The Apple Throne

  The Valkyrie studies me through narrow eyes. “I should destroy it.”

  “But the trolls… That would be genocide.”

  “I know.” She pushes to her feet. “I know!” she cries, flinging her arms out. “I don’t even know if I could destroy it.”

  The Valkyrie paces to the burning altar. She spins to face me. “I want to meet this elf. I want to meet the hidden queen of the mountains, this champion of trolls, the murderer of my best friend.” Her chest heaves with some exertion.

  “She’ll be here,” I murmur. I look to the altar and remember my vision of Signy and Eirfinna facing across an ash-covered pyre. “Tonight.”

  • • •

  Signy charges out of the hall, leaving me with the ashes.

  I walk to the altar and remove the torc from my neck. I place it upon the slab of granite. One by one, I remove the rest of the gold rings and lay them in a line. Except for the wide ring fused to my finger, they are not for me. The altar continues to exude heat, to smell of smoke and burned meat. It will all have seeped into my hair and clothing. We’ll have to let the hooded priests come soon to sweep up the ashes for his urn.

  The slam of the rear door lets me know she’s returned. In heavy boots, jeans, and another red sweater, with a sword at her back and a thick belt around her hips that holds an ornate seax. The fire heart hangs free outside her shirt, beating dark red in the rhythm of a pulse. Signy’s pulse.

  “I’ve put the guards off,” she says, stomping up to stand on her throne and face the door. “And ordered the berserkers to let us be. Your godling and hunter, too. Let her come.”

  I sit on the first pew again, knees up, and try not to drift into sleep.

  • • •

  Eirfinna joins us quietly.

  There is flickering light from the prayer candles and very dim silver light streaming in from the gated door leading to the garden of the New World Tree. Signy slouches on her throne, and I have not moved.

  The front doors shove open, and there she stands: Eirfinna Grimlakinder with all the shine she can muster cocooned around her like a star.

  Her eyes are so deeply dark they are hollows in a bleached skull, and the harsh lines of her black-diamond cheek ridges cut up into a wide jack-o-lantern grin. She walks silently in white boots and a white tunic, hair loose and flowing. She carries a short sword in hand, but there is no decoration upon her, no ribbons or jewels or rings. Only what grows in her bones.

  She stops halfway up the center aisle and gestures behind her with a flat hand.

  It is meant for the goblins crouching behind her in the arched doorway of the Death Hall. They snap their teeth and click claws against the marble floor, scrape down the walls, but they do not enter.

  Eirfinna slinks her way to us. I stand, joints aching. “Eirfinna,” I say. “This is Signy Valborn, the Valkyrie of the Tree. Signy, Eirfinna Grimlakinder of the Mountain.”

  Signy plants her feet wide and draws her seax. It is nearly as long as Eirfinna’s short sword. The two face each other beside the altarstone.

  “You killed my friend,” Signy says.

  “And you killed countless trollkin,” Eirfinna replies.

  The Valkyrie lifts her chin defiantly.

  The elf holds out her empty hand. “Give me the heart.”

  Signy tightens her grip on the seax. “I won it, shadow-eater,” she says proudly. “I killed Valtheow, the mother of all trolls, and I took it, as trolls have killed and taken and killed and taken for centuries.”

  Eirfinna cries, “You didn’t swallow it! The heart must live and breathe with blood to thrive!”

  Signy raises her seax, pointing the tip at the elf’s chest. “What would you do with it?”

  “There are troll mothers alive still. Barely.” Eirfinna steps forward. “I will give it to them, and they will choose. They will regenerate their kin.”

  “I will not undo what I’ve done. I won the heart from the troll mothers. I was meant to, and it has to matter. The world has to change because of it.”

  “The near extinction of the trollkin isn’t enough change for you, Valkyrie?”

  “Stop,” I say finally, stepping up, too. “Listen.”

  The three of us stand in a small triangle at the head of Soren’s pyre. I reach out and take Signy’s hand and Eirfinna’s. The Valkyrie’s is hot, the elf’s cold. They both look to me, and I say, “Look at what we have here: a Death Chooser, a god, and an elf queen. There is a heart of fire, an apple of immortality, and transmutable elf-gold.”

  Signy touches the thin iron cage at her chest. Eirfinna looks to my scar and my ring, then to the line of gold upon the altar, and back to the heart. I take the apple out of my bra again. The poor wrinkled thing is washed of character in this dim light; it is like a cracked marble. “Eirfinna, you are made of crystal and flesh, fortified by the mountains, by the earth itself. As the troll mothers are fortified. If you eat my apple before swallowing the heart, you might not be destroyed.”

  Eirfinna does not take her eyes from the heart in Signy’s hand.

  I say, “Freya gave me a prophecy: we choose the monsters we become. You can choose, Eirfinna.”

  The elf tears her gaze from Signy and the heart to stare at me. “Why, Idun? Why do you care? Why would you want this?”

  “It’s what I do,” I say, thinking of Soren who wove a brand new thread of fate when he chose to become the Sun’s Berserk. “I am Idun, born of humankind and born again to the gods. I am neither a fake goddess nor a lost girl. I am not a pretense. I am a bridge, a connection.”

  Signy fists her hand around the heart. “What would you do with it, elf? Tell me why I should let this happen instead of destroying it now. And be warned: I do not care about the race of trolls.”

  Eirfinna stares at Signy. Her lips part, and the tips of her sharp black teeth glint in the candlelight. “I want to take this risk you are unwilling to embrace if it will save the trolls and give me the power to save my people.”

  I quietly say, “Let her make a choice, Signy, as you and I both chose.”

  The Valkyrie suddenly jerks the heart hard enough to snap the chain. Eirfinna drops her sword to the ground with a clatter, takes three gold rings off the altar, and holds them tight in her long white hand. Her black nails glint dangerously. I hold the apple of immortality out, palm up.

  My scar tingles.

  “If you turn into a raging monster,” Signy whispers to Eirfinna, “I will kill you immediately and snatch the heart back.”

  I shake my head. “She won’t.”

  With a strange little smile, Eirfinna plucks the apple from my hand and pops it into her mouth. She swallows without chewing and then cups the rings in both hands. Her eyes fall closed, and I see she has no lashes at all. Her black claws curl upward, making a vicious mouth surrounding the rings as they shiver and shake and, slow as butter, melt into a pool of liquid gold.

  Signy unlocks the iron cage around the heart. The stone tumbles into her palm. It is small and rough and red. She touches it to her mouth, and sweat drips down her temple. Then the Valkyrie thrusts it into the pool of gold.

  I feel it: the flash of heat.

  Eirfinna sings a low note, and the gold flows around the heart, closing off its light.

  Signy sways. I catch her elbow.

  The elf draws the golden heart to her lips. Her black diamond cheek nubs seem to sharpen and grow. Her eyes reflect the gold; she quivers all over. And then she eats the heart.

  Nothing happens.

  She turns wide black eyes to me, then to Signy, who glares.

  The air between us all is warm and thick. My ears feel like they need to pop.

  Then Eirfinna gasps. She falls to her knees hard. I drop with her, taking her face. Her wide, unseeing eyes gape, her mouth flies open. There are so many black teeth.

  The Valkyrie kneels with us, grabs Eirfinna’s hands, and clutches them tight enough to break her own skin on the elf’s claws.

  “It hurts,” Eirfin
na says hoarsely, pulling on her hands, but Signy will not let go.

  I wrap my arms around Eirfinna’s neck and kiss her temple like a blessing. “Choose,” I whisper. Her skin heats under my lips. She is shaking.

  The stone floor beneath us shifts. It melts and we sink in. There is a rumble all around.

  “This is mad,” Signy hisses, but I don’t think she’s angry. She sounds merry or panicked or both. I tighten my arms around Eirfinna and squeeze my eyes shut. I feel Signy’s arm come around me, and Eirfinna jerks inside my arms. Sweat breaks out on me, my stomach rolls, but I do not let go and neither does Signy.

  The scream builds from a thin wail, louder and louder, beginning deep inside Eirfinna, spreading to me and then Signy. We all three of us cry, teeth grinding, heat exploding from inside this circle of arms. I try to breathe. My eyes squeeze tight shut as Eirfinna’s body roils and shifts in my arms, changing and melting and burning.

  What did Soren always say to hold the frenzy calm? I am between the earth and sky.

  So much heat, the power slamming through me, back and forth.

  I am between fire and earth. I am the always-dying. The giver of life. The unique spark that feeds the apples of immortality.

  I breathe.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I open my eyes to the cracked, broken rafters of the Death Hall.

  It’s built to resemble branches of a tree, and those branches hang now, splintered and dropping paint and small hunks of plaster down upon us.

  There’s yelling and loud thuds nearby, but not inside the chamber with us yet.

  I roll, body aching, to the side and see Signy sprawled near me. Blood slashes her face and her sweater is torn, but she’s breathing.

  Eirfinna is a gentle glow beside the altar, which is split down the middle, Sleipnir’s Tooth hanging across the gap like a bridge.

  Struggling to my hands and knees, I crawl to the elf. Her hair is shot with gold, and her white skin glints as though spread with a fine gold dust. Those diamonds cheeks have been tipped with gold, and her claws streak black and gold.

  Most wondrous of all are the golden horns curling out from her skull, elegant and spiraled.

  We three lay in a depressed circle of floor that has melted and reformed in a swirl of marble.

  Eirfinna shivers, and her eyes flash open, black on gold on black. Her now-visible irises shine with golden fire. She leaps into a crouch. I can see the diamond teeth as she sighs and tiny golden tusks breaking where her eyeteeth had been.

  “Eirfinna,” I croak, my throat parched and burned.

  She whips her face around to me and spreads a wide smile. “Idun. Valkyrie.”

  Behind me Signy pushes up to sit.

  “I feel them,” the elf says. “I feel the power down through my feet, through this stone and into the core of the earth. I feel it spreading. The—the mothers wake.”

  Signy touches my back; I grip her hand.

  We help each other to our feet. Eirfinna sways, and her skin heats up. The gold in her eyes seems to spin. I don’t let go of her, and Signy offers support, too.

  The iron gates that lead to the garden of the Tree swing open with a metallic shriek.

  Freya is there.

  The goddess smiles with a vital joy. It transforms her cool face into youth. Her long moon-silver hair falls free around her shoulders, and her gown is the rich gold of the apples of immortality. Her feet are bare, toes peeking beneath the velvet skirt, and simple golden bracelets spiral up her forearms. I see scarlet threads wound about her waist like a belt.

  She comes to us, smoothly, as if the wreckage does not exist.

  “This I did not see, exactly,” she says and smiles again. Then she laughs. It is a clear ring of laughter, merry and sweet, and it brings an answering smile to my lips.

  But Signy scowls.

  “Lady of Dreams,” Eirfinna rasps. She is a brightening, hot sun.

  “Look at you, leohtbora alfcwen.” Freya glides nearer, and Signy and I release the elf so the goddess can face her. “Magnificent.”

  Eirfinna bows, and Freya returns the gesture.

  A great pounding comes from the rear of the temple. We all glance that way.

  Signy yells, “We’re fine. Slow down before you kill us all!”

  “They’ll come through the garden soon,” I say. Somehow, I am both exhausted and exhilarated.

  Freya holds out a moon-white hand. “Come home with me, Idun. You must be ready now.”

  I nod and slip my hand into hers.

  “And you, Eirfinna?” the goddess continues.

  The elf stretches out her arms, arches her back, takes the deepest of breaths. “I shall make my own way home and wake the trolls as I go, feel the power of this land under my feet!”

  Freya reaches a hand toward Signy, who lifts her chin and goes still. “Hrafnling,” the goddess murmurs.

  Signy spits on the floor. “Grit in my mouth,” she mutters.

  Shock clenches my teeth, but Freya only smiles. “Come, Idun.”

  I touch the back of Signy’s hand. “Tell Amon and Sune I’m all right. Thank you. And Soren’s ashes…”

  But Freya draws me with her to the altar. There she blows long across the altarstone. I gasp, but the ashes swirl together. Freya holds out her other hand, palm up, and Soren’s remains twist and turn into a tiny moon, tightening, hardening, until it drops solid into her hand. She tosses it to Signy, who fumbles to catch it. The Valkyrie cradles the stone ball to her chest.

  “Bury it in the roots of the New World Tree,” Freya instructs.

  Then she wraps an arm about me, and the frozen wind of the spirit paths envelops us.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The apple tree is shrunken, its branches twisting inwardly as if to protect itself. But the apples hang still, withered and ugly. They have not fallen.

  I kneel beside it and whisper hello. I touch curled leaves, and I kiss an apple, then another and another. I remove my boots and dig my toes into the earth against the upper roots.

  I tell the apple tree everything I’ve seen and done in nine long days.

  The leaves shiver at my words, and the gray bark warms under my touch.

  All day I remain, talking gently or laying in its scattering, small shade. The sky overhead is bright but cold, and tiny black birds dart among the rest of the orchard trees.

  My heart beats calm and smooth, and I feel it drum in the earth below me. I reach up to toy with the thin leaves and bobbing apples of immortality. They brighten just a little bit.

  PART THREE:

  The Apple Throne

  THIRTY

  I have not stopped dreaming for eighty-one days.

  I dream of Soren in that brilliant, sunny field, sparring against Baldur with gleaming swords, both of them laughing and happy. I dream of his face, skin bare of tattoos, and I dream of him standing beside an old hollow tree, facing the horizon. He turns to look back; there is a flash of gray at his temples.

  I dream of Signy digging deep into the mud at the base of her Tree, planting a hard ball of ashes. I dream of a dozen workmen gutting the Philadelphia Death Hall, and I dream of it rebuilt two years from now, the tree-pillar gilded and thrones for eight women spread around the sanctuary. I dream of the Valkyrie painting runes onto her own pregnant belly, snarling to be left alone or she’ll send the baby straight to the Valhol and won’t you be sorry.

  I dream of Gunn-Elin singing in her catacombs, and in my dreams I see that fate does not let go of your bones when you die. Tiny thin threads link old bones to each other, and I try to remember the exact patterns when I wake, to draw what I can for her. I dream of her, too, in a priest’s raiment, though the Thunderer has never allowed women to take such vows.

  I dream again and again of Amon and Sune: middle-aged Amon with Sune kneeling beside his chair, pleading; Amon clasping Sune’s wrinkled hand as he weeps; young Amon’s head in the hunter’s lap as the godling chokes on blood; white-haired Amon kissing Sune tenderly; young togeth
er, and their boots scraping dirt as they face each other furiously over holmgang shields. So many possibilities.

  And I dream of Eirfinna running across the United States of Asgard on gold and crystal feet, ducking into shadows and slipping under rocks to rediscover wights and prairie trolls who have woken, confused and half-mad, out of the devastating plague. Massive forests pass by her as she runs, deserts and highways, skyscraping cities, deep lakes, snow and rain and fertile valleys and swamps. I dream of her arrival in her mountains where the troll mothers wait, hulking and round as moons, yellow tusks shining, eyes bright and alive. I see Eirfinna kiss them and the troll mothers touch their hands to her breast as they pay homage to the heart.

  I dream of people I’ve hardly met: the barista from Leavenworth, Neri the elf with his amethyst cheeks, militia members and creeping goblins, Darius Strong asleep beside a delicate woman with reddish hair, and even Pilot, much older and prancing around a resigned Soren. Vider, the lady berserker who doesn’t remember me, dropping an apple of immortality to the dusty ground and crushing it under her boot.

  I dream of strangers, too, threaded to me by degrees of separation I don’t understand. They quarrel and laugh, die and grow old. They pierce their ears and design tattoos; they write books and canoe whitewater rapids and join the Army.

  All of it crowds my nights, repeating and shifting as choices change, as the weave of destiny knots and unbinds.

  • • •

  One night, a troll mother climbs down the ring of sleeping volcanoes and into Bear Valley. Into my orchard. She is rough and gray, strips of reddish lichen growing up over her knuckles and corded forearms as if she’s battled a mountain. Startled, I meet her far from the apple tree, and I hold out a hand in greeting.

  She hunkers down to squat between two bent saplings, and her round yellow-green eyes remind me of apples. Her smile reveals boxy teeth, one cracked, and her drooping breasts are scarred in the shape of stars. From a pouch hanging off her worn leather belt, she pulls a scroll. She tosses it to me.