The Weight of Stars

  After scrubbing my hair with honey- and chemical-smelling soap and scraping clean my body, I put on an emerald bikini and complementary sarong. I stretch up onto my toes, fingers reaching toward the ceiling, and jut out my empty belly.

  There’s ham frying downstairs, and he’s roasting some apples, too. I smell toast and mustard-seed cheese, capers and smoked salmon and…mango jalapeño chutney.

  I kneel to dig under the bed for my plastic bin of nail polish, choose three shades of green, and take the little bottles downstairs with me to retouch my toes. Tyr stands at his counter cutting into a cantaloupe.

  He’s lit a few unscented beeswax candles, the kind he knows I like, with their balmy old smell and light smoke. He makes them himself these days. There’s a quiet radio show playing from a box atop the refrigerator, just the murmur of news. I set my polish on the round table in the breakfast nook and join him, leaning across the counter to pluck a piece of salmon. He flicks his clear blue eyes at me, cheeks twitching in nearly a smile, just the promise of one.

  I swallow the fish, then lick my chops loudly for him, putting all my weight on my forearms to swing my heels up in the back playfully. “I’m clean now,” I say.

  Tyr nods and slides the halved cantaloupe toward me with his gold and silver hand, and then the butcher knife. He goes to flip the ham, and I take up the task of cutting fruit. We work in silence except for the murmur of the radio, the pop of fat, the schick of the knife, and my purring stomach.

  His metal hand does him little good, other than as a placeholder or eye-catcher. The fingers move slowly, and the wrist barely bends. They might have done better, the elf queens, but Tyr did not wish it. The hand is a reminder, he says, of hunger and love.

  I don’t like to hear him say those words, either of them. Neither of them.

  We spread our lunch feast on one of the tables on the patio, in the shade of a wide blue umbrella. Sun flickers on the pool and on the ocean, off the sleek black windows of his yacht.

  We eat.

  There is no talk until every crumb is consumed, mostly by me. Then both of us lean back in the wicker chairs and sip black coffee. I am barely hungry now, but the pinch remains, mildly throbbing under my diaphragm for attention. I close my eyes, let the wind dry my hair.

  “What is wrong with you, Fenris?” Tyr asks after a long lull of distant waves and a dance of seagulls in the sky.

  I shrug, tacky and short. How to explain to him what made me cry in Soren’s arms last night? Why I want the world to end? That there is nothing for me but this hunger?

  “Fenris,” he says softly. He gazes out to the bright ocean. A few sailing boats mark the water with long white lines.

  “I think they were right to fear me,” I say.

  “Cowards.”

  “Cowards run away; they do not act. The Alfather and his family did. They bound me against Fate.”

  “They judged you for a crime you had not yet committed.”

  “I will, though,” I mutter.

  His disapproving frown makes me squirm.

  I say, “It isn’t because I think I’m weak or even because of destiny, Tyr. I want to do it.”

  The god of heroism startles. In him, it is like watching a glacier shift. “You’ve never said that before. Not in all the years of your life have you said that to me.”

  “I wanted to once before,” I confess, turning my face away from his. “When you founded this country, when Old Asgard became New, when you were all setting up the systems of government and going through the land enslaving and battling. Riddling and bargaining with men. I’d been coming here a long time, since before Gudrid Far-Traveler led her family to Vinland. It was wild and empty, and people were easy to avoid. They had great civilizations here, did you know? Up and down the Mizizibi River, and they had complicated trade routes and built earthworks, not nearly so grand as pyramids or castles but impressive. They left me alone, I left them alone. Ate pygmy mammoths and greater mammoths, trolls and bison and old condors when I could catch them. Ran through mountains and didn’t meet a man or woman for months. But they were here. I wonder what Freya saw in the weave of Fate for them? Or if she cared at all when you came here, when you conquered them?”

  I glance at Tyr, but his cragged, handsome face is untouched by pity or empathy or anything. Waiting for me to get to the point.

  “It happened so fast,” I say. “A hundred years, and my wild land was gone, my neighbors killed or enslaved. I don’t know why it occurred so quickly. All I know is that the momentum of change changed. Industry and science and communication came together in discovery and invention to make this modern world seem like a child in her parent’s shoes. People barely keep up with it, but drive recklessly forward anyway! Remember the Thralls’ War? Men and women fighting against each other and against their gods in order to make people free. Good! But look how it was done, Tyr. Humans actually forced change upon the Alfather himself. They push forward and forward, pushing for progress and plowing over anything in their way – traditions or ways of life. This United States of Asgard is a monster.”

  I catch myself thinking, A hungry monster.

  Tyr says, “Such things have happened before, Fenris. In other lands and other times. You are only looking at what is in front of you, only looking at what you can see.”

  “What else should my eyes be for?” I snarl.

  “You’re telling yourself a story about this country that suits how you feel instead of what actually is—finding a narrative to match your emotions, instead of finding anger or satisfaction or joy in the more complicated, messy truth.”

  “Bias.” I say it low in my throat, disdainfully. Bias is Tyr’s ancient enemy.

  He nods once, regal and slow.

  I thrust to my feet. “It is impossible to be unbiased, Tyr! Not and have a heart, have desires. And I know you are not made of stone. You want.”

  “And what do I want?” he asks mildly.

  “Peace!”

  “And what you want is to eat Baldur and start the twilight of the gods?”

  I lick my lips before I realize what I’m doing. Under all the grease and mustard smells hanging in the air, under the concrete and lawn and chlorine and ocean, I detect the apple-blood richness pumping through Tyr. My mouth waters at the memory of his blood spilling over my tongue.

  Grasping my stomach, I curse in seven old languages, hissing my fury, because this gaping hunger is making me shake. I turn my back to Tyr, shoulders hunched against the agony. “I wanted to eat him before, too at the beginning of this country, when everything was in upheaval, before I was distracted by automobiles and telephones and the television. There was so much to see and smell and do, to learn and devour! But I’ve done everything in this new world. I want to eat him now because…because there’s nothing left for me. I don’t fit here.”

  Tyr’s hands fall to my shoulders, one warm and gentle, one cool and hard and heavy. He stands behind me, close enough to feel his body heat and smell skin and smoke and the memory of pillow feathers in his short blond hair. “You don’t fit, so you want to end the world? Ah, what a selfish notion, Fenris Wolf. How like your mother you are sometimes.”

  I clench my arms around myself, gripping my elbows. “I’m so hungry, Tyr, and that is why I want to end the world.”

  “And so you invent a story to convince yourself it is not selfish, it is right. That the world deserves to lose its sun and gods and begin anew.”

  “Then I should end,” I say harshly, pulling away from him. He lets me go. I stomp around the outer crescent of the pool toward the ocean, and stop as a breeze brings myriad fish and rot and flower smells.

  “Fenris,” he calls, and do I detect a note of feeling in my name?

  I glance back to see him with one hand out—his flesh-and-bone hand—reaching for me. His high brow wrinkles with confusion and hurt. “Fenris,” he says again, quieter now that I’m looking at him. He shakes his head. “Don’t say such things.”

  “Why?”
I yell, exaggerating the word, all mouth and challenge.

  “You know,” he says. His expression settles back into its perpetual near-frown.

  “I don’t know,” I insist quietly. I suddenly want him to say it; I hunger to hear him reveal his cursed bias. For me.

  He won’t. I should know already, he would say. Isn’t he the one who brings me an apple of immortality every spring? Not my mother, not any of our cousins. He sees to it. Is that not enough of a gesture to prove his loyalty?

  Apples and kisses.

  I want more. I want more.

  I dig my fingers into my hair, scraping the scalp. I fist my hands; I tear at the dark curls. My knees bend, my back curves. I crouch like an egg beside Tyr’s pool, face tucked in. I am shaking, starving, angry, on the verge of tears again.

  I am so hungry. So tired. I want more.

  My refrain.

  Tyr kneels beside me. He brushes the hair off my back, then traces the line of oily scar that is my necessary collar. “Your hunger was not bound the way your body was; isn’t that what is happening? You remain small, a girl, a strong wolf, but your hunger is the size of your sister, who wraps herself around the middle world. You cannot contain it with little bites, tiny moments of satisfaction.”

  I shake my head. Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know. “Lock me up, Tyr, if you don’t want me to eat him. Lock me up.”

  “You don’t need that. Stay here. Remain here with me and I will be your anchor, as I always have been.”

  “I want more,” I whisper.

  He leaves his hand against the back of my neck but says nothing.

  • • •

  I stay for a while.

  It is easier with Tyr so nearby, his calm, judging eyes on me. His skills in the kitchen help, too. We play an old game of planning elaborate meals and dinner parties, spending hours shopping and prepping, chopping and cooking, only to eat it all: one or two shares for Tyr, the rest for me. On Tyrsday, when he travels elsewhere to sit judgment, I lounge at the pool, pretending I am a great tropical flower, feasting on the sunlight. I swim laps and hold my breath for long minutes.

  Odinsday, I find a local Odinist chapel that smells of old blood and incense and sit still for as long as I can stand it before running home to Tyr.

  Thorsday, I follow him into the Everglades, and we hunt through fetid smells for alligators. He keeps an airboat out where there are no earthy paths, only waterways and huts on stilts.

  Freyasday, he drives me in a sporty white two-seat convertible to an all-natural restaurant and buys out the entire menu for me. I eat very well: hormone-free beef and fresh raw fish and my favorite kinds of steamed and creamed veggies. The lavender cake and mint cream is my favorite dessert. When we’re finished, I sneak out the back under the pretense of using the toilet and run to a nearby park, where I’ve seen an old seethkona dance on Freyasdays. I push through the gathered seekers, snapping and glaring at any who complain, and offer her a gold bangle to read my Fate.

  She is bent and wrinkled, in a white sundress that shows off the gray-brown bark of her skin. Fingerless catskin gloves cover her hands, and she wears a sagging crown of hibiscus flowers. I smell the crowd of people, sweaty and perfumed, hopeful, anxious, laughing, and tense; I smell hair product and makeup, Cuban coffee and hot cream, spices and hot pigs and rust from the swing set.

  The seethkona takes my hands. I’m in a short halter dress printed with obnoxious green leaves, but nobody will care, because of how amazing it looks against my hips and over my tits and scoops so low in the back, you can see the entire curve of my spine. My sandals are spike-heeled; mere mortals might not be able to walk in them across grass or gravel without snapping some bones. I’ve put on my glittery green eye shadow and thick black liner, cab-sav lipstick, fingernails the color of trees at night. They are dangerous, and so is my mouth, so are my teeth and eyes and this aching hunger.

  I am dangerous.

  But I smile prettily for the prophetess.

  She sees through it, talented as one is after living seventy years spying on Fate.

  “Oh, girl,” she says in an ocean-spray voice, “don’t waste that on me, won’t do you no good.”

  “Makes the rest of the crowd feel better, maybe,” I say in my own growling-wolf voice.

  The seether smiles and shakes her runes. She does her spinning dance, slow and steady, but the air picks up gnarled silver strands of her hair and the hem of her skirt, so it seems she’s dancing on another plane, where the wind is faster or gravity has changed.

  The runes fall, pat pat pat, onto the wide woven mat upon which she steps, painted with an elaborate scarlet web and black-white-blue-green stars.

  I know the runes. I’ve read them and their predecessors for ages and lives. But I look only at the seether’s eyes, sharp, dark, and darting, short brown lashes aflutter.

  “Oh, girl,” she repeats, sucking in air. “You’re—” She stops, points one finger, nail yellowing, at a single rune. Glory.

  I laugh, loud and harsh as an upset dog.

  The glory rune is shaped like an arrow, like a T with its cap broken. Its oldest name is Tiwaz, and its oldest meaning is simply god. These days, we call it Tyr.

  “Hungry,” she finishes, mouth turned in sympathy.

  “Is that all you see?” I whisper, verging on hopeless.

  Tip of her tongue visible, she studies the runes. All around us, assorted drums beat arrhythmically, like nobody can focus or nobody cares. “I see it all coming together, soon. Your knot, soon. I see urgency, girl, I see a need, and I see you finding relief—in death or darkness or satisfaction, there.” She points at a few more runes. Torch and joy and death. “I see a heart in a hand. Your heart or your hand, I do not know.”

  A heart in a hand.

  Baldur’s heart in my hand, I hope.

  I wipe sweat from my brow and smack my wine-colored lips. I would like to chew on that pointing finger of hers, knowing it will be stiff and brittle and strong.

  But I go, abrupt and running, through the crowd, away from the park and the drumbeats, and slam into Tyr’s broad chest. He steadies me with his flesh hand, touches his silver and gold hand to my face. The metal is cool even in all this tropical heat. I skim my cheek against it again, a caress, a question, a suggestion.

  Tyr, in lightweight shirtsleeves and linen pants, an old man’s fedora tilted over his short, thin blond hair, removes his hand and leads me back to the convertible.

  • • •

  Freyrsday, I go to Mizizibi and the Bliss Church to hear Ardo Vassing and his wife and protégé preach. Bliss is an amazing monstrosity perched atop a bright green hill outside Jackson, surrounded by piney woods. Three white paths curve toward it, one from the lake and two from the parking lot, up a gentle slope of perfectly manicured grass. The building itself gleams white, though the peaked roof is slate and crowned with an obelisk made of copper, tinged red by the sun. A few centuries ago, the Freyans used more anatomically correct representations of fertility.

  An entire battleship, masts and cannons included, or the whole of the Philadelphia Death Hall could fit inside the church. Grand pink-and-red stained-glass windows stretch across the front, and the double doors are thrown open like welcoming arms. A sign with golden lettering reads Welcome to Bliss.

  I like it.

  I avoid the cameras inside – for the service is filmed for several television stations – and they do make a show of it, with lights and giant screens, a full choir and a six-piece band. The Vassings are a beautiful family, Ardo with his braided beard and pinstripe suit, his wife elegant as a dancer, with a graceful voice to match her legs. Rathi Summerling, the protégé, has a face like sunshine and reddish-golden hair, set off by the shimmering gold waistcoat he strips to in the impassioned middle of his short sermon, rolling up his shirtsleeves to the elbows, mussing his perfect hair. I think he would make an excellent Baldur substitute, but for the fact that he is like a brother to the new Valkyrie, and her ire would be more trouble t
han eating Rathi’s heart would be worth.

  I stand and clap, I sing and sway with the congregation, ears ringing, nose full of high-class perfumes and electronics and chemical-fruity air freshener. The loudness tastes as good as always, the shouts and joy of Freyan Satisfaction. These rituals are not so sexy as they were four hundred years ago, but the energy raises the hair on my arms, makes me want to howl.

  When I get home that evening, Tyr is waiting on the upper balcony like a sentinel, moonlight in his hair and on the rough stubble along his square jaw. He’s in white, and his silver hand might be made of the stars.

  I trail up to the third story and join him. I slide my hands around his waist and kiss his neck. I bare my teeth and sink them into his muscle, not breaking the skin, only feeling the strong meat between shoulder and neck, tasting salt and light sweat and that always-ever-tart-apple-blood just under my lips.

  Shivering and shaking, I remain fixed there, until Tyr dislodges me with a tiny grunt and takes my hand to lead me to the kitchen, where another feast awaits.

  • • •

  It’s Sunsday again, and I go dancing.

  Tyr comes with me, not to a sun temple or to the Church of the Rising Sun, but to a slick old club with a few boarded-up windows and lightning graffiti, the interior glowing with rich orange paint and oil chandeliers, where, even in the middle of the day, gorgeous gentlemen and mothers and lifelong partners dance graceful bolero steps. I would have chosen salsa for its speed and passion, but Tyr would not dance frenetically. He put on a fine suit and polished black shoes, and pointed me toward an elegant green old-fashioned gown with an asymmetrical hemline, high boat collar, no sleeves, and matching heels with rhinestone buckles across the toe. We go through the bolero dance again and again, smooth and nimble, arms arched, toes pointed, me laughing and whirling under his arm. When we spin together, faces turned toward each other, Tyr is almost smiling.