Ain't Myth-Behaving

by Katie MacAlister

  Paul was standing with his mother, his hands moving as he clearly tried to explain who the Vikings were.

  I tugged Alrik toward where my great-grandmother sat, looking like a small child in an oversize rocking chair. “I’m going to have you talk to my momo. She’s—”

  “Hilda!” Alrik came to a dead stop, his hand tightening painfully around mine.

  I glanced back at him. His face was a mask of disbelief. “No, it’s Hildi. It’s short for Hildigunn.”

  He marched forward to the rocking chair, pulling me the last few steps. “She has changed her name then, since it was Hilda when I met her.”

  “You met my momo?” I stared with open-mouthed surprise at Alrik. “You’re not saying that my great-grandmother is—”

  “Hilda the witch. The one who cursed us!”

  Four

  T he small bundle in the chair stirred and Momo Hildi’s head rose from where her chin had been resting on her chest. Her eyes, once a startling blue, had faded to a milky color that held only a hint of their former hue. A horrible crackling noise started up, and I realized that it was Momo laughing.

  “Alrik, son of Sigurd,” she said in an equally crackly voice. She lifted a palsied hand and pointed her finger to him. “You have returned. I always knew you would. You are weak, just as your father was. Kneel down and pledge your eternal love for me.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I told Alrik. “You slept with my momo?”

  “It was a millennium ago,” he said, his lips thinning.

  I jerked his hand and moved to block his view. “You slept with her?”

  “Thirteen hundred years ago! I barely remember it.” He still held my hand. I tried to pull it away. His fingers tightened around mine.

  “Barely?”

  Alrik straightened up a smidgen and looked down his crooked nose at me. “Brynna, please, there are more important issues here than the fact that I had sex with your great-grandmother.”

  “You know, there are some sentences that are on my Never Want To Hear Anyone Utter List—and ‘I had sex with your great-grandmother’ is right at the top.”

  “There are extenuating circumstances, which you very well know.” He gently pulled me to his side, continuing to hold my hand despite the fact that I was prepared to cast him from my smutty fantasies. “So you have survived all these centuries, eh, Hilda? Your evil plans have come to naught. I will never kneel before you! Brynna has sworn to release us from your curse and take us to Valhöll.”

  “Brynna?” Momo Hildi turned her milky eyes on me. Although I’d seen her in the last few days, she’d not spoken more than a handful of words to me. I honestly hadn’t known she could do much more than eat and doze, since that had been all I’d ever seen her do. As she pinned me with a look that would scald a frozen turkey, I realized there was much more to her than your average one-hundred-year-old great-grandma. “Ah. My namesake,” she said.

  “Namesake?” My voice came out as a squeak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I don’t see how Brynna is related to Hildigunn.”

  Momo Hildi’s clawlike hands scrabbled on the arms of her chair. Evidently Aunt Agda recognized the signal, for she leaped to her feet and heaved Momo out of the chair. The old lady stood there for a moment, her tiny body stooped so far over I wondered that she’d ever had a straight back.

  “Hildigunn is not my true name.” Momo Hildi seemed to shimmer for a moment, her image flickering before my eyes, slowly dissolving into that of a stunning young woman. Her hair was long, as red as my own, bound into two braids hanging down to her knees. She had a wicked jaw, flashing blue eyes, and wore a white linen robe girdled with gold cord that glittered in the early evening sun. “You were named for me, Brynnhilde, just as each of my true daughters has been.”

  Beside me, Alrik sucked in his breath.

  “Brynnhilde?” I asked the red-headed vision. She faded back into the little gray old lady. “Not…the Brynnhilde? The one in the Wagner opera? Siegfried, and Thor helmets, and fleshy women in metal breastplates? That Brynnhilde?”

  “It’s Sigurd, not Siegfried,” Alrik said, his fingers so tight on mine, they were beginning to cut off my circulation.

  “You’re hurting my hand,” I said quietly.

  “I’m sorry.” He loosened his grip but didn’t let go. “This has come as a shock to me. I had no idea she was Brynnhilde. But it all makes sense now.”

  “You inherited your lack of brains from your father,” Momo cackled. Around us, the family stood silent, undoubtedly stunned. I was having trouble putting thoughts together, myself.

  “I don’t understand. What does your father have to do with any of this?” I asked.

  Paul took a step toward me, his gaze flickering between Alrik and Momo. “Er…it’s the legend of Sigurd and Brynnhilde. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  I looked at Alrik. “Yes, I know it. Brynnhilde was in love with Sigurd, and he with her. Something happened to mess things up, though, and he ended up marrying someone else—”

  “Gudrun,” Alrik and Momo said at the same time. They glared at each other.

  “—and Brynnhilde got pissed off and killed Sigurd, then…er…I’m a bit hazy about what happened after that.”

  “She swore to have revenge for the ills she claimed he did to her,” Alrik said. “That’s why you seduced me, isn’t it? So you would have an excuse to curse me?”

  Momo’s crackling voice cut across Alrik’s. “Did you think it was fate that sent you across my path? You are more foolish than I thought. I swore upon your father’s bier that I would have my revenge for all he did to me, and this is but the beginning.”

  “What exactly did Alrik’s dad do?” I asked.

  Momo waved a gnarled hand at Alrik. “He took my ring! He loved me, took my innocence, and returned it with treachery when he married that whore’s daughter, Gudrun.”

  “Alrik did?” I asked, more confused than ever.

  “Sigurd!” Momo answered.

  “My grandmother was not a whore,” Alrik snarled. I could feel how tense his muscles were, as if he was keeping himself in check, and gave his hand a little squeeze to remind him not to lose that control. Momo might be just as old as him—or more likely, older—but she hadn’t stood the length of time as well as he had.

  “She made Sigurd lose his memory because she wanted him for her own daughter!” Momo yelled in a surprisingly strong voice. “He gave her my ring! Then he disguised that idiot Gunnar as himself, and sent him to my bed! Odin himself swore I would have the finest warrior in the land, and what did I end up with? A half-wit, a fool, brother to the one who stole my true love. Me, Brynnhilde, the most beautiful of all the Valkyrie! I will be revenged! The crimes against me must be redressed!”

  “Oh my God. Your dad slept with Momo Hildi, too?” I gawked at Alrik. “What is with your family?”

  “That was before my time,” he answered quickly, his eyes narrowed on Momo. “You speak of justice, but you have not told everything, have you?”

  Momo spat at him. She literally spat, but Alrik easily sidestepped the spittle. “Skitstövel! Liten skitstövel!”

  I leaned toward Paul. “What does that—”

  “You don’t want to know,” he whispered. “It’s not at all proper.”

  “So Momo has a bit of a potty mouth on her?”

  Paul shot me a look. I decided to keep my levity to myself.

  “You don’t wish to tell everyone what happened after you murdered my father in his sleep?” Alrik turned to face the rest of the family, huddled together in a stunned silence. “When Odin heard of what she had done, how she had deprived Valhöll of my father’s presence by murdering him in his bed, he put a curse on her.”

  “Okay, I’m totally confused,” I said, tugging on Alrik’s hand until he looked at me. “Why would Odin—oh, man, I can’t believe that it seems almost normal to talk about Nordic gods as if they were real—where was I? Oh, why would Odin be so ticked off that your dad cou
ldn’t go to Valhalla?”

  “Ragnorök,” he said succinctly, returning his gaze to Momo. “The battle at the end of the world. Sigurd was the best warrior there had ever been, and ever would be. Odin needed him at his side for the battle between heaven and hell, and Brynnhilde deprived him of that.”

  Momo snorted and did what I’d call a head toss on a younger woman. “No great loss.”

  “Odin declared that she would never know peace until she had paid for her crimes against Sigurd,” Alrik told me. “My mother told me that Brynnhilde killed herself on my father’s bier. Evidently she was wrong.”

  “He took my heart,” Momo howled, slumping back into her rocker. “I died that night, when that she-witch took his memory of me from him, and wed him to her daughter.”

  “I’m a bit confused about the players,” I said in a whisper to Alrik. “Who’s the woman she keeps talking about?”

  Alrik’s jaw tightened again. “My grandmother. Evidently my father was wounded, and my grandfather found him and brought him home to be healed. He fell in love with my mother, and married her a few days later.”

  “He loved me! I was the one he was pledged to. He gave me his ring! That she-witch stole it all from me! She made a potion that took his memory of me from him!”

  Alrik’s fingers twitched. “My uncle married Brynnhilde after I was born.”

  “Disguised as Sigurd!” Momo struggled to her feet unassisted, hobbling the few steps over to Alrik to poke him in the chest with a bent finger. “Sigurd disguised that idiot as himself, and sent him to my bed! It was trickery that wed me to him, nothing but trickery!”

  “So in revenge, you killed Sigurd, then hunted down Alrik several years later and seduced him, then cursed him?” I asked, frowning at my great-grandmother. “Even though he’s totally innocent of everything but dubious taste in women? That’s not fair, Momo, not fair at all. Alrik isn’t responsible for what his family did to you.”

  “He carries his father’s blood,” she replied with an injured sniff, limping back to her chair. “He must redress the offenses committed against me so long ago.”

  I glanced at Alrik. “I don’t suppose you’d consider apologizing—” His outraged glare was all the answer I needed. “Right. I suppose I don’t blame you, considering what you’ve suffered.”

  “It is only a fraction of what is due me,” Momo insisted.

  “I understand that you’ve been through a lot,” I said with as much diplomacy as I could rally, “but honestly, I think Alrik and his men have suffered enough. So why don’t you show them that you can be magnanimous, and lift the curse so they can go off to drink beer and ogle beer maids in Valhalla?”

  “Never!” Momo swore with a glare at me.

  “Fine,” I said, shrugging. “Since I inherited the Valkyrie abilities from you, I’ll just take them all to Valhalla myself.”

  Momo’s thin, wrinkled lips split into a smile. “Daughter of my blood you may be, but you are not a Valkyrie yet.”

  I glanced at the four Vikings behind me. “But I summoned them all to me from the ship.”

  “You have powers, but you are not yet a true Valkyrie. Until you are recognized as such by me, you cannot take them to Valhöll. Only I can grant that by lifting the curse, and I will not do so until I have been revenged.”

  “I will not give you the satisfaction of that!” Alrik all but snarled.

  I rubbed my forehead, where a headache was beginning to blossom. “We just seem to be going around in circles. Momo, couldn’t you just—”

  “No!”

  “Fine. Alrik, could you—”

  “Never!”

  I sighed. Paul had been standing next to me with an absorbed look on his face. I knew that he had a firm grasp of Nordic history and lore, owing in part to his position as the curator of an antiquities museum in Stockholm, but mostly because he had a deep love of all things Swedish.

  “There may be something…” Paul started to say, as if he was thinking out loud.

  “What?”

  He looked from Momo to me, his eyes doubtful. “I’m not sure, but according to ancient Nordic law, if Momo Hildi can hold Sigurd’s issue responsible for his actions, then likewise, so her issue can accept any repayment due her.

  “Okay. What does that do for us? Repayment isn’t the issue here. Alrik just said he won’t do it, and I don’t really blame him. He and his men have gotten the short stick.”

  “He said he wouldn’t repay Momo,” Paul answered, looking over my head to where Alrik stood. “Do you have an objection to repaying the debt itself, or offering repayment to Momo Hildi?”

  Alrik’s eyes narrowed on Momo. “She killed my father, destroyed my mother’s life, was responsible for the death of my uncle, and cursed my crew to an eternity of hell. I owe her nothing.”

  “Just as I thought.” Paul nodded. “The solution is simple, then: Alrik can repay the debt owed by his father to one of Momo’s issue.”

  “What, like blood money or something?” I turned to Alrik. “You said you had gold, right?”

  “No, Brynna, not that sort of repayment,” Paul interrupted. “If I understand the situation correctly, Momo Hildi is asking for recompense for the fact that Sigurd promised to marry her, and then married someone else.”

  “Yeah? So how do you repay that?”

  Alrik’s eyebrows rose. His hazel eyes—now more brown than anything else—lightened a few degrees as they considered me, scanning me from head to foot.

  “It’s easy,” Paul said, smiling. “Since Sigurd can’t marry Momo Hildi, Sigurd’s issue will have to marry her issue.”

  A horrible idea began to form in my head. I stared at Alrik with increasing astonishment.

  He winked at me.

  “And since you’re the only marriageable female in the family under fifty…” Paul clapped a hand on Alrik’s shoulder. “Welcome to the family, cousin.”

  Five

  Y ou’re insane!”

  “On the contrary, I think it’s quite an elegant solution.” Paul turned to the old lady crumpled up in the chair. “Momo, would you accept that as repayment of the debt owed to you by Sigurd?”

  I whacked Paul on the arm. Hard. “You’re downright cracked! Seriously nutso!”

  Momo Hildi was silent for a moment, her scrunched-up face even more inscrutable than ever. She said something in Swedish before her head dropped back down to her chest.

  “What did she say?” I asked Paul.

  “She’s thinking about it.”

  I spun around to where Alrik was huddled up with his men, evidently having some sort of a conference. “Surely you can’t think this is a reasonable solution!”

  Bardi lifted his head from where he was whispering to Jon. “You don’t want Alrik? I don’t understand; all the ladies want him. They follow him around like—”

  “Like puppies, yes, I know, but when I get married, I want a man, not a hound master.”

  The Vikings broke their circle so that Alrik stood in the middle, flanked on either side by his men. I tried to keep from looking straight at him. He had the most unnerving ability to make me lose my train of thought with just a glance of his eyes, a tightening of his jaw, or a flash of that wickedly sexy smile.

  “He isn’t as decrepit as he looks,” Bardi said, waving a hand toward Alrik, as if he was trying to sell a side of beef. “He has good health, a strong back, and all of his teeth. Well, most of them. A couple were knocked out by a bear.”

  Alrik had been smiling at me, a noticeable gap visible on the far left side of his teeth. He quickly changed his smile to a closed-lip one.

  “And he has his own longboat,” Jon added. “He can fish…somewhat. And no stag has ever gotten away from him, no matter how old and feeble it is. He’s especially good with the old and feeble ones. He will be able to provide for your children.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Alrik shot Jon a dirty look.

  “He can handle a sword tolerably well without injuring h
imself,” Grim said. “Well, except for the time he accidentally embedded the sword in his foot, but we got that out without too much trouble.”

  Alrik shook his fist at Grim, who just grinned.

  “He has a very large bed, as well,” Torsten said with lascivious meaning. “And land to go with the house. It’s up north in Lapland where no one else wants to live, true, but long cold nights just mean more time to spend in the bed keeping warm.”

  Alrik waggled his eyebrows at me. I had to clamp my lips together to keep from laughing.

  “Mind you, he hogs the blankets, and sprawls all over a bed, taking up all the room, so you’ll probably end up sleeping on the cold floor, but eh. No one is perfect.”

  Alrik shot Torsten a look that should have dropped the ghost dead on the spot.

  Bardi clapped his friend on the back. “He can skin—sort of. And he knows the seasons for planting…just not how to plant. He is good at swindling and pillaging, though! He’s relieved many a priest and monk of their money pouches without their being any the wiser.”

  Alrik tried to punch Bardi in the gut, but the latter caught his fist, laughing openly.

  “I’ve heard the ladies say he has a fine manroot, straight and without—” Torsten started to say, but I raised my hand to stop any more of the sales pitch.

  “That’s all well and good, but there are two major stumbling blocks that no amount of fast talking is going to get past: One, he’s a ghost, and two, he’s a ghost.”

  Bardi frowned. “That’s just one point.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a whopper—”

  “I have decided!” Momo’s crackly voice shot out, causing everyone to turn to her. Aunt Agda helped her to her feet again. She raised her cane and pointed it to Alrik. “Son of Sigurd, come forward.”

  Alrik marched over to stand in front of Momo. He towered above her—he had to be at least three or four inches over six feet since he was a foot taller than me, which meant he was at least two feet taller than little old Momo Hildi.

  “Yes?” His hands were on his hips, an angry light in his eyes.