The Strange Maid (43 page)

He makes the word into an insult.

As if he’s been spring-loaded, Soren throws immediately into Sharkman.

My guts knot as Unferth and I back up out of the way. Unlike our spar, this is vicious and fast. Like dogs, Soren and Sharkman dart in to engage, punch, and grapple, then fling apart. They circle and leap back in with jabs and grunting. Sharkman knocks Soren’s head to the side, and Soren connects with Sharkman’s stomach in a heavy blow. They break apart again and Sharkman shakes his shoulders, then strips off his shirt. The column of horizontal spear tattoos ripples as his chest heaves.

Soren pauses, and I’m about to insert myself when he slowly removes his T-shirt, too, and sinks back into his boxing stance. Sharkman growls and bares his teeth, face flushed.

The meadow is silent but for the smack of flesh and hard grunts and the occasional explosion of breath. Soren takes a few hard hits, then goes on the defensive; he dodges and blocks, occasionally knocking back, while Sharkman pounds harder and faster, and my throat is closing up, I think I have to throw in myself to get this to stop, if Darius won’t, and
all the gods curse them.

Just as I think it, Soren lunges in and grabs Sharkman by the neck and chest, and there’s an explosion of heat. I spread my arms to catch myself when it hits me. Thebes sways, and even Darius falters back a step.

Sharkman drops to his knees.

Soren lets go, expression stricken, and turns away. As Sharkman falls forward and barely catches himself with his hands, Soren heads fast to the mess tent, grabs a bottle of water, twists it open, and pours it over his face.

And Rathi, standing in the doorway of the second guardhouse in miraculously pressed pants, shirtsleeves, and a vest that shines with pink-and-orange-flowered embroidery, says stiffly, “If you’ve all finished determining your place in the pack, maybe we should discuss the battle plan.”

Soren raggedly insists on checking the perimeter of the island first, though we can see everything from the wall of the fort. Worried, I go after him, padding carefully barefoot along the boardwalk until he leaps off into the shallow dunes. I roll up my jeans and track after him, around the edge of an inland pond that shimmers with tiny waves, toward the far western tip. Whitecaps beat at the southern curve of the island itself, but to the bay side the water is clear green, calmly lapping the beach.

Soren sinks to his knees at the edge of the water and lifts great splashes of it up to his face.

The sand sinks away under my toes. Sunlight warms my neck and arms, and the air smells like fish and salt water. Soren looks up at me, shoulders dripping and seawater glistening in his buzzed hair. I notice the new tattoo on his forearm that’s been covered until now.

It’s the outline of a skinny, twisted apple tree growing from roots that encircle his wrist. The branches weave and tangle up toward his elbow in delicate lines, only the phantom of a tree with tiny apples sketched in like promises.

“Are you all right?” I ask. “What did you do to Sharkman?”

He strips off his orange T-shirt, rubs it over his face, and tosses it onto a tuft of grass. “I drew off his frenzy. The power of it, even though we weren’t berserking. That’s what happened, at the end of the fight. I reached it and just took it away.”

“Odd-eye, that’s incredible.”

“I shouldn’t be able to,” he says darkly. “I’m not their warleader. That’s how they assign captains.”

“It isn’t about seniority?”

Soren rolls his wide shoulders with discomfort. “Just power. Madness, and the one in charge needs to be the one who can control the rest of the men. Just in case.”

“Could you do it to Thebes and Darius?”

“It’s possible.” He doesn’t sound convinced.

“When I decide to take over the world, you’ll definitely be my first call.”

“If you survive the next few hours.” Soren’s gaze stretches toward the mainland, reminding me sharply of what’s coming. We should head back now, but it’s so lovely here for these last few moments of peace. I wonder if the troll-mother is under the water yet, if she made it that far.

“I’ll survive,” I say, and kick a huge splash of water at him. He doesn’t waste energy blocking it but lets it fall all over him, completely darkening his jeans.

I grin.

His hand snakes out and he grabs my ankle, shifting up with his shoulder to knock my hip and send me crashing back into the ocean with a yell.

The water barely softens the blow of my other hip against the beach. Laughing and wincing simultaneously, I dunk back all the way, lying back into the sloping sand. I rub sweat off my arms, scrub my face, and pop my mouth and nose out enough to breathe while I work my fingers through my hair and let it all loose.

I let the gentle sway of the tide move around me, for one moment lost in the quiet roar of the ocean.

When I sit up, Soren has dragged a large hunk of driftwood to the water and straddled it. I stay in the ocean, enjoying the cool silk of it sliding over my legs. Leaning back with my elbows on the soft sand, I breathe as deeply as I can and hold it, then I tell Soren everything Ned told me.

His glower grows fierce the longer I talk, and when I say Freya’s name, he moves his mouth like he wants to spit but can’t. I flick my fingers against the surface of the sea and say, “We have to go back and make a final plan. I know she’s coming tonight.”

“Because of things Unferth said? We can’t trust that. Not if the troll mother is coming, and he’s done so much for her, for hundreds of years.”

I shake all the water from my hands and stand up. With water sluicing off my jeans I look straight at him. “I love him.”

Soren tilts his head up, wincing away from the bright sky. “There’s nothing Astrid could do to make me stop loving her.”

Relieved that he understands, I smile. “I’m sure Ned Unferth could manage
something
unforgivable if he tried hard enough.”

“Probably that’s part of what you like in him. You both reach for impossible things.”

As he joins me on the bank, I lift my chin and adopt an air of haughtiness. “Naturally.”

“I’ll dump you back in the sea,” he threatens, and I swing an arm as high as I can around his shoulders. It occurs to me that everything I’ve been through is worth it for earning a friend like Soren Bearstar.

He must agree with me, for he puts his arm around my waist and lets us walk like that for a few minutes before his usual reticence kicks in and he withdraws. We’re nearly back to the fort, me cursing my playfulness because wet jeans are the most awkward thing in the world, when I see Ned himself waiting for us on the boardwalk. Soren casts me a careful glance and murmurs, “I’ll see the others are gathered and ready,” before walking through the sally port.

I stare at Ned while Soren clomps down the boardwalk. He leans off his bad leg and holds an open bottle of wine loose in his hand. He takes a drink. “You and Soren enjoy your bath?”

“Quite,” I say with relish.

He twists his mouth. “He’d make you a good consort. Possibly he’s even who Freya had in mind when she made me promise not to love you myself,” he says more casually than I’ve ever heard him bother with.

I laugh. “That’s not likely. Soren …” My laughter trails away and I stand there, stunned.
He was supposed to forget Astrid.
“Do you really think so?” I stoop beside him.

His shoulders jerk in a shrug. “Why else would she care who I loved?”

My instinct is to shove him over, to act out because he keeps dancing around that
word.
“It isn’t Soren you have to worry about.”

“Worry about,”
he sneers.

“Sharkman is the one I kissed.”

Ned hisses through his teeth; exactly what I wanted him to do. I smile, and he cusses as he pushes to his feet. “I do not like this, little raven—Signy.”

“It’s hard being the one not in the know. The one teased.” I skip back from his reach.

He doesn’t chase. “Not being the one you’re kissing.”

It hangs between us in the sticky air. I reach down to swipe the bottle of wine. “You know you’ll have to cut back how many nights a week you’re drunk when I’m the Valkyrie of the Tree. I can’t be surrounding myself with bad role models.”

He studies me, slowly sucks in his bottom lip as if he’s tasting a last drop of wine. “I’ll consider it,” he murmurs.

I offer the bottle back to him. As he takes it, our fingers brush together, and I slowly smile.

The seven of us gather in the questionable shade of the mess tent to eat protein bars and talk. Sharkman and Soren sit at opposite ends, and Rathi folds his hands and bows his head like he’s in church.

I describe my dream this morning, my feeling that the woman was the troll mother despite her lovely Valkyrie appearance. That if this mother is the first troll mother, perhaps this was her face before Freya put the heart into her chest.

Ned’s lips tighten as if he disagrees, but he only says, “We should be ready before twilight. I’ve seen her walk under cloudy skies and rise when the sun still burned in the west.”

“Is that because of the heart?” I ask. “If I’m right, it lets her use rune magic like the ancient Valkyrie could, like Odin and Freya do. That might be one reason why it’s my riddle’s answer—so I take that power from her, to use it myself, or … give it to Odin.”

“That’s just a story,” Rathi scoffs. His eyes are dark and warm as the earth. It dawns on me he’s not wearing his contacts. “You’re forgetting the
fossil record.
”

I laugh. Rathi sniffs and regards me with the familiar brown eyes from all my best memories.

But Ned says, “This troll mother isn’t the original troll mother.”

“What?”

He only gazes at me as if I should already understand.

“How do you know?” asks Darius.

Ned twists his mouth, and his hand tightens on his knee, knuckles whitening.

Impatiently I say, “He knows because he’s the original Unferth Truth-Teller. Raised from the dead by Freya to lead me to the troll mother. Ned, are you sure? I thought she
told you
this troll has the heart from—”

Sharkman surges to his feet.
“Freya!”

“You knew Hrothgar Shielding?” Rathi interrupts. “Of the great Freyan kings? You were at Heorot?”

Darius quietly says, “Beowulf Berserk.”

Rathi stands up to, too, towering over Ned, and the sunlight gilds the smooth waves of his hair. “That’s why your version was different in places, like I’ve never seen or heard before. You wrote the poem!”

Of course my wish-brother resisted the legend of the first troll mother being true, but he believes this with only scant linguistic evidence.

“Sang it. I sang it,” Ned snaps. “When I was a poet, when I was a man, we didn’t murder poetry by carving it onto stone. It lived in the air or not at all.”

There’s a long silence as everyone studies him.

I rub my rune scar. “Ned, how do you know this troll mother isn’t the first?”

He slowly turns his gray eyes to mine. “The same way she knew me, when she saw me. We are old friends.”

“Grendel’s mother?” Darius asks.

Sharkman says firmly, “She died. Beowulf killed her.”

Suddenly I know. My rune scar.
Strange Maid.
Ned told me the answer months ago. And again last night:
In the end, she was too dark, too mad, for her own good.
I splay my hand and thrust to my feet. “Rag me,” I whisper.
“Valtheow.”

My troll mother. My mirror self, the monster of my dreams. Writing my name again and again, carved into her stone chest. But not my name.
Her name.
Valtheow.

I push through the men and look down at Ned.
Truth truth truth
flickers against his pupil. “You lied,” I whisper, hoarse and shocked.

He says numbly, “That poem was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“What?”
Rathi demands.

“He made it all up,” I say. “What happened at the mere. The story of Beowulf.”

“No. Most of it is true.” Ned blinks, staring at a thing from the past. “The berserker killed Grendel. But it was Valtheow who destroyed the mother and saved Heorot.”

Darius puts his hand on Thebes’s shoulder as if to steady himself. Sharkman’s face is blotchy around the spear tattoo on his cheek. Bright sunlight pours down through the tarp, turning everything a haunted blue.

“He’s our greatest hero,” Thebes rumbles.

“But why?” Rathi whispers. “Why lie about that?”

“Grendel’s mother had the heart,” Ned says, his voice hollow. “The magical stone heart from the very first troll that Signy was talking about. It’s what made Grendel’s mother so powerful. The trolls had passed it down, mother to daughter, over the ages.”

I sink to my knees beside Ned’s camp chair. “Valtheow took it.”