The Weight of Stars

by Tessa Gratton

  My dragon licks at him, scraping curious claws against his iron spikes, displaying her sharp fangs for his blunt gear-teeth.

  And then Soren’s frenzy roars.

  I black out.

  The ringing in my ears is high and strong. Soren’s got me by the elbows, holding me up in a careful balance.

  My heart tingles with a hollow sort of burn, an empty hot oven, for my frenzy is coiled tight and tiny around my spine. Tamed, overcome. I feel her stretch as I breathe a long sigh and struggle to get my feet under me again.

  What a trick he played.

  Blinking, I smile dazedly, feeling loopy and not just a little drunk. Bobs of sunlight bounce and dance around his head. His frown is immense.

  “Vider?” he murmurs.

  “Soren!” I say, breaking into laughter. “You are a liar and a sneaky, dangerous creature!”

  His frown turns to a scowl, but I keep on prattling. “What a clever trick that was, holding your power so even and calm; it was like you unleashed a tidal wave. I thought you were a clock, but that was a roller coaster.”

  Soren puts his hands on my face, angling my head up so he can peer into my eyes. “I hurt you,” he says.

  “No, no, no!” My head is still floating, though, and I turn in his hand to snap my teeth at his palm, like my dragon snapped at his gears. Not the guts of a clock, but the fine, fine ticking time of a nuclear bomb!

  He drops his hands away fast. “Vider.”

  “I’m all right!” I widen my stance and put my hands together over my heart. I shut my eyes and breathe deeply. “I am a mountain, Soren,” I murmur, recalling the first lesson he showed me of berserkers and strength. Breathing the sticky air, I imagine it pressing into all the cracks of my bones, out to my fingers and toes, cooling my mind, swirling around my heart in a calm, tender wind.

  “I thought you were ready for it,” he says apologetically.

  “I was just saying hello.”

  “Most berserkers I’ve met this year have been aggressive.”

  “Not me, not toward you.” I hold out my hand. After a moment studying my face, he takes it. I grab up Visby’s hat off the dusty grass and lead him toward the tac tent.

  “Competition, eh?” Visby Larue says.

  Soren flicks his eyes over Larue and clearly dismisses the young man, merely offering a brief nod of acknowledgment. I smile, too meanly, at the cowboy. “Soren, this is—well, he goes by the name Visby Larue, but can you imagine it’s his real one?”

  Soren hardly responds other than with a twitch of his mouth.

  Visby snatches his hat from me, and mirrors my obnoxious bow from earlier. “’Tis not the name my mother gave me, indeed.”

  “Did you just make up that story about thralldom and the street and the earth?” I demand, incredulous but impressed.

  He smiles that long, curling smile. And I feel my eyes twinkling. That lie had been smooth, very smooth. “Don’t forget to dust off your hat,” I say, tugging Soren after me to the tac tent.

  We duck through the rolled-up flap—or rather, Soren ducks, I waltz right in—and wait for our eyes to adjust to the orange light filtering through the thick canvas walls. The tent isn’t crowded yet. Sune Rask and Lydia Wolfdottir lean over the long table where the maps are tacked down. Their shoulders are bent at the same angle, heads together. Sune points at something, tapping his finger. In the back, Sean Hardy and two of his handlers are standing by the coffee cart. His little girl sits on his boot, with her arms and legs curled around his calf and her cheek pressed to his knee. Her eyes are shut like she’s sleeping, and her braids are messier than a tangle of baby vipers.

  “Major,” Soren says softly, but not so quiet that the hunter doesn’t hear it. Sune Rask turns sharply, hawk eyes pinning Soren immediately. I’ve only seen Sune for a handful of minutes, but he’s made that stoic, rigid Army thing an art form, so I nearly trip on myself when the hunter’s shoulders relax and he smiles.

  “Soren,” is all he says.

  They clasp hands and embrace one-armed. I’m at a total ragging loss, tinged with an awkward combination of jealousy and relief that Soren has another friend here. To hide it, I plop down in one of the folding chairs, slouch low, and prop my boots up on another. I close my eyes to seem unconcerned, focus my frenzy, and listen.

  “Good to see you,” Soren says.

  There’s a shuffle of movement, and then Sune says, “Here is Lydia Wolfdottir, of the Valkyrie of the Prairie’s household. Lydia, Soren Bearstar, the Sun’s Berserk.”

  In her gravelly voice, she says, “Bearstar.”

  They give nothing else away. I could groan.

  Then Sean Hardy calls, “You made it, Soren,” and I guess they know each other, too. I squeeze my eyelids shut and remind myself it’s been a while since that week we spent together, and Soren’s been famously traveling around with Baldur the Beautiful for most of that time. Of course he has plenty of other famous friends.

  “Bored?” Visby says. The creak of the metal folding chair tells me he sat down beside me.

  I open my eyes, sit up, and call out, “We’re all here now, Sean, did you have something for us?”

  Sean, Soren, Sune Rask, and Lydia all glance at me, and I keep my expression light. The frenzy in my chest unfurls her wings just a little, calming me down and spinning me up at the same time.

  The dragon slayer’s little daughter, still hugging her dad’s leg, cranes her head around to look at me. “You have a tattoo on your face, too,” she says.

  “Half of us do, lizard,” I say fondly, jerking my chin at Soren and at Lydia, with her wolf-mask tattoo. Only then do I realize that Soren’s spear tattoo looks different than it used to look: Not a traditional berserker spear but has a thinner shaft, a more spade-shaped head.

  Sean clears his throat, and as he crouches to grab up his kid, I struggle to pull my attention back to him. Hefting her onto his hip, he kisses her temple. She shakes her head and snuggles against his neck as if she’s wiping off his touch. “This one,” Sean says, “is the reason you’re all here. I wanted you to know that before the hunt officially begins in the morning, so you have a chance to get out.”

  “Get out?” Lydia Wolfdottir repeats as if he’s an idiot. Her wolf-mask tattoo and royal nose triple the disdain.

  The dragon slayer shrugs one shoulder, looking harassed. “I’ve killed two dragons,” he says, “and though I’m told it was destiny, I’m sure it was luck and the will to live, nothing more.”

  “You don’t say that in the frosted wheat commercials,” Visby Larue laughs, knocking his hat back on his head to make eye contact.

  “I follow the script,” Sean says, tapping a finger on the table in no particular rhythm.

  Soren says, “There’s no script for dragon slaying,” as if that’s especially insightful.

  But Sean jumps at it. “Yes, exactly,” he says, leaning against the map table, his gray eyes pinched.

  I can’t help myself; I glance at Visby. He raises an eyebrow at me. I want to say, These boys are so serious. The cowboy mouths, Odinists.

  Even though, technically, Soren gave up Odin when he swore to Baldur, I snort in amusement.

  Everybody looks at me again. I smile. “Isn’t the script: Find, kill, celebrate?”

  “It’s the killing part I’m worried about. All reports are that this beast is massive, and….” Sean glances at his daughter, who’s braiding the ends of his yellow hair. “Eight years ago, I asked for a tank or a rocket launcher, and the government said no. They wouldn’t let me have anything but my sword and shield, for the sake of the story. If I die from this one, they’ll probably blow the dragon out of the sky from a heliplane, but dragon slayers are supposed to die.”

  It’s what they say about berserkers, too. I’m startled he talks so openly about it with the little girl there, but she doesn’t seem to notice: Either she thinks he’s just telling stories, or she’s entirely used to it. For the first time I wonder about her mother, and if she has one,
and if not, whether the lack is why Sean Hardy seems so agitated all the time.

  Sune Rask says, “We’re your weapons.”

  “I need more than luck and the will to live this time,” Sean Hardy says. “Not just because I’m older, or because third time’s the charm, but for my daughter. I’m what she has, and I intend to be where she needs me: here in the middle world.”

  “Not weapons,” Visby says, “shields and distractions. We’re here to make it less likely you’re the one who dies.”

  Sean doesn’t flinch. He meets Visby’s gaze and nods once. Just like that: simple and honest. No wonder he and Soren get along.

  Lydia lifts her hand, palm up. “That is what I am, always. A shield for my Valkyrie.”

  “I like glory,” Visby says. “It’s worth the risk.”

  Sune Rask says, “My job is to hunt where my god bids me. To glory,” he nods to Visby, “or to death.”

  Soren says, “I have been dead, and there are worse things.”

  My frenzy gnashes her teeth. I remember now: Soren died a few months ago, under dismally mysterious circumstances, and no one in the middle world knew of it until he clawed his way to life again at Baldur’s side this spring, at the roots of the New World Tree. He’s been in Hel, he’s been through so many things without me. We are strangers. It strikes me finally, hard and heavy, that the week we spent together driving Baldur to safety was a piece of our separate journeys, not the beginning of something together.

  Soren will always be the person who broke me out of my daze, the two years I spent frightened and hating after my mother died and my father went to jail. He opened a door for me, and even though I keep looking back, both of us have moved forward. The dragon under my ribs purrs, alive and calm and eager for flight.

  “Vider?” It’s Soren, sounding amused.

  Everybody in the tent is staring at me, while I’ve been staring at Soren.

  I flash a grin and say, “I want to smile at a dragon and see if he will smile back.”

  Visby laughs.

  Most of the others look at me as if I’m mad or ridiculous. But Sean Hardy accepts it with a nod, and his daughter claps her hands and says, “Me, too!”

  The dragon slayer releases us, saying he’ll see us in the morning at oh-eight-hundred for the official sendoff.

  I consider sticking to Soren to ask him about his death, about his past two years, but there’s my epiphany to consider, and Sune Rask already has his attention. So I leap up and stride for the door, knocking Visby’s hat off his head with a flick of my wrist as I pass.

  He yells, but I speed up, darting through the late evening toward my tent.

  With the sun hot pink in the west and purple clouds spanning the sky, it’s cooler now, and I scrape my boots through the grass, listen to the hiss of grasshoppers and the buzz of cicadas, the clacking and laughter and grind of generators from camp. It’s a comfort to me, like the sounds of a caravan, and if somebody pulled out a fiddle or an accordion or even a set of drums, the song of Loki’s children would be complete. But this isn’t a caravan, and Loki’s children are outnumbered here by Thunderers and Odinists; the warriors, the soldiers.

  I duck into my tent, tie the flap down so I can ignore any visitors, and stand in the muffled noise. This feeling welling up in me is akin to loneliness but tinged more with a thrill of anticipation; I am alone in this caravan, connected to others but separate still, and though it isn’t what I knew as a child, though it’s not what berserking promises, I find I rather like it.

  Vider No-Name, I think.

  Vider, the Daughter of Dragons.

  A smirk pulls at my lips, and I know exactly how mad I would seem if any could see me and know my thoughts.

  Bending to untie my boots, I plan to flop on my cot and relax, listen to the music of the prairie and all these people until I fall asleep.

  But there’s something on my pillow.

  I go still as my frenzy pulses bright, my feet firm on the ground, breathing deep to remain calm and in control.

  It’s a wrinkled yellow apple no larger than my eyeball.

  Curse and ragging skit.

  Loki Changer is here.

  TWO.

  Once I was in love with the god of mischief, of orphans and shape-shifting and lies and thieves.

  I didn’t know he was a god the first time he appeared, a tiny coyote mutt at the edge of the caravan. I was five and filthy already from crawling under booths to hide from my parents—one would put me to work, the other might hurt me. Across the caravan’s wide-flung camp from my family trailer, I liked to sprawl behind the sweet-corn booth. It smelled of oil and sugar, and sometimes the lovely fat lady popping the corn whose name I can’t remember would give me a tiny handful, fresh and hot, to hold in the pocket of my thin summer dress and eat one fluffy kernel at a time. Nor was I opposed to scavenging pieces that fell onto the packed dirt.

  The coyote nosed at my pocket before I saw him, and I sat up too fast. But the dog didn’t run off in fear; he just sat his fringed butt on the ground and let his tongue loll out.

  I knew he was special when he said Vider, because coyotes don’t know how to speak.

  He came again shaped like a little boy with the same green coyote eyes, then a little girl in a dress that matched my own exactly. A cat, a purple griffon, a dragon the size of my hand. He was my secret friend, my pet, my imaginary creature named Jade or Lukas or Dog or Natalia. Because of all the names, my mom didn’t guess for years that I was always babbling about the same friend, always eager to wake up in the morning and do my caravan chores so I could go running off with him or her or it. But I was never confused. Never unsure of our bond.

  It was Loki who saved me from my dad, the first time Dad thought I was an enemy to catch and kill, the first time I was the target of his trauma. I escaped with a torn dress and bruises, face sticky with snot and tears, and there was my best friend—a bit taller than usual, stronger like a ten-year-old, and ready at the base of a tree too big for me to climb on my own. He lifted me up and curled around me in the crook of a branch, and his eyes went huge and dark as the night sky. I fell into him as he whispered star-poems and silly limericks, facts about snakes; he kissed my forehead and wiped my cheeks.

  Hours I remained in the tree with Loki Changer, and as I calmed down, I told him all the names I’d made up for him. I told him knock-knock jokes he pretended to think were the funniest jokes in the nine worlds. We talked about Lokiskin I’d never heard of, mothers and siblings who went on adventures here in the New World and back in the Old. By the time the sun had set and my mom was rushing frantically through the park calling my name, I wasn’t afraid anymore, and I loved Loki with every little piece of my heart.

  He came more often after that, and for two years, there was nothing but drama and adventure in my life. My dad was in and out of therapy, in and out of vicious nightmares, Mom got skinnier and skinnier, I’d run off as soon as the sun was high, with Loki or pretending to be, shunning the caravan rats who should’ve been my friends. From the outside, my family must’ve seemed dysfunctional, but I didn’t notice; I thought it was normal.

  I was ten when I kissed Loki—a fast, shy, desperate little kiss, and he laughed and flushed and held my hand.

  I was ten, too, when my mom caught a glimpse of my imaginary friend Lukas, and she interrogated me, having always believed he wasn’t real. I answered her questions, unconcerned, as her mouth dropped open and she demanded to meet him. When I asked him, Loki said he had no use for mothers who took five years to notice him. Mom told me she thought my friend was a god. Loki Changer, god of our caravan, she whispered in awe. They say he chooses a caravan child with which to play, and here it’s my baby Vider, my little girl. Thank him, Vider, and this month at your birthday, we’ll tell the Matria and get you a special last name.

  I did no such thing, told Loki nothing, for what did I care if he was a god? What did I care but that he played with me and changed shape and lifted me into trees too high
to climb? He was my Jade. My Lukas, my Dog, my Natalia. Not my god.

  And before my birthday, Dad kidnapped me away from the caravan, dragged me to his cousins in southern Colorada kingstate, because he’d freaked out that the caravan lifestyle was terrible for me, and a bad place to raise kids, as if he knew anything about raising me, or living, or anything but surviving.

  Loki found me in the tiny backyard, with its metal fence and spindly, un-climbable trees. He said, I can take you away from here, I have the power. And I shrugged. I tugged his ear and traced a smiling face in his freckles and said, I’d rather you just play with me, Loki.

  He knew then that I knew, for I’d never said his true name before, and we had the longest, best game of Escape from School ever. I called him a hundred names, never the same one except Dog, because it made me laugh when he turned his tongue long and lolling or grew a tail.

  It took Mom a year to find me, and four months after that for Dad to track us down with the Half-Serpent caravan in the bottom of Cheyenne kingstate. She let him back in, but he didn’t stop drinking or screaming his dreams. Mom told me it wasn’t his fault; his pills kept him calmer but made it easier to scare him. She said again and again he’d not been built for violence, and so when it crawled into his brain and into his heart, all he could do was let it out.

  I started bleeding that year, and in the caravan, you’re an adult when you can be a mom, so I took my pillow and took my knife and got a corner of somebody else’s booth for sleeping, in return for mucking and sweating to earn my keep. Sometimes Loki came after dark, and we climbed onto the roof of the Matria’s trailer to count stars and whisper secrets. I thought the rest of my life would be so wonderful: dusty caravan, freedom and stars, Loki, who eventually I would kiss again, when I was older and prettier, and maybe we would make a family of our own, better than mine.

  But one night, when I was nearly thirteen and Mom was pregnant, I woke up alone in my corner to screams and yelling and terrible roaring fire.

  My mom’s trailer was burning.