
He squints over the fire; his green eyes spark through the haze of smoke. “Did you take up my sword?”
I reach over my shoulder and grasp the hilt. “Yes, Dad, yes. I did. I took it from you and carry it still.”
“Oh, my Soren.” His eyes shut and his body jerks. Twice. Three times. Then again and again in rapid succession, the way it did when they shot him.
“Dad!” I draw the sword. It melts orange in the firelight. “Dad! Look! Your sword. I took it. I am your son and your sword is here.”
He stops moving, but his eyes remain closed and he whispers, “I shall not … I shall not … with words of fear …”
I say, “For Odin will welcome me. Death comes without lamentation, and the Valkyrie summon me home.”
Dad’s dry voice joins me. “Gladly shall I drink ale from the Poet’s Cup, for the days of my life are ended.” He opens his eyes as we say together, “I die with a laugh.”
The frenzy is alive inside me, cutting at my ribs to be free. To battle at my father’s side. I’m reaching across the fire for him, to touch him and pull him closer or to go with him into whatever Hel is his. But Astrid’s choking keeps me back. With massive effort, I tighten my hand on the sword. If he can’t tell me where the orch
ard is directly, I have to find another way. As calmly and firmly as possible, I say, “Dad, I need to know where you met Mom.”
His eyelids flutter and something yellow, but like a tear, drips from his lashes. “Leavenworth. It was near Leavenworth. They have amazing apples there. And you can see the Cascades.”
I close my teeth around an exclamation of relief. Please, Odin, let our guess be correct, that he met Mom while serving at the orchard. It’s the only way I can be the key. “Thank you.”
“My son, I see the mark on your face.”
It’s my turn to laugh, a tight, fearful laugh. “I am truly your son, and a berserker.”
“And in commit.”
“No, Dad, I’m not in a band.”
He raises a hand and points to Astrid.
I shift so I am mostly blocking his view of her.
“She is not long for this world,” he says.
“No!” The word cuts through the fire and my dad staggers back.
Astrid’s breath chokes off, then restarts in a ragged gasp. I touch her hair, winding my fingers into the curls. “Tell me, Styrr Bearskin, what will happen to Astrid.”
“The Lady of Apples knows. She’s waiting for you. For the bear, the sun, and the seether. One will die, one will forget, and one will be reborn.”
“What does that mean?” My fingers are too tight in Astrid’s hair, but I can’t let go. I won’t let go.
Dad is silent. His mouth presses closed and he stares through the smoke. His eyes darken, swirling into black coals again. I’m losing him as Astrid loses her breath. With one hand, he draws a rune in the air. And again. And again. “Only this,” he says in a voice of sand. “The commit will break.”
“You can’t know!” I yell at him, and sweep one hand through the flames. I’ll banish him; he has nothing to say that I want to hear.
“My son!” He flings out his arms. “My blessings on you. Your mother’s wisdom guide you, your father’s strength guide you, your heart’s belief guide you. My blessings on you and your love!”