The Strange Maid

NINE

THIN CLOUDS STRETCH across the sky, ruffling like the scales of a giant salmon. Nature unaffected by the turmoil below.

I pick my way over the gravelly yard toward the ocean and our holmgang ring, where Unferth drives himself hard, shirtless and sweating. Both of our packed bags slump against a boulder, ready to go.

His back is to me, troll scars giving his skin jagged stripes, and his braids are in a double row, held together with rubber bands into a club at the nape of his neck. There’s a heavy troll-spear in his hands; he swings it smoothly around, slams the butt into the ground, and sees me. Relief flashes across his face before he hides it and snarls, “You’re late.”

“I’ve been busy.” All the anger from last night floods back with a vengeance.

His face pinches and he drops the spear. “You aren’t in your travel clothes,” he says, bending down with a grimace to swipe up his T-shirt. His hands are dark with sweaty dirt.

“I’ve had more important things to do this morning,” I snap.

Instead of answering, he pulls his shirt over his head. The collar catches on the knot of his braids and I take some malicious pleasure in his sudden awkwardness.

He sees it and sneers. “More important than going after your stone heart?”

I say, “Baldur is missing. The god of light didn’t rise this morning.”

The change in him is instant. “Odd-eye,” he whispers, and takes my elbows, but not to steady me. His neck is rigid, his fingers hard. There’s ice in his colorless eyes. Suddenly he pushes away and pounds the side of his fist against the nearest boulder. His back hunches and I hurry forward. He’s whispering in Old Scandan but cuts off when I touch him. “Go, Signy,” he says. “Go inside and … I don’t know. I have to … to think.”

I take a backward step, then another, until I spin and rush for the tower, because even Ned Unferth is scared.

I strip and bathe in the warm but low-pressure shower on my level, scrub my hair, and comb it wet. Because the afternoon is cold, I put on wool leggings and a thick wool dress, my boots, and a coat before I gather up a blanket, hairpins, and an extra calligraphy set to head up to the bell balcony. Unferth will join me when he’s ready, and we’ll talk about leaving in the morning. This is just a minor setback, I tell myself, as I sit against the curved wall where the late afternoon sun can shine on my back. It’s cold up here, but the wind is gentle, and when I pad the floor with a blanket it’s not so bad. I lean a shoulder against the wall and let the low sun dry my hair, let my eyes glaze as I stare through the rail at the shivering gray ocean.

Everyone is upset, afraid. But I never thought to see fear in Ned’s eyes.

To distract myself I open the calligraphy set Jesca gave me at Yule and pull out the ink, the brush, and a tiny oval mirror I pried from a foundation compact. I angle it to reflect my right eye. My irises are green and gray in jagged chunks, with a darker gray ring at the edge. In them this evening I see only death and there, ever-so-tiny, between a blink and the next, chaos. I long for my excitement yesterday, instead of this pervasive dread.

To remain calm, I recite the first six verses of “Brynhild’s Lament.” As the sun turns the tips of the icebergs into pink fire, I draw runes up my arm and across my palm. Death Chooser, Strange Maid, the binding rune scar says. I trace the lines, tickling myself, and then mark a long rune poem against the salt-seared wood of the balcony, half prayer, half invocation. I try to summon my Valkyrie ancestors and the ravens Thought and Memory. At least this poem will remain, staining the tower for months. Whatever happens when I go hunting tomorrow, this was real.

When my hair is dry enough I slowly weave my fingers through it. Its color is bland like ashes and driftwood, though afternoon sun can tease out darker honey-brown strands to set alight. Separating it into sections, I put it back into a braided crown and am near finished when I hear the uneven creak of Unferth on the stairs. He pushes through the thin door out onto the balcony and I keep braiding, my back to him. My fingers slow as he sets things down, and my arms burn from effort by the time he kneels behind me. His fingers slide into my hair and he undoes the braids, gently slapping my hands away. I lift my chin, but silently he pushes my head back down.

While the sun sets, Unferth braids an intricate pattern into my hair that requires me to lend him the use of my hands to hold different sections at different times. When I try to speak, he grunts at me to be quiet and let him concentrate or my hair will be lopsided.

The moment he’s finished, having stuck in the final pin, I move around behind him to return the favor. As I begin separating sections, his shoulders slump in a sigh. Pink blotches his cheeks and I know he’s already been drinking.

An arrow of gulls flies past us; to the north I hear the rustle of the cormorants spilling out of their breeding ground. I want to talk, but resist it, though I playfully tweak a strand of his long blond hair between my fingers. He reaches up and skims his hand against mine for the barest moment of comfort.

We at last both have intricate braids like the poets and queens of old, and I don’t know what to do next that won’t shatter this temporary peace. I sit back against the round wall and glance at what Unferth brought: a bearskin blanket and ham sandwiches and a nearly full bottle of lavender mead labeled with masking tape.

I work the stopper free and pour a mouthful down my throat. The sweet alcohol brightens my insides. Unferth pulls my blanket aside and spreads the bearskin down instead. He sits and he drinks, too, before tipping the bottle over the edge of the balcony to splash some down to the faraway ground.

“To the Glorified Dead,” he says, “all who are and those to come.”

“Are you worried about Baldur?”

“No.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

He’s quiet and won’t look at me.

I tip my head back to study the paling sky, a gradation of blue and violet, and accept the bottle when he offers it. For a while we pass it back and forth. I grow warm with the bearskin beneath us and with Unferth so close and the alcohol filling in the cracks.

Without looking at him, I say, “It doesn’t matter that Baldur is missing. Or maybe it matters even more. In the morning, I go hunting.”

He doesn’t respond.

“I want you to come.”

Still nothing.

“And if fear is what made you stop last night, then … well. I guess I’m glad. I don’t want to kiss a coward.” At that last, I turn and he’s right there, face very near and shadowed in the evening light.

“Really, that’s what you think,” he says.

“I don’t know what else to think.” My voice is softer than I intend it to be.

“Don’t you?”

I force myself to say, “Unless you don’t … you don’t want to kiss me …”

Unferth flips his hands in a little shrug. He says, “Often shall many men, for the will of one, endure suffering.”

“Riddles, Ned?” I hug my knees against my chest, trying to parse what he means.

To my surprise, he murmurs, “Isn’t the heart of every relationship a riddle?”

There’s so much regret layered into his voice that I wonder, as I study the sharp line of his nose, the last sunlight gilding his eyelashes, if ours is a riddle for me to solve, or him.

Unferth says, “So, in the morning you leave.”

You. Not we.

“You’re not coming?” The words are as tight as I can make them, lest my voice shake. “I thought that you’d be with me for it; I want you with me for it.”

Say it, Ned. Say you want to be with me, too.

“We can’t always have what we want.” His toothy smile edges toward triumph.

“Why not?”

“That isn’t how destiny works.” Unferth glances away from me, out over the ocean. “We’re bound by history and our circumstances, and sometimes all we can do is let it wash over us.”

“I won’t let destiny drag me along like an unwilling victim. I will take it in my hands, Unferth. Like I did when I climbed the Tree. I did that.” My fingers are rigid as I grasp for the right explanation. “I won’t let anybody else make my destiny for me.”

He gives me that grin again, the one that’s all teeth and

longing. “That’s what will make you great, Signy, daughter of Odin.”

I put my hand against his neck and caress down to the collar of this ragged red sweater of his I love so much. I start to slip under the cloth, pulling him closer to me, and he allows it, until our lips are a breath apart and he says, “Or, you’ll do something foolish and die young, never to achieve any glory.”

I push myself away, then snatch the mead. The alcohol fills my mouth with secondary delight, gone too fast. I tilt the bottle so it sloshes gently, moving it in a circle until I find the same rhythm as the waves below. My head already swims, and when the sea wind blows I sway with it. The scar in my palm burns.

“Signy.”

I turn my head to Unferth. Our faces are so near I can smell the sweet drink wafting on the air between us. His eyes go silver in the moonlight. Chaos is plain in them, sharp as lightning. I inhale hard. It’s never been anything but truth in him.

“Little raven, what is wrong?”

“I’m drunk,” I whisper. Maybe I imagined it, and I can hear pounding, like hoofbeats on the sand. Sleipnir, the eight-legged beast, is coming for me.

“You’ve been so before.”

I try to tug away, but he holds on.

“Signy.”

“I see chaos in your eyes, Ned.”

He freezes. It seems even the wind stops blowing and the waves stop crashing for a moment as he stares at me. I bring my hands up to his face and he grips my wrists like they’re saving his life. Like he wants me to save his life. “If you finally see my true, wretched worth, I beg you not to look further.”

“Tell me what you’re afraid of, Ned,” I whisper.

“Oh, everything, little raven,” he whispers back. One of his thumbs brushes over my lips. “But you most of all.”

“Me?”

“Signy the Valkyrie, too dangerous for her own good, who walks along the precipice of power and temptation. Longing to dive in.”

I snort.

But he keeps on. “Who sees into men’s hearts, who will change the courses of fate, serve at the Alfather’s side … Shouldn’t we all be afraid of the Death Choosers?”

“Not you! Not when I—”

Ned Unferth covers my mouth with his hand. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

“I won’t ever regret how I feel and what I want.”

He laughs once, like a lazy dog. “If I can have a prayer, this is it: May Signy Valborn never regret.” He rolls the empty mead bottle against the uneaten pile of sandwiches, then lies down against the bearskin with his hands behind his head. He stretches, wincing as his right leg straightens. And then he opens his arm for me. Because I’m drunk, it takes little courage to put my head on his shoulder and close my eyes around the sliver of nausea poking in my stomach.

We’re quiet again while the ocean continues to murmur, only hushed waves now against the shore. Unferth’s chest rises and falls against my cheek and he curls his arm around me tightly. I want more and more, but tonight this is enough. I close my eyes, thinking of what he’s trying to tell me with his riddles and open arms, thinking of Baldur and tomorrow and what choices I’ll make and whether he’ll be here to make them with me.

Cold wind on my cheek wakes me. I’m alone in the dark, curled against bearskin on the tower balcony. Moonlight flashes red near my eyes. I slowly focus on the pommel of Unferth’s sword. The one he brought with him across the moor, strapped to his back, the finest possession he owns. Once he said, This sword is an unhallowed blade. The style is old, a ring-sword with a relatively short, fat blade, a wide fuller, and a narrow crescent guard. A loose iron ring attaches to the pommel, which is embedded with a small round garnet etched with a tiny boar. That bloody eye is what winks at me in the moonlight.

“Ned?” I call, sitting up and taking his sword in my hand. The smooth wooden grip is freezing. He never leaves his sword behind.

A long sound like a faraway trumpet calls back. It echoes over our edge of the island and I pull myself to my feet. I lean over the rail and stare northwest toward Leif’s Channel. The howl comes again and again, layering atop of itself; an argument of low, deep screams followed by a roar I recognize in my bones.

The signal cry of a greater mountain troll.