The Apple Throne

  With the meat warm in my belly, I open the mead and wash the flavor away. I drink for myself and again for my mother. Then I pour some onto the ground for the etin-folk and some into the fire for Freya. I murmur prayers to her, the goddess of dreams, as I draw a circle with my yew wand and upend the small vial of corrberries into my gloved hand.

  I lick them up, all six of them.

  They crack in my teeth and squeeze down my throat.

  I sway. I turn slowly. The fire heats my face, my back, my face again, and I call out to Freya, to my mother, to her mother, and I sing the song of my family—all without saying my own name.

  I dance. My bare feet stomp the grass, my hands splay wide, and I feel the dizzy, sweet yearning of the brightening stars.

  My head roars with inner wind, my skin tingles. I call to the sky, “Give me a dream, a dream of my future! I am a daughter of Freya, connected to the fate of Soren Bearstar, and this is my need!”

  My stomach twists, my heart beats a flurry. I am spinning and wild. I see nothing but reddish haze as the world tilts beneath me.

  This is the seething dance! I will fling myself up to the heaven of stars, where all the wisdom of the world resides, in that darkness, in that deep! The berries, the mead, the fire, and my family’s blood in my veins—all of it together will carry me to the weave of fate and show me the future!

  I laugh. I call Freya’s name. I call my mother’s name again.

  Blackness, shrill and ringing, rushes at me, and my laugh tightens to a scream.

  It consumes me, the dizzy dance; it throbs in my fingers, beats at my toes, and clenches a fist of night around my heart.

  I try to stop moving—this feels wrong—but I am caught in the spiral, in the dance. It drags me down, choking me with thick, cold smoke.

  • • •

  I wake, aching.

  My mouth cracks dry; my skull is ablaze.

  Sunlight drives arrows against my eyes, despite them being shut tight. I roll away and gasp at the tightness of all my muscles. I moan softly.

  I did not dream.

  All the tricks in the seethkona’s book, everything but a crowd, and I had not even a hint of a vision or dream. Hot tears burn my eyelids.

  But a cool hand touches the back of my neck. Her caress is delicate, nearly tickling, and she says, “You nearly died of those poisons, my love.”

  Freya.

  “You…” I swallow. I cough. I try again. “You heard me call.”

  “No, I did not. I came because of the ripples I saw in the threads of destiny, Idun. Your death would cause changes.”

  I curl in upon myself, refusing to look at her. I did not dream of Soren, of anything.

  “What were you thinking?” Freya gently pulls me up so I lean in her lap, clutching at her thighs as she combs my tangled curls with her fingers.

  “I wanted to get it back,” I whisper. “The dreams. I thought because I still affect Soren’s threads…” The tears will not stop, leaking against Freya’s smooth gown. I should push away, should stop staining it. But I can’t. I only press harder, and my spine bows with a sudden sob.

  Freya curls over me, hugging my shoulders, whispering old words into my ears. I cry, she holds me. All I smell is burnt apples, the grass, and her vivid, sharp perfume.

  “Idun,” the goddess finally says. “You still cling to what you were, who you were. You cannot live in both lives. Everything changes, everything shifts. Idun the Young does not dream. She tends the apples of immortality. She may love, but it is Idun who loves, not a girl with no story, a girl who never existed to the Middle World. Do you understand?”

  Shaking, I sit up. I meet her gaze, awed as always by the cold, stone stars that are her eyes, the pristine beauty of her living face. I imagine my own face so still, so cool. I imagine the tears in my eyes washing them of Astrid Glyn, of the teen prophet, the girl who dreamed.

  It is not real, but it is a beginning.

  Ninety nights.

  I rebuild my fire that night, as the stars poke out to play.

  When it is fierce and nearly blue, I throw my seething kit atop the flames to burn.

  And after the leather curls and the glass vials pop, after the medicines and charms catch, I remove my mother’s plastic pearls. Inside the cottage, I drag that box out from under the bed and place them carefully inside.

  I am a piece of a long string of girls, and it will continue after me. One day, another girl will come here and open this box. She’ll see the pearls, each one the same, one after the other, as we are all the same and unrecognizable. Maybe she’ll wonder which Idun brought the necklace here. Maybe she’ll put it on, maybe she’ll forget it.

  I close up the box and shove it away.

  I am Idun the Young.

  And I do not dream.

  PART TWO:

  The Broken Star

  ONE

  I wake alone the morning after Yule, huddled in a tight ball beneath my quilts. I left my cottage door wide open, for welcome, and the invading winter air promises ice in the back of my throat.

  My eyes are blurry with sleep, and I think to myself, Six hundred and thirty-one nights.

  I quickly bury the number. Sunlight gleams pure and white against the window panes. It’s dawn. Soren.

  I sit up, dragging my quilt about my shoulders.

  The cottage is empty, the hearth cold with ashes.

  He should have kissed me awake, or filled the rustic little room with the smell of the chicory coffee he’s grown so fond of in the south.

  My heart goes a bit to ashes, too.

  I shake the tremble of fear away. Some simple thing must have delayed him, and when he arrives, we’ll have our twenty-four hours.

  Quilt-wrapped, I slide into my house slippers and go stir up the fire. I crouch at the stone hearth and toss in kindling from the brass bucket beside me. There’s plenty of chopped wood just outside the door, all of it from dead apple trees. I blow on the glowing embers until the kindling ignites. As the fire licks along a wrist-thick old branch, I curl my legs up and try to relax.

  Soren will come.

  Nearly two years have passed since I became the lady of this orchard, and in all that time, I’ve seen Soren six days. Today will be the seventh. Seven together out of more than six hundred apart.

  The fire pops. I push to my feet. Through the open door, the apples of immortality are dull yellow fruit on a naked tree. Behind it, the wintery orchard is gray and black and the shocking blue of sky. The sun is high. He’s never been so late.

  I duck into the bathroom to wash, though I showered last night when I returned from Bright Home and the Yule feast. It was a sparkling night of beer and laughter and dancing, and I left the party weary but fulfilled, despite Soren’s absence. He didn’t come to Bright Home last year at Yule, either, though he was waiting for me here at dawn. I would like to see him always, even if we do not dance together or speak, even if we hide our relationship from prying eyes and mortal cameras. But I know how difficult this time of year is for Soren. It’s winter, and Baldur the Beautiful sleeps in Hel until spring. Soren barely tolerates the attention and pandering of these crowded, hot parties when the god of light is at his side. Alone, he’s a helpless wallflower.

  Clean, I put back on last night’s simple white dress. Frigg always sends one for my appearances at Bright Home. I go to the mirror and touch my brow. My curls are longer than Soren will remember. They creep down my spine like honeysuckle. I already scrubbed off the makeup from the feast, and my face is bright and plain. I’m softer and rounder than I used to be, from this lazy orchard living. Less desperate-looking than when I dreamed all night long and starved to find my mother.

  Frigg knows what she’s doing, fashion-wise; this gown drapes off my shoulders pleasingly. Pleasing to me, at least. But Soren likes my cardigans. Maybe I should change.

  I cover my reflection with a splayed hand and laugh at myself. Soren wouldn’t care if I had on burlap. Such indecision and anxiety haven’t hit
me when he’s been on time.

  If only I had a way to know for certain he’s all right.

  I wander out to the basket of fresh bread I baked yesterday and tear off a hunk of crust to eat. Beside it is a small basket of cheese and slices of roast boar from the Yule feast, as well as plastic jars of hummus and a yogurt sauce and assorted veggies. Bottled water and beef jerky and Doritos and candied plums and popcorn. Mint-flavored candy Lady Fenris tucked into my bag, adding condoms with a lascivious wink. Everything we need to pass twenty-four isolated hours. I make my bed and set my little table with a candle and apple blossoms. The fire burns easily.

  Stage set, but the star player isn’t here.

  Outside, cold wind ruffles my orchard, sun glints off the snowy peaks of the Cascades, slanting light into my eyes. I squint and stare, letting the vision blur into a shimmer of silver and white. Maybe if I rub my eyes, Soren will appear like a mirage.

  In slippers, I pace between the cottage and the gnarled tree with its apples of immortality, swiping my toes against the stiff winter grass. Cold bites at my shoulders. I never need a jacket when Soren is here.

  Spinning, I cast my eyes upward. Maybe he’ll come on a heliplane. He did once before, borrowed from a preacher friend of his, though usually he arrives on his own two feet through the orchard gates.

  But the blue-bluer-bluest sky is a mirror reflecting nothing. I slump, fingers on the frozen ground. He could be anywhere in the world.

  The last time he was here he’d been telling me about Pilot, the eleven-year-old berserker who’d managed to convince Soren to apprentice him over the summer. He’s earnest, and I appreciate that, Soren explained, but perhaps a bit too eager.

  I was in his lap, my back to his chest so I could feel his words reverberating at the same time they murmured past my ear. The windows of the little house were open wide to let in the breeze, but we weren’t cold. Soren’s frenzy will fog the windows if we’re not attentive. My bare toes hooked on the chair rungs, and Soren’s arms wound about me like ship’s ropes. I leaned my head back and listened, knowing it helped him pass this day in particular, because the night before we’d stood together and watched Baldur die again, as the god of light does every autumn.

  Soren spoke of his plans for himself and Pilot, how they’d been traveling with a preacher called Rathi Summerling across the Midwest. The caravan would winter down south at a Gulf casino of all places while Rathi considered a run for the newly vacated Cherokeen king seat. Soren wasn’t sure it was the best place to leave Pilot alone when he came back here for Yule. He told me about his friends and the train they’d taken between Chicagland and Fort Vegas with its double-decker sleeping cars, about Vider’s letters lamenting the heat of Tejas, of his friend Signy the Valkyrie tricking him into addressing a joint meeting of the Valkyrie’s council.

  As he spoke, as he wove this complex story with such simple words, populating his life with interesting people, adventures, and possibilities, a great ache bloomed from a seed that had long ago planted in my heart.

  When he’s not here, I’m all right. Happy, even. A few of the gods I call my friends—Lofn and Fulla and Mani—visit me regularly with Bright Home gossip and apple sherry. I walk the length and breadth of the orchard. I care for the spirit of my tree. I read and bake and have begun to draw a little. Some days, when the light blurs the edges of my apple trees and the sky is purple, it feels like a dream. As though I live in this constant dream, surrounded by gods and magic and my own spirit. Those are the days I am content. The days I could live forever.

  But Soren. He reminds me again and again of the world outside and all that I used to desire.

  Sweet swans, where is he?

  The sun is high, the orchard awake. The cardinals dart like ribbons of blood between unfurled leaves that will drink up all the light they can on such a short winter day.

  I fling onto my back. The earth spins beneath me and around me as if this grove were the central axis. The little gray cat appears and curls up beside my knee. He naps there, twitching with his own dreams.

  Lady Fenris could not have known anything was wrong, for she expected him to come; she put condoms in my bag. And if Freya knew he was in danger, she would tell me, wouldn’t she? If Soren were lost or dying or dead? My gods are not so cruel they would let me wait and hope and suffer.

  But it’s past lunchtime, and he’s not here.

  The frosty grass melts around me, molding to my shape. I’m too cold to shiver. I stare up at the clouds sweeping over the sky, and I draw never-ending spirals on my hip.

  Soren is not here.

  The nameless gray cat leaps up suddenly to chase a crow, and I jump up, too. My cold bones crack, but I run and run, around the orchard, diving through thick-woven trees and tripping over fallen branches. I push faster, tearing the skirt and hiking it up to my waist. This, this, is my domain, and I know it. I know the turns in the path, the ill trees, the most gnarled branches. I know where to find the dead trees and the lightening-shot. They all listen to my stories, and some days so do the birds, gathered around me like in a fairy tale. I know Lofn, the goddess of love, prefers pies cooked with bitter apples, and she knows I like to put cheap vodka in my crusts to make them lighter. Loki the Changer is a constant presence between the trees, asking weekly for an apple, wheedling or blackmailing or tricking, but always I have won against him so far. I’ve traveled the spirit winds in the arms of my grandmothers and feasted at the high table in Bright Home beside the greatest of our ancient gods. And when I set foot back here in my orchard, the wind breathes with me, apple-scented and sweet and welcoming. The roots are grown into my heart.

  I run, and I run, and I promise myself when I get back to the cottage, he’ll be waiting.

  But he’s not.

  Furious, I slam inside and throw myself onto the hearth. My knees knock hard. The embers glow red. Sweat glues my curls to my neck and temples, and I think of how I panicked last time and told him not to come back. It was a moment of weakness, of fear and desperation because I didn’t want him to leave, and of course he didn’t believe me. He promised to always return, and I was glad. But now it seems the universe is making me pay for it.

  I rip out of the lovely feasting dress. I turn the shower on again, as hot as it will go, and scratch at my scalp, scrub at my skin as if I can wash all this slimy fear away. I pull on a dark wool dress with ruffled skirts, then scrounge in my jewelry box for the necklace Soren gave me.

  My anger is draining away, leaving only sick dread in its place.

  It was this necklace that set me off the last time he was here, when his stories put that ache in my heart, that longing for the life he leads. I stood up from the chair where he held me in his lap. I poured water to hide my sadness, and Soren used the opportunity to go for his small backpack, which had been slumped on the floor at the foot of the bed. He dug through it and pulled out an elegant red box, tied with a bow.

  “Here,” he said, offering it casually.

  We never gave each other gifts; it seemed too prone to heartache.

  Inside the box was a necklace of black horn beads carved into apples and pomegranates and rosebuds. I nearly dropped it from panic and sharp love. It was perfect. Beautiful. It would be as familiar as my mother’s black pearls, tucked away in the Idun history box, but new and from him. A constant, always reminder of what I didn’t have.

  Soren lifted it out and fumbled a little with the clasp. I turned away, shaking my head.

  “Astrid?” he called softly.

  Staring out the window at the apple trees, I said, “Maybe you should stop coming here.”

  There was only silence behind me, but the temperature of the room rose one-two-three degrees. The clocks and pocket watches hanging from the rafters ticked out their disordered, off-key conversation. Finally, I looked back.

  Soren hadn’t moved. One end of the necklace fell so it dripped like black tears from his hand. He stared at me. His chin angled down, but otherwise, my Soren was a statu
e. I stared, wanting to suck in every detail of him, from the perfect tilt of his eyes, to the shallow valley where his neck and shoulders met. The spear tattoo he’d spent so much time hating, the colorful apple tree tattooed in my honor on his right forearm.

  “Why would you say that?” he asked, sounding lost.

  I thought what a beast I was for hurting him and hesitated. “I…want you to be happy, and you have so many friends, so many adventures, but you drop it all every three months to come here.”

  “I chose this as much as you did, and I want to be here, as much as I can be.”

  “As much as you can be,” I cried. “I resent the time you’re gone, Soren! It ruins the peace of this place. This balance I achieve alone with the orchard and the gods. You show up here and it’s wonderful, but then you’re gone again, and it taints everything for days! I don’t remember how to be Idun when I miss you so much, but there is no Astrid anymore. I don’t know who I am.”

  He put one hand—the hand with the necklace—flat to his chest where the frenzy lives, pressing as if he could hold it back. “Do you still love me?” he murmured.

  I reeled away.

  He waited with lowered brows and that martyred, I can take it, look in his hard brown eyes. “If you don’t want me, Astrid, I won’t come.”

  I thought, And what would I do if he stopped coming? Would I fade into Idun, the faceless lady of youth, the always-dying shell of a goddess? Could I live in contentment as a friend to the gods? Would it be worth it? Worth losing him and the way I feel with him? I couldn’t imagine it.