The Strange Maid by Tessa Gratton
“Paint a prayer card, Signy, and ask.” Precia ushers me to the long table, dismissing her death priests with a glance. She spreads rainbow-colored cards for me in an arc.
I choose one that is pale green with silver vines at the edges. “Tell me what you know about my riddle.”
She taps a peach-colored fingernail against my card. “We prayed that night, too. Elisa, Myra, and I. We prayed together for an answer, for help managing you because the three of us have always been … the ones most behind you.” She offers me a pot of dark green ink. I take it without touching her fingers.
“We came out to find you and there it was, emblazoned on the trunk of the New World Tree. It was for us as much as you, Elisa and I thought. That it meant you would always fight us, that your heart is a stubborn one, and one perhaps we should strive to understand instead of dismiss. But Myra said, That riddle is future tense. And then you woke up.”
“I woke up and ran away.”
“You didn’t ask us what we thought. You never asked. We’re supposed to be your sisters.”
I draw the rune for glory onto my card, and Precia’s hand goes still. I add sacrifice and death and transformation into a binding rune. Precia murmurs, “Sacrifice transforms death into its own glory.”
“That’s what Odin said to me when I was a little girl.” I lift my gaze to hers. “Do you still think the riddle’s answer is about my being stubborn? Or is it a prophecy?”
Precia’s coiffed hair and conservative wardrobe make it easy to forget she’s not even thirty years old yet. But the emotion in her eyes is young. “I think you proved yourself against the Vinland herd. I think you were there because of fate, and you were brave; you were a leader, Signy. That’s all we need you to be.”
“If I went home to the Philadelphia Death Hall right now, you would argue to include me now? Officially?”
“Yes. I already have. But the others—Gundrun and Siri and Aerin, in particular—will not agree until you ask to be one of us again. They argue that you can’t have proven yourself if even you don’t believe it.”
“I have to prove myself … to myself.”
She nods.
I smile sadly. Unferth said that to me the very day we met. “Do you believe Odin is the one who created the riddle?”
Precia flips over my card irritably. “Signy, really.”
“It’s not only a riddle but a prophecy. Like Myra said. Future tense. The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart.”
Her mouth curls into a frown. “If the heart is your heart, everything in that riddle was built from pieces of you, from pieces our Alfather could see and understand in that moment.”
“I think the answer is the troll mother’s heart. The one I’m hunting. Her heart is literally stone, Precia, and when I cut it out of her, I’ll have my vengeance. I saw runes in her eyes, too: stone and heart.”
“She has the worth of a Valkyrie,” she breathes.
I knew Precia would understand. “She’s my mirror.”
“I make myself a mirror to understand the beast.”
That my sister made the same leap to Valtheow as I did relieves me like the perfect couplet at the end of a poem. I take a long, deep breath. The air here is thick, heavy. It tastes of rain and wet leaves. “And so I’m faced with two options, Precia.”
“Two?”
“Either the riddle is all of Odin, and the answer is with me and me alone, pieces of my heart and the Valkyrie I wanted to be. I’ve always been the answer. Or the riddle is a prophecy, and the answer the troll mother’s heart. A thing to come that Odin could not have seen on his own and asked Freya to look forward into fate for me.”
The Valkyrie grasps my face, peers into my eyes. “And you’re convinced it’s the troll mother. A fated answer from the queen of Hel.”
“I dream of the troll mother every night, and she uses runes, Precia. She does what I do; she wears my poem on her stony skin. She recognized me, too, somehow. Her heart is the stone heart of the riddle, and Odin does not see the future.”
“But, Signy, the Alfather cast it. If his sister-god looked at Fate for him, he saw her answer and approved of where it would lead you. That riddle is from the god of the hanged.”
The certainty in her voice, the firm grip of her hands on my face, makes me wilt against her. “And so he did send Ned Unferth to help me, when it was time.”
“What?”
“Last year, at my birthday, I met a poet called Ned the Spiritless, who brought me to the trolls, who taught me about the riddle and, odd-eye, Precia, he …” I don’t know where to go from there, what detail to give her that will make her understand my connection to Ned Unferth.
“You love him.” Precia lets me go so suddenly I have to catch myself on the table.
I gape at her. It must be so obvious.
She says, “There is no room for other men, other loves, between a Valkyrie’s heart and the Alfather’s.”
“Elisa is married!”
“To a man who understands her devotion.”
“There are so many stories of Valkyrie and great, epic love,” I argue.
“How many of them ended happily? Especially for the Valkyrie in the sagas and ancient poems, the kind of Valkyrie you want to be? They have no happy endings, my love.”
It’s true, what she says, like a kick in the guts. “He’s dead anyway.”
Precia softens, touches my prayer card only to flip it over. “Finish your prayer, Signy.”
The front of the card reads: Sacrifice transforms death into its own glory. The first thing Unferth said to me was that pain wasn’t the worth of sacrifice. I think now the worth is in how it changes us. With a shaky hand, I paint the rune spirit and cross it out with a jagged line.
Precia blesses my card with a kiss. I open the cage while she gently pulls out my dove. We tie the card to her thin gray leg. I take her in both hands, her downy feathers shivering against my skin, to the hanging tree.
As I hold the dove, Precia ties one end of a green rope to her neck in a simple slipknot and the other end to the branch. I whisper, “I know, little bird, what this fear in your heart is like. Thank you for being my sacrifice.”
Birds are difficult to hang, and if you give them their freedom they’ll beat their wings and panic, flying against the rope for long minutes before they tire and slowly, achingly, choke themselves. I take a deep breath. Ignoring the chatter of the crowd, the rush of hot wind and sticky sweat clinging to my shoulders and thighs, I close my eyes and picture the runes of my prayer card. I don’t let go of the kissing dove, but with a swift, fast tug, pull her down against the rope.
Tears burn in my eyes. They spill out, warm on my cheeks. Beginning in my chest, I feel the relief of sacrifice, the loosening of my ribs and slowing of my heartbeat.
Releasing her with a caress, I allow my dove now to gently swing, like a pendulum marking the wind. The breeze flutters her feathers and teases at my hair.
NINETEEN
THE MOMENT BALDUR’S charity ball officially begins, I’m waiting inside the parlor of the town house. We’re to make a grand entrance about an hour into the evening, and as I’ve been dressed and pressed for quite some time, waiting is all I can do. I sit for a while at the baby grand, plunking out old nursery tunes, trying to distract myself from the whirl of thoughts spiraling endlessly behind my eyes.
Wide-winged fans drive thick air down at the crown of my head. The humidity finds every free strand and curls it against my cheeks and neck. Disir Day is midway through Blissmonth, and exactly six weeks since I sat alone on the death ship beach, watching two hundred paper lanterns rise up and up into the stars. Almost as long since Unferth died.
I tell myself his loyalties don’t matter anymore. Precia agrees the riddle itself was approved by Odin, regardless of its being a prophecy, too. And so what would it mean if Freya sent Ned to me? No more than that she wants me to solve the riddle, to meet my destiny. There’s no reason to think that just because sh
It’s only this niggling question in my heart: how much of Ned’s truths were lies?
Soren isn’t down yet, and I can’t think what could be taking them longer with him than they took with me. I glance at the wide-faced grandmother clock stretched tall beside the door. Five minutes past seven. The manner of this old house muffles the noise from upstairs, though I just left a maid there and saw at least one man moving in and out of Soren’s rooms.
I pace around the edge of the Oriental rug that covers a good half the floor. What is the troll mother doing now, as I’m forced to wear a fancy dress and go make nice for charity? Where is she? Will she dream of me tonight, as I dream of her? I put my feet down heel-to-toe and breath steadily, imagining the dark red line bordering the rug is Peachtree’s tightrope. Pedestrian noise from the Quarter outside and distant music catch a ride on the sticky breeze.
“Isn’t this a vision?” says a man in the doorway. He leans against the door frame in a tuxedo with silver fitted vest and bow tie. Sun-yellow hair is pushed behind his ears to curl loose against his lapels, and his face is wide-open, tanned and flawless. Even without the dark foyer for contrast behind him, he’d be a beacon of sunlight.
Baldur the Beautiful smiles, pushes gracefully off the door, and comes to me with his right hand held out, palm up.
Because there’s absolutely nothing else to do, I give him mine. He raises it and bows, holding my gaze with his. His eyes are indigo, and around his pupils is a thin penumbra of dark pink. Like the sunset outside. My breath becomes sheer, too light for oxygen. Even seeing him on the pavilion at the funerals didn’t prepare me for this contact.
Baldur kisses my knuckles and flutters his lashes as he glances away politely.
It breaks my shock as he must have known it would, and I manage to squeeze his fingers. “My lord Baldur,” I say, too husky to sound like myself. He’s filling the room with bright ardor, enough to power a city.
“It’s such a pleasure, Signy of the Tree.” His smile is merry and he drops my hand, planting his on his very fine hip. “I was sorry to have missed you at the funeral.”
Despite his words, I feel as though I’ve been dropped into a summery ocean and have to relearn to breathe. Out of habit I think for Unferth to anchor me: he’d be cutting and hard, but I can’t think of anything gloomy about the god of light.
Folding my hands before me in the semblance of calm, I reach for politeness. It’s what Jesca would’ve wanted. “Thank you for what you’re doing tonight. Vinland needs it.”
“I feel responsible,” he says, sorrow eclipsing his smile. “My absence upset so many things, and Vinland paid the price. I would that I could change that.”
I shake my head slowly. Odd-eye, he’s so beautiful and shining, but his fingers play against his thigh as if he’s nervous.
Like a man.
With a leaden tongue I say, “Sacrifice is worthwhile.”
Surprise winks across his face and he nods firmly. But immediately Baldur wipes away the brief serious note with a smile. “This dress looks amazing.”
The corner of his mouth tells me he’s flirting, and my heartbeat picks up again. “Your designer did herself proud, and I appreciate it. Without you, I’d have shown up in a hoodie and giant black boots.”
He laughs, too bright for this world.
I struggle to say “I understand you’re quite the boxer.”
“Soren’s been talking about me?” Delight pushes up his golden eyebrows. They distract me for a split second and I notice the pink is fading from his eyes. They truly carry a piece of the changing sky.
“Um, yes. Yes.” I’m hopelessly caught up in his beauty.
Empty-headed girl, sneers Unferth.
As if he’s here, judging me, I fist my hands and say, “Lord Sun, may I ask you a thing about your father?”
Baldur the Beautiful takes my hand. His own eyes burn too brightly for me to read runes in them. “Of course.”
“Do you know … all the names of his Lonely Warriors?”
His golden eyebrows shoot up. “Ah, yes, I believe so.”
“Was there one named Unferth? Ned Truth-Teller?”
“No,” he says immediately. “Though it sounds familiar.”
“It’s also the name of a character in The Song of Beowulf.”
“Ah!” He claps his hands together, and just as he’s about to continue, Soren enters, saying, “Baldur, you’re here!”
The men embrace, clapping each other’s backs and grinning in the way of brothers. I take a moment to release my shaky breath, to right the world that’s tilting under my feet.
They’ve put Soren in a white uniform that mirrors the berserkers’ usual attire: double-breasted jacket with two rows of golden sunburst buttons and a narrow, high collar. The tails of his jacket are almost as full as a skirt and will look amazing if he dances. A thin stripe of yellow lines the outside of his white slacks, and his shoes are so shiny the chandelier reflects back on the toes.
He stretches his neck uncomfortably.
“You look more than worthy of being the Sun’s first Berserk,” Baldur laughs, throwing an arm around Soren again and turning them both to face me.
Focused on Soren’s familiarity, I purse my lips as if shopping. “How can I choose only one?”
“No need for that, pretty thing,” interrupts a young woman in a gown that sparkles like it’s made of a thousand shards of green glass. She slinks into the room. “I’m here for the Bearstar’s escort.”
Something in her vivid green eyes reminds me I haven’t eaten in hours. My stomach pinches with that hunger, and when the newcomer winds her arm possessively through Soren’s, I ungraciously think she must be wearing contacts like Rathi.
Soren lets her hold his arm and doesn’t appear surprised, but shifts slightly so he’s more between her and Baldur. The woman laughs, revealing strong teeth. “I’m not here to eat him, boy.”
“I invited her,” the god of light reassures us. “Glory, meet Signy Valborn, of the New World Tree.”
Glory’s lips never lower down over those teeth as she studies me.
I hold myself still. She’s only taller because she’s wearing heels. “Glory,” I say. “Have you no epithet?”
She leans in. The hairs on my arms rise as her face envelops my entire vision. I don’t know what stands in front of me, except that she is no real woman. Do not quail before predators, little raven, hisses Unferth.
“I need no epithet,” she murmurs.
“Signy.” Soren is there beside me, glowering at Glory hard enough she wrinkles her nose at him. “This is Lady Fenris.”
Fenris Wolf, daughter of Loki, destined to swallow the sun at the end of the world.
My eyes drop to her neck, where a collar woven from nine silver chains rests. The stories say those chains bind her with all the magic of the goddess Freya and the elves and goblins into this girl’s form so that she can be no danger to Baldur. He, at least, must believe it’s true.
I force myself to look past her to the god of light. As delicately as I can, I ask, “Shall I ready myself for any more divine surprises tonight?”
Glory barks a laugh, and Baldur bows apologetically as he offers his hand to lead me out. Soren catches my eye and nods once.
But then Soren always prepares for the worst.
Pretending it’s little deal to sit in a limousine whiter than ivory with two immortal beings strains even my skills at performance. I perch with my knees together and Unferth’s sword pressed across my thighs. The housekeeper handed it to me as Baldur swept me out the front door. The sheath is new, made of mirrored silver, with a chain-mail baldric I should easily buckle into.
Glory rubs her bare ankle against Soren’s calf to see him squirm and speaks to him in a rough language I su
I peer out the tinted window at the passing Port Orleans, relishing the tingle of Baldur’s gaze. He hasn’t said anything, only sprawls in his corner with a pleasant smile.
The streets are narrow, full of people celebrating the holiday. Light seeps from every window, from the long iron balconies and streetlamps. The limo slowly curves toward the river, which is only a black void between the hotels and convention center. We turn alongside a massive green park. It’s Sanctus Louis, and in the center is the crooked hanging tree and statue of Frigg. A brilliant spotlight shines onto her face, making it glow.
I twist to point her out to Soren, but Baldur is staring at my lap with slightly narrowed eyes. Protectively, I grip Unferth’s sword and the god looks up at me. “Is there a tiny boar etched into that garnet?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Hringmæl swords are rare these days.” Baldur holds out his hand and I give the sword over eagerly. He inspects the raw garnet, flicks his finger over the ring dangling from the pommel, then caresses the narrow wooden grip and flat crosspiece.
“Do you know it?” Soren asks.
“It looks like Hrunting.” Delight peppers his voice. “Is this why you were asking about Unferth and Beowulf?”
“You know its name?” I whisper.
But the limo stops and everyone but me looks outside. Our driver opens the doors and Baldur steps out with the blade. He holds his hand in for me.
Glorious light blinds me and I blink to adjust. We’re surrounded by guests and the media, and before us is a mansion. The veranda is lined with massive white pillars and crystal chandeliers hanging between them like fixed galaxies. Taxis and hired cars and another limo fill the circle driveway, and photographers wait in the garden, snapping pictures of the guests in their gala gowns and tuxedos. We aren’t the only ones fashionably late, and we’re nearly lost in the noise of the crowd and cameras and jazz.
Baldur faces me and gently settles Unferth’s sword over my shoulder. His fingers skillfully find the buckle of my baldric and snap it around my ribs. They designed it to act as a belt around the high waist of this red dress and to cut up between my breasts like a necklace. The cold silver pinches but holds the iron weight of the sword firmly against me. I feel as though Baldur is fixing my armor in place before battle.