“Hand it to Amon,” Sune says.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
I start to ask her to tell me why she left, but Sune pulls his gun and shoots her.
The crack echoes in the clear autumn air, a sharp roar like from the fumaroles around here. Sune’s arm is straight out before him, and Eirfinna steps back, shocked. Her knees buckle and she falls onto the gravel road before I’ve made it halfway to her.
My boots skid as I sit down beside her. Blood drips in scarlet threads down her collar, onto her neck, seeping onto the gravel below. The black wound is tiny, billowing blood in the rhythm of her heart. But the pool beneath her grows too fast: The exit wound must be even worse.
I see it all, ears pounding with my own pulse. Her forest eyes are wide and strained as I pull her against my knees, reaching under to put pressure on her back. Blood pours through my fingers, and she cries out when I touch her. “It hurts,” she gasps. “Oh, Amon, the pain!”
Sune, standing over us like Death, says, “Take off the Mask, and you’ll be yourself again. Elves are made of stronger stuff, yes? You won’t die if you take it off and give it to me. Quickly.”
“Rag you, Sune!” I spit, flailing at his thigh. My fist makes red streaks on his uniform pants.
Kasja looks up at him with a wretched smile. “Well played.”
“She’s dying, you son of bastards.” I’m crying, as gutted as my friend, burning and lost.
She touches my mouth, and I taste the sting of blood. She says, “I thought, when I saw you that night, when you appeared like destiny, maybe I wasn’t supposed to…to go through with my plans. I took the Mask for my people. I wanted to use it to save us, before they do something to us like they’ve done to the trolls. But I thought, when I saw you, maybe I could just…go with you. Be a woman for a life, with you.”
I kiss her. I kiss her too hard, and she whimpers. I say, “Don’t die, Fin. Please.”
“You’re right, though” she says. “I’m too wild for you, for this form. How delicate you humans are! That surprised me. How cold I was, how easily I bruised. How hot your skin was against mine.” Her fingers dig at the skin by her ear, slipping in blood, but she shuts her eyes and there’s strain in her lips, in her furrowed brow. Then, with a slight suck, a thin golden mask cleaves off her face.
She tosses it away, and her back arches. I grip her tight, holding her against my chest. The wind howls around us, but it’s nothing supernatural; it’s the heliplane starting up its blades again.
“Come on,” Sune says, and I glare up at him.
“Get away with your prize,” I snarl. “I’ll take my van wherever I want to go from here.”
He studies me for a small moment, letting sorrow curl over him like a cowl. But he nods, and turns back toward the heliplane.
I put my head down again, but her hair against my lips is cold and silky and straighter than spidersilk. Sharp nails press my cheek, and I lean back to look down at Eirfinna herself, milky-gray, slick skin covered in streaks of blood and crystalizing amethyst. Her solid black eyes fill her head, alien and remote, and the sun gleams on those tiny nubs of black diamond pressing along her cheekbones like a miniature mountain range. She smiles through sharp diamond teeth. “Amon,” she rasps. “Take me to shade. I need shade.”
Swooping her up, I carry her off the road into a patch of evergreens and stumble down with her. She’s smaller than she was, but still long, slender, and heavier from her crystal and gold bones. I set her gently on the fallen pine needles, pushing down the grasses to make as comfortable a bed as I can. “I’ll get you sleeping bags and the quilt,” I say quickly, “and I’ve got all sorts of remedies and powders that can strengthen you. Sugar…ah, protein….” I trail off as she puts her hand up to my lips, catching my mouth with curled fingers.
“No, Amon.” Her round eyes flutter shut. “Leave me. I need my people now; none of your men’s folk remedies will aid me.” Her words click against her sharp teeth, pronounced swiftly and correctly, but with a rhythm not quite human.
“You’re still bleeding,” I protest, anger surging. “You can’t just send me rag off, nothing else. You left me, and now you just want me to go?”
“That’s why.” She heaves up onto her spindly elbows. “I left you: We are not friends.”
“Rag that! You—we…we slept together! We….” I think I might ragging cry. Like a ragging baby.
“My heart is a black diamond, Amon.” She hands my words back to me. “I cannot be loved by such as you.”
I sit back on my heels. Teeth ground together so hard, they might crack and crumble. “I was right,” I grind out. “If you aren’t changed by last night, I was right.”
She spreads her spidery hands and lies back with relief. She is a silver and gray and black corpse, all hard edges and violet hollows. Breathing through her mouth, lips cracked, teeth tiny pointed fangs.
“So much history,” I mutter. “Wasted.”
“Not wasted,” she says, never opening her eyes. “It was learning, for both of us.”
“What did you learn?”
“I understand what I want now.”
“Not me. Not us.”
She nods. “I am Eirfinna Grimlakinder, a queen under the mountain, not a woman. That is how I was born, and what I was born to be. I will ride that truth into history and legend, Amon Thorson, just wait. I will save my people from your gods.”
Her voice fades toward the end, and I think she’s passed out. But then she presses her moon-gray hand to my knee. “Go. When the stars rise, my people will come, and I will grow strong again.”
Almost as if she’s become something repellant, I tear away from her touch and stand.
I return to my van and drive away from Eirfinna of the Elves, off into the sunset. I’m not sure what it is I’ve learned, but it feels ugly.
NINE.
Though I’d rather shove my rocks in a blender, a summons to Bright Home is not a thing I can ignore.
I show up late, in dull dread, park the van in the assigned lot—in Glory’s place—and wind through a surprising number of cars for the side hall where my dad does his official business. It’s shaped like a hammer, just like his cathedrals, jutting out from Etintooth Peak on a spur of cliff. Early snow stains the gables and long roof. There are no pillars here, just thick stone walls, and no windows, either. More soldiers than I’m used to line the entrance, wearing their dress uniforms, and that’s the first thing to ping my suspicion.
I head into the entryway, which is lined with armored knights from the past thousand years, at least one from every century. All are such large examples Thor could wear them if he liked. Though he prefers much older-style corselets and smaller plates. No helmets, since he’d not be caught dead in a helmet.
The double doors leading to his sanctuary are thrown open, and brilliant firelight pours out. I hear Dad’s voice flowing over everything but muffled by a lot of people.
It’s a ceremony. If not for the line of soldiers formed up behind me, I’d turn and go.
My only luck is that when I step reluctantly inside, I see it’s not me who’s the star guest.
The benches are lined with medal-crusted dignitaries from the Army, Lightning priests, and other men in fancy suits. Up front with the cardinal priest in his deep blue raiment is my dad, all silver metal and fire-blond hair, and Loki Changer, slowly transforming from ten-year-old up to hoary old man and back again, with a gluttonous smile on his face in every shape.
And Sune Rask.
Groaning loud enough the back benches can hear me, I thump to the side and plop down on the floor against the far corner, happy to let my irritation be known.
Sune’s being promoted.
And awarded the title Hunter. Plus a medal.
Rag me sideways.
The moment he shakes Loki Changer’s awkward teenage hand, I get the skit out.
Knowing better than to leave before I talk to Dad, I skulk around the armory for a while, hefting the maces
and old battle axes, though that makes me think of Sune, and I switch to the hammers. Dad has every kind imaginable, from pointed knee-knockers to pyramid-shaped skull crushers. They’re made from stone and steel and wood, handles wrapped in silver wire or blued iron or sharkskin or troll skin. The tapestries on the walls depict him battling the World Snake or sucking down the entire ocean through a drinking horn. Nobody ever accused Thor Thunderer of modesty.
There’s a table with a war game set up on it; tiny figures about an inch high spread out over some Danish hills to depict the battle where Hrolf Kraki died two thousand years ago. I lean over it and begin the tedious process of rearranging the cavalry so they’re in the correct position for a different battle. I pick up Hrolf Kraki himself and tuck him into my pocket. Not saleable, but good to know I’ve stolen something of Dad’s when I’m already having a bad day.
“You came,” Sune says from the darkened doorway. “I didn’t know if you would.”
“I don’t ignore my dad’s invite to anything.”
His jaw muscles shift as he tries not to look peeved. “Of course.”
“Congrats,” I say offhand, keeping the table between us, hands crammed in my front pockets. “On the promotion.”
“That’s why I wanted you here. It took both of us. I got the Mask back because of you.”
“But you kept my name out of it, I note. There wasn’t a medal waiting for me.”
He squares his shoulders, and I can’t help seeing how fine the dress uniform fits him. Even in this dim light, the cut shows off that V from shoulders to hips, and the seam of his pants doesn’t hide the muscles in his thighs. “I thought you preferred it that way,” he says quietly.
Chewing the inside of my cheek to distort my expression, I nod once, like it doesn’t matter. “You’re right about that.”
Sune toys with one of the miniature conifers on the Danish battlefield, skimming his fingers along the wiry green fringe. “I won’t tell anybody anything about you that you don’t want them to know,” he promises.
And not just girls, apparently.
I grunt so I don’t have to say anything.
“Did she make it?”
My skin goes cold. “Far as I know.”
He’s staring at me with an intensity I can’t begin to interpret. “Good,” he says.
“You give a skit about her? Who you ragging shot?”
“I care because you care.”
The laugh I choke out is high-pitched with incredulity.
Sune comes around the table to me, stalking smooth and graceful as a giant cat. Hunter. That’s what he is now, and I feel it in my rocks. He stops a pace away and says, “I’m not the one of us full of skit.”
I shove my face into his. “No, you’re the one of us who shot my best friend and sorta hoped she’d survive.”
“I know the Mask,” he snaps. “I study my prey, and I know how it works. It changes you totally, not just your appearance, or else Loki couldn’t have babies using it, you dumb ragger. She only had to choose to take it off and be herself. Bullets don’t kill easy elves or goblins, whatever she was.”
I’m shaking, thinking of Eirfinna and how delicate she looks with her crystal bones, even having diamond claws and fangs, even with those deep black eyes. Thinking how she says there’s nothing between us anymore. “You might’ve hit her heart, killed her instantly.” Even as I say it, I think how I called that heart hard as a diamond.
“I’m an excellent shot,” he says back.
And then he shifts in so our chests almost touch, and his breath is hot on my mouth. “Always hit what I’m aiming for,” he says. If I move at all, my nose will brush his; I could crush us together, to rag him or beat him, I don’t even know.
Sune chooses.
He kisses me, but the instant our lips touch, I shove him back over the miniature table.
His body slides across it, flinging tiny soldiers every way, and he catches himself in the center. The look he gives me could scathe the fur off a bear.
I go.
• • •
It takes all night long to reach the Rock Church on foot, all ragging night, when I can get there in under an hour on a motorcycle. As dawn crests the peaks, I see it, glittering with frost across the icy tundra. The stone building perched there like a forgotten toy.
That just reminds me of the miniatures and throwing Sune across them. This place is mine and Eirfinna’s—and I don’t know if maybe I didn’t ruin it by bringing a stray lost girl here in the first place. I was the one who broke the magic, because I didn’t think. I didn’t care, just wanted out, like an addict, like one of those raggers I sell leaf or cloves or bearbane to.
When I reach the church, sweaty and frozen, I put a boot on the small boulder elf cup, and with all my might, I shove. It’s so heavy, I roar with the effort, but the rock tears up from the frosty mountain and tilts to the side. The monument to tradition, to men’s ancient worship of the elves and goblins, hangs there, off-balance, and then slams into the ground.
The dull thud of it breaking echoes in my heart.
I dig a clove cigarette out of my pocket, and light up.
THE END.
LADY BERSERK
By Tessa Gratton
For all the girls with dragons in their hearts
ONE.
They’re saying it’s the first official dragon hunt in the history of the United States of Asgard.
Used to be every few years in Eurland, especially toward Rus and Deutschland, where the largest populations were, the kings would round up heirs from every famous dragon-slaying family and send them out to bring back heads. That’s how so many dragon skulls ended up gracing the hearths of drafty old castles, but why few dried hearts and ribcage sculptures were dragged across the ocean here to the States. Most of our dragon bones are the fossilized kind, from when they liked it here because of the glaciers. Like most of our monsters, dragons prefer ice and cold to tropics or deserts. Something about their inner fire, blah blah, et cetera. I didn’t pay attention during that lecture, because unlike my peers that year, I was only interested in things that could hurt me. Dragons, being endangered, were extremely low on that list.
Every once in a while¸ a loner buzzes down from some mountain because of encroaching civilization, and we have to kill it. By we, I mostly mean Thor and his Army, and by every once in a while, I mean it’s happened four times since the founding of our country. Five times now, I suppose.
The first time was two hundred years ago, when some pioneers ignored very explicit warnings from the native warriors—I don’t remember which tribe, if I ever even knew—and got themselves massacred when they sheltered in the wrong cave. Took Thor himself three days and that big hammer to put the pair of wingers down.
The second time was when they were blasting tunnels to drive the transcontinental railroad through the Rock Mountains and woke up a really mean black wyrm that supposedly was as long as twenty boxcars nose to caboose.
Then ten years ago, a dragon the size of a barn crawled out of the Lake of the Ozarks and a kid named Sean Hardy killed it practically by accident. Turned out he was descended from an old-school dragon-slaying clan with thousand-year-old dragon teeth in the attic. He was all over the television for a while, and two boys I knew in the caravan used to play Dragon Slayer with wooden swords, fighting over who got to be Sean. They weren’t my friends, because I thought any self-respecting Lokiskin should be fighting over who got to be the dragon.
Hardy did it again a year and a half later, somewhere in the Adirondacks. I barely remember it, even though I was nine, because my dad had just come back to us from a tour of duty in some secret, terrible place, and he rocketed to number one on my list of things that could hurt me. All I know is that Hardy survived the second dragon, too, but spent a few months almost dead in a Friggan hospital. Now he pops up every once in a while on one of those “Where Are They Now?” type shows or magazine spreads. He always looks harassed.
So now there have
been three months of reports out here on the prairie of entire herds of cattle going missing and grass fires nobody admits to setting; and half the passengers on a plane flying from Westport City to Dallas swear to Tyr the Just that they saw a dragon with a head nearly as long as the airplane flying above them.
A dragon that big shouldn’t be hard to find. Especially on the prairie, which distinctly lacks the mountains and valleys for monsters to easily hide in. Yet nobody has. Not with satellites or heliplanes or magical powers. Odin, the god of sacrifice, says the ranchers can sue the government for reparations for the lost herds, and the dragon will be found when he wants to be found. Thor Thunderer says we must band together to scour the land for the creature. Freya the Witch only smiles mysteriously and refuses to say what she sees in the strands of Fate. Loki, the lazy coward, has said nothing at all.
The president and Congress, the Council of Valkyrie and the War College, the Departments of the Interior, of Environmental Protection, and the National Park Service have come together and assembled a crack team of heroes to take care of the problem:
Sean Hardy, the Dragon Slayer himself. He’s twenty-nine now, bright yellow hair, full manly beard, gray eyes, with a two-year-old daughter hanging from his neck more often than not. He’s been avoiding the crowds here by remaining in the tactics tent, this great-hall-like tent about twelve feet high at the peak and fifty feet long, full of topographic maps and water maps and maps of cattle pastures and property lines. I ran into him this morning in the shower tent. I’ve seen a lot of terrible scars, having spent so much time with berserkers, but rag me, has he been destroyed a couple of times.
Major Sune Rask of Thor’s Army. He’s tall and has legs that go all the way, if you know what I mean. His eyes are hooded and his nose large, and probably he’s only as attractive as he is because of how he moves. It definitely isn’t his face. He’s about twenty-two, I guess, with a shaved head and the most gorgeous ram’s-horn tattoos on his scalp I’ve ever seen. Even though it’s pushing equatorial hotness here in Kansa, he wears his full Army kit, including the iconic blue hunter’s coat, because that’s what he is: Thor’s best hunter. Recovered Loki’s Mask of Changing is the rumor, which doesn’t exactly enamor him to me, since I’d rather Loki not get things back that others have managed to sneak off him. Oh, well. Sune Rask carries double axes on his shoulders, in addition to a sidearm at his hip and knives in his boots, and since axes are my weapon of choice, too, it’s possible I won’t hate him.
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