The Strange Maid (19 page)

A small pile of clothes waits stacked beside Unferth’s sword. The garnet in the pommel is a dull red this morning, like some life’s gone out of it.

My pulse throbs in my fingertips and I think of her.
Your heart.

I put on the clothes left for me: a loose-fitting cotton dress with a sweater to go over it. The collar is so wide it falls off of my shoulder. I make it through most of a normal bathroom routine, aching on the outside, strangely numb and empty in my heart, until just after I spit out my tooth gel and notice my broken fingernails.

Clutching the sink’s edges, I lean into the mirror. There’s so little blood in my cheeks that what’s usually a scatter of freckles across my nose has erupted across my face. A thin cut slices from my left eyebrow back toward my ear, the skin around it alive with a vicious bruise. My hair is a wight’s nest of snarls, as I couldn’t bring myself to unknot all the intricate braids Unferth wove before I collapsed into bed. I hardly recognize my own eyes. A ring of blood stains the white of my left one, brightening the green iris until it nearly glows. Like hers. But no runes dance at the edges of my pupils. And my hair looks so awful I laugh. That laughter shakes up my entire body, punching at my cracked ribs until I have to grip the sink tighter, clench my jaw to keep from puking. Tears spill down my cheeks in two straight lines.

I press my fist against my chest, over my heart. I must keep myself together. The Alfather would expect me to be strong after battle.

But I hear the troll mother’s roar echo in my ears.

She’s still alive. I have to find her, destroy her, chisel her heart from her chest. Not for my riddle but as the blood price for Vinland. For Ned Unferth.

If I am a Valkyrie, it starts here with revenge.

Hands shaking, I dig into my mass of ashy hair to find the little pins Unferth used. One by one I pull them out and drop them into the sink. They ting against the porcelain. Each braid falls, flopping into my face or down my back, around my shoulders. With every gentle tug on my scalp another tear slips past my lashes.

I’ve no idea how long it takes to work out all the knots. My normally straight hair is kinked and ruined, and I wish I had scissors to cut it all off. But I twist it against the base of my skull and take the pins out of the sink. I close my eyes and try to drag up the memory of Ned’s fingers against my scalp, the scratch of pins and the tug as he set them into place.
I’ll always have these pins, at least.
Laughter pops up again, reflected like panic in my eyes.

I bare my teeth at myself in the mirror, watching for any wisp of this madness escaping through the cracks.

For the slightest moment I see the rune for
need
spelled out in my freckles.

The kitchen is at the end of the tight, poorly lit hallway. It’s cramped with white cabinets and appliances, with a wooden dining table filling the center so there’s barely any room to maneuver around it. But what it lacks in space it makes up for in friendliness. Creamy wallpaper with tiny yellow and pink flowers cheerfully displays a set of framed butterfly drawings, and the refrigerator is covered in rainbow alphabet magnets. The
E
and
M
hold up a Thorist prayer card in which a romantically drawn Thor holds a half-dozen small children in his massive arms.

Esma sits at the head of the table, half her attention on the year-old girl in a cherry-red high chair, the other half on the small muted TV crushed up on the counter between a coffeemaker and standing mixer.

Mother and daughter both have round brown eyes and tight curls that hug close to their heads. Esma’s skin is darker than the baby’s, glowing smooth and pretty in the warm light.

“Good morning,” I say, but it comes out scratchy, like a horrible radio signal.

The baby slaps her palm against the high chair tray and Esma turns to me, straightening her shoulders as if grateful for the interruption. “Good morning. Help yourself to cereal or toast, and there’s coffee in the carafe. I’ll finish up in just a moment.”

I pour coffee into a wide green mug that says
SUMMERFEST ’97 ~ LOKI DID IT
and join Esma at the table. I can do this, I can be calm. The baby stares at me, opening and closing her mouth around the spoon like a robot. I wrap my hands around the mug and avoid the TV. The news is on, and I don’t want to hear any reports from Vinland.

“Did you sleep all right?” Esma asks as she scoops the last bite of orange mush onto the baby spoon.

“Yes,” I say to my coffee. No need to speak of nightmares.

“This is Manda, and I’m so glad I had her with me last night or you’d have never gotten to sleep. The little goblin always gets a tish crazy when her da is in and out so fast.”

Because it’s polite, I look up. “Is Sagan gone again?”

Esma’s mouth curls down like a crescent moon and she shakes her head. “He flew before dawn to join a militia group in Mishigam hunting for Baldur.”

And here I’d forgotten the god of light was even missing.

After a stop at the infirmary to have my ribs wrapped, we go out to the Exchange. I’ve no money, and nothing even to my name but Unferth’s sword. Even the seax I couldn’t sell remains useless with my packed bags in the warning tower on Vinland. Esma insists on buying me clothes and tells me we’re all children of Asgard and what sort of woman would she be if she didn’t help? When she quotes
The Charge of Thunder,
I have to accept the charity.
We give aid to those in need, and make of our strength an entire world.

I ask if we can find news of the troll herd. I try to say it lightly, when I want to rip the information out of the air:
Where is the troll mother? Is she still breathing?

At the base commander’s office, we wait in a pale blue room with wilting flowers in the window. The ache in my muscles and tight cracked rib force me not to pace but to sit still and find some measure of patience reciting lines from
The Volsunga Saga
to myself. Signy Volsung burned down her traitorous husband’s castle, she transformed herself into a wolf for battle. She did everything she needed to in order to protect her family, even lie and cast curse and seduce her own brother. Turning the words of her poem over my tongue calms me.

It’s nearly an hour before the commander’s lowliest retainer greets us and gives me his condolences. He tells me there’s a hospital in Halifax where refugees are being temporarily settled, but no, they can’t provide the manpower to send me anywhere. Not to the refugees, and definitely not back to Vinland. Even when I remind him of my name, of my history, he shakes his head regretfully and apologizes that he can’t accommodate me. Everyone but dependents and a handful of necessary personnel are deployed for the Baldur emergency. And because we’re so near Canadia, where trolls still roam wild, the national troll alert set off by the our massacre has locked down the base, not to mention the major highway between here and the city. They expect it to last as least as long as Baldur is missing and all the country’s resources are spread thin. I learn that the berserkers who mowed down the troll mother’s herd are called the Mad Eagles, and they alone remain on Vinland, tracking any stragglers or escapees from the herd. The berserkers will annihilate the trolls, I’m assured.

They won’t find her without me, I tell him, though he clearly thinks I’m addled from trauma.

But I’m worried they
will
find her. I want to stand over her body as it calcifies and hack it into chunks of stone to get at her heart.

The commander only promises to send word to the Death Hall that I’m here and see if the council will help me return to the island to find the troll mother, but he won’t allow me to leave on my own.

By the time we return to Esma’s home, it’s too late to do anything drastic.

Esma lets me be for the evening, and I gather up Unferth’s sword from under the cot. The hilt is cold. I cover the garnet with my palm as if it will keep him from seeing me.

With it I go out into the narrow backyard. A chain-link fence separates it from the next and the next, every metal box the same for two hundred meters in either direction. I spend a few minutes warming my aching muscles and then raise the sword into the first offensive position. The sword is perfectly balanced and only slightly too heavy for me. I’ve never practiced with it before, never even thought to; it seemed too perfect and right in Unferth’s hand. Just as it seems perfect that I should use it now to strengthen myself for vengeance.

I lift it slowly, move into defensive forms. The pain in my side is a fire urging me on, pushing tears into my eyes, but when it becomes a vise I can’t breathe through I stretch out onto the lawn to stare up at the sky as it slowly darkens.

The troll mother must be moving now that the stars give her permission. I will tear her to pieces, and when I prove myself to the Valkyrie it will be through violence and death, a confrontation with a monster, not some symbolic riddle solving. It will be on my terms. Raw, vicious, legendary terms.

And I won’t wait for her to come to me again.

Esma calls me for dinner and I don’t respond. She puts her daughter to bed and sits beside me for a while, but the cold night wind chases her inside. She brings me an old green pea coat and I tuck it under my chin, squeezing myself into a ball as if I can hold myself together.

At dawn, I’ve chosen my favorites of the clothing Esma bought for me, just what I can wear. Jeans, a thermal shirt, a dark purple hoodie, and the pea jacket. And my own tired mud boots. I strap Unferth’s sword across my back and pin up my braids.

I begin coffee for Esma and then go to the refrigerator. With the alphabet magnets I spell out
THANK YOU
in bright colors.

I reach the gates of the base just as they’re opening to allow in a convoy of armored trucks. With my chin high I slip out and march along the gravel shoulder of the highway as if it’s exactly where I belong. When a voice yells at me, orders me to return, I disregard it.

But the last truck in the convoy stops and three soldiers pile out. They all have hammer patches sewn to the shoulders of their dun uniforms. This is Thor’s Army. The first soldier holds a hand out and says, “Let’s get you back inside, honey.”

I keep walking, and his two companions spread out to flank me. Beyond them are the rolling hills of New Scotland for me to focus on; the pale green and grayish gold of early spring. There’s no troll-sign here.

When the first soldier tells me to unsheathe my sword and put it on the road, I curl my mouth with Unferth’s own disdain. “I need to be on Vinland, and I will find a boat to take me there in Port Hali.”

“There’s a troll alert. This highway is closed.”

“I don’t care.” As I begin to notice details of his face, his dark eyes and the shape of his nose, I force myself to ignore them. I don’t want to know him. “I can make it.”

“It’s thirty kilometers to Hali,” the soldier says quietly. Not without sympathy.

That tenderness infuriates me. “Take me, then.”

“It isn’t going to happen. You’ll have to wait. Maybe we can put a call somewhere? Is your family here on base?”

“My family is destroyed! On Vinland!” Desperation makes me add, “I am the Valkyrie of the Tree and you will obey me, soldier.”

“There is no Valkyrie of the Tree,” the soldier says as he reaches for Unferth’s sword, and it’s probably only his surprise that lets me punch him in the face.

The others are on me instantly and I kick to the side, then spin and try to block them. But they throw me onto the road hard enough to knock the breath from me. I shut my eyes against white-hot pain in my ribs and swallow bile. My hand throbs but isn’t broken, and gravel cuts into my right cheek. “I have to go!” I yell.

“Nobody’s going anywhere, girl,” one of them says. They drag me up, don’t wait for me to find my feet, and haul me into their truck. The moment one reaches for Unferth’s sword again, I snap my head around and say, “If you touch that, I will kill you.”

They take it anyway, just before tossing me into their brig.

TWELVE

BEING IN PRISON
at least gives my ribs a chance to heal.