The Curiosities (Carolrhoda Ya) (34 page)

So I force myself around, sliding down until my stomach presses into the jagged edge of the stairs. My arms shake from the effort of lowering my body slowly. I remind myself to keep my muscles loose when I fall, to crumple and roll. I pray to Thor Thunderer that I will land safely and not impale myself on the sharp stakes of broken stairs awaiting me.

I drop.

My bones jar and my head snaps, catching the tip of my tongue. Blood spurts down my chin. I sit, dazed for a moment, while pain burns up my left arm from a gash on my palm. Otherwise I’m all right. My ankles ache, and my butt too, but nothing bad. I struggle to my feet, and my socks slip on a plank of wood.

Scrambling up, I dash to the den and shove the broken door aside. The harsh creak makes my ears ring.

The den is destroyed.

Window glass glitters everywhere. The sofa has been gutted, and the dull white cotton fluff hangs in the air. Paralyzed in time. Unreal. Impossible.

It is worse than I imagined. Their eyes hang wide, mouths agape like desiccated roadkill. Bright shards of bone jut up where their hearts were torn free and eaten.

My heart has been eaten, too.

Everything is so cold and quiet except for the flicker of rage, of the keen building in my throat. The feeling reminds me of fire. I get kerosene from the shed and douse everything. The stink makes me puke into Mom’s herb bed, stomach acid smelling suddenly like mint and dill.

It is the smell of revenge. The only thing that can give my heart life again.

In the cold, damp shelter with the berserk, I open my eyes. Rein Konrsson radiates heat. They say the berserks don’t sleep and that they burn up the air around them like they’re made of fire. Destroying everything in their path. Waiting to unleash the Alfather’s madness on friend and enemy alike. I tilt my head and stare at his tattoo. The spear is to mark them so anyone will know to keep back. I wonder what that would be like, having that cut into my cheek. Burning there.

“What?” His eyes are closed, but somehow he knows I’ve been staring at him. Maybe my breathing changed.

“I was only thinking it would have been nice to be a berserk when the trolls came.”

His sigh is more of a grumble. “It isn’t something to wish for.”

I don’t believe him. “Do you hate it, then?”

Rein turns to face me, his leather armor scraping against the rocks behind us.

LISTEN!

They say that a thousand generations ago, when the ice giants ruled half the world, a man climbed a yew tree and hung himself there by his ankles. He took his spear and with a mighty jab, cut between his own ribs to pierce his heart. His screams were carried up through the yew branches, and his blood dripped far to the earth, sinking and pulling the man’s need down into the roots.

Odin, the Father of All, heard.

Having once sacrificed himself to himself in such a way, Odin respected the man’s courage and insanity and need. Growing to the height of a giant, Odin reached up a massive hand and lifted the hanging man out of the tree. He cradled him and asked, “Why have you done this thing, child of man?”

Through bloodstained teeth the man answered, “I give all myself to you, oh god, and ask that in return you grant me the power and strength to win my daughter back. For my family has been murdered by my enemy and my daughter snatched away.”

Odin looked with his single great eye and saw that the man’s heart was skewered by the spear. If it was removed, he would die. Placing the man between the roots of the yew tree, Odin cast about for aid. He found it in a wild bear, its eyes crazed with anger, its jaws wide and roaring. Coaxing the beast to him, Odin whispered promises of glory for the bear’s sons if it would give its heart to the god. So it did.

With magic learned from Freya, the Feather-Flying goddess of Hel, Odin poured the bear’s heart into the man.

“Go, Bear Son,” the Alfather said.

Fever coursed through the man, energy like the sun’s own heat giving him strength. With it he found the home of his enemy. And with it he tore through them. Wild bear’s rage took hold of his limbs, keeping pain and weariness away, so that all the man knew was the whirlwind of battle.

When he woke from his rage, each of his enemies was splayed upon the earth, dead in great waves around him.

And yet so was his daughter.

For to be a berserker is to have a heart that may turn against you.

LUTA:

Rein Konrsson regards me uncertainly for a moment. “No, I don’t hate what I am.”

“I wish I had a bear’s heart.” My ribs feel tight, but not because they are too full; they are hollow. There is nothing inside. I turn away from him before he can say anything about the impossibility of girls berserking. The curse only follows the bear’s sons after all. I know it. Everyone does.

Instead he only says, “The rain is letting up. We should ride on.”

My wounded hand aches, and my head pounds in time with my heartbeat. Yesterday I would have complained, would have gnashed my teeth at Mom and said I needed hot chocolate with cinnamon and toast. But yesterday I was thirteen, and today I’m a hundred years old.

LISTEN!

They say as dawn broke over the horizon, the berserker’s motorcycle roared around a hairpin curve coming down the mountain, then skidded in the loose gravel as Rein jerked it sideways to avoid slamming into the dying troll splayed across the road.

The girl’s arms tightened around him. Rein’s foot kicked up a stream of gravel as the bike curved tightly and stopped. He killed the engine and heaved several calming breaths, but the girl was off the bike in an instant, running toward the troll.

“Luta,” he called, letting the bike drop as he grabbed for her and caught the hem of her sweater. She hit the gravel with a gasp and he let go. “Wait, kid, it’s alive.”

Huffing, the girl rolled onto her back and kicked at him so that he would step away. He held his hands out in surrender until Luta grimaced at him, climbed to her feet, and stomped off into the trees. Away from the troll.

Rein Konrsson walked fearlessly forward, a hand lifting to loosen one of the battle-axes from its cross straps. The troll’s shuddering breaths sounded like wind rushing through a cave, and its dark blood snaked in a hundred tiny rivulets through the gravel, fleeing from the
bulbous
creature and dragging its life away. Its eyelids fluttered and it rolled green eyes at him. Crust gathered in the corners of those eyes, and bloody snot streaked across its lips. When it growled at him, Rein felt a stab of pity and wondered why the rest of the herd had left it behind.

They say it was at that moment he realized the girl had lied to him. The herd had come this way: east and north.

His gaze slid out over the valley. There were pine trees as far as he could see, broken only by the shining ribbon of a river far below. Where did the trollkin hide? Under what shadows did they settle to wait through the sunlight?

The dying troll grunted and twitched, its entire weight shifting toward him. Swift as the flick of a salmon’s tail, Rein freed his axe and held it poised to strike.

But the girl appeared from the woods with a branch as thick as the troll’s arm. She stood over the troll, teeth bared, and raised it over her head. Before he could say anything, she slammed it down into the troll’s face.

Rein did not stop her, even as she bashed it again and again, reducing the troll’s face into a sticky pulp.

LUTA:

I fling the branch away and stand, chest heaving, eyes on Rein. I’m not sorry.

“You knew,” he says quietly, so I can barely hear it over my hard breathing. “You knew they came this way.”

“I knew.” I lift my chin, daring him to make something of it. The stench of the dead thing rolls up, sticking to my face and neck, slinking through my hair. It’s plastered to my braids, and when I turn away the smell wafts around me.

LISTEN!

They say she was a monster already.

LUTA:

I can’t lift the motorcycle. The chromed steel slips from my sweaty fingers, and even when I grip the leather-wrapped handlebars it’s way too heavy.

Rein takes it from me, rights it in an easy motion, and blocks me from getting on. “There will be many of them.”

“How many?”

He shrugs. “You expect me to know?”

“Yeah.”

“A dozen, usually.”

“That’s too many for you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“They killed my whole entire family.” I want to scream it but I don’t. It’s worse to just say it, like a fact. Like something I learned from a book.

He reaches forward and wipes his thumb under my left eye. It comes away dark with troll blood. “Get on. Even little girls deserve blood-price.”

I don’t bristle, because I can tell he’s only calling me that to make himself feel better.

LISTEN!

They say it was easy to find them. They say that trolls don’t travel much by daylight because their eyes are poor, that sunlight turns them into stone.

Rein felt the rage building slowly in his chest. The battle-frenzy, the need to destroy. He thought of his band, of the Bear Son warriors he should have died beside. He thought of Luta, clinging to his back, being alone, too.

They say he thought how right it was, that he had come to find her.

LUTA:

The trolls are split in two groups: most of them asleep in a grove of silver aspens, shielded from the sun, and the two biggest down by the place the river twists into a calm pool. We’ve snuck up, rolling the motorcycle along with us. Rein showed me how to start it in case I have to get away. He doesn’t mean get away from the trolls, but from him if he loses control of his battlerage and doesn’t know me.

I am shaking behind a tree, but not from fear. I clench my hands because I want to race out screaming at them, to hammer my fists into their faces and kick in their teeth. To tear off their skin. I want to cry as I bend over them, and let my tears drop into their bleeding chests.

“Stay here,” Rein whispers in my ear. “I will take their heads for you, and then we’ll ride into Colorada Falls in triumph. You’ll have your blood-price, and we’ll both have a little glory from the kill.”

I nod. I can feel my heartbeat pounding in the tip of my tongue.

My berserker warrior steps into the aspen grove with great, double-headed battle-ax in either hand. He rolls his shoulders, plants his steel-toed boots, and then grins. He winks at me over his shoulder.

Then he tilts his head back and he roars.

LISTEN!

They say that it was a swift battle.

Rein Konrsson danced with his blades, screaming a war song as he killed. There was no sense to it, no predicting the tide of motion rising within him. Axes cleaved neck from shoulder, arm from torso, cutting away chunks of flesh, digging through heavy troll hide to find death. He did not flinch when a club cracked three of his ribs or falter when his knees slammed to the ground. His axes did not lower or pause in their brutal task. Trolls fell, roaring, one after the other even as they swarmed him.

The Bear Son was surrounded. But it did not matter. He cut through them all, laughing.

LUTA:

I tremble. Rein is terrifying. I want to be in the center with him, my back pressed to his with axes in my hands, whirling and dancing the battle-rage with him.

All the trolls fall. The ground shakes as they crash, stripping branches from the pine trees. Needles shake loose and sprinkle down.

Rein slows, spinning on one foot to see that all his enemies are dead. He laughs a high-pitched, wild laugh, and his hands tighten on the axe handles. Knuckles white. He’s hunting still.

I reveal myself. “Rein,” I call.

His laughter fades when he sees me, his face calms. He remembers, he knows me. And he’s reining back the frenzy.

My fingers flex and relax and flex, because I can’t stop them from acting out my nerves. The stench of dead and dying trolls, their low groans, their hacking coughs fill the aspen grove. No birds call, no wind blows. All the animals for miles must be huddling in fear. Even the mountain is quiet as Rein restrains himself.

Finally, he meets my gaze. He smiles the same toothy grin from when he said he’d eat me.

LISTEN!

They say the wisest old troll waited until the frenzy was over. Until it was the only survivor. Waited until the berserker’s back was turned, his axes lowered, his shoulders relaxed. Until he was laughing with the girl.

It walked into the ring of its dead family, footsteps masked by the groans and death-throes.

And it stabbed its spear through the berserker’s back.

LUTA:

I scream.

Rein tears free and springs in a single motion, axes coming together under the troll’s chin. They stand there, still, for a long moment before the troll’s head tilts off its neck and lands on the pine needles with a thud.

My breath rushes out of me.

But Rein falls to his knees. His axes hit the ground, and he delicately touches the hole in his chest where the spear exited. As if the touch were a signal, blood spills around his fingers and down the old leather armor. It wanders in red streams along the weathered tooling, making patterns blossom on his chest I hadn’t noticed before. A swirl of runes, the jaw of a snarling wolf, and the trefoil stamp of Odin just over his diaphragm, the house of spirit. Stained with his blood, the armor comes alive.

I run, tripping over a dead troll’s arm, and skid to a stop in front of Rein. His head is level with my stomach, and he sways forward. I catch him by the shoulders. His face presses into my belly, and he grips my hips. I can’t hold him up. He’s too heavy. I hear his blood dripping fast onto the ground, feel it soaking into my socks. “Rein,” I whisper.

My heart wasn’t eaten. It wasn’t torn away. I can feel it now, churning in my chest, and it isn’t fair because why should this boy’s dying hurt so much when I’ve only known him for ten hours?

We fall down together, and Rein manages to land on his shoulder instead of me. I kneel beside him. He is gasping for breath. Air whooshes out of the cavity in his chest and I’m crying. My tears drop into the tattered hole.