I don’t care, and by the way her hand in mine remains loose, the way she turns from the apple tree and begins the walk back to the orchard gate, I know Astrid is convincing herself not to care, either. If we had more time, I might try talking her into forgiveness, but I’m selfish for her touch.
The gate looms like a giant’s iron mouth. Torches flicker, and in the far east a line of silver illuminates the mountain peaks.
Henry and his berserkers have been busy. They’ve set Baldur upon a pyre, and at each corner a bowl of herbs burns, sending acrid smoke into the predawn light. All nine berserkers stand at attention with spears and shields. Even Alwulf is there, blood dried on his neck, holding himself tall with his spear.
Their vigil is soon to end.
Freya goes ahead of us and, with a swooping gesture of her arms, makes the gate flow open. Every berserker sees us then, and as one they bow low.
The Feather-Flying Goddess glides over the meadow to where Baldur’s body lies. Idun follows close, and the three of us after. Vider was silent for the entire walk, and now I hear her footsteps pause. But Astrid and I go on.
There’s no spectacle of magic to his resurrection. Freya merely bends over his head and kisses him. Perhaps she speaks, perhaps not. Astrid holds my hand so tight.
Then Vider is at my other side, slipping her hand into the pocket of my bearskin coat to remind me where the troll eye rests.
No one moves, though Henry Halson glances at me. His face is joyful; I wish I could be as glad.
Baldur’s eyes flicker.
To our left, Jenna gasps, and then collapses.
Astrid cries out and runs to her mother’s side. She kneels. Her hands hover over Jenna’s shoulder. But the sun slips over the mountains just then, and Baldur takes a deep breath.
“Idun,” Freya says, in a summons not to be ignored. Astrid touches her mother’s slack lips and stands. I can see her shaking as she walks to Baldur and Freya. The sunlight catches her curls, highlights the gold in her eyes. She is so beautiful.
A murmur goes through the assembled berserkers, but they’re too controlled, or too afraid, to approach.
Astrid says, “Eat, Baldur.”
The god of light opens his eyes. I strain forward, longing to see him closer, to look at the dawn reflected there in all its silvers and pinks.
He sits tentatively, rearranging his weight on the pyre. Though he blinks with confusion, he takes the apple Astrid offers. His fingers brush hers and she smiles. It is the smile I know from the first moment she saw him, when she recognized the godhood in his glance.
I cannot forget that smile.
It seems impossible that I should stand, but my legs remain solid as Baldur puts the small apple between his teeth. He closes his eyes as he eats, and when he swallows, a smile creeps over his mouth. His skin glows from internal radiance and the sun fills the valley with golden light. They are twins, Baldur and the sun, and I blink. It’s hard to stare at him now, to study him in any detail. There aren’t any shadows on his face to give his cheeks or lips depth.
But I know his voice.
“Idun!” he laughs. I squint as he holds his hands out to Astrid. Uncertainty flits through her expression, but she takes his hands and helps him from the pyre.
“This is different,” Baldur says as he stands tall and surveys the valley. Despite myself, I feel warm and comforted. Parts of me that turned themselves to stone crack open.
“Aunt,” he says to Freya, who remains cool and still, “are we in Bear Vale? Where is my father?”
“Yes, Prince,” she replies. “Your father will be here momentarily. You’ve had quite the adventure.”
“You remember nothing of the last few days?” I say, my voice breaking.
Vider echoes my dismay. “No, Baldur, you idiot.”
He frowns at her, likely unused to such abuse. The frown changes from displeasure, though, into confusion again. “You … and …” He glances at me. “It is like a dream. I remember you as if I’ve spent days dreaming of you.”
It is what he said before, only then we were reality and his godhood was the dream.
Astrid stares at him like he’s a ghost. And I realize that what I feel, the horrible betrayal of forgetfulness, is what she will face in me. She sees Baldur and knows that soon she will look at me and I will not know her. My heart twists; my fever blossoms hot. No.
Tugging away from me, Vider steps close to the god of light. “I’m Vider,” she insists. “And this is Soren. You were teaching me to fight, and that’s Astrid—not Idun, whatever they say—and we’ve driven hundreds of miles to get you here. There were trolls and …” Vider trails off as Baldur’s eyes widen.
“It sounds incredible,” he says, his mouth widening into a grin. He spreads his hands. “You must tell me everything. Trolls, you say?”
He’s giddy and bright, so pleasant, and with none of the sorrow or fear I’m used to. I look to Astrid and she’s looking back at me. Baldur the Beautiful lives, and so the sun will be safe in the sky. But the man who became our friend is only a dream.
Freya brings Astrid before the berserkers, introducing her as their Lady of Apples. They all nod, unquestioning, as if the forgetting magic permeates the valley already. Then she instructs them to move Jenna onto Baldur’s pyre, and tells them they should prepare for the Alfather to appear.
While she speaks, Baldur pesters Vider to tell him more of the story. He says she should go with him to find something to eat, because he feels like he hasn’t eaten in a week. His smile is half-cocked, and when I realize he’s flirting with her, I start for them. But Astrid catches my hand. “She can take care of herself,” she murmurs. I turn to her and she takes my face, drags me down, and kisses me as if she can breathe only with my help.
It’s overwhelming and painful, and I twist my hands in her hair. Her nose crushes into mine, and she kisses me hard enough I feel her teeth. It is not pretty, but a mess of kissing. “I will never forget you,” she whispers, “and somewhere inside, you’ll know.”
Words die on my tongue as a cry echoes up from the gathered berserkers: “Hangatyr!” “Alfather!” Odin is coming. It’s time.
I jerk away from Astrid. “Astrid. My boon.” I laugh as I kneel and grab her around the waist. “My boon.”
She lowers her eyes and puts one hand over my heart. “You must ask him for what will make you happy. What will make you live a long life, with love and peace and—and happiness.”
“Yes.” I smile at her, and I feel the fever waking again. This time I welcome the warmth of it, as a comforting power, a familiar storm.
We gather in a crowd, shielding our eyes from the bright morning sun as a great eagle soars over the mountains and spirals down. A nine-foot wingspan at least; his feathers glint bright as gold. Flanking him are two ravens and a red-tailed hawk.
Astrid clutches my hand, and I wish I had a moment to tell her what I’m thinking, but Vider finds us again. She casts a look of horror toward Baldur where he stands beside Freya, hands on his hips, in the white shirt the berserkers gave him but the same jeans we bought at that gas stop just outside Fort Collins. “I can’t trolling believe it,” Vider hisses at us while the eagle banks back. “You’re giving up everything for a nack-brained surfer with about as much in his head as the World Snake.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and say, “He is Baldur the Beautiful.”
“Remember when he ran away to Fiji a few years ago?” Astrid adds with a little smile. “With the whole corps of the Bostown Ballet?”
Vider huffs and crosses her arms. “We should have left him in Mimirsey.”
She continues shooting him furious glances. I watch him, too. Before we arrived in Leavenworth, Baldur asked me to be his friend. And he expected, too, how changed his memories would make him.
Nerves fist in my guts as I think of having my memories torn away.
The eagle’s wings snap, pushing at us with a sudden warm wind, and all the layers of feathers fold into a broad
coat, rather like mine, that settles over Odin’s shoulders. He seems so modern, in black jeans and scuffed boots. His silver hair is braided down his back in a thick rope, and his wide hands hang relaxed at his sides. From here, his empty eye socket is only a shadow. I’m used to seeing him like this, appearing casually with Congress or beneath the New World Tree. Unlike Thor, who will not give over his armor, or Frigg, with her love for the old weaving ways, Odin has always been a god who changes with the times.
The berserkers go onto one knee in unison, saluting with spears held high and a sharp yell of “Hangatyr!”
Their call suspends in the air a moment, while the two giant ravens duck down from the sky, laughing loud enough that I wince. One lands heavily on Odin’s shoulder, and the other flaps up to perch on Jenna’s pyre. The red-tailed hawk lands on the ground, shaking its feathers.
And then, suddenly, Odin’s single eye slides over me and in the empty socket next to it I see the frenzy. Odin scowls fiercely. His hair spreads wild around his head. He takes a spear and stabs himself with it so that his heart’s blood spills into the valley with a hiss of steam. Red is everywhere, drowning me in heat.
I blink and the vision is gone. Nothing changed, except my fever is awake. Burning.
My knees tremble. Here is Odin the Mad One. Odin Dark-Bringer. Father of the Slain. No matter how he plays at being a man, at aiding us when we request it, pretending to be nothing but a figurehead, this is the Alfather. Poetry comes from the pinpoint of black at the center of his heart, and the piece of sky in my chest was born in him, too. The battle-rage flares along my skin and shakes through my bones. I hold tight to it, knowing if I let go so near him, I could scorch the earth with my fury.
I was so unaffected by Freya, but I fall to my knees before the god of berserkers.
Though Vider and Astrid kneel as well, Odin doesn’t even glance their way, but zeros past me and onto Baldur. In three large strides the Alfather is before his son, embracing him tightly enough to wrinkle his coat. Baldur claps Odin hard on the back. As Odin pulls away to study his son, tears fall onto his godly beard. “My son, my arrow,” the Alfather says in a voice like the crashing of waves.
“Father. I am well; no need to worry.” Baldur says it like a child. And he opens up to swing his arm toward us. “These are the friends who brought me here, Father. Soren and Astrid and Vider.”
Freya inserts herself, and quietly says, “Astrid is Astrid no longer, but Idun, Lady of Apples and Youth.”
I stand up, holding Astrid’s hand tight as all the power of Odin’s attention focuses on her. He comes, one arm about his son, and it takes all my energy not to back away. I avoid looking at his eye socket. The shadowed hole gapes there in his face, daring me to try again.
“So,” he says to Astrid, “you are the new keeper of our immortality. And here with Baldur.” Odin’s smile is a wicked one, belying the plain coat and jeans, making him more like the raven on his shoulder. “That must be quite the story. You will come with us to feast, and tell it to all my children. For they are your cousins now, girl.”
Astrid’s hand shakes in mine and I feel the stress in her arm as she hangs on to me, as she barely manages to remain upright. “Alfather,” she says. Her voice is empty.
Odin laughs. Both the raven perched on his shoulder and the raven on the funeral pyre laugh with him. “You are too old to go easily with this, are you not? When you were a child, you’d not have feared me so.”
“There is much to fear in dancing so close with the gods,” she replies, a little of the familiar snap in her voice.
“Only too true, lady.” Odin bows to her, much to my astonishment, and Astrid puts her free hand to her heart and returns the gesture.
The Alfather’s gaze travels to me again, and his single blue eye takes everything in. Not just my bearskin coat and tattoo, but the edges of my frenzy and all the desire I’ve ever had to cut it from my heart. His stare leaves me breathless, as if he has reached in and filled my lungs with lightning. “Soren Berserker, newly named Bearstar. Son of one of my most wayward warriors. I see my son Baldur in your heart. I see you raise your spear against him.”
I quail at his words, and now it is my turn to hold myself up by the touch of Astrid’s hand. “Yes, Alfather,” I say.
“I also”—Odin tilts his head as the raven on his shoulder clacks its beak—“understand that with that spear at your throat you swore yourself out of my service and into his.”
“I did, lord.” I glance to Baldur, where surprise makes his eyes even brighter. The god of light watches me and slowly smiles.
“Interesting.” Odin turns finally to Vider. A single barking laugh launches from him. “Vider! No wonder that layabout wanted to come.”
Vider flushes so hard her delicate skin turns pink from collar to crown. Frowning, I look beyond Odin to where stands a boy I’ve never seen before, with a bush of violent red hair, wearing sunglasses and a T-shirt the color of the hawk’s red tail feathers. No hawk is to be seen. The boy waves. Winding between his fingers is a strand of Vider’s white-blond hair. The strand Freya transformed into that little bird when we were still in the orchard.
Ignoring the boy, Vider raises her chin and says to Odin, “We were promised boons.”
My heart stops and Astrid lets loose a tiny groan. But on the Alfather’s face shock is followed fast by amusement, which is lucky for Vider.
“So you were, trollkin. Let it not be said that all of Loki’s children mince words.” He crouches, and his raven spreads its wide wings for balance as Odin brings himself down to Vider’s level. “And what is it, child, that you ask of me?”
There’s no drop of hesitation before she says, “I would be your berserker, with your madness in my stomach, as wild and strong as Luta Bearsdottir.”
The red-haired boy cries out, “Vider!” and jumps forward. He throws off the sunglasses and strides toward us, with every step aging until he is about fifteen. Her age. Freckles stand out stark against his suddenly bloodless face and he’s reaching one pleading hand to her. “What are you doing?”
I recognize him now: this is Loki himself, patron of caravans. And Vider knows him personally. What else did she not tell us?
But Vider ignores the god of thieves, holding her eyes on Odin’s pale blue gaze. The Alfather ignores the boy, too, and says something. I only see his mouth move, but no words issue forth. Vider, though, must hear them, for she releases my hand and covers her mouth in the most fearful gesture I’ve ever seen her make. Tears fill her eyes but don’t spill over as she nods. “Yes,” she says, and her hands lower to her belly, as if she will feel the growth of the frenzy there.
Astrid squeezes my fingers and I look with her past Odin to where Loki sinks to his knees. The strand of Vider’s hair is still caught in his hand, and I wonder what part he played in all of this. I remember that Fenris Wolf told me it had to have been a god who stole Baldur’s ashes, and although Loki was given alibi, the alibi was from Freya herself, who is clearly involved. Had Glory known? Was she warning me? Or is her faith in her father more than it should be?
Odin says, “So be it.”
Loki casts a baleful glance at Freya.
“Vider Bearskin,” the Alfather intones, “the fever will grow to fill you, and you will writhe with madness and power. From this moment, not berserker born, but berserker made.” Odin places a hand on Vider’s white-blond head. She bows, shivering, and that is all of the passing of power.
Loki jumps to his feet and claps his hands. He is a fire-red hawk, screaming as he flies up.
“That shall be your burden as well, little warrior,” Odin tells Vider. She purses her lips angrily and says nothing.
“And so,” Odin says, standing again. He holds out a hand to me. “What is your wish, Soren?” Amusement glints in his eye. “Immortality? Shall I bring you to the Valhol and make you one of my Lonely Fighters?”
I open my mouth and think for a moment what a thing it would be, with Vider asking to become
a berserker, if I were to ask to be free.
But it isn’t what I want anymore. I take a deep breath and say loud enough that Freya is certain to hear, and perhaps the gathered of Idun’s Bears as well, “I want to remember Astrid.”
I feel her tense beside me, going as still as stone. I don’t breathe, either.
Odin frowns thoughtfully. The raven on his shoulder ruffles its feathers and tilts its head at me.
The moment drags out, and I cannot think that he will refuse. It is really so simple a request. Only memory. Only to hold her always in my heart. Nothing more. No power or immortality. Nothing to bend the laws of gods or men. Please. Just a memory.
And he says, “So it is done.”
All the air falls out of me. “Just like that?”
His smile now is almost tender. “Just like that.”
Astrid grips my arm and stares at me for a split second, then she reaches for Odin. With more courage than I have, she touches the Alfather’s hand. “I want him.”
Freya walks over and slides her fingers around Odin’s braid. The two gods watch us—one blue eye and two gray as the moon. Freya smiles as if this was her intention all along, and on Odin’s cheek a scar slowly blooms, cutting it in half under his missing eye. Just like my tattoo.
The weight of their consideration is the only thing anchoring me to the earth. We are all the beings in the world, me and Astrid and Odin and Freya, and everything hangs between us until Odin finally agrees. “Four days a year you may have him. Once at each quarter of the sun. Every other day, you will serve your apples.”
“Thank you,” she whispers, and closes her eyes.
And like that, our destinies snap together again.
TWENTY-THREE
IMMEDIATELY WE’RE SWEPT away.
Because most of us are incapable of transforming ourselves, Henry Halson offers up the berserk band’s heliplane, a long black machine with two rotors and the face of a grizzly bear painted on its nose. Odin barks a laugh and accepts, clapping Henry on the shoulder with such force the warrior shakes.