The Strange Maid (24 page)

We discuss the riddle, and I tell him what the troll mother said, that it makes me chill with fear but also hope, because I’m certain we’ll meet again. Soren says there must be more to the riddle’s answer than only presenting a heart of stone to the Death Hall, that there will be a catch or a trick because Odin Alfather does nothing without a catch.

I ask him why he dedicated himself to Baldur, and he only shrugs and says, “When you meet him, you’ll know.”

“A lot of people meet him and don’t change their dedication to him.”

“I …” Soren drags the pause out, not to avoid me, I think, but because he’s never put it into words before. “Baldur is the first god I’ve ever believed in.” He’s quick to add, “I know they all
exist,
there’s nothing to believe in that way—but I mean that I know he cares what happens to me, and that he’s good. He believes in
me,
and none of the rest of them do.”

Hanging behind his words is the question:
Does Odin believe in you?

It’s such a light word, a gentle word: to have confidence in, to trust in. I put my fingers over my heart. “When my parents died, I felt this desperate longing, this growth in my heart that made me want to scream and drag others behind me until they felt that scream in their own hearts. I still feel it, and so does the Alfather. He recognized it in me, and instead of saying I was too wild or wrong he embraced it. He’s the god who not only lets me need to feel the troll mother’s blood between my fingers, he encourages it. The god of the hanged understands how violence is part of life. Creation itself is an act of violence, and everything I do is violent.”

Even your way of kissing,
Unferth whispers.

“So I believe in that. And Odin does, too. We want the same thing. That makes us allies.”

“Dangerous ones,” Soren says.

“Danger is necessary to life.”

“If you can contain it, control it.”

“Ride it, use it! Dance with it! You can’t control life, Soren. That’s what people try to do with troll walls and seat belts, it’s what the Valkyrie do with their rules and costumes, but you can’t. Horrible things still happen. Trolls attack, people die. People who shouldn’t.” My throat tightens and I realize I was near yelling.

Soren doesn’t try to comfort me. The tiny fire casts him in bronze and earthy tones, like he’s a statue. A calcified hill troll.

I look away. I want Unferth here so badly to argue on Soren’s side, to cut me down with a well-placed barb, to twist what I say into a riddle so I’ll spend hours delving deeper into myself. That’s what he did. He drove me deeper.

Ned Unferth believed in me.

It’s no use. The day we reach the trailhead, and there’s the lightning-scoured spruce as proof we’ve gone all the way around, I take my backpack off and fling it to the ground with a cry. I pick up a rock and throw it as hard as I can toward the mountain. It clatters through branches and lands softly, rolling several paces. I throw another and another.

Soren puts a hand on my shoulder and I drop the last rock. Sunlight pounds down on us, warm enough to actually feel. “How am I supposed to find her? Where am I supposed to go next?” I yell, tossing out my arms.

“The funerals are tomorrow night,” Soren says.

“What?”

“It’s seven days since we met, which was a Moonsday, so the funerals are tomorrow night. Back at your cove.”

I blow a hard breath. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to watch the town burn again, even if it’s in pyres.

But a Valkyrie does not balk at death.

We arrive as the sun is falling. There are media vans and death priests everywhere. I recognize logos from Freyan volunteer organizations from all up the eastern coast of the States. Soren is even more interested than I am in avoiding anybody with a camera. Men and women come from across the country, half of Congress is here, kings and princes, representatives from every priesthood, reporters and the far-flung families of the dead. Baldur the Beautiful is here, Freyr the Satisfied with his endless entourage, and two Valkyrie: Siri of the Ice, whose region we’re in, and Precia, the Valkyrie of the South, where Rome and Jesca Summerling were born.

I’m glad I packed my last wool dress from the tower. It’s dark green and falls to my knees. A red apron ties over it, cinching in my waist and pinned at my shoulders with abalone shells. Chains of fake gold line the collar and wrists. I pull on Jesca’s silver rings and wear both my seax and Unferth’s sword. I braid tiny ropes to either side of my face and let the rest of my hair fall down my back. I use ash to darken my eyes with thick lines, like a mask, and dab it onto my mouth, too.

It’s as if I think all this preparation and costume will help me look my sisters in the eye. They surely know what I’ve done, since even Soren had heard the story, and maybe that commander on the military base did get around to calling one of the Death Halls.

We join the mourners, and one look at either of us parts the next section of the crowd until a path arrows us toward the pavilion. It’s set up in the valley beside the razed festival site, a gilded stage hung with prayer flags and flowers flown in from some tropical greenhouse. It clashes dreadfully with the moor, especially as the sun sets and our island goes hard and harsh with shadows, but the pavilion lights up in a blaze. There are fourteen pyres arranged so that when lit they will become a circle of fire like Freya’s
brisinga
necklace. My stomach twists at the pomp. This is the part of being a Valkyrie I always hated. The decorations, the ceremony, the gilded prettiness of everything. I would prefer to light the fires and scream. Make a sacrifice, yell gruesome poetry, to remind the mourners death is all we truly have in common.

Rathi speaks at the podium in a red three-piece suit, pink starburst tie pinned with a horse brooch, his hair perfectly slicked back and his false green eyes bright. He welcomes everyone in a shining voice. Behind him stands Siri of the Ice, her thin lips in a line when she sees me; she flicks her fingers lightly against Precia’s elbow. There’s Baldur the Beautiful, nearly impossible to look at in person, a golden beach bum in jeans and a loose white coat, tears caught like stars in his sky-blue eyes. And my parents’ own Freyr the Satisfied, taller than his cousin god, in old-fashioned finery: purple velvet jacket and hose to show off his well-shaped legs, fur boots, a six-hundred-year-old sword crusted with gems, and an actual crown. There are congressmen and the president’s lawspeaker, a death priest in a silver raven mask, five wolf-guards with their faces tattooed black, attendants in gray and green cowls holding incense and torches at every corner of the pavilion.

The crowd waits in a half circle, the first fifty rows in wooden folding chairs, the rest arrayed among the fourteen pyres. I reach the end of one aisle, Soren at my side.

“Signy!” cries Peachtree the clown from across the crescent of empty moor between dais and crowd. She waves an arm as Rathi falls silent, as everyone turns to me. I keep my eyes on Peachtree, on the two sequins melted onto her cheek from the fires of the attack.

Murmuring breaks out and Rathi steps around the podium. “Signy,” he says, only loud enough for those of us near to hear. He holds out his hand for me to take, to pull me up with him, but I shake my head.

“I am only here to grieve,” I call loudly. “To dance with the song of crackling flames.”

My wish-brother hesitates and then nods. He goes back to his welcome speech and ends with Rome Summerling’s favorite prayer. When he looks at me I mouth the words with him. It loosens the pain curled tight around his eyes.

Into the silence after his invocation, drums beat a sedate, gloomy rhythm, and a team of flautists raise the hairs on my neck with their ghostly accompaniment.

Precia and Siri step forward to opposite ends of the pavilion. The Valkyrie of the Ice is tall and lean, in a white feather cape and an impractical skirt of chain mail. Beside her the young Valkyrie of the South wears a leather and fur coat, her dark hair coiffed and her eyes dangerous. They are both so elegant, so powerful in every smooth gesture, and together they lift their voices in a song of mourning.

It’s controlled, synchronized. Not a word out of place, not a gesture unpracticed. So unlike the wild splash of death, the frenetic beating of my heart as I struggled and fought to save my family. Not desperate, not thick and bloody.

This is only a performance.

Such a lowly thing for a Valkyrie to do,
Ned told me when I painted myself up for the festival.

I feel so empty.

We don’t even have his body to burn.

The Valkyrie fall silent and put their arms around each other like sisters.

Freyr the Satisfied holds out his hands. He draws Rathi forward with him, and from here I can see the shudder as my brother closes his eyes. The god is lovely and tall, as they all must be, and charisma flares in the corner of his smile, in the light way he flirts with the audience even as his words are sad. He offers condolences, and those of his twin sister Freya the Witch, who promised him our island would never be forgotten in any of the strands of fate.

Freyr then tells us a story of meeting Rome Summerling once over a decade ago; his words blur in my ears, but everyone around me laughs, gently at first then uproariously. Even Rathi smiles widely and puts his hands together over his heart to bow to the god of joy.

Rathi leads another prayer, that lilt of his father’s accent carrying the sadness out of his voice, and he gleams with a sincere sort of glory. Cameras flash, and I imagine viewing this all through a television screen, as I’ve seen so many appearances by the gods and Valkyrie before.

But the cold ocean wind tickles my ears and I smell salt and mud under the perfume and gathered bodies. There are evergreen boughs tossed onto the pyres to brighten the inevitable sickening of the air when the remains burn, and I wish there weren’t. That we would all be forced to breathe in the sour death.

Why should it be beautified?

I ignore the congressman with his wide sideburns and rearing horse lapel pin as he eulogizes my island. I ignore the click of a camera beside my face. Let them see that I stand to the side, that I don’t sing along with Jesca’s favorite hymn or the old dawn theme they used to open the festival.

Only when Baldur the Beautiful steps forward, and tears glint on his cheeks, do I feel any of it matters. He shines like a star in the darkness, tan and healthy and perfect, his jacket casually open, his collar unbuttoned. All the god of light says is “May they rest peacefully in Freya’s embrace, as I do in my turn.”

The Valkyrie step forward again, both with unlit torches in hand. They raise the carved wood in harmony, and in an arch over their heads tap the tips together.

Flames burst to life.

The congregation gasps, and Baldur claps with a smile. Freyr takes a torch and lights it from the Valkyrie’s fire, then so do Baldur, Rathi, the congressman, and the president’s lawspeaker, who is short and unimpressive amongst this company.

It is so choreographed, exactly like our
Beowulf
pantomime in the feast hall. A shallow production, a mask. This is not what death is. This is not all the Valkyrie should be.

A scream builds in my chest. I clench my hands into fists, push them hard against my heart, and the Valkyrie of the Ice suddenly looks at me. The Valkyrie of the South does the same.

They lift their voices in a keen. A beautiful, controlled wail of grief. There’s no rage in it, no desperation.

Other voices join them, until all around me a hundred people cry as the fire passes from torch to torch. This is no scream, but a song they tried to teach me.

The Valkyrie step off the pavilion and stride together for the first pyre. It lights, flaring loud and bright and cutting off the howl of the crowd. The Valkyrie are shadows against the bonfire as the others file off the pavilion and walk through the rest of the pyres.

I back away, touch Soren to tell him he need not follow, and dart through the mourners onto the free, open tundra. It sparkles in the moonlight, so many human bodies shielding it and me from the warm light of the fires.

If the frost-tipped gorse rose up to become the troll mother, if her moon-white marble body loomed over me now, I would say his name for her.

“Signy.”

I turn to face the Valkyrie.

The firelight behind them darkens their faces, but the Valkyrie of the Ice tilts hers so I can see the glint of green in her eyes. And there is Precia beside her. In the two years since I’ve seen her, I’ve grown a head taller than the Valkyrie of the South.

“You do not mourn?” Siri of the Ice says with disdain.

I try to match her tone. “Not like this. It is too clean for me; you should know.”

“People like for death to be clean.”

Precia adds, “It’s part of what we do.”

“Death isn’t clean. Especially these deaths,” I say.

The Valkyrie of the South shakes her head at me. “We make death into what we need it to be.”

“Or what the Alfather needs it to be,” Siri adds. “We translate for him, we are
his
voice.”