The Apple Throne

  I wait in the frozen lava garden and glance left toward the guest house, where Amon, Sune, and Gunn-Elin remain inside. Golden light drops through the dining room windows into the garden, three streaks of warmth. Amon’s blocky shadow darkens the edge of one as he stares out at me. I can’t see his face, but he argued to be out here with me. I refused. If Amon is here, the Changer will find a way to win a boon of him, and Thor’s son won’t owe Loki because of me.

  “Hallo, darling,” Loki murmurs into my ear.

  I startle forward, swinging around. My boots skid in the lava gravel.

  He laughs, mouth wide and teeth shining. Hands on his hips, shoulders back to shoot the laughter at the sky as if this is the most hilarious thing he’s seen in a decade. I fist my hands in my pockets, then finger the three apples of immortality jumbled together like marbles.

  The jollity cuts off suddenly, and he smiles at me: a cool, silky smile on his androgynous face. It’s long and pale, high cheekbones and a sensuous mouth, with green eyes surrounded by too-long lashes. His trench coat is slim and long, collar popped and bobbing lightly under his chin.

  “Idun, Idun, my lovely.” The god of orphans holds out a long, elegant hand. “How long has it been?”

  I slide my frozen fingers against his. “Too long,” I say.

  As I watch, Loki’s shoulders widen and his stance grows bulkier. His jaw goes square and his eyes dark; his nose is shorter and flatter, the same with his cheeks. His hand around mine transforms into a rough, strong warrior’s hand.

  Soren stands before me.

  “You know,” I whisper, tugging free.

  “My daughter,” Loki-as-Soren says, “can be rather possessive of her toys.”

  “Fenris told you he’s missing.”

  The god snaps suddenly sharp teeth and dissolves into a girl a year or so older than me, dangerously gorgeous with layers of dark curls and emerald eyes. She lifts onto her toes, then sways back onto her heels. Eyebrows up, her finger tap against dark leather pants at her hips. Loki says, “She doesn’t know where he is. Like he vanished off the map.”

  I let myself smile, only a little, in anticipation of disappointing her. “That isn’t what I’m going to ask.”

  Her shoulders slump. “Ah, well, good. I couldn’t have told you where he is, and I hate not being able to pay my debts.”

  Tiny white flakes of snow land on her hair and melt. I tilt my chin to look up at the sky. Those clouds blew in so quickly. A snowflake lands on my eyelash, and I blink it away, shivering.

  “I flew through it,” Loki says. “Lake-effect snow. You might be trapped here by morning.”

  I sigh, allowing her to see my frustration. It’s what she wants: to read my emotional state, in order to better negotiate. “Then we should be fast,” I say.

  “You called me here, darling. Name your request. Be specific!” She spreads her arms theatrically, growing taller and masculine again as his coat billows out as though blown by a perfect wind. Dark red hair flares around his ears, and there’s a scatter of freckles burned across his nose as if someone tossed embers at him. Snow drifts down, fluffy and dry, and it does not melt where it hits the lava rocks.

  “Take me to speak with Eirfinna Grimlakinder, one of the elves-under-the-mountain.”

  The god’s face goes blank—featureless and plain, only a pale, freckled young man with hollow green eyes. Then he snaps back together, a flush taking over his cheeks, and his hair flares orange, braiding itself. He grasps my shoulders, laughing again. I can see the pink of his tongue in the dim glow of the cathedral spires. “Idun! You surprise me!”

  Wrapping my fingers around his wrists, I gently pull, but he doesn’t release me. His eyes spark with energy, and snow melts against his forehead and handsome nose. “You like to be surprised,” I say, but softly, almost allowing it to be a question.

  “Sometimes,” he replies, boring into me with that gaze.

  I focus on his pupils, but it’s a mistake. They’re black as that river between stars, where the future dances and Soren’s frenzy screams at me. My fingers throb; I can feel a vibration begin in my teeth. I shut my eyes and wrench fiercely away. My knee hits the rocks, and I fall to my hip, catching myself on my palm. I remain in darkness, breathing deeply, and gouge my bare fingers into the rough, frozen lava rocks until it hurts.

  Loki crouches beside me, a boy of twelve or thirteen, concern etching lines that never belong on a little boy’s face. “What happened to you, Idun?” he asks sweetly. “You’re not yourself.”

  “Will you,” I pant, carefully planting my feet under me, “will you do as I ask and repay your debt to me?”

  Snow hisses down around us, patting the rocks and whistling past my ears.

  “I will take you to the entrance to Eirfinna’s mountain.”

  “And my friends. Amon Thorson and the hunter Sune Rask.”

  He plops onto his butt, suddenly broad as Soren again, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. “I thought I smelled thunder.” His brilliant green eyes dart toward the guesthouse. I catch his sleeve.

  “Leave him be. This is between us, Changer.”

  “Very well, Idun,” he pouts. He springs to his feet, lengthening like a willow tree until he’s six feet tall, slender, and dressed all in white. His eyes grow too round, his mouth pinched, and the skin along the ridge of his cheeks splits. Tiny glittering diamonds grow from his bones there, and when he smiles at me, his teeth are all sharp fangs. “To the Alfheim we go!”

  I shiver, from the cold and not from the cold. “One other thing, Loki,” I say, struggling to keep my voice firm as I stand. “Tell no one Idun has left her orchard.”

  “That!” The Changer’s alien skin reverts until he’s the same elegant man who first approached me, trench coat buttoned tight, but scarlet hair now long and smooth. “That is a second favor.”

  “I won’t owe you more,” I say, reaching into my pocket. I pull out a single, wizened yellow apple.

  I hold it between my thumb and forefinger, offering it.

  His lips part. He studies it. His tongue darts at the corner of his mouth. “I…” He wets his lips. “I already have had my apple this year, and no need to acquire next year’s so early.”

  The god of orphans shrugs, but it’s not casual enough to fool me. I raise onto my toes and slide it under his nose. He inhales sharply. His breath skims warm around my fingers, curling down my palm like a snake. It flicks at my wrist. I hold steady. “An extra,” I breathe.

  “Oh god,” he whispers. “For nothing but my silence? No help, no stopping anything, no lies. Only…only silence in this matter.”

  I brush the wrinkled apple skin against his bottom lip. “Only silence,” I repeat.

  “Darling.” He covers the apple with his hand, and I let go. “You have a bargain.”

  • • •

  I return to the guest house with Loki at my side. She swings our linked hands gently between us, casting me a mischievous smile from a girl’s heart-shaped face. Her orange hair is piled in a crown, and her gown silver and violet, as fine as a queen’s. The apple of immortality disappeared into the folds of the skirt almost immediately.

  Amon jerks the door open before we arrive, meeting my gaze to check on my state. I nod once, and he blocks the entrance with a glare at the god of orphans. “Loki, no nonsense if I let you inside this house.”

  “This isn’t yours to guard, Amon,” Gunn-Elin says hastily, nudging her fingers into her brother’s ribs. “Changer,” she says, curtsying. “Welcome to the Sisters of Sif Holy Guesthouse. All who come with clear hearts are welcome inside.”

  Loki curtsies back, slower and more elegantly, fluttering her lashes at Amon. “See, there, Thorson? I’m perfectly welcome. Thank you, Sister.”

  Amon crosses his arms. “You saying you’ve a clear heart?”

  Gunn-Elin slips past him, taking Loki’s hand. “Only Gunn-Elin, please, Changer.”

  “Amon,” I say.

  He grudgingly steps back.

/>   Sune waits in his full uniform, boots wide, hands clasped behind his back. He’s a sore spot against the relaxed, rustic dining room. “Ah…Lady Loki,” he says with the briefest hesitation. “Major Sune Rask of the Thunderer’s Army.

  “Major!” The god flutters her lashes. “So good to see you again. Reclaimed any famous artifacts lately?”

  Sune bows sharply at the waist. “It is an honor to stand with my lord’s commit-brother once more.”

  Sticking to his girlish appearance, Loki salutes Sune with a lazy two fingers over her heart. “Doesn’t that make me your uncle?” she says to Amon.

  The godling snorts. “Sure, auntie.”

  “Loki’s agreed to lead us to the elves-under-the-mountain,” I put in, determined to end this idle discomfort now.

  “For what in return?” Amon asks.

  Neither the god nor I answer, but Loki says, “We should go now, and perhaps we’ll make it to the door in time.”

  “In time?” Sune asks just as I do.

  Loki’s gown rustles as she shrugs. “To open it. The doors to the mountain only open when the sun alights exactly so upon the proper rune poem.”

  We stand in silence, though Gunn-Elin makes the sign of the hammer over her chest. “What time is that?” I ask.

  “Depends on the season.”

  “And in deep winter?”

  Her pink lips curl into a dreadful smile. “Oh, about ten hours from now.”

  I glance back out at the snowfall, the quick white glazed over the nighttime shadows. “Dawn,” I whisper.

  • • •

  Loki insists on taking a single vehicle because she doesn’t feel like speeding up more than one. She transforms into a dangerous looking young man in motorcycle leathers and says, “This is my show now.”

  While Gunn-Elin whips up sandwiches, Amon and Sune transfer some of Sune’s equipment into the rear of the van and leave room for two of us to ride in the back. I stop Amon and ask if he has anything that counteracts bearbane in berserkers, anything we can use to bring Soren out of it. Sune overhears and leans in to say, “Sal volatile might shock him free.”

  I raise questioning eyebrows.

  Amon says, “Basically smelling salts. I’ll dig around for the most potent.”

  I shake my head. “It isn’t so easy to stop a frenzy, or everyone would know it. They’d have used smelling salts instead of bullets to stop his father.”

  Sune says, “It only disrupts the drug. Then it’s up to the berserker to clear his heart.”

  Inside, I help Gunn-Elin by slicing cheese and washing lettuce. Our elbows graze lightly as we work. “Thank you,” I murmur.

  “Take care of those men, that’s all the thanks I need.”

  The sincerity of it nearly makes me blush. “How do you let this pass you by?” I ask. “I would have… I imagine if I were you I’d be begging to join the adventure. To meet elves, travel with Loki.”

  “It isn’t my adventure to have. I’ve my place and my role here, and that’s important. Adventure is not a piece of my destiny.”

  I study her, noting the quiet little lie embedded so well in her words. I can’t tease it out, though, not without seething or more time.

  Gunn-Elin wraps a thick sandwich in plastic, folding it smoothly, and adds it to a canvas grocery bag emblazoned with RECYCLE: Ymir Did It. You Can Too. Her hand slows as she returns to the stack of sliced bread. “Lady Idun?”

  “Idun.”

  She smiles, but it fades. “Why are there no priests dedicated to you?

  Oh. I finish swiping mayonnaise onto the bread in my hand, taking care to spread evenly, and think of the million things I can’t say.

  “I’m sorry,” Gunn-Elin murmurs. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “No, I…” I turn to her and try to adopt a divine countenance. “I serve the gods, and I serve the apples. There’s no need for anyone to serve me.”

  She parts her lips, but there’s only a brief flash of white teeth before she stops and nods in acceptance.

  “You may say anything,” I say peevishly before I remember I’m supposed to be a goddess.

  “It’s only that I’ve never believed serving a god had anything to do with dedication,” she admits.

  “You don’t serve Thor?”

  “I serve my fellows. I serve guests and the congregation and the bones below our feet. I sometimes remember to serve myself,” she says, chagrined. “But I only love my father and strive to be like him.”

  I take her hand and squeeze it. “Then I have an answer for you: there are no priests of Idun because no one strives to be like me.”

  “They don’t know you.”

  “How can they when I…” I stop. Then I laugh lightly, as if none of it matters. “When I never show myself to the world?”

  “There are a few of us who might see a piece of ourselves in a shy goddess.”

  That makes me truly laugh. Astrid Glyn—shy. How my mother would cackle, how Soren would wince. Gunn-Elin only smiles, clearly uncertain of my outburst. I wish she could be just a girl with me and forget she’s speaking with a so-named goddess. I want to tell her.

  Together we finish the final sandwich, and Gunn-Elin lifts the grocery bag. “Here, and thank you.”

  I take it, surprised by the weight she didn’t seem to notice. A daughter of Thor, after all. Before heading out to the others, I say, “Perhaps when all this is done, I may come visit you?”

  Her face brightens, making tiny licks of lightning sparkle in her dark eyes. “Please do.”

  “And me, too?” Loki Changer slinks up to Gunn-Elin’s other side, handsome and devilish in black leather and a wicked smile.

  “Friends of Thunder are always welcome,” she demurs as we walk across the parking lot. The god kisses her cheek, which widens her eyes.

  “It’s go-time,” Loki says to me darkly. But his hair brightens to a flare of cherry blond. “I’m driving.”

  Amon hugs his sister, and then she hugs Sune, too. Amon heads for the driver’s seat, but Loki beats him, transforming into his princess shape again to say, “Ladies in front.”

  Sune doesn’t bother arguing, but hands me up into the passenger seat before climbing behind me onto the thin carpet of the van. His blue Army bag is there, as well as a small electric camping lantern hanging with the nails from the ceiling. It casts even, pale light. Amon joins him, though they sit as far from each other as possible in the confined space. But nearer the gold than me, I think jealously, then frown at myself. I wonder if I should ask Amon to put it farther away. The iron lining of the hiding place doesn’t seem to be keeping it from slipping into my thoughts.

  Loki slams her door, adjusts the rearview, and says, “All aboard for the night train to Big Elf Mountain.”

  I wave at Gunn-Elin, who watches from the steps of the guest house as Loki shrieks out of the lot. Amon cusses at him and says to take it easy on the poor van. Loki shifts taller until he’s the same elegant man who first appeared tonight. He readjusts the mirror with long fingers and grins. We take off through sleeping Salt City, snow brushing the windshield and glazing the road. There’s nothing but gray, rushing clouds overhead. No stars.

  We go in silence. Even the god of orphans, who I expected to be louder, only taps a finger on the steering wheel. His lips move as if he’s humming or singing soft, but I hear nothing. The engine’s rumble fades, though the vibrations I feel through the seat continue, and the snow flies faster. We pass a car or two, here and gone in a blink. Sune gets onto his knees, holding the back of my seat for support. His frown is apparent in my peripheral vision as he stares with me out ahead.

  “What are you doing to my van?” Amon demands.

  “Speeding it up,” Loki says very quietly. Strained. “Shh, cousin, I have to concentrate until we’re out of the city or I might destroy something.”

  The metal frame shudders around us.

  “Skit and rag me,” Amon snarls. “Is it going to destroy my van?”

  Sune reach
es back to grasp Amon’s shoulder. Amon looks at the hunter’s hand, then at Sune’s hard expression. He doesn’t shrug off the grip or say anything else.

  I fold my hands in my lap, squeezing the blood out of my fingers. The world becomes a rush of wind and snow, the trembling van, the arrhythmic tapping of Loki’s fingers on the wheel. Buildings rise and fall outside, trees whip past, all of it black against black, with arrows of snow in between.

  And with a jolt, we blow out of the storm, free on a black highway rushing east toward the crest of Rock Mountains and dawn.

  Loki sighs with immense satisfaction and says, “What sort of music does this fine machine support?” He slouches in his seat, adjusts the mirror again, and uses it to glance back at Amon.

  “Radio,” is the godling’s rough reply.

  “Boring.” Loki raises an eyebrow at me. “Tell us a story, darling.”

  Sune, settling back onto his heels, says, “I’d like to hear the story of how the Lord of Changes came to owe debt to the Lady of Apples.”

  I watch Loki for his reaction, but the god’s face shifts only a little, into the sixteen-year-old boy with flaming hair and pouting mouth whom I first saw in my orchard. It seems enough a sign of his permission.

  I’ve only told this story to Soren, pressed together under blankets while the clocks from the Alfather ticked our time away too fast. “Since the age of the first Valkyrie, the gods of Asgard have relied upon the apples of immortality for their youth and long lives,” I say. Though now I know the true story of the apples, this is the commonly accepted one. “Before Idun, the lady of apples, the gods warred with each other for control of the crooked apple tree, and the gods warred with the etinfolk—all the frost giants and giants of the wild ocean, all the elves-under-the-mountain and goblins—for every creature in the Nine Worlds longed to live forever. Mankind, too, though women might’ve told them it was a fool’s errand,” I add for my own benefit. “The constant battles and tricks, the strife-stricken hearts, left open a window, and the tree was nearly destroyed and immortality lost forever. And so the gods of Asgard came together and gave the orchard into the keeping of Idun, the only among them each god trusted, for she was fair and kind. They hid her and the orchard behind veils of shadow and illusion—away from the etinfolk, especially. Freya the Witch and her lover the god of the hanged wove the grandest magic into the roots of the apple tree so that only an apple freely given would retain its form and shape. And Idun, their keeper, was the only one with the power of gifting the fruit.