It’s like she knows. But she can’t. The way she looks at my tattoo, like she’s hungry, makes my hands sweat. I grasp for a flirtatious smile, but I haven’t the least idea how to move my mouth to achieve it. I manage only, “Have you heard anything about him? About Baldur?”
“Nope.” Glory shrugs, and she frees me by rolling her eyes to the rafters. “Between you and me, I think he ran off to some island again, to soak up the sun like he did a few years back.”
“Surely the Alfather would be able to find him, if that were the case.”
“Suppose so.”
We’re interrupted when a group of older guys with gray beards comes in to be seated. Glory winks at me as she sashays through the tables to show them to theirs.
I wonder if it’s the shirt, instead of my tattoo. As I was getting ready to go out, Astrid said, “You should always wear that shirt, Soren.” I frowned at her like she was crazy, and it made her laugh. “I just mean the color complements your skin and brings out your eyes.”
“Boys don’t care about that kind of thing,” I told her as I closed the door. But I sure wasn’t going to forget she’d said it.
I’m staring down at my orange Metal Canopy T-shirt when Glory returns. “You don’t seem like the light guitar type,” she says playfully.
“I like things that calm me down.”
“Get worked up easily, do you?”
What do I say to that? I stare at her round cheeks and the wine-colored lipstick making her mouth shine. “Everyone does, lately.”
“That sure is true. But more so for guys like you.” Her voice lowers, and her eyes linger on my tattoo.
I swallow the dryness in my mouth and manage not to lean away. “It is,” I say rather gruffly, “an added concern.”
She smiles slyly. “Have you ever … you know.”
“What?” I hope rather desperately she’s talking about sex.
“Well … you know what they say about men with a spear tattoo.”
We eat babies? Go mad and destroy a dozen men in half a minute? Tear heads off trolls? I know a lot of the things that are said about berserkers, but I don’t think they’re what Glory the hostess means. I’m having trouble not biting down on my own teeth so hard my jaw will ache. Rescue arrives when a kid in a greasy apron pops around the corner with two paper bags.
I stand, smiling tightly at Glory, and take the food in return for very nearly the last of our money. As she picks coins out of the register, she scrawls a phone number on the corner of a napkin, with a spear sketched under it. I notice a tattoo on the underside of her wrist: a snake twisted into a figure eight, just like my mom’s. She’s a follower of Loki. That explains a lot about her attitude.
Just as I turn, the nearest TV catches my attention. There’s a red crawl of news moving across the bottom half of the stoneball game. It’s the word death that grabs me. VALKYRIE OF THE ROCK CLOSES GATE TO BRIGHT HOME AFTER MAN LEAPS TO DEATH TONIGHT AT SUNSET.
Hurrying outside and back down the street toward Sigyn’s Keep-Inn, I’m determined to come up with a plan that does not involve taking Baldur into the thick of chaos. Either Astrid or I can go, perhaps, and prove to the Valkyrie that they need to come to Baldur, in a safe location. I want it to be me, because I’m strong and can’t be hurt by a mere crowd, but I know they’ll believe Astrid more readily. I’m just the son of a reckless murderer.
My tattoo seems to burn on my cheek.
I was thirteen when the ink was pricked under my skin. In a concrete building, surrounded only by militiamen who remembered everything my father did, I’d kept my eyes open the whole time, staring at a scattering of dots on the wall. It hadn’t hurt, not compared to everything that came before, but the sting so close to my eye threatened to draw tears. I refused to let it. I would not cry in front of those men, in front of the artist who scowled and cussed quietly to himself about boring, straight lines and dangerous children.
And I remember seeing it in the mirror for the first time—angry puffed skin around it. Reminding me of my dad. His tattoo had been the same black streak against his hard jaw, sharp cheek. A scar. Linking us together. Take my sword, he said. The last thing he said to me before calling out the Berserker’s Prayer and running at the guns.
The cabin is dark but for flickers of candlelight reaching around the ajar bathroom door. I set the paper bags of food on the empty bed, glance at Baldur. His golden hair manages to pick up the little bit of light and glint like he’s a copper statue.
“Astrid?” I call. Weaving through the dull smell of vacuum cleaner and moldy motel is a strain of acrid yew that I recognize from the night on the barrow at Sanctus Sigurd’s. My boots are silent on the thin carpet and I pause at the bathroom door, brushing my fingers down it. “Astrid?”
Her sudden harsh breathing grates at my ears. I push open the door. Astrid stands before the soot-smeared mirror; she’s drawn all over it with the charred tip of her yew wand. A hundred curving lines, repeated like waves. Obscuring her reflection.
Red wax has bled over onto the toilet tank from the thin candle she lit, and shadows dance against the tiles, turning the bathroom into a white-and-gray prison. Stepping all the way in, I move behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. Her brow glistens with sweat and her wide eyes stare into themselves through the soot.
“Apples,” she says.
I see it, then, the orchard on the mirror. Black and white lines creating a portrait of apple trees across the glass.
She drops the yew wand into the sink and turns around, putting her sooty hands against my chest. I feel the cold seep through my T-shirt. Astrid whispers, “The gods of Asgard welcomed the new Baldur, giving him apples from Idun’s orchard and mead from the Poet’s Cup.” She tilts her face up. “Soren, he needs the apple. Every time after he rises from the New World Tree, they give him one of Idun’s apples to make him immortal. That’s what grounds him back into his life.”
The truth settles in my chest, quieting the rage there. “We have to take him to the orchard.” It’s even a relief, to think we can pass by Shield.
“Yes.” She nods slowly. There are dark shadows under her eyes.
“You need to eat, Astrid.” I turn her by her shoulders and push her gently toward the door. “We can’t do anything until dawn.”
“You too.” She catches my hand, and when I gesture at the mirror she tugs. “No, I’ll do it after.”
I pull back, leaning over to blow out her candle. We’re washed in darkness and I think, This is a perfect moment to kiss her. To draw her against my chest and put my lips against hers. But she laughs lightly, just a wisp of sound, and lets go of me.
With the lamp between the beds on, we settle on top of the quilt, my back against the headboard and Astrid’s against the wall. Our knees touch. I dig paper-wrapped Jotun burgers out and hand her the bottle of mead. As we eat, neither of us talks. Astrid wolfs her burger as if she hasn’t eaten in days, and after swallowing the last of it, untwists the cap on the mead. Although I’m happy with the lavender tea, when she offers me the bottle, I accept and take a very small sip of the thick honey alcohol. It slicks down my throat, leaving a warm, pleasant burn behind on my tongue. I close my eyes and feel the uneven mattress springs shift as Astrid moves to sit beside me. She leans against my arm, her head on my shoulder.
I keep my eyes shut, hoping she’ll fall asleep so we can remain like this for hours.
But she takes the mead back from me and raises it high enough that I hear it glug into her mouth. She sighs heavily. “Soren.”
Because it seems impossible not to, I lift my arm so she can settle under it, and I hold her against me. She smells of ashes and honey. “I have been dreaming the answer for years, Soren.”
“We’re exactly where we’re meant to be,” I say, looking down at her dark curls.
“Exactly where we’re meant to be,” she repeats, her head turning so she can see Baldur. I glance, too, and his eyes flicker beneath his lids. His lips tremble.
&
nbsp; My arm tightens around her. But Astrid touches my knee. “The gathered gods consent to find / why baleful dreams to Baldur come,” she says. It is a line from one of the lays in the Younger Edda. The one telling of Baldur’s death, and of the nightmares that plague him before it.
“We must keep him alive and safe, Astrid.”
“We’ll do what fate dictates.” Her forefinger draws tiny spirals against my jeans. Through the material the pressure is just enough to tickle. “He’s fated to be swallowed by Fenris Wolf someday, at the beginning of Ragnarok, when all the nine worlds will perish.”
I smile wryly into her hair. “So long as Fenris remains bound, the hunger controlled, he’ll be all right.”
“Why am I not surprised you think that’s the moral of Fenris’s story?” Astrid relaxes into me, melting into my side. I close my eyes and imagine turning to stone here, never moving again, and it’s a pleasant thought.
“That’s not it,” Astrid says. “That’s not the point.”
“Oh?” I’m barely listening.
“Long after the World Snake spilled from Loki’s belly, and after, too, the first queen of Hel passed the throne to Freya, Loki transformed himself into a she-wolf in order that he might hide in the wastelands between Gianthome and the Middle World. No one knew why he left, but it was suspected he must have once again angered one of his cousin-gods. For many wolfish generations Loki ran and hunted, played and slept with the pack of giant wolves as they ranged over the mountains and glaciers. And one night, when Loki climbed alone to the edge of a cliff where he could look out over the tundra toward Asgard, a band of frost giants came hunting. They destroyed the pack, spitting and roasting all of Loki’s friends and playmates. A distraught Loki returned to Asgard to grieve.”
I’m familiar with this story, of course, but some of Astrid’s details differ from the basic version they teach in school. She adds depth to the trickster’s desires, and I find myself feeling an ache in my chest because this is a Lokiskin version. Like my mom would have told.
Astrid continues, and the spirals she draws against my jeans heat up. “But Loki did not return alone. In his belly a wolf-child grew, and Loki fed it honey and blood for nine long years until the day the baby was ready to be born. Half wolf and half god, Fenris was as beautiful as she was monstrous. She grew at an alarming rate, eating constantly, anything that was set into her path. She ate so much that Odin asked Freya to look into the strands of fate and read the wolf-child’s destiny. ‘Fenris Wolf shall swallow the sun, oh God of the Hanged,’ Freya told him. ‘She will signal the end of the nine worlds with her appetite.’ ”
Astrid’s hand stills on my knee. “The gods were so horrified and afraid of Fenris Wolf that they went to the goblins under the mountain of Asgard and asked the creatures to create a rope with which to bind her hunger. The goblins were cunning, and angry at Loki for some trick he’d played, and so they did what the gods asked of them, but only barely. They wove a thread of six impossible things, creating a rope that was delicate and beautiful. But Fenris knew it would destroy her. It would keep her from her ravenous destiny, and she knew that to fight destiny was like denying your own name. It took the trust of Tyr the Just, god of accord and honor, to convince her to close her jaw. And even then it was only because he put his hand in her mouth, and she was so hungry she bit it off. The gods used that moment of brief satisfaction to tie the binding rope about her neck.” Astrid brushes my knee as though it’s dirty. “But, Soren, the rope did not bind her hunger. Instead it transformed her into a girl. It keeps her small and human-sized, but with a hunger still as large as the world! Even today her hunger grows and grows, never satisfied. And perhaps it is that rope itself which, by binding her now, will one day make her so starving, so keen to eat, that she will devour our sun.”
Her story fades, and I touch the back of her hand. I draw a spiral there, as small as those she’s traced on my jeans. “You twisted that just for me,” I say.
The shadow of a smile graces Astrid’s mouth. “I worry about you.” Her voice is slow with sleep.
I hug her gently, and watch Baldur sleep, too, wishing I were tired, wishing I could curl on the bed with Astrid and let go of the day. But my palms are hot, and my heart beats beside the black night sky of the berserker’s rage.
Baldur’s hands clench into fists.
I hope he doesn’t dream of burning.
TEN
BALDUR RISES AT dawn, and Astrid is curled against me, her back to my chest and her hair against my chin. I’ve been awake for over an hour, running through breathing exercises as they sleep.
The first thing Baldur does is walk to the door and open it. Sunlight streams in. I squeeze Astrid’s shoulder and she stirs. Her fingers creep up to mine and her eyelids flicker open. We both watch Baldur bask, Astrid breathing twice for each of my own long breaths. Then she slips out of bed and goes to him. The wrinkles fall out of her dress, but her hair is mussed where she slept on it. She brushes her fingers down Baldur’s back before disappearing into the bathroom.
He turns, smiling widely enough I can see his teeth. The sunlight gilds the edges of his hair and I fight back a tightness in my chest. I must keep him safe. “We know where to take you,” I say, my voice heavy after hours of disuse.
“Excellent.” He sounds delighted.
The shower turns on, and the bathroom sink. Astrid must be cleaning the soot from the mirror and the red wax from the toilet tank.
Baldur’s hands settle on his hips. “Shall we have an early-morning spar?”
We choose the far corner of the parking lot as our battleground. It’s away from the road and blocked from view by the bulk of the motel office. After stretching out, we start to jog the perimeter of the lot. An easy rhythm forms between us, and one and a half laps into it, Baldur asks, “Are you certain I’m the god of light?”
I falter, the toe of my boot catching on a patch of weeds pushing up through the cracked asphalt. “You have to be.”
“Why?”
Slowing to a walk, I glance over. A frown pulls his brow together, and he’s staring at me with eyes that hold the pale blue of the sky. “Astrid believes it.”
That surprises him. “That’s all the proof you need?”
I stop completely and turn to face him. “What do you want me to say? That you’re beautiful as only a god can be? That the sunlight calls you like it calls no man? That you—” Make me wonder what it would be like not to fear myself? I can’t voice it, not yet. “Something about you, Baldur, is different. I don’t think that’s in my imagination.”
Baldur crosses his arms, but not in resistance or anger; his hands cup his elbows as if he’s offering himself support. “In Astrid’s story, I was a man, and then Odin made me a god by giving me the apple and holding me at his table. Now I am mortal and have no memory of sitting at the high seat. Even if I was once the god of light, can I still be so?”
The idea is like a cliff crumbling beneath my feet. I shake my head. “You have to be. But you know already it doesn’t matter to me so much what you say, that it’s in your actions if you’re a god. And yesterday, you fought me over that very thing. Your honor was at stake, and you proved it true. The essence of you is here. If you’re only a man, you’re a good one, and I will still help you get to the end of this.” It’s the most I’ve said to him in one go, and I hope that proves to him I mean it.
He looks east toward the dawn. I would have to wince away from the sun, but he stares full on. That his eyes are immune to the brightness should be evidence enough. “Thank you,” he says after a moment, and picks up the jogging again.
Three pensive laps later, Baldur asks, “What sort of god am I?”
How I wish he would ask Astrid these things. I continue at the same pace and say, “Warm and bright. A warrior. Everyone loves you, and although you have a reputation for loving back a little bit, erm, too much, few fault you for it.”
“Too much?”
I twist my lips, not wanting to b
e blunt. But there’s no helping it. “You fall in love with a different woman pretty much every year. Sometimes more than one.”
“Oh.”
The tone makes me glance at him, and he’s wearing a bemused smile. I roll my eyes. “See, you do remember.” And I remember how Astrid watches him. It won’t happen to her.
“Not really. Though … it always ends badly, doesn’t it?”
“They have an exclusive support group, I hear.”
Baldur laughs, and I find myself laughing a little with him. Not because it’s funny, but because of all people, it’s me explaining to Baldur what his love life is like.
We jog on, and I think about the kind of god Baldur is. A lover and a strong fighter, outwardly, but his rebirth in the spring is our most beloved celebration. The moment all of New Asgard waits and breathes together. As I lead us back toward the far corner of the lot for a spar, I admit, “You’re hope, Baldur. That’s what you are.”
He has nothing to say to that, except he cannot meet my eyes.
To soothe us out of the serious conversation, I offer to teach Baldur a few sets of partnered yoga. For a beginner, he’s well balanced, good at finding the energy flow. I shouldn’t be surprised. In return, he shows me something he says he thinks must be his favorite boxing warm-up. “It feels like a favorite” is what he says. My training hasn’t included much hand-to-hand, since berserkers in general don’t have to worry about being disarmed. Odin’s way does not include fisticuffs.
I relax into his instruction, finding myself enjoying the pattern of back-and-forth. It’s been too long since I’ve relaxed as I exercised. I know not to go at him with full strength now, because I can’t risk hurting him, but even just as men we’re well matched.
Astrid arrives to watch. Clean and changed into a pleated skirt and violet sweater, she leans against the hood of the Spark. Her hair is combed straight back into a thicket of curls at her neck.
I am so distracted by her sudden appearance, Baldur slams through a punch I should have easily stopped. It lands against my bruised ribs and I double over. “Soren!” he says, shocked, and grips my elbow.