There is so much vivid color—every color that exists is here.
If I were a dragon, maybe I’d have picked this place, too. Especially in summertime.
I slow to pace through the prairie grasses toward the little copse of trees. There’s no stream at the base of this valley, maybe because it’s such a wide one, not a gully like where I fought Loki last night. If it were two years ago, I’d have my eyes sharp and my ears alert for troll sign, but there are almost none left. It’s something to think about, though, instead of him, and the aggressively annoying voice chanting his name in my mind, as if to catch my mouth off-guard so I’ll inadvertently say it.
My frenzy dances lazily in my chest, all pirouettes and somersaults and arching wings, and I bend my knees, standing in Soren’s mountain pose, with my legs wide, my chest open, shoulders back, chin raised. I breathe in and out and imagine my breath is the silent, eager partner to the frenzy.
Heat fills my blood and loosens my bones, all the cramped muscles from sitting eight hours in a truck, all the tense thoughts and ragged longing from being trapped and bored and quietly anxious. My worry melts and my tension pops into fluffy clouds that float away like cottonwood seeds drifting through the wind.
As if the prairie itself senses me, energy swells in the land beneath my feet. I take off my boots and touch toes to the sharp grass, to the hot earth and crumbling dirt. Energy passes between me and the world, and my fire is a fire that connects earth and sky; it is the ligament tying one element to another, the connective tissue of the nine worlds.
And then I feel hands on my shoulders and a cooler fire behind me, tugging gently at me to turn to him. I do, because I want to.
I hold my eyes closed, though, as he puts a hand to my waist and takes my hand in the other. I touch his shoulder, and Loki Changer lifts me into a strange dance, not a waltz, not a two-step or tango, but something I don’t know, something that has three beats and suddenly two, has seven odd beats and then three again, as if it’s every dance and none, a dance that slips through music and shapes just like he does.
My bare feet follow his lead with an ease that I don’t think about lest I destroy it, and I lean in until I’m against him, in his arms, and I don’t know if I am the frenzy and he is the wind, or he is the fire and I am air and breath and song.
He ruins it, not me: “Did you eat it?” he whispers into my ear.
“No.”
His body goes rigid, not like flesh but like hardwood. “Vider. There is a dragon out here, and she could eat you.”
“She?” I open my eyes.
Loki is my height, as if we were carved from the same tree. He mirrors me in other ways, too: white-blond hair spiky around his face, sun-raw white skin, eyes like grass and young leaves, skinny, a pretty enough face with pointed chin, and he’s even wearing a black tank top a bit like my berserker vest. A Loki version of me, as if I had a fraternal twin. It’s cute and obnoxious and weird and sexy all at once.
The golden-pink sunset colors his cheekbones and puts sparks in his eyes.
“She,” the god repeats.
Excitement pumps my heart and I smile. “She. I like the thought of that.”
Loki presses his lips together, and a tiny wrinkle forms between his pale brows. “You would,” he mutters.
“You could stop me from meeting her. You could steal me away right now, or you could kill the dragon yourself or lure her away—there are a hundred tricks you could play, oh, god of tricks. But your only plan is this apple?”
“You have to choose to eat the apple,” he says bitterly.
“Ah!” I lift my eyebrows, let my lips hang open in mocking surprise.
“I do not allow people to make fun of me, Vider.”
I jut out my chin, inviting retaliation. Our mouths are so close together, my knee exactly near enough for a solid kick to his rocks. Start something, Loki, start it, I think. My breath and my heart speed up, but I do not glance away.
Nothing happens. Loki Changer does not change, does not act. He waits—he waits for me to move again.
And I want to. I want to slide my arms around him and dance, or I want to grab his hand and run as far as I can with the frenzy fueling me and his laughter in my ear, or I want to kiss him like I did when I was ten years old, before I knew what kisses could really mean.
But there’s a question in the way. A need that slows my heart back down, that cools my skin and makes rain inside my stomach.
“Why didn’t you save my mother?” I whisper.
The words hang bright and desperate on the last golden rays of sunset.
Loki says, “I am not supposed to so directly interfere. None of us are. I had not caused the fire, I could not stop it.”
My face curls into a scowl, my fingers drag into fists. I shake my head at that skitty ragging answer. “If I’d been inside the fire, you’d have come.”
“But I love you.”
The words are like trick daggers: aimed for the heart, sharp-seeming, but with no capacity to break the skin. “I loved my mother.”
He shrugs, helplessly, unconcernedly.
“You were pissed off at me,” I say. “You didn’t come because I prayed to you like you were a god, not like you were my friend. Admit it.” I shove angrily at him.
Loki stumbles back under my onslaught. He spreads his arms. “Fine, yes. I hated that you elevated me away from you, that you lowered yourself to begging. In one moment, you ended our equality. We were friends. Then you made me back into your god and put yourself on your knees. I don’t love worshippers.”
“I was thirteen years old! I needed you and everything you were—not just a boy, not just my best friend. I needed my god.”
“I didn’t want to be your god,” he says, and it isn’t only his voice that darkens. The tips of his hair catch fire, burning up the length of it and leaving black behind. His eyes burn, too, white-hot in the black center, and his eyelids redden, but there are no tears. “Then you spurned even that, Vider! You didn’t even want me to be your god. You looked at my cousin’s mad, hectic, spinning eye, and you gave me up. You got me back, didn’t you?”
His skin crisps and blackens, turning into a shimmer of scales along his cheeks and jaw.
I shake my head, staring at the transformation, at the beautiful oily radiance of his snake skin.
“You did,” he hisses.
Sorrow dampens my frenzy even more. “I’m going back to camp,” I say dully.
Halfway back, along the crest of the massive hill, he’s walking beside me. I head for the even and warm glow of camp. They’re mostly battery-powered lanterns and a few electric lights from the mess tent’s portable generator. Welcome against the deepening blue of twilight.
Loki says, “You look good, I meant to say.”
I slide him an impressive side-eye. He’s back to his imitation of me but bulked up and aged slightly, with even a berserker’s tattoo on the cheek nearest me. “Wrong side,” I say.
“You couldn’t have seen it otherwise.” He shrugs. “Stay out with me. Like you said: I’ll take you away from here, spirit you off, far from dragons and berserkers and television cameras.” Loki stops walking. “I’ll be anything you want me to be. Beautiful or young or monstrous or anything. Shape me, Vider. I’ll be a coyote mutt, if you ask.”
“That isn’t what I want,” I whisper, tears abruptly attacking my eyes. And I dash away, leaving him again in the darkening prairie.
SIX.
In the morning, I make Soren switch trucks with me so I can ride with Sean Hardy and Visby Larue.
I got a bit of skit last night for taking off, so I made myself useful cleaning up in the mess tent, telling jokes to my fellow workers and answering questions about Baldur and Bright Home and berserking. I know Soren doesn’t tend to get along with strangers; most berserkers have this attitude that they’re unwelcome among the non-berserking populace, but that hasn’t been my experience—because I’m sort of famous, or because I’m a girl, or because I
’ve got the charm of a caravan rat, I don’t know. But I fell asleep full of smiles and at least three interesting new jokes.
I didn’t stay asleep, though. It was like I wasn’t tired enough to sleep, and I tossed, turned, stared at the top of my tent. Finally got up a couple hours before dawn and ran laps around the camp. Soren joined me, unsurprisingly, and we did some boxing and weight training and yoga until the rest of the caravan rose. I taught him a frenzy game Henry and I played to help me hone my control. Soren seemed fascinated by it.
Now we’re taking off for what promises to be another day of absolute boredom. Sean is driving, explaining to the camera guy, who’s in the passenger seat, that we’re going to finish the entire grid over the next two days, so we’ll have seen with our own eyes the basics of the Flint Hills and have a feel for the land. I throw my head back against my seat in despair. But it isn’t as if I have any better ideas. Not any, at least, that don’t involve Loki Changer.
Sean seems calm, though, and now that I’m stuck two feet behind him, I notice he’s got a little valknot tattooed on his earlobe. An Odinist trefoil. There’s a dark splash of color cutting through it, though, a slash across the design the way you tie a green ribbon across portraits or around your arm when somebody dies to show mourning. That’s what it reminds me of, and I immediately assume the dead person is his daughter’s mother. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so, and the ragging weight of it settles in my stomach again. As long as this pencil-neck camera guy is here, I won’t give him the satisfaction of making Sean admit to anything on television. Probably the whole world knows already anyway.
But ragging rut. He needed that apple.
Unlocking my seatbelt, I slide across the bench and easily straddle Visby’s lap. He’s so surprised, he puts up no fight, and of course, when he realizes what I’m about, he doesn’t argue. He steadies me by my thighs as I bend my neck only a little awkwardly to fit under the roof. Good to be tiny sometimes.
“What are you…?” Sean asks as I jostle the front seat, and the camera guy makes an excited, strangling sound.
Visby holds one hand out to block the camera. “She didn’t sign the release,” he says in that northern drawl of his.
I smile, inches from his mouth, and turn my face to tell both the camera guy and Sean, “Lokiskin business, kids.”
“Aren’t you a berserker?” camera guy asks in a squeaky voice, like his rocks haven’t dropped yet.
Visby goes tense under me, as if suddenly nervous what I might do, me and my raging power.
More to him than the others, I say, “I was born a sneaky Lokiskin, and I don’t think any fever could burn that away.”
The cowboy’s eyes widen, and he suddenly looks so happy. I lean in, scooting as close as possible, because I cannot have the camera recording any of this, or Sean hearing. “Did you eat that apple I gave you?” I whisper against his skin.
Surprise jolts through his body to mine. My frenzy is heating up, for sure. “Yeah,” he says almost as softly, angling his head to try and meet my eyes. “Tasted like dust, kitten.”
I suppose I asked for that endearment when I slunk into his lap. Still, I narrow my eyes threateningly, and he flashes a wicked smile.
“You’re in luck then,” I say, shoving down the regret that I can’t save Sean Hardy’s life.
“Luck?” He shifts his hips, and I catch my breath before I can stop myself. Visby is wearing a T-shirt for the drive today, his charm necklace tucked underneath, his black hair loose and silky. That scar on his upper lip just dares me. I might as well like him more than a little, if he’s the only one of us guaranteed not to die.
Before answering, I kiss him. A teasing taste of a kiss, off-center, where I can feel the ridges of scar against my lips. He tastes like smoke and bacon, which is about the best combination I could ever imagine.
From the front of the car, I hear some grumbling and the sharp static of the radio.
I murmur, “It was an apple of immortality, Visby.”
He honest-to-Tyr gasps the air right out of my mouth. Leaning back on his lap, my knees folded tight and my hands on his shoulders for balance, I study his reaction. Surprise, wonder, maybe a slight undercurrent of fear. “How did you…?” he whispers. “Are you…?”
It’s not so satisfying a response as I’d expected. I shrug a shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Only means you’re safe.”
Keeping his voice low, he says, “Hot skit, girl, you are something else. Tricky, for sure.”
“I told you: Lokiskin to the core, no matter the heat.”
His mouth widens into a great skit-eating lion smile. He puts his hands on my waist and tugs me close again, so I’m curled over him. I grip the back of the seat bench and kiss him for a while. It’s a better way to pass the time than I had yesterday.
When we stop for lunch, my mouth is rather numb and my knees cramped, and I’m starving. We tumble out into a lovely grove of birch trees, with their stripping bark and thin, droopy branches. There are picnic tables here and a really nice-size stream, with plenty of shade for relief from the scorching sun.
Turns out Lydia and Soren have been having what most people would consider an argument, although, as we watch Lydia jerk back the buttoned tarp covering the bed of her truck to dig around for a weapon, Sune Rask gently characterizes it as a philosophical debate. Soren stands alone, eyes on Lydia, weaponless other than the white-hot weapon that lives in his heart. The wolf guard pulls out four long pieces of wood and steel, two with sharp ends. She snaps them together with deft twists of her wrists to make two long spears. They’re about two feet taller than she is and as thick as my ankles, which is not actually very thick.
“What’s going on?” Sean Hardy asks, seeming to just notice that two of his heroes are about to go into battle. Cameras are aimed and ready, and all the rest of the convoy crowds around for a view.
When she reaches Soren, Lydia strips off her lightweight shirt to a basic white fighting bra, revealing really impressive ragging muscles in her back and shoulders and arms. I hadn’t guessed she was so ripped but probably should have, since she’s here.
“Troll spears?” I ask, having used such things when I was in the Great Canyon, though these are longer, and the point is longer and thinner, too. Beside me, Sean crosses his arms and says, “Dragon. They’re lighter and meant to be used astride or shot into the air with an atlatl.”
“I don’t think she’s gonna throw them right now,” I say.
I’m right.
Their sparring begins when Lydia charges, a dragon spear in each hand. Soren dodges and moves around her but can’t get close. She’s graceful and can swing both spears in impossible-looking ways. Lydia doesn’t stop moving at all; momentum becomes her ally. Soren is strong and steadfast and can take her hits without flinching. They dance around each other, Soren trying to get in to grapple with her, and Lydia holding him back like he’s a bull and she’s got electric prods.
I feel his frenzy, but it’s churning slow, like a grandfather clock.
Around me, people are taking bets, and Visby slides his hands around my waist from behind. He says, “Any chance your fellow will lose?”
“If he doesn’t stop playing half-game, he might,” I say.
Sune Rask is crouched on Sean’s other side, in the dappled shade of a tree, his blue Army jacket flared around his thighs and his tattooed scalp glistening. “They were arguing over who should hold back when we do find the dragon. Strategizing which of us is the most dangerous and the least, who needs protection. Lydia didn’t like where Soren ranked her.”
I wince as she knocks Soren in the shoulder hard enough for us to hear the smack from fifty feet. But she was aiming for his head. “Fourth?” I guess.
The major shakes his head. “Fifth. Larue was sixth.”
Visby grunts.
“She told him he was sexist, and her strength and spears could beat my strength and axes,” Sune says.
“Then why aren’t you two sparring?
” Sean asks. The harassed look is back on his face, and he’s tugging at his yellow beard.
I laugh. “Soren wants to experience for himself, not watch.”
“Who put him in charge of ranking us, anyway?” Visby asks, suddenly sounding peeved.
None of us answers. Seems obvious enough to me: Berserkers are the ultimate weapons, and Soren’s definitely better than me.
Suddenly, Soren grabs one of the spears and thrusts back with it, knocking Lydia off balance. She goes down, but rolls and comes back up with the other spear still in her hand. Soren holds his captured spear in both hands and squeezes, but instead of breaking it, he tosses it away. He only wanted to prove he could.
Lydia attacks again. Sweat sticks her bra tight against her skin, and Soren’s sweating, too, both of them breathing deep and hard and even. I’m impressed, though I can still feel Soren’s frenzy clicking and clacking instead of burning.
“She’s excellent,” Sune says. “Her patience.”
“Her ass,” Visby adds. I narrow my eyes, though he can’t see it.
Sean nods. “I wonder how her accuracy is, throwing those.”
“How’s yours?” I growl, pushing away from Visby, irritated at all these men, including Soren.
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