The Strange Maid (36 page)

My hopes fall. “All the excess sightings around the country. Are you sure there’s no pattern that might be … attributed to her?”

Talia chews on the side of her tongue as she thinks. “It will be hard to really mark what’s unusual, because it’s all unusual. We’ve been keeping records for fifty years, and with satellites for nearly twenty. This whole situation is unusual.” She crosses to one of the computers and types in a series of lightning-fast commands. The wall-sized monitor flares to life, with a detailed map of the Gulf Coast. She flings her arm to it as a string of orange dots appears along the Mizizibi River, clusters especially around the cities of Memphis and Port Orleans. “For example, in the past five days there have been more lesser-troll sightings per capita right here in Orleans and Watauga kingstate than in the past ten years put together.”

“Could there be more sightings because people are looking harder?” Soren asks.

Talia shakes her head. “We’ve adjusted for that.”

I sink back against the table. “If she culled trolls from other troll mothers—she pulled them to her? Could she be doing that with the lesser trolls, too? Calling them?”

“I suppose so, though I’ve never heard of it; there’s no suggestion in any of the research that mothers cull across species.”

“Still. Can you …” I approach the monitor. “Can you expand out, still mapping these lesser-troll sightings?”

“Sure. It sticks with the Mizizibi River, roughly, for a while, and then I’m not sure. I’ll have to … hang on.” Talia types more commands into her computer, pulling up additional websites. She hums to herself while I clutch my hands together and try not to pace and grind my teeth.

“I had to access the Ohiyo Institute database,” she says after a moment. “Here.”

Orange dots flare across the country, but they’re obviously concentrated in a thick strip spreading north and east along the Mizizibi River and following the Ohiyo River all the way north to the banks of Lake Erie. “Odd-eye,” I whisper. This is a highway of rivers and lakes from Port Orleans all the way northeast to Canadia and the Gulf of Lawrence, which connects to Leif’s Channel and Vinland. Through both Ohiyo and Vertmont. All along it there have been even more lesser-troll sightings over the past two weeks than in the rest of the country.

The troll mother could have walked almost wherever she wants to underwater, unseen, avoiding the sun from Vinland.

Unferth whispers a line from the old poem
The Song of Beowulf.

From the mere slunk the troll mother, dripping and wet, black fury in her heart.

Soren touches my back. “Signy, look at the dates.” His eyes are on the monitor, not the map. I try to read the list quickly and see what he sees, and Talia says, “Here,” and types in more commands.

The LED lights blink out. “They’ll come on as I say the dates,” she says.

Talia begins a month ago, when the new pattern of excess sightings began. It starts in the northeast, near Montreal and New Scotland, with tiny pockets in major cities around the country. As time progresses, the troll sightings bloom toward the south and west, spilling across the map like a virus. The most intense groupings grow along the rivers from the Great Lakes down the Ohiyo to the Mizizibi, dragging inexorably closer to us here in Port Orleans.

“Did you see?” Soren asks. His palm is hot, burning through my T-shirt to my skin. “Play it again, please, and stop when I say.”

Talia starts the sequence again, and on the date of the Vertmont sighting he says to stop. Then he asks her to continue two days, until we got the tip from Ohiyo, the only positive identification of my troll mother.

“All right,” I say. “Then what?”

For three more days the lights flip on very slowly and make almost no progress south.

Then they explode on the fourth day, and Soren sighs harshly. “See? That’s the day
you and I
started down toward Port Orleans, Signy.” He turns me to face him, hands hard and hot on my shoulders. The spear tattoo is rigid on his dark cheek; he hardly moves his mouth as he says, “We followed the troll mother to Vertmont and Ohiyo, but after that this pattern pauses, and then started up again heading south. Just behind us. If this”—he waves a hand at the map—“if this is tracking the troll mother, it means she waited for us in Ohiyo, and then tracked
us.
She’s not just hunting you in your dreams. And she’s already here.”

TWENTY-TWO

AFTER EXTRACTING A
promise of temporary silence about our discoveries from Talia and a printout of the latest lesser-troll-sightings in Port Orleans in return for allowing her a personal visit with Red Stripe, we head home. My toes curl and tap in my boots as I analyze the possibilities. If she’s here, if she’s been hunting me, I should draw her away from the city and its residents, but it’s also possible the huge population has been a cushion of safety because she can’t find me here without revealing herself.

And suddenly I have questions for her, not only this black need to cut out her heart. I want to know why she came to Vinland. What choices did she make—as it’s clear she does make her own choices—that led her there? If she wasn’t from Montreal and if she truly followed Soren and me here, it has nothing to do with Red Stripe. That is both a relief and horrifying, too, because then what if it was only and always to do with me?

If Freya and Odin set me on the path toward her, did they set her onto me, too?
Your heart,
she said, as if she recognized
me,
had been looking for
my
heart. And what about Unferth? Where does he fit in?

There must be a solution to this puzzle. A refrain to this poem.

After ten minutes of silent driving along the red highway, Soren says, “Maybe she has nightmares about you, too.”

I shiver despite the heat and bright sunlight, and ask him to pull off at a rest stop.

It’s white with a pink tile roof, sheltering soda machines and candy dispensers, toilets, a Skuld shrine for travel blessings, and a stand of brochures advertising swamp tours and the Old Quarter and the Mjolnir Institute we just visited. While Soren buys a honey soda, I wash my face in one of the rather wretched sinks, then stand outside in the sunlight. It dries the water as I lift my chin, eyes closed. The evaporation is slow and prickles. What does it feel like to have your skin turn to stone?

Shaking out of the thought, I plop onto a bench. I bend down to grab a sharp chunk of gravel and carve
nihtmaera,
an Old Anglish word for nightmare, into the surface of the picnic table. I turn it into a binding rune and try to match it to my scar. It nearly fits.

Soren slides in across from me and adjusts the sock on his forearm before putting his elbows on the table. He doesn’t even open the soda can but regards me placidly while condensation forms against the aluminum.

I take a deep breath and pluck the front of my sundress off my chest to let air slip down. Dogs bark and cars rush past; the wind bends the pine trees lining the highway.

Finally I reach over and pop the top of his soda for him. He lifts his eyebrows. Instead of bursting out with my thoughts on what we should to next about the troll mother, I say, “I met a disir in the garden at the ball.”

“A disir!”

I rub my finger over
nihtmaera.
“It was Idun the Young.”

The flash of heat rips down my arms and face; I jerk my face away. When I peek again, Soren’s hands are flat against the picnic table, his brow creased, but otherwise he hasn’t moved. “She was there?” he whispers tightly when I meet his gaze.

“Yes.”

Soren knocks the soda can over with a sharp swipe. Carbonation hisses as the liquid glugs out. He watches it for a long moment and then says, “I’m sorry. I’m … sorry.”

I cover his fist with my hands and slowly pry it open. I draw the rune
love
in his palm.

“How does she look? Is she … well?” he says, so quietly I nearly can’t hear it.

“Pretty, and healthy.” I catch his eyes. He looks down.

We remain posed with our hands together while the breeze and sun dry the spilled soda into a nearly invisible patch against the wood. Soren’s shoulders heave then, and he withdraws his hand.

“Soren, how is she Idun the Young? I saw it in her eyes, her godhood. I know you aren’t supposed to say more, that it was breaking enough trust to even tell me her name …”

His glower is severe. “That’s why Freya stole Baldur’s ashes, or arranged for it, to get Astrid there and make her the Lady of Apples. That is what she wanted.”

“There was no other way?”

“Astrid … agreed. She knew it was the right thing to do, and always … always was devoted.”

“To Freya?”

“To Freya, and Baldur, and the world and … her own heart. She’s
so good,
Signy.”

I scowl. “If Freya wants me to kill the troll mother, she’ll get that, too. Everything she wants.”

He nods. “Freya didn’t get everything she wanted. I was supposed to forget Astrid, too. It would have destroyed me. I would not be the man I am without her in my life. It would change me as much as cutting out my frenzy.”

“Odd-eye, Soren. I should have tied her up and dragged you to her.”

He laughs sourly. “I’ll see her in a few weeks.”

“You will?”

“Four times a year, at the heavens’ holidays, I’m allowed to spend one day with her.”

“What a curse.”

“A blessing compared to what it might have been.” He covers his chest, as if it pains him, and stands up. “Can we go? I’m too hot, I need to move.”

I follow him back to the car, where he insists on driving, as it will give him a thing to focus on and stay calm until he can practice his meditation.

As we head back into the city, I wonder if I’ve been too selfish. What if I’m not Freya’s endgame, but Astrid was? What if Vinland and I and the massacre were all just consequences to her plan? Did she give us up for Astrid to become Idun the Young? Were we casualties of war? Maybe my riddle was to position me for vengeance. Maybe Freya did this
for
me.

And that would mean Unferth did it for me, too.

I think of his dangerous teeth, of that hidden smile behind his eyes, when his lips never moved at all. And I wonder if I’m making it all up, inventing meaning in her actions and in his, because I can’t stand the thought that he was her pawn, that he only betrayed me.

I invite Soren to stay for dinner, but he shakes his head and says darkly, “I can’t control myself right now if your Sharkman pushes me.”

I lean across the gearshift and kiss the corner of his mouth. His hands tighten on the steering wheel and he very carefully remains still. I say, “If you change your mind, you’re welcome. Always welcome wherever I am, Soren Bearstar.”

He nods once, slowly, and I gather the rolled-up map from the backseat and climb out.

When I enter, I go straight into the garage where Red Stripe is chained. He’s crouched more comfortably in this airy room, despite the restraints, than he’s been in weeks. His calcified expression is merely uncomfortable instead of twisted with rage or pain. I set my map down and take a harsh cloth from the bucket of salt water in the corner. Darius, reading a book in the only chair in the room, glances up but says nothing as I wring out the water and put the cloth against the gash clinging to Red Stipe’s back and side. I lean in, scrubbing at the purple crystals that are his hardened blood. I should have asked Talia if she could guess why he’s not healing well, and wonder if maybe it’s the heat as she mentioned. But then, he was in the cold of Halifax for two weeks at least, and it didn’t heal then, either.

When I’ve scraped off the blood crystals as best I can, I stroke a finger along his short tusk and whisper, “It won’t be much longer.”

“Lady?” Darius says.

Putting my back to Red Stripe’s hard marble chest, I lean into his arm, which props him up like a pillar. And I look at Darius. He’s back in his uniform now, the long black vest and black pants, black boots. It leaves his arms bare. The left shoulder is marked with a family crest tattoo: a rampant eagle spreading its wings, in its claws a round-shield divided into quarters: two are blacked out, one holds the rune for
strength,
and in the last is a crossed hammer and anvil. Beneath the crest is a small phrase in medieval script.