The Weight of Stars

  My heart is stuck in an off-beat and my fingers cold like they’ve never been before. I feel empty and clean, like after a really good fight, but insubstantial. I haven’t felt so breakable in years.

  Then it took me months to recover. What will it be this time?

  • • •

  Ten minutes later we’re returning from the outhouses, and I hear a rustle and thud coming from Sky. I’ve adjusted to the moonlight enough to see movement, the flash of a light. I stop, tugging Kasja behind me. “What?” she asks distractedly, and I hush her. A curse spills out of the van. Kasja hears it, too, and clutches the back of my shirt.

  Three long strides, and I’ve grabbed hold of one intruder, dragged him out of the van. I toss him to the ground with an extra shove of strength.

  “Aw, skit, man,” he says. Jared, the lawspeaker student.

  I step on his neck. “What are you doing in my van?”

  Kasja points behind me. “Addy is in there still.”

  “Come out, Addy,” I say calmly. “Before I crush Jared’s windpipe.” His hands fumble around my ankle, but he’s got nothing on my weight and strength together.

  Addy scrambles out, screeching a little, like a wounded bird. “Stop, stop!” She falls to her knees beside Jared’s shoulder, clawing at my jeans. I take a fistful of her hair and jerk back her head. They both reek of leaf and their eyes are wide, unfocused. Jared makes a rough noise, trying to talk. I say, “Addy, you tell me.”

  “We wanted to find you—we thought you had some good party, seeing as you…you live in there!” she cries. I want to make her quiet before she wakes up the rest of the campground. Thank luck we picked this isolated corner.

  “And then when we were gone, you decided to steal all our skit?” I lean down, balancing carefully so I don’t accidentally break Jared’s neck.

  “It wasn’t like that,” she wails.

  “Quiet, jill. Tell me what it was like. Softly.”

  She grimaces at me and wipes her hand under her nose. “I don’t know, I just—we wanted to find it.”

  “Find what?”

  “The….” Her wide eyes tear up. I don’t loosen my grip. “The….” Addy shakes her head, or tries to. My hold on her hair keeps her too still.

  “They’re so high,” Kasja says unsympathetically.

  “Addy,” I threaten, twisting her head farther back. “Tell me what you were looking for.”

  She closes her eyes, squeezes them and claps her fingers over her mouth. A humming noise pushes out, not like a melody but a long, haunting note. “It hummed,” she says after a second. “It was so beautiful. Calling me, like it knew my name. I wanted to find it.”

  Understanding swoops down like a hawk in a field. I release her suddenly, and Addy collapses. I step off Jared. “Get out, both of you. Sleep it off, and don’t tell anybody about this or I’ll make you regret it.”

  Jared rolls over, pale desert dirt covering his back, and gets up woozily. He touches his head and glances at me in surprise. Before he can ask anything, Addy takes his elbow and drags him away. They stagger together through the darkness.

  I spin and dive into the van. It’s been tossed, clothes and protein bars everywhere, the blankets half spilling out like soft woolen intestines. But under the driver’s seat, in the secret pouch I sewed there myself, is the heavy bag of elf gold.

  Relieved, I slump on my hands and knees.

  This little retreat was too good to be true. We stopped running and searching out trouble, and so, like to its nature, the elf gold dragged trouble to us.

  Clutching it in my fist, I slide back outside. Kasja hasn’t moved. She stands like a salt pillar three meters from the van, holding herself and staring at me. Her eyes glint in the moonlight.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say.

  “You hurt them,” she says softly.

  “I protected what’s mine.” I go to her, frowning unapologetically. “I’d do the same to anybody who hurt you.”

  “I’m not yours.”

  That hurts, but I keep it off my face. “Come on. We have to go.”

  “Tell me what that is.” She gestures to my fist with her chin.

  I pause. This isn’t the place. We need to be in motion. The stars overhead are enough of an audience, and the moon—the moon is too bright. If I show her the gold, that moon’ll snatch up the wicked glow, and everything with half a skill for prophecy or reading dreams will know exactly where we are. I’m skit lucky the gold hasn’t tempted Kasja herself yet. “I’ll tell you,” I say, “but not here.”

  “You promise?”

  Holding out my hand. “I promise. I’ll tell you when the sun comes up.”

  FIVE.

  We’re through Vernal and into Uto kingstate before the sun rises high enough for me to put the bag of elf gold into Kasja’s lap. She’s been silent for an hour as we watched the dim silver morning creep pink and blood-orange over the desert. Now we’re surrounded by scrub brush and flat-top hills. Rusty dirt blows over the highway like a quick disguise.

  Here’s an advantage to talking while driving: I don’t have to look at her. I say, “Open it.”

  She does, daintily untying the thin leather drawstring. The leather creaks as she tugs it. Even from the corner of my eye, the flash of gold is bright. Unlike regular gold, this shimmers to a man like me, with a god’s eyes. To Kasja, it’s probably dead yellow, like polished chunks of sulfur.

  The cab slowly fills with a tinny song, like miniature axes picking at crystal caves, like whispers that echo from under the mountain. I narrow my eyes onto the road, glad for the iron piercing my ears like a shell, dulling the effect.

  Kasja reaches in and pinches out a single bean-shaped chunk. It catches sunlight reflecting off the side mirror, and the song vanishes. Relieved, I sigh. Kasja raises it to her face, though, staring. “It’s vibrating,” she says.

  “Don’t hold that piece for long, or you won’t be able to put it down.”

  She casts me a frown.

  “Really. You’ll think you put it away, but will find it in your pocket. Your hands will betray you. The leather is only slight protection. Usually enough for me, and I get rid of it fast, spread the pieces around. In bulk like that….” I lift my shoulders. “It’ll poison you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Elf gold.”

  “What?” She wraps her fingers around the chunk in her hand.

  “You’ve heard of it.” Everyone has.

  “How did you get it? Aren’t the elves under the mountain gone?”

  “They want us to think that, and so do the gods.”

  Her bitter hiss is enough to reassure me Kasja won’t question me much in that regard. I continue, “There’s still a court of them in the Rock Mountains, higher up near Snake River where the old supervolcano is. They keep to themselves for survival—they wouldn’t want anything like the Anti-Troll League shifting focus onto them, imagining they’re more of a threat than the trolls.

  “Why do you know this, Amon?” Her tone is shrewd.

  I glance at her fist. “Put that piece away.”

  Her hand uncurls in surprise, and she shoves the gold back into the pouch before jerking the drawstring tight. “My heart is roaring,” she whispers.

  Snatching the bag, I tuck it behind my seat in the shadows. “A few years ago, I met one, and we began to trade. She wants electronics and plastics. I take the gold from her and sell it.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “It’s illegal,” I say flatly.

  Silence is her response, and after a moment, I add, “I should have told you what you were getting into. But I didn’t think it would attract anything out in the middle of a national park.” The whole truth is that I hadn’t thought much past Kasja. Dumb dumb dumb. If Addy and Jared had found the gold, Loki only knows what they’d have done with it. Ruined their lives, certainly, been caught up with harder people, vanished into the mountains—any number of things. The people I sell to know how to
spread it around in tinier chunks, how to soothe the edges and dull the trouble. But I’m not fooling myself that it’s not a dangerous substance, what I do hardly better than drug-dealing or gun-running.

  “So,” Kasja says quietly, “what will we do?”

  “I usually spend about three weeks on my route, trading with the under market in little towns and cities around here, down in Alisonak and Nuevo Spain, up to Cheyenne. I get cash notes and computer parts, SIM cards—just technological trash—and dead-drop it in Yellowstone for my buyer. Three weeks after that, I’m back at Bright Home for a holiday and grab my payment at the Rock Church.”

  “The chapel you took me to? I was your cover? You need an excuse to run off there, so you grab the first girl you find?”

  “That’s just goat skit.” I point my finger at her. “I go up there by myself every single gods-cursed holiday. I didn’t need you. I wanted you.”

  She crosses her arms. “Fine. So. You’re planning to take me around to your under market contacts? That’s the road trip?”

  “You want off, you can get off,” I snap. “But I’m unloading all of it in Salt City, today. It’s too dangerous to go around to all my contacts now, with the Mask missing. Fenris and her hunters will be nosing through every place that smells a hint like etinfolk of any kind. We’ll get less commission, though.”

  “It’s been three days. Surely…don’t you think they’ve recovered it? Does the Mask leave some kind of trail?”

  “I have no idea if Loki got it back. Maybe. We’ll have to listen to the radio or look at a paper. I’ll ask Uriah this afternoon, in Salt City. He’ll have had his ear to the mountain. If they do, we’ll be able to relax a bit. And yes, it’ll stink like etinfolk, because that’s who made the Mask. Glory thought I had it, because I smelled like it.” I slide Kasja a meaningful look. “It was really the elf gold I smelled like.”

  “Oh. Would you be able to smell the Mask? Would I?”

  “Doubt it. Maybe if I was trying?” I tap my forefinger against the steering wheel. “Lady Fenris is part giant herself, and a wolf besides. I’m just a godling. You’re just a girl.”

  Kasja pulls her hair over her shoulder and begins combing her fingers through. She braids it, combs it out, and braids it again, her fingers moving quickly. This has gone better than I was expecting, but somehow I don’t feel all that relieved. It’s like I’ve opened a door instead of locking one down.

  We turn north with the highway, cutting around Provo through the foothills of the Wasatch Range. They slope up and away, barren except for a few leafless trees and evergreens spotting along the edge of the road. Metal barns and flat ranch houses with old stone walls to keep out the trolls appear in clusters and flash away again before I can register them properly, and soon we’re joined by working trucks and family cars, heading toward Salt City.

  “You’re so powerful,” Kasja says suddenly.

  I’ve got nothing to say to that. The sun flashes off the car passing in the opposite direction, punching into my eyes.

  “There’s something about you, Amon. Not just your eyes, but maybe it’s all of them in you. I can’t pull away, and every time I start to try, I’m ripped right back.”

  I manage a laugh, low and rough like the bleat of a goat. “I might’ve said the same thing about you,” I confess. “You sure you’re not a godling, too?”

  “Oh, most definitely not a godling.”

  I watch her, flicking my gaze from the road to her again and again. But she only smiles privately and refuses to say more.

  • • •

  Salt City’s broad, clean streets have always appealed to me, laid out in their simple grid that any man can navigate. It’s easy to find what you need, and the purple mountains guarding the borders rise up to stand as obvious landmarks, so you can tell the cardinal directions even when the sun hides. Today, though, the sky is bright and the sun casts onto the small downtown, with its not-so-high high-rises and wide temple square. Though the Salt Cathedral is a straight shot, we stop first at a motel I know in order to shower the desert away. I go first, knowing I’ll need the extra time with my hair, and tell Kasja to put on something appropriately conservative for a visit to an arch priest. Before I’ve finished picking the worst kinks out of my hair, she’s showered and dressed, in jeans and a long sweater, with her hair braided in a damp crown. Unfortunately, her formerly shiny dress loafers still have red dust pressed into the seams.

  “Can I help?” she asks, coming up behind me in the tarnished little mirror hanging over the sink. Her eyebrows are lifted with uncertainty as she eyes the pick in my hand, the dark bottle of oil sitting on the counter. She avoids looking at my hair, so I presume the answer to her question is a resounding no. I shake my head. My hair puffs out in a huge halo except where I’ve already braided a third of it back over my left ear. Not for the first time, I consider shaving it all off. Mom would murder me, though.

  Kasja waits patiently, watching as I style the rest. Usually I slick my hair back into an easy, oiled club at the nape of my neck, but Uriah will be more impressed with some cultural effort on my part. I put it in three fat braids tight to my head, the ends sparking out in the back like miniature black eruptions. Kasja says, “It looks like the wind permanently sculpted it.” She stands behind me, her mouth near enough to my neck that I feel the heat of her breath. “That oil smells really good.”

  I lift my eyes in the mirror, but she’s entirely hidden by my body. Until her hands slide around my ribs and she hugs me. I visualize her slowly unbuttoning the silky shirt I pulled out of my duffel, and am instantly tight and hot all over. Covering her hands with mine, I say, “Gather all your stuff so it’s in the van when we go.”

  Her head pops around mine so she can see my reflection. “I thought we were staying here tonight?”

  “If all goes well. If not, we’ll have everything with us.”

  She touches her cheek to my shoulder. “I’m not used to thinking this way.”

  Guilt makes me a little rough as I shrug and start dumping my crap into the toiletries sack.

  The drive to the Salt Cathedral is fast and straightforward. The parking lot is packed, so we’re forced to park a few blocks away at the edge of the square. Kasja tumbles out of the van, craning her neck to take in as much of the temple as possible.

  There’s no difficulty getting caught up in the beauty of it. In perfect symmetry, square stone towers rise high enough to touch the clouds when they’re low off the lake. Today the contrast of white rock against the deep blue sky has me shading my eyes. Spires twist from each corner into sharp, smooth peaks, mirroring but improving upon the rough shape of the mountains all around us. The cathedral rises out of its manicured green square, paths paved for walking with white salt-gravel that near glows in the sunlight. At night the spires of the cathedral light from the inside, creating a cool magic to spread out over the city, reminding everyone that Thor’s blessings are with us.

  “It’s the oldest rock church in the country,” I tell Kasja proudly, “except for that tiny one on Etintooth Peak. Built a hundred and fifty years ago to honor the Thunderer, to be a beacon west of the mountains to guide all our people here.” After the Thralls’ War, so many former thralls came this way, seeking land untouched by history, by oppression. Thor himself set the cornerstone of this church, and dug the first irrigation trenches in the arid basin.

  I walk around to the cathedral’s south side, passing the great double doors, and put my hand against the cornerstone. It’s smooth and as tall as me. Etched into the face are the words So may this be my mountain, where my people will gather in life and death.

  Kasja touches the words, too. “I didn’t grow up with anything like this. It looks like all the old cathedrals in Eurland.”

  “Most of those are Thor’s, too. Manmade mountains of rock and prayers. But so many were destroyed during the last Eurland War.” Like the rest of my dedicants, I don’t want to linger on that dark episode of Thunder history. Glancing over
my shoulder at the full parking lot, I add, “I think there’s a service going on, so we’ll have to be quiet inside.”

  Kasja stays near me as I shoulder open the small rectangular door fitted into one of the massive stone and iron double-doors. We step into a silvery space scented with candles and myrrh. Here in the vestibule are beaten-gold bowls of blessed water for washing your hands, and a prominent pedestal with a stone hammer on it. I touch the handle and whisper a prayer. Kasja walks past me, her lips parted and eyes wide.

  We stand at the base of the hammer-shaped sanctuary, looking up the grand nave of the handle toward the wide head where the altar waits. There’s an afternoon service ongoing and the stone pews are full up, all attention on the slab altar, where the priest Uriah lifts a smaller hammer and recites a chant of strength that the congregation repeats. My lips move with the call despite myself. Behind Uriah is a row of statues of heroes who died in Thor’s name, and rising over them is a great blue stained-glass window that invokes the sky and one perfect lightning stroke.

  I follow Kasja as she wanders past alcoves of prayer candles and blue velvet kneeling stations, stone statues of saints and heroes, toward the chapel that fills the northern arm of the cathedral. She pauses at a statue of Sif Fairhair, who smiles calmly, her stone eyes lifted toward the sky. The goddess wears a blue mantle, and her long hair is tinted with gold-laced paint. It’s discomfiting for me to look at her, the wife of Thor, knowing my mother lived in her place for a time. I saw the goddess at Bright Home once, and she saw me. Her huge blue princess eyes hung steady on me as I fought every instinct to look away, because I’ve no fault in the situation to cause me legitimate shame. When I held her gaze, she smiled.