The Strange Maid

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE LIGHT COMING through the east-facing window of this guardhouse is violet and low. Twilight. “I need a phone,” I say. Ned’s entire body tightens and I untangle myself from him, hurriedly grabbing my shirt, my boots, and my seax.

I find Soren sewing two pieces of old leather armor together and borrow his cell. Dialing the Port Orleans Death Hall, I jog back to the guardhouse, where Ned is still on the floor but clothed. At the proper moment I put in Precia’s private extension and she says, “Hello?”

“Precia.”

Ned sits up, leans on his elbows.

“Signy.” Her voice through the line is fragmented and thin.

“The troll mother is coming tonight. I wanted to tell you, she’s Valtheow the Dark, who stole the stone heart from Grendel’s mother, but she lost herself and its power corrupted her. She became a monster and … I’m going to take the heart, too. I wanted to tell you, in case.”

“Signy!”

“I love you. And I love Myra and Elisa and all of you. That’s all. But you believed in me, and I won’t forget that.”

Ned is on his feet, glaring at me. Don’t give up, he mouths. I shake my head harshly. “I’m as strong as you all made me,” I say into the phone, holding Ned’s eyes.

There’s silence on the end of the line, and the distance between us rushes and crackles like a bonfire.

Suddenly, outside, Red Stripe cries out. It’s a bark that shakes the foundations of the fort.

He barks again. And again.

“What is that?” Precia asks, startled.

“Her. I have to go.”

“Signy, I know where you are,” she says, but I hang up.

Red Stripe howls. The troll mother is coming. I hear the Mad Eagles scramble outside, Darius yelling something.

“Here.” Ned catches my wrist and offers me his sword, hilt-first.

“No. I won’t leave you weaponless again.”

“Take it, Signy.” He butts the pommel into my stomach. “It’s a gift from your poet.”

“You’d better be at my side with spears, then,” I say fiercely, taking the sword.

Out in the parade ground, Soren tosses me a hard leather vest with metal plates sewn into the lining. I thread my arms through as I dash after him up the spiral staircase to the cannon mounts. We climb the battlement and face southwest. The Mad Eagles will be going out through the sally port to wait on the beach while Rathi mans the UV lights.

The waters of the bay are still, a lustrous purple under the evening sky.

My chest is heavy, but my spirits are light and excited. The ocean licks at the red bricks below me, and the setting sun casts a fuchsia and hot orange rainbow against the sea, a wavering line like a spear pointing from it to me. To the place where she emerges, rising out of the ocean with kelp snaked against her moon-white head and shoulders.

“Valtheow!” I cry.

The troll mother roars back. Her trumpet echoes across the sandy island. Low and longing, it reaches for me, curling around my ears, and I shudder when it fades.

She continues walking up the beach, too graceful for her size, like the earth itself growing up where the ocean touches shore. Necklaces of iron and bone fall down her stony chest, and she wears a belt hung with charms and steel. Those scars cut in patterns over her bulging shoulders, and the rune-like ones: this time transformation and darkness.

Behind her, the ocean seems to roil with whitecaps and foam, as if she can force the tide to rise.

I keep pace with her, striding along the circular embankment above her.

Soren follows me, and Ned the Spiritless joins us, both with swords and spears. Soren offers me a spear. The Mad Eagles wait in a spreading line at the top of the beach. They won’t engage her without me if she doesn’t force them to.

“Signy,” Ned says urgently. He points with his spear to the roiling tide. It’s cat wights and bridge eaters. They hide just under the dark water, glaring up at us, clawing at the sand and snarling, spreading their teeth.

I can barely look at them, for the troll mother’s marble skin captures all the dying light, and her shifting muscles are a kaleidoscope of color, like the northern lights dancing against her stone flesh.

She lifts her face and meets my eyes with her aquamarine ones, so fresh in my mind from last night’s dream. I’m waiting for you.

I’m coming.

“Valkyrie,” she grates now, just as she did on Vinland.

Even in the warm night, the hairs on my arms rise.

“Valtheow,” I say.

She opens her mouth and laughs again. Her marble shoulders roll and her spiral tusks gleam. All that bulk of her, the gnarled, bulbous troll form, all wild boar and elephant and great ape sculpted together from the finest marble, it retains so little humanity. Only her eyes, only the way her shoulders shift when she reaches up for me, only the rune scars scoured into her flesh.

Soren murmurs, “I feel her heart. I feel the madness burning like a sun.”

My blood is on fire, too, pulsing with something like glee as I stare at her, as I think of Valtheow the Dark and how I’ve adored her. And here now I am going to destroy her, tear her stone skin off her bones and take her heart. For the Summerlings I want her to die; I want to let her bleed for hours; I want her to suffer. The desire builds inside me, a scream and a roar and a great broken river.

I could still lose myself.

The sun vanishes.

The troll mother spreads her arms.

“Signy Valborn,” Ned says. With a hard hand he jerks me to him and kisses me; he bites my lip hard.

I gasp. He sucks at my pain and presses his hands against my face. “Strange Maid.”

And he leaps off the grass embankment with a cry, flinging himself at the troll mother.

He slams into her with his sword, sinking it low in her chest. She curls around, roaring and flinging him away, but shows her back to me. I follow Ned, spear and sword in hand, and when I hit her it’s like hitting a solid steel wall.

I stab with my sword and slide down her, hit on my feet and dart away. There’s Ned swinging around, and we harry her together, one on each side. She swipes at us, claws glancing off my shoulder. I use the momentum to spin and plant my troll-spear hard, catching the butt under my boot, and Ned drives her toward it with a harsh cry.

There’s shrieking and motion all around me: the wights are on shore now, racing through the evening shade, meeting up against the Mad Eagles and Soren.

The air crackles with berserker heat.

Red Stripe roars from inside the fort, chained and trapped and safe.

The UV lights flash on, cutting off the trolls’ exit. They’re trapped with us on the beach or must return to the sea.

I slash at the troll mother, but the blade glances off her ribs. She charges at me, so heavy the island shakes. I run; I can’t survive her crushing strength, but the sand slides under my boots and I hit the ground. I roll; there’s Sharkman dragging me up. The troll mother swings out and slams her fist into his skull. Bones crack and he flies off. I stumble and reach for him—

Claws dig into my back.

Screaming, I tear a cat wight off me, but another scrapes at my calves. I’ve lost my spear and sword, and unsheath the seax. I slice one’s head near off. Darius appears, hacking with a battle-ax in one hand and a sword in the other. Purple and black blood splatters his face and beard.

There’s Soren driving his sword into her, being smacked away, and then Thebes on her back just as another handful of wights leap for me.

“Call them off!” I scream at her. She spins to me, too quick for her size, and Thebes gets his arms around her head. Darius runs at her wildly. They grab parts of her, pulling at her arms with all their mad strength. But she bares her massive fangs and throws Thebes off.

Darius stabs her in the eye with one of his knives, ripping it away, flinging gore in a wide arc.

A wide swath of light flares suddenly, and I throw up a hand to block it. UV lights sweep the sandbanks. Wights shriek and flee, diving for the ocean again or into the inland pools. It’s Rathi and Soren, lugging the lights and aiming them to make a tighter perimeter. A circle of sunlight.

The troll mother heaves to her feet.

She throws Darius, bashes Thebes in the side.

Sharkman doesn’t move off the sand. Blood stains the white sand in scarlet ribbons, stark under the spotlights. No, no, no.

My breath rattles. I should see his spirit; I should be able to gather it up and take it to the Valhol, where heroes belong.

The troll mother roars.

I turn to her with a scream, blood on my face and my hair straggling out of its braids, purple ichor staining the front of my jeans. This is what battle looks like. This is the true costume of a Valkyrie: smeared death.

With that stain of blood, I draw Strange Maid onto my thigh.

Valtheow the troll mother stares back at me. The same battle raiment of blood and pain coats her body. Her shoulders heave; so do mine. Her mouth spreads over spiral tusks into a wicked smile; so does mine.

Before me stands the monster that I might become if I push toward death, toward screaming and violence and pain, the raw pieces, the blood and skit of hanging, the broken, flawed beauty I thought was the strongest core of my god.

She is the answer to my riddle because I was always on the path to her.

But I’ve found something stronger.

Here’s Soren standing before me, his father’s blade bare in his hand, hero burning in his dark eye like a brand.

Here is Ned Unferth, staring like he wants to devour me. Here’s Rathi Summerling with old-brown eyes, and Darius and Thebes, and Sharkman crushed on the sand. I whisper Precia and Myra Quick and Elisa of the Prairie. Siri and Alanna and Gundrun and Aerin and Isabeau. The names of my sisters. I whisper Astrid, too, and my wish-parents’ names, Rome and Jesca. They all tether me here. I belong in this place that I’ve made. I’m strong enough to bear the weight of the troll mother’s stone heart because of these people.

I look up at the troll mother. Lesser trolls shriek from outside the UV circle.

“Valtheow, I want your heart,” I say firmly, glad my voice rings out boldly.

She smears blood off her stomach and writes a rune between her breasts: Strange Maid.

The troll mother roars again, louder than a hurricane. Soren winces and Ned presses his fists to his ears, blades sticking out like spikes.

The roar spreads out like an explosion, a mushroom cloud of noise, shoving back at everything. I dig my boots in, but the lesser trolls scatter. Thebes crouches over Sharkman’s bloody body to protect it. Darius and Soren brace themselves. Rathi screams. Ned falls to his knees, back bowed.

At the center of it, the troll mother shivers and shakes. Her roar lifts into a scream and she flings aside her arms.

It’s a woman there. White as the moon, with black hair falling in strings about her face, thick with stone dust and salt. She’s naked but for iron and bone necklaces, a belt of steel that hangs with claw charms and silver rings and strips of fur. Tusk bracelets curl around her forearms, and her fingers end with thick, twisting nails. Her skin is cracked, and purple blood seeps between her teeth.

I tighten my grip on my seax. “Give it to me.”

“You take it,” she says, her voice a grating thing, too big and low, like it comes from the earth, not her mouth.

When she charges me, she’s a meteor of rage and fire. Terror blazes down my spine, but I don’t move; I don’t run. Her feet shake the earth; her searing white body becomes my entire world.

I scream at her, teeth bared, bones shaking, because I am the Valkyrie and she is the monster.

She reaches me and I drive my seax into her stomach with both hands. Valtheow grasps my wrists, locking us together with the seax in between. Her grinning mouth is near mine, her breath hot and sour as a back alley. Those bright eyes blaze with power, and runes: stone heart, death maid. I jerk at the seax, but her grip is perfect; her claws dig into my skin.

Her blood pours over my hands and I’m bleeding, too—purple and bright scarlet together.

The blood hardens.

I bash my forehead into her face, there’s a flash of wicked pain, and she lets go of one arm. She slaps her hand onto my cheek, smearing our blood across my face.

The runes in her eyes turn black.

Hot pain bows my spine. My knees go weak.

“Signy,” she murmurs, drawing me into her embrace. The pommel of my seax presses into my diaphragm. Her arms are hard and cold, and there are her lips on my cheek, on my lips. “Take it,” she whispers.

I hear my name from Ned and Soren, from Darius. But all I can do is hold on to the seax, force my legs to stand.

There is a pounding in my ears, that eight-count rhythm of Odin’s pulse, and with every beat my bones grow colder. My fingers stiffen. I can’t blink.

Darkness surrounds us. But our mingled blood glows like lava.

“Take it,” she whispers again, hissing the words into my open mouth. “Swallow it. My heart that was her heart, passed from the first mother to her daughter, to her daughter and then to me. Now to you, daughter of Odin, greatest of Valkyrie.”

But I cannot move.

I use all my strength just to close my eyes.

It’s bright in my own mind, and here is the roaring of my own blood. My skin turns to stone, but inside I recognize myself. I am strong; I have changed my fate before. This stone heart cannot destroy me.

“No,” I say, lips cracking.

My stone skin shatters and Valtheow shoves me back with a scream.

I hit the hard sand, dazed. My hands are coated with dark troll blood.

The troll mother looms over me, huge and bulbous and monstrous again. There is no sign of Valtheow. Her massive, moon-bright body blocks the last of the bright violet sunset, the first evening stars. She is my entire world.

And here are Soren and Ned appearing beside me to drive her back. Their swords together are like fangs, my warrior and my poet.

The UV lights are gone, bulbs blown out, and lesser trolls swarm around. The Mad Eagles and even Rathi bat at them, cutting and slicing.

Ned cries out as the mother cuffs him away; his sword flies. But Soren shoves his sword into her throat. He lets go of it, buried up to the hilt in her chin, and swings to grab up Ned’s lost sword. With it, he slashes at her belly, at her thighs and groin. His dance is so fast he’s a blur of steel, hacking at her, dodging her claws. She bleeds from every limb; from her chest and sides bright purple blood spills.

He stabs her again, all the way through, with a cry like a lion.

I get up as she struggles to remain standing. There is a gaping wound that gushes in the rhythm of her heart, where my seax remains lodged.

I reach into the wound and tear my blade free.

The troll mother falls.

My heart rages and sings, but my mouth is a line; my eyes do not burn.

Soren pins her to the mud with two swords; his breath harsh, hers like a sigh. Ned staggers to us, catches himself on her great shoulder. He leaves a violet handprint like a bouquet of flowers.

I kneel at her head, and I kiss her brow.

“It screams,” she whimpers.

“It’s supposed to,” I return. I climb onto the boulder of her chest, push aside iron necklaces, chains of bone, and with both hands I thrust the blade of the seax down into her again.

She crumbles beneath me, chunks of marble and bone falling away, in a puff of sweet breath. The moonlight finds rainbows in her breaking flesh: amethyst and emerald, ivory-white and lines of pink rubies, trails of gold, the oily sheen of obsidian. Up to my elbows in sticky dark blood turning to powder and tiny sharp crystals, into flakes of glass that cut my knuckles, that bleed my wrists.

It throbs in the center, small as a pinecone. A sharp rock of fire, hot to touch. I gather it in my palms and cradle it to my chest. It reaches hot fingers through my skin, teasing at my breastbone, calling at my heart with tingling pleasure.

There is no poem I know to describe it.

Like sunlight and kisses, like Ned’s tongue on my skin.

I close my eyes, let my head fall back.

This is the line between death and life, the line between fire and air. It whispers to me as the Tree whispered to me: here is the first heart, forged by elf-queens, by Freya herself, the goddess of magic and dreams. It whispers that we will be glorious; together we will transform the world into anything I like.

I controlled it moments ago. I could do so again. I’ve defeated it; I’m strong enough. Stronger than her.

A smile spreads on my face. The heart whispers yes yes yes.

I want it forever, hardening my skin and beating in my breast. With it I cannot die; with it I can save everyone.

I will be the greatest Valkyrie.

Pleasure rolls through me, and these tiny licking tendrils of power. “Yes,” I say, allowing them to hook into my heart. I bring the beating stone to my mouth, where it is warm and silky-soft.

“Signy Valborn.”

My name rings out.

My name.

Again and again.

“Valkyrie. Sister. Signy.”

It’s all of them, their eight voices from eight points in the sky. Precia and Myra, Elisa, Siri, Alanna and Gundrun and Isabeau and Aerin.

I open my eyes. They’re all here, in a circle around us: me and the troll mother, Soren and Ned. Starlight horses cast such a shine to push back all the shadows, to keep the lesser trolls at bay. My mounted sisters watch with bright runes in their eyes, hair in braids but for Myra, who keeps hers short and spiky. They wear silver corselets over armor and T-shirts, over pant-suits and summer dresses, with leather boots or loafers or high heels or, in Alanna’s case, house slippers. They came when I needed them, dropped everything. Undignified but ready.

Precia dismounts, rushes to me with her fine dress tossing up sand. She kneels and thrusts out a gilded jewelry box. She opens it, and the inside is empty but lined with dark green velvet.

The heart burns my fingers as I set it inside and shut the lid.