The Weight of Stars

  I blink, rocking with vertigo. “Oh,” I say, stumbling backward. I catch myself on hands and butt and lean back to look up, higher and higher as she raises her head again. The moonlight is nothing compared to her, but it makes her into a monster of crystal and bone and prairie again.

  Goodbye, fire girl, she tells me.

  “Goodbye,” I whisper.

  The prairie shakes as she shoves into the sky, a leap that takes her up a thousand feet. Her wings snap; dirt and grass and flower petals rain down. I cover my head with my arm, peering still, but she is a blur of clouds, a smear of starlight in the night sky.

  I wonder how she would glow under the sun.

  And then she is gone.

  Falling onto my back, I let myself sink down, let my frenzy burn through my spine and into the earth below. I gape, mouth open, eyes wide, fingers dug into the grass. I am itchy and loose from heat and shock. I am starving. I throb with a headache and an empty, scoured heart.

  But oh, what a dragon.

  I suck in a deep breath and yell, “Loki Changer!”

  Nothing.

  The world turns under me, and I don’t feel it, of course; the moon rises, the stars burn cold and silent.

  “Loki?” I say again.

  “I’m right here.” He lounges nearby on his side, head resting on his hand. “Fire girl.”

  I grab the front of his shirt and pull him close. He is like me again, blond and delicate, my fraternal twin in a black T-shirt; but instead of a spear tattoo, it’s a starburst, dark on his pale cheek. “I want you to do something for me.”

  “I might.” He grins.

  “Let’s give them a dragon to hunt, and have some real fun.”

  Pale smoke slips out between his teeth, and his eyes transform green-blue and begin to spin like a planet.

  NINE.

  As the sun rises, we soar so high I’m really ragging cold; without my frenzy, I might not be breathing. Clouds stretch below us, layers of thin moisture distorting the golden prairie, flashing across my face and Loki’s dragon-scale skin. I straddle his neck, and the muscles under my butt and thighs work slow and strong as he maneuvers across the sky with broad wings. Though I wish to spread my arms, too, I hold tight to the curved horns growing out of his spine, squint my eyes against tears and the cold. My frenzy rumbles and spins in rhythm with Loki’s lazy wings.

  My skin is afire from the crisp, biting wind, and my stomach is someplace behind us on the ground.

  Loki transformed into a dragon that looks like you expect them to look, based on picture books and movies: spiny, dangerous head and sinuous neck, four strong legs ending in wicked claws, huge wings—clawed, too, like a bat’s—with horns and ridges and spikes down his tail, and golden-orange-red scales like chunks of flame frozen in time, like rubies and amber resin, like the silent, vicious hot coals in the heart of a fire. His eyes are slit-pupiled and narrow, and when he opens his mouth, his tongue slides out thin as a snake, curling around curved, sickle-sided fangs.

  He crooked the knee of his foreleg for me to climb onto his shoulders. As I settled down, he shifted shape to accommodate me, re-angling his wing bones, growing perfect handholds for me. He stretched and twisted his neck to look at me upside-down. I smiled, I rubbed the smooth, warm scales, I leaned over and kissed his neck while he could see me, because I doubted he would feel it.

  Loki Changer is a dragon for me, large as a barn, with the wingspan of a 747.

  The sun edges over the horizon, and Loki soars. He tilts his wings so our long spiral descent takes us down gently. We dip only as fast as the sun rises, parting the wispy clouds with the wind off his wings.

  I wonder who will spot us first. If Loki could hear me, I would bet him it’ll be Soren, because the berserker has an advantage: me. He’ll feel my frenzy coming, no matter how silent Loki the Dragon flies.

  And I cannot tamp it down. I am flying.

  We dip entirely below the clouds.

  Under the pastel dawn, the prairie awakens like fire: yellow grasses are gilded with orange, and green is made electric with pink shadows. The hunting party’s camp is tucked between two shallow, wide hills, clustered around the creek, half in the shade of trees. The canvas tents are dull and plain amid the riot of summer all around them.

  Loki curls his claws together, clicking them to get my attention. He gestures at the trucks with all the weapons, and I yell, “They can’t kill you, but they might feel bad about shooting down a god.”

  A chuckle shakes his body.

  Only a few people move among the tents, mostly near the mess, and I see someone jogging in a wide circle on the outskirts. That’ll be Soren, I guess.

  This is going to be so much fun. We’ll tease them, scare them, and laugh until we land.

  As Loki pulls around the eastern edge of the camp, our shadow falls against the prairie in full relief: a wavering black dragon mirroring us, a sleek dart of shade, and I take a deep breath. “Don’t kill Sean Hardy,” I yell, thumping Loki’s shoulder.

  His response is only to bark: sharp, deep, loud. Like a crack of thunder.

  I squeeze my thighs against him, hooking the toes of my boots around ridges on the underside of his neck, and let go of the horns.

  Wind catches me and drags my arms back.

  I hold them out like wings and let my frenzy free.

  Loki drops under me.

  Half floating, I scream in terror and in joy.

  My heart bursts in fire, in frenzy and madness.

  The world is red.

  I am screaming.

  I fly.

  As an alarm goes up, I hear yells and screams to accompany mine, but

  I

  am

  gone

  TEN.

  no Vider

  no fire girl

  nothing but

  frenzy-fire

  heat

  A rush of battle, the exhilaration of motion, hot muscles beneath me, the flap of wings, dragon roaring, car engines, and my fingers

  fingers grasping the wind

  My core, my heart, my dragon is alive and all around me, manifest in wind and fire and screaming.

  Screamer.

  There is only air and the dragon and the cries, the crack of thunder—guns—and the laser-swift song of a blade.

  I scream myself raw, and the dragon does, too, his roar reverberating through me and all around me. We are a scream, we are flight, we are dipping and climbing, twisting, laughing, burning red. We are

  Blood in my face

  Sudden bowing pain

  Fury

  My dragon-fire-heart transforms the pain into power

  Raw fiery power

  Hands fisted, desperate to lash and hit, to tear and bite and claw—

  I am

  Vider again

  My eyes see his dangerous, fiery head, the blue sky, the camp a hundred feet below and in chaos.

  I see my shaking hands, I see vicious red blood on my skin, and darker red splashed across Loki’s scales.

  I see the hunters below, four of them. And they’ve finally seen me, too:

  Sean Hardy with a spear in hand, blade to the earth as he holds the others back.

  Lydia Wolfdottir crouched and panting, teeth bared at me like the wolf she is. There is blood on her, too. Not her blood.

  Sune Rask, his Army jacket missing, blood striped down his chest and a gun in his hand.

  And Soren. Soren Bearstar standing like a mountain, heat washing off him in waves; he is the oasis in this desert, shimmering like an illusion.

  None of them attacks again.

  Loki banks and I fall forward against him, exhaustion burying me for a moment. Horns and bony ridges cut up against me, but I hug tighter, I grip around his neck, I cling with my arms and legs. I feel every motion as he wheels around to land on the hill. My side hurts, a quiet, hot pain like I’ve cracked a rib.

  But oh, am I alive.

  My mouth curls into a smile before I know it, my teeth against his s
cales.

  Gently, carefully, he lands.

  Soren and Sean Hardy are speaking; I hear the tenor of their voices, though the words seem to escape my understanding. Too far into dragon I’ve gone; I barely comprehend my human tongue. It makes my smile wider.

  Then Sune says something harsh and gasping, and I feel Loki shrug beneath me. Not for them but for me. To get my attention.

  I push up, sliding off him at the same time, right into Lydia Wolfdottir’s arms.

  She puts me on my feet with a little snarl, and I lean on Loki.

  “Curse it, Vider,” Soren says. His frenzy swarms toward me and I shudder—too much, it’s too much for me.

  My dragon throws up a wing for shade from the pressing sun, and I stroke him, foggy and blinking at Soren’s heavy presence. He looms, chiding me. Someone asks where Visby Larue is.

  “Did you get it all on camera?” I ask, my words raw, because I’m hoarse from screaming.

  Sean Hardy says, “Yes” in a long, bitter drawl.

  Soren puts his fists on his hips. “Loki?”

  I nod, but it’s not necessary. Loki Changer stands beside me wearing his most public face: fifteen years old, wild red hair, freckles, gangly adolescent arms and legs. He bows, smiles, and shakes his head like a dog. “Soren,” he says. “And Sune Rask.”

  Sune’s face is in a permanent wince, the blood on his shirt slowly seeping from a lash across his collar and chest. His gun remains in his hand, a small pistol. He knocks it lightly against his thigh. “I shot her,” he says, about me but not to me.

  I laugh, and it hurts. “I’m not shot. I would know if I was….”

  But my side feels sticky and warm, something thicker than sweat and the slick remains of frenzy heat.

  “I don’t miss,” the hunter says wearily.

  Hidden by the black berserker vest is a patch of wetness now spreading down my hip. When I touch it, my fingers come away red. “Oh,” I say.

  A hiss is all the warning I have before Loki snakes around me and has Sune by the throat. The hunter brings up his gun, hitting Loki in the face with the butt. The god grunts and shifts but doesn’t let go.

  “Loki, stop!” I say.

  He does, like a dog. It’s funny. I laugh, light-headed.

  Soren curls his fingers around Loki’s and pries him off Sune, who collapses onto his knees.

  “This is a disaster,” Sean Hardy says.

  But Lydia is smiling, a twisty, wry smile. “I think it will make good television.”

  “I’m blacking out!” I say, offended.

  Loki is there to catch me.

  ELEVEN.

  In the end, the gathered hunters slay their dragon.

  Not for three more days, once I’ve healed enough to move about on my own. The berserking fever is useful for that, and it wasn’t a terrible wound. Sune Rask does know what he’s doing.

  He shot me because Soren yelled that the dragon was Loki, and Sune assumed it was just like before, when my frenzy was lost in the god’s fire, and nothing would stop us but dramatic action. Soren couldn’t latch onto my frenzy to suck it away, so Sune did the next best thing.

  Put a bullet through my side. A glancing shot, mostly through muscle.

  I deserved it, for the trick we played. What a grand trick it was, too.

  Soren doesn’t appreciate that I’m still laughing.

  For our next trick, Loki and I convince everyone to put on a show: Loki will transform into a dragon again, fly around roaring and threatening, then let us cut him down with a magnificent spear thrown by the dragon slayer with all the cameras on. The footage can be edited for, as Lydia said, really good television. The country will think the dragon is dead, and I won’t have to explain to the world about Laufey the Needle. Loki can take any heat from Thor Thunderer.

  Sean Hardy is the easiest to persuade: He wants to survive. Lydia Wolfdottir doesn’t argue, because she wants to keep the peace and return to her own life. Sune and Soren are more troublesome: The former is a stickler for rules and honesty; the latter is a giant stick-in-the-mud who doesn’t know how to have fun. Loki himself ends up whispering some secret in Soren’s ear that has the berserker grinding his jaw and finally agreeing.

  After them, it’s easy for Loki to cajol and threaten and tempt the entire rest of the crew into agreeing. We choose a cool morning with puffy, picturesque clouds and no rain in the forecast, and a long, relatively flat valley with a few fat cows grazing on the rough, rocky ground as bait.

  From the earth, Loki the Dragon takes my breath away, and my frenzy leaps and soars, desperate to be with him again. His wings curve sharp and his scales reflect the sunlight and prairie, as if he were made of fiery glass. When he roars, it shakes me to my toes, and we all roar back for the cameras.

  The fight is not choreographed, though we discussed techniques around the fire last night, the sort that will play well for an audience, that will allow us all to shine and allow Loki to dance and show off, nearly eat a cameraman, and make off with one of the poor cows in a rain of fur and blood. It’s gruesome; it’s wonderful. Soren and I grapple with him, Sune casts a magnificent bowshot, loosing an arrow into Loki’s eye—apparently, he can shoot anything.

  But I lose myself then, when Loki is half-blinded and I’m unable to help. I stare and struggle with my frenzy, because if I let her loose now, it will be the people I attack: my colleagues, not the dragon. I’ll protect him to my death, even knowing he will be all right, and how will that play on television?

  Together, Sean and Lydia load an old-fashioned spear hurler and deliver the killing blow.

  The massive spear slices into Loki’s chest, and he rears back in the sky, shrieking.

  He snarls and twists; he whips his sinuous neck and slashes with his tail.

  It is a glorious death scene.

  When the dragon crashes onto the prairie, everything trembles and then goes still.

  We pant, all of us, staring as quietly and blankly as if we were cameras ourselves.

  Loki’s blood runs red and dark from the wound at his heart. Blood seeps through his fangs and dribbles down his long dragon-cheek from his gory eye socket.

  I can’t help it; I run to him.

  I kneel at his head and touch him, petting and soothing. Tears fall, and I shake them away as I whisper, “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t, but…it’s hard to watch.”

  No matter that he’ll live again because he ate his apple, no matter that he’s a god and a troublemaker and everything else to me; this must still hurt.

  His body shudders. A few scales fall away.

  The others walk up behind me, slow and reverent. Sean is speaking to the cameras, some arty Odinist words about monsters and beauty and respect for death and the sacrifices that make us what we are.

  I lean against Loki’s neck, grip one of the twisted horns.

  The sun beats down and the wind rushes through the prairie grass. Grasshoppers and bugs return to their daily buzzing refrain. There is dust in my nose and tears gumming my eyes, and the dragon inside me sighs in sorrow. “Come back,” I whisper, and I close my eyes so I do not see him die.

  TWELVE.

  I go home.

  Not to the Devil Bears, or to the sprawling Tejas estate of the Lone Star Henrys where I’ve spent holidays for the past two years, nor to my father’s family in Colorada.

  I drain my meager savings from my military pay, buy a rusty Kaiser with a decent engine, and drive out to Lakota. My old caravan, the Half-Serpent Trading Company, spent a lot of time skirting around the Black Hills, and it’s these pine trees and clear skies and this kind of dry sunshine I dream of when I dream of home. I camp in the car in the shade of forests, building pinecone fires and counting the stars through a thin layer of pine needles. I drive around, into Cheyenne, where there’s grassland a bit like the prairie Flint Hills but flatter and with less vivid green and fewer flowers, certainly in this part of the summer. But really, it’s the evergreen breath on the breeze that makes me
feel clean.

  It’s hard to talk to people, not because of them or this tattoo on my cheek, but because of me. I’ve gone a bit quiet inside, despite my burning frenzy, despite the laughter always waiting tucked up against my palate. I buy buttons and snow globes and decorated spoons in the tourist towns and rock shops that line these lonely highways; I leave them in restaurant bathrooms and crusty bars. I build miniature altars at the crossroads from tin cans and paper flowers, and I use ketchup and mustard to write jokes on the sides of buildings, jokes that will wash away in the rain. I mark them sometimes with a little smear that kind of looks like a dragon.

  Wandering is the Lokiskin way, but it’s safer with a family, with a caravan. You have to take people with you so that when you die, there will be friends to know the places you’ve never been and lay your ashes there.

  I don’t need family or friends for safety anymore, not with this spear tattooed on my cheek and the dragon in my heart. When I die, I guess my body will be burned with other berserkers’ and buried in the Hangadrottin barrow field.

  Always in my life, I’ve gone with others. In the caravan with my mom, of course, with my dad, again with my mom, with Soren, with Henry Halson, with the hunters, and with Loki. Now I’m going only with myself.

  And my dragon.

  And this tiny dry apple of immortality in my back pocket.

  Probably the Hangadrottin will be searching for me. Probably the Devil Bears, too, and Henry. I sent him a postcard from the Badlands. I’ll be named wulfheart, which is only a burden or punishment to berserkers who need their band. Being cast out of a brotherhood doesn’t matter if you never were part of one in the first place.

  I drive north to where the dragon geyser blows every ninety minutes or so, then into Montania and across its tilting plains, leaving pieces of myself and random kitsch and painted fossils everywhere I stop. I curve up into Canadian troll country, ignoring the warning signs, because most of the trolls are gone now, and anyway, I have smiled at the oldest dragon.