The Weight of Stars

  A shiver makes its rattling way down my spine. “I didn’t take anything else,” I manage to whisper.

  Low clouds have muffled the world, trapping us here in frozen darkness. The parking lot is an empty cloud-cave, just the Lady Fenris, me, and lines of ghostly cars. Glory wraps her arms around my neck and smells me slowly. The tip of her nose skims my neck, her lips my throat. I push back against the side of the van as she tortures me with light touches, bending to claw gently at my thighs through my jeans. Her mouth hovers over my stomach, and she pushes up my T-shirt.

  “Silver rut, Glory,” I nearly shriek.

  Her laugher crawls up my skin. “Tell me why you smell like giants, or I’ll make you beg so hard, you’ll hate puppies.”

  My brain is all afire, turning black at the edges, but I scramble, I grip at the van door. Why do I smell like giants? Why why whywhywhy?

  Oh.

  My breath explodes out of me. “Gold!” I say, grabbing her hair. I push her away from me, shoving with all my strength. Ninety-nine percent of the world would go flying. But Glory barely staggers. She growls. Her face stretches and her teeth push through her mouth before it all snaps back into that perfect, young, beautiful woman’s face. “Gold?” she purrs. Like a gods-cursed cat.

  I fumble with the handle but pop it out and slide open the door. Diving in, I drag out my bag of elf gold from Eirfinna. I keep it fisted as I thrust it at the wolf, so she can’t just snatch it away.

  Glory shoves her nose against it, then reels back immediately. She shakes her head at me. “Naughty, naughty Amon.” Delight pinches her smile, though.

  I pull the gold against my chest. It pulses in my palm. “I earned it, and it’s none of your business.”

  She shrugs. “I’ll just take my bike then, and you can hunt back up that cute thing you were dancing with.”

  As she turns on her spike heels, I nearly throw myself after her. “Wait— you said something else was stolen? Besides the bike?”

  It’s so quiet, I hear the first new flakes of snow hit the pavement. They gather in her dark hair like lace. Slowly, Glory turns back to me. Her expression is a feral grin, her eyes black. “Loki’s Mask of Changing,” she says.

  My whole body goes cold.

  The Mask hung from the Changer’s belt tonight, reflecting gold, as the god stomped down the high table flyting at my father. Fashioned by ancient elf queens in the time when Loki was young, it taught him the art of shape-shifting, and its said any who wear it could change as he does: not just an illusion, but wholly and complete. Loki Changer does not merely appear as a child or an eagle, a woman or horse or massive dragon, he truly becomes those things in form and essence. It’s magic only he and Freya the Witch have now, since the elf queens diminished.

  Whoever took it will be hunted to the ends of all nine worlds. The gods do not like to share their power, and even less do they like being made into fools.

  But what takes my breath away is the realization that hot skit the Mask would be worth so much money.

  Before I recover, Glory leaps for her motorcycle, flips it on, and skids away. She vanishes with a roar that shakes the parking lot. I hear it for far too long, like a song trapped in a feedback loop, bouncing off the clouds.

  • • •

  Kasja finds me sunk down onto the asphalt, my back against the passenger wheel.

  “Amon?” She crouches in front of me and puts her hands to my face, hissing and snatching them back before dragging at my hands. “You’re frozen, Amon. Get up. Are you all right?”

  I blink, breaking my steady stare through the night. Her fingers scramble at me, and I turn my hands to grip her wrists. “Kasja,” I say. I’m thinking of all the complications piling atop my life as long as the Mask is missing. There’ll be bounty hunters out, investigating all the black-market avenues. And investigating my contacts, who are the only way to get rid of this gold burning a hot hole in my lap. It’s dangerous enough trading with Eirfinna under normal circumstances. Elf gold out in the world is pretty cursed illegal. My route’ll have to shift. No stopping here in Colorada kingstate since it’s so close to the scene of the crime. I wish I could contact Fin and hand it back immediately. Maybe I’ll take it straight north to the Yellowstone caldera and leave it there for her six weeks early. Or I’ll go straight out to Salt City, to trade it in bulk with Uriah. He’s got the best stash spot. Third option: I lay low until Fenris finds her daddy’s mask. “Skit,” I mutter.

  Kasja scrapes her nails down my chest lightly, and all my attention snaps to her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody stole Loki’s Mask of Changing.”

  She twists her lips. “The god of changes still needs his training wheels to shift shape?”

  It’s nice to be with somebody as generally disdainful of the Bright Home gods as I am. Almost comforting. I shrug. “Even if he doesn’t need it, you know he’ll have fit that he let it out of his hands.”

  “And you’re so bothered because?” She draws circles on my collar.

  I fix my eyes firm on the curve of her hairline and manage to say, “There’s the fun sort of trouble, then there’s this sort. I’ll be on the short suspect list for sure.”

  “So what do we do?”

  I open my mouth to say we isn’t in the equation anymore. It’s better for her not to be caught up in whatever’s getting ready to go down in the circles of the gods. People always get hurt. And by people, I mean anyone with a life to lose. But she tilts her eyebrows as if to dare me to push her off. It’s cursed annoying, and just as cursed sexy. I say, “I’m gonna get us a head start out of Shield, before morning traffic. We’ll stop for supplies in the morning and make a decision about where to head.”

  Instead of answering, Kasja drags open the sliding door and climbs inside. “I’ll get settled in then.” She closes the door.

  I stand there alone in the quiet, feeling off-balance, then shake it off to get behind the steering wheel. As I shift gears and send us out of the parking lot, headlamps cutting through quietly falling snow, Kasja nestles down just behind me. The shuffle of blankets and her small sigh as she relaxes into my old quilt soothes the hot pins pricking my spine.

  We leave Shield a few hours before dawn, Hallowblot bonfires still burning, and I can’t help thinking we’re dragging a string of trouble behind us.

  FOUR.

  The sun rises as we pass through the Rock Mountains. Weak silver light shoves at our back, creeping ahead of the van to illuminate the road. I push faster. A month from now, stretches of Highway 34 behind me will be closed with snow, like the earth sealing our escape hatch.

  Most of the tense thoughts that chased my heels out of Shield were consumed by the need to concentrate on the winding way. Now the highway straightens for a while, with only low brown hills around me and a lonely phone line running parallel to the road. Along with a resurgence of stress comes the need to piss and find coffee.

  I fill up Sky’s tank at a gas stop and jog into the building for a break. Returning with two coffees, I find Kasja still collapsed in her little nest. Her lips are parted and her hair tangled at the nape of her neck. The rest of her is swathed in my grandma’s quilt. There’s color in her lips and cheeks, and it occurs to me this is the first I’ve seen her in daylight.

  She’s just a girl I met less than twelve hours ago, crashed in the back of my van like she belongs. I blink, squeeze my eyes shut, then look again, wondering at the familiarity I feel, like I’ve known her far longer. Could it be some future I sense?

  The very thought makes me snort hard enough I nearly spill my coffee.

  Once I stole Dad’s hammer, when he left it on the kitchen bench overnight. He’d told Mom he was leaving in the morning, and I thought if he couldn’t find his hammer, he’d stay.

  Of course, the cursed thing always finds its way back to him.

  He pulled me onto his knee and said, What was your end goal, Amon? We’ve always got to have an end goal.

  I want you to stay.
br />   The one thing doesn’t lead to the other in this case, son.

  That was the moment I decided that most things don’t lead anywhere.

  I hit the highway again and drink both coffees.

  Over the next hour, the mountains fall away completely. Sky shoots out into the nothing-plains. Scraggly desert brush and fields of yellow winter grass in endless stretches. The flatness should open up the world, but the sky is a gray lake overhead, uninspiring. We’re nearly alone on the road, since it’s a holiday and most people are slugging off last night’s drink. I don’t turn on the radio, as I don’t want to know if they’ve announced the missing Mask yet. Rather assume to know as little as possible.

  Kasja stirs about half an hour outside Dragon, Colorada. A perfect place to stop. Tiny enough town but with a Walton’s and a handful of eateries.

  “There’s water bottles and protein bars,” I call back to her. “We’re near a city to stop in, if you can wait a bit for a toilet.”

  She mutters something, and I glance in the rearview. After a few minutes and three kilometers of landscape as dry as lizard scales, she clumsily climbs into the passenger seat. She pulls her legs up so her knees are against her chest. A half-empty bottle of water rests in the crook of her elbow, and she sticks out her hand to offer me half a ThinkStrong protein bar. There’s a logo on the wrapper of an ax with a bite taken out of the blade. Dad thought it was a great joke. He’s simple like that sometimes. Live long enough, Amon, and you’ll find humor everywhere, he says.

  I take the bar and eat it in two bites.

  “Are we in the desert?” Kasja asks, leaning toward the window.

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “It was snowing last night!”

  “It’s probably freezing out there, too. Will be until the sun’s higher. The desert is hot or cold based on the sun. At least this one.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Dragon, Colorada.”

  “Dragon?”

  She glances at me, bright in the corner of my eye.

  “There’s a huge old wall of fossilized prehistoric dragons there. National monument.”

  “Can we…see it from the road?”

  I look, and her nose is pressed to the glass. Fogging it in a tiny little balloon around her mouth. “I’ll take you. It’s just bones, though. In the rocks.”

  “Amon, that sounds amazing.” She rubs her cheekbone as if it itches.

  I say, “We’ll go to Walton’s and grab you some clothes, some supplies, make sure we’re stocked. Then we’ll head out to the wall for you. Maybe spend the night, and go for Salt City tomorrow.”

  She’s quiet. I look, and her hands are in her lap, her legs crossed at the knee. She fiddles with the cuff of her white shirt. The knot she tied last night at her midriff is undone, and the ends are more wrinkled than the rest of her.

  “Kasja?”

  It’s another kilometer before she responds.

  “Here, this should help pay.” She holds out her hand again. Tiny red gems sit in her palm. Garnet earrings.

  I stare out the windshield. “No way.”

  “It’s more than fair,” she says darkly.

  “Not necessary.”

  “I want to trade. I…you don’t need to just buy me things. I’m not that kind of…girl.”

  It’s my turn to be silent. Maybe I misjudged last night. Maybe she regrets taking my hand. My ropes are churning. The bites of protein bar sit in there like chunks of lead. “Look, Kasja,” I finally say, as fast as possible, “I don’t expect anything, shine? This is just us getting away, finding trouble, not being skitting alone. But if you’d rather, there’s a phone at Walton’s, and you can call somebody to pick you up.”

  I keep my eyes on the highway, on the pulse of passing yellow lines, the curve of the horizon. It’s so far away, impossible to reach. Shifting and changing depending on the land, on the weather, the light. But always the distant spot where the land and the sky come together. In the old stories, that’s where the spirits of men dedicated to Thor Thunderer go when they die. The far mountain, between earth and heaven.

  “Things are different in the daylight, aren’t they?” she sighs.

  “Yeah.” Things always are. People leave. They sober up. Look in new directions.

  Wind knocks against Sky, pushing at the wheel. It brushes over all the tall grass on the sides of the highway, an invisible hand making waves.

  “I only want to trade, to be fair. A gift for a gift.” She puts her fist, with the garnets inside, against her knee.

  “Save them. I’ll share what I have, and someday I’m sure it’ll even out.”

  She slides the earrings into her pocket. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

  With a grimace, I pull carefully off onto the shoulder and shut off Sky. Twisting in my seat, I stare at her. She’s tall and white, and soft shadows mark her eyes. The sun makes her even paler, like new paper. Seems as delicate, too, despite the strength I remember in her when she pulled herself up against me. I reach out and touch her earlobe. It’s not pierced.

  She shrugs me off.

  What does she need to hear? Why I am trying so hard to convince her? The memory of her mouth is my obvious answer, her fingers digging in my back, her thighs pressed behind mine. But the flutter of her eyes, that little slick of wildness I glimpsed last night, all of it tells me she needs a grander reason than sex. Most people in our country do. They want destiny. They want meaning.

  I sigh. “We give aid to those in need, and make of our strength an entire world,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Charge of Thunder,” I grumble.

  “How noble.”

  “Well, I do also want those pants off you,” I say in order to shift far far far away from the subject. And to insert some honesty.

  Luckily, Kasja laughs, and the silence warms slowly between us.

  • • •

  We bounce into Dragon, Colorada, to an acoustic version of “All Quiet/Night Riot” by the Wereboars. Kasja says, when the strains of electric guitar fade, that the whole band grew up dedicated to Freyr the Satisfied but defected after disapproval from the Southern preachers’ union over one of their songs. They’d been called Boar Spears but changed it to We Were Boars and finally accepted the fan-derived Wereboars, appearing onstage in elaborate headdresses with tusks and bristling golden manes. I don’t know if I’m impressed or disturbed by her vast knowledge of their history, and she backtracks when she sees my face. She waves her hands to wipe out the conversation. “I get obsessed with old bands. We’re outdated in my mountains, behind the times.”

  I just stare.

  “Not just music,” she adds slyly. “I wore low-rise jeans until last year, too.”

  I imagine her in low-rise jeans and can’t remember what I’d been complaining about. Chalk one up for Kasja.

  Walton’s is on the south side of town, and I drive straight there. It’s a massive warehouse building painted an oddly bright brown, with a sunflower logo you can see for kilometers. Only about thirty or so cars grace the lot, thanks to the holiday. We decide to grab toiletries and clothes for Kasja first, so she can duck into the bathroom while I finish up. I’ll take my turn brushing teeth after, when we find a lunch joint.

  She takes at least twice as long as she should, even with being a girl. Finally, she emerges from the toilet in jeans and a dark shirt that hugs her curves. Not that I’m staring, but her new bra seems just a tad too small, like she didn’t know her own size. She’s braided her hair in a seven-strand with the curly ends loose and rioting down her back. It does crazy things to me, half ordered, half chaos like that. I can’t stop from grabbing a handful of curls. Kasja touches my mouth with her fingers, like a kiss, then swoops past to the van.

  The best food in town is in a double-decker café where the seats are shaped like long-necked brachiodracus and the bar is held up by brightly painted tyrannodracus. A large sign over the door reads We put the grrrrrr in hungry!
We’ve got a paper prehistoric map of New Asgard spread across our table and a little cup of crayons. Kasja takes up a green one and reaches toward me, past the napkin dispenser, draws a triangle in the middle of the map, where a wide inland sea covers everything. “Bright Home was under the ocean then.”

  I say, “At least we’d be dry out here.”

  “That long ago, the gods didn’t even exist,” she murmurs. “They were barely even sparks in the fires of Alfheim.”

  “The gods are older than the elves,” I correct her.

  She darts a disparaging glance at me, as a waitress with tight oiled curls sashays over and takes a pen from behind her ear. “Can I get you anything?” she asks, hip cocked like she’s completely uninterested. We order burgers and two ridiculously fruity drinks called Dragon’s Brew that I assure Kasja will come with tiny plastic dragons hooked to the rims.

  After the drinks arrive, Kasja leans in. Her thumb on the map obscures the ancient Mexican peninsula. “I would not mind if Bright Home were drowned now.”

  I lean back in my chair, feeling like I’ve been here before. In exactly this moment, with this cord of anticipation tightening around my spine. Probably it’s just my rocks demanding attention.

  “I used to think the gods were perfectly flawed,” she says. “Like the best diamonds.”

  “Pretty sure Thor isn’t a diamond,” is all I say, plucking the blue pterodracus toy off my goblet by the wing to mime its flight across the table to Kasja’s. I perch it beside the bright orange velociraptor hooked to her glass with its large claws.

  Kasja ignores my play. “They became what they are through fire and war, and rule because of it. They destroy what refuses to love them or give in to them. That’s always been their way. The Romans, the Biblists, the Skraling tribes here in New Asgard, your own ironskin people before the Thralls’ War, and they even, finally, defeated the giants who refused to sit back and accept subjugation. The… elves are gone, and now….” She squeezes her huge plastic glass. “Now the trolls, too. Dying of this plague.”

  I blink in surprise. “The Stone Plague? You think the gods caused it to happen?”