Charlee crept toward the bars. “Oh, he’s beautiful!”
“Step into the cage,” Ylva told her. “Help me feed him.”
“But I’m late for—” She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t pass up this opportunity to feed a real, live falcon. She draped her coat over the balustrade and stepped slowly into the cage and shut the door. The falcon flapped his wings, but Ylva crooned to him and he settled down again.
“Should I put on a glove?” Charlee asked.
“Do you feel you need to?”
But Charlee couldn’t take her eyes away from the proud head of the falcon, the big hooked beak and the barrel chest, spotted with black and white feathers. She realized she was picking up the food only when the coolness of the raw meat registered on her fingers.
She made a fist around the meat, so that it poked from the top of her fist like a posy of flowers and held it out toward the falcon. He looked at her, assessing, then bent and tore at the meat.
Charlee realized she was grinning like a little kid.
“He’s been visiting for about a week now,” Ylva said quietly. “I think he’s looking for somewhere to nest for the winter. I would like you to step into the cage each day and see that he’s fed. Skuld will give you meat and seed for the others.”
As the falcon took another bite at the meat, Charlee tilted her head back and looked up at the top of the cage. In all but the very worst weather, the skylight that opened the cage up to the fresh air was kept open. In winter, all but one pane was closed, and the pane that was left open had a flap that spun open and shut like a spindle. The wild birds that knew about the cage knew how to dive through the flap, hitting it with their beaks so that it would turn and let them through. It let them access the cage all year round.
“You want me to feed the birds?”
“Yes, please,” Ylva said. She still hadn’t moved her arm. The falcon gripped her wrist through the leather guard she was wearing, at ease with both of them. “And while I have your attention, Charlee, Lucas is home.”
Quick delight filled her. “At Darwin’s?”
“He had a week’s leave. I told him when he phoned this morning that I would send you home to visit.”
“Will it be alright for me to go?”
Ylva was watching the falcon and didn’t turn her head. “You’ve made good progress, Charlee, despite your lack of grounding in the subjects you’ve been exposed to. I think a few days off won’t hurt.”
“I can’t feed the birds while I’m gone.”
“They’ll be here when you come back.” Ylva looked at her then, and smiled. “You will be back.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but Charlee answered it that way. “You know I will. Nothing would make me stay away, now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“God, look at you!” Lucas exclaimed. He stepped back from hugging her and looked her over from head to toe. “You look amazing. Whatever Ylva is teaching you, I’d say it’s agreeing with you.”
He looked very good himself. He had filled out around the chest and shoulders, and especially through the neck. He was tanned and looked fit and... Charlee reached for just the right word and found it. He looked hard. Seasoned. It was his second year in the SEALs. “I’d say life is agreeing with you, too,” she said.
“Ah, you know, jumping from twenty thousand feet every month tends to keep you appreciating the small stuff. Like being home for a visit. Have you seen how grey Darwin is? He must miss you.”
Darwin grinned. He stood behind Lucas. “I don’t miss her hogging the popcorn in the slightest. Coffee is on, Charlee. Come and sit down and tell us all about it. I’ve been trying to explain to Lucas and not doing too well.”
Charlee caught Darwin’s eye as they walked into the kitchen, and he shook his head. Then Asher’s secrets were safe. He hadn’t passed them on to Lucas.
The Amica in Ylva’s house had a standard cover story for curious humans that Charlee borrowed shamelessly. As they settled at the battered table and while Darwin poured coffee for them all, Charlee explained about the home economics and domestic science apprenticeship she was completing, including all the non-mysterious hard work, the drudgery, the teasing of the older students and the study.
“Hell, it sounds like high school all over again,” Lucas said, sitting back, slightly baffled. “I thought you would have wanted to leave all that behind.”
“I like it now,” Charlee said flatly. “I like what I’m learning. I like the people. And the teasing is never cruel.” She realized she was touching her scar and put her hand down.
“Well, I can’t argue with the results. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quite so....” He shrugged.
“Content,” Darwin supplied.
Lucas nodded. “She’s glowing, almost.” He crossed his arms over his chest, still leaning back. “Seen Asher lately?” he asked.
Charlee almost jumped. Almost. She had been expecting a question about Asher, but her heart still leapt. “Not since the prom,” she said. “Too busy.”
“I thought you two were glued at the hip or something.”
Darwin stood up. “I’ll get lunch going. There some chili in the freezer and I’ve got buns.”
“Ah, hell, let’s go out somewhere nice,” Lucas said. “Not that your home-cooking isn’t just like home-cooking, Darwin. But I’ve been dreaming about the chicken dinner at Scachi’s since I got my leave approved.”
Charlee jumped up. “That sounds great. Let me get changed and we can go straight away.”
Lucas didn’t seem to notice the shift in subject, and Asher wasn’t mentioned again.
After a long lunch, on the way home, Lucas started yawning heavily. “I’m still on London time,” he confessed. “Do either of you mind if I hit the sack?”
“You should maybe try to stay up later, and go to bed at a normal time,” Darwin said.
Lucas shook his head. “Nah. I learned a long time ago that sleeping through to the next morning is the best way to do it.”
“That’s over twelve hours,” Charlee pointed out.
“If I get up at five, it’ll be nearly thirteen.” Lucas grinned. “I’ll sleep like a log. You could let off bazookas downstairs. I won’t hear them, but when I get up in the morning, I’ll be adjusted to local time and rarin’ to go.”
When they got home, Lucas headed upstairs and shut the door on Charlee’s old room, leaving them alone.
Darwin rested his hand on her shoulder. “Finally, a chance to talk.”
They took the wine bottle out into the tiny back yard, to the little table and chairs there. Wrapped up in their coats, they basked in the last of the sunlight and drank. Darwin rested his long legs out along the concrete, his ankles crossed. “So, how has it been?”
“Marvelous. Interesting. Absorbing.” She shrugged. “Every day is different. I don’t know what I’ll be doing from one day to the next.”
“Still nothing resembling a curriculum or books?” This point had bothered him from an academic perspective. During her last flying visit, a few months before, he had circled back to it just as he was now. “Still no books,” Charlee confirmed. “Everything they teach you, they do one-on-one. Demonstrations and explanations. No notes.”
The lack of books and notes was one of the reasons Charlee was slow at discovering more about Asher’s real world. The only way she could find out was to ask one of the other Amica and usually, she was too overwhelmed learning whatever she was learning to push a conversation around to what would amount to idle gossip for the Amica she worked with. They all knew the mysteries she was trying to unravel one slow clue at a time.
“Any new words?” Darwin asked.
She nodded. “But I might get it wrong again.” None of the words and names Charlee had brought back for Darwin to mull over had meant anything to him, and they had decided that she might be mispronouncing them or just plain getting them wrong.
“Hit me,” Darwin said.
“Eye
-n-here-yar,” she said slowly.
Darwin sat bolt upright, shock making his eyes widen and his mouth open. He spilled the glass of wine he was holding, and it was his favorite. He didn’t seem to notice the wetness on his hand or his knee as he leaned forward. “Einherjar?” he repeated, sounding stunned.
She nodded. “Yes, that sounds just like Victoria said it.”
Darwin spelled it out for her. “If that really is the right name,” he said slowly. His expression was distant. The wheels were spinning. “It can’t be right,” he said. “But now everything else makes sense. Well, sort of.” He frowned.
“Magic is real, remember?” Charlee said. “If magic is real, then anything is possible.”
Darwin nodded, his eyes still far away. Then he stood up. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the house and she watched him reappear in his office, the tiny room at the back of the kitchen. He reached for one of the books that were kept high up near the ceiling. He opened it and started flipping through it even as he returned to the back door.
As he got closer to her, he spun the book in his hands, then laid it gently on her knee and sat down.
Charlee looked at the page he had opened the book to. There was a full-color picture on the left of a massive tree. Around the tree, nine planets were arranged. The one at the top left was labeled “Asgard” and in smaller letters beneath it was “Valhalla”.
She looked up at Darwin, startled. “Vikings?” she breathed.
He shook his head. “The gods of the Vikings.” He was almost whispering, too. “Thor. Odin. Feyr. They had dozens of them.” He considered what he had said. “They have dozens of them.” Then he scratched at his head. “Jesus Christ on a pony. It all makes sense now.”
“It doesn’t to me.” She closed the book. “Asher isn’t a god.”
“No, he’s not,” Darwin agreed. “I’m pretty sure he’s one of the Einherjar, though.”
“And they are?”
Darwin leaned forward. “Didn’t you learn any of this at school?”
“Any of what? The closest thing to ancient history that we got was the founding of America. Everything else was modern history. Anything that happened before the Renaissance I learned from you.” She tilted her head. “You didn’t teach me about Vikings.”
“That’s because this stuff is their mythology, not their history. Well, it was mythology until about five minutes ago.” He blew out his breath. “Let me match it up with what you’ve learned.”
“Yes please.”
“Valhalla was the hall where Odin ruled. He was one of the major gods.” He grimaced. “I keep speaking in the past tense.”
“Never mind. Tell me the myths. We’ll sort the facts out as we go.”
“Okay. Valhalla was on Asgard, one of the nine worlds. I won’t go into the rest of the worlds right now. You can read about them yourself. I don’t think it’s relevant right now. I think we’re just dealing with Valhalla.”
“Which is supposed to be on Asgard.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think it is.” Darwin pointed toward the ground. “This here, Earth, is Midgard. Then there’s Asgard, where Valhalla was supposed to be, but I think Valhalla is here, on Midgard. Or something like Valhalla is here.” He leaned forward again and tapped the book on her knee. “All this stuff, all the stories about their gods, it was all written down in medieval times by writers who had heard the stories from other people. The stories in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda were already centuries old when those books were written, and they’re two of only a handful of recognized authorities on Norse mythology. The Norse didn’t write anything down themselves. They didn’t have a written language, not until medieval times, so all the stories about their gods were spoken, passed down one generation to the next.”
Charlee shivered. “That would have been how they taught the new generation essential knowledge, wouldn’t it? They would have shown them. Told them. No books. No notes.”
Darwin nodded vigorously. “And you know what else fits?”
She just looked at him, a little amused by the almost tangible excitement emanating from him.
“The words and names you’ve bought home. I thought it was some modern language, and I’ve been working my way through every translation program I could find, plugging them in to see what hit. But if they are using Old Norse as their common language, and if the names they use are from Old Norse, then it’s no wonder I couldn’t find anything to match.”
“Does anyone speak Old Norse anymore?” Charlee asked. “I thought it was a dead language, like Latin, or Old English.”
“They use it. I bet your bottom dollar. If they’re still calling themselves Einherjar and Valkyrie, then they’re still using Old Norse.”
“Valkyrie…” Charlee could feel her eyes opening wider. “Really? Could Asher be one of those?”
“The Einherjar are men,” Darwin said flatly. “There was no such thing as equal rights back then. The men were the warriors, the women kept the homefires burning.” He grinned. “But Norse women were known for their fierceness and their ability with weapons. They had to defend their farms while their men were in the longships, pirating their guts out all over Europe. Even the Americas.”
Charlee grinned “That sounds better.” Then a thought struck her. “Is Ylva a Valkyrie, then?”
Darwin frowned. “I don’t know. I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that Odin and Valhalla and the Einherjar are real and living in New York City. That all by itself is a mouthful. Why they’re here and what are they doing while they’re here, that’s a whole other mystery.”
Charlee rested her hands on the book. “Amica. Valkyrie. Einherjar…” She stumbled over the word only a little. “Lawn. That’s the other word I heard. It seems to be some sort of secret. You never found that one, either.”
“Give me a day with my computer at the office and I’ll find it now,” Darwin assured her.
Charlee started leafing through the book, picking up words and phrases. Ragnarok. Loki. Jötunn. The Æsir. There were images, many of them, and most were violent, showing gods and men and fantasy creatures locked in battle. She closed it again, quickly. “If Asher doesn’t age, and we’re pretty sure he doesn’t, then that would mean he has lived a long time, wouldn’t it?”
“That would follow,” Darwin said.
“How long has he lived, then? And where did he come from? The real Valhalla?”
“Maybe they’ve been here all along,” Darwin said slowly. “Maybe Valhalla was always here. The concept of it being on Asgard, that might have been the ancient way of saying it was “another world” like we talk about remote or beautiful or alien locations being another world, like the Grand Canyon or the Ellora Caves, or the cemeteries in New Orleans. Or New Orleans itself, if you’re talking about midnight on Bourbon Street.”
Charlee laughed.
“One thing I’m pretty sure of is that Asher started out life as human as you and me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of what the Einherjar are,” Darwin said. “The Valkyrie had one particular job, Charlee. When a battle was done, they would ride among the dead and gather up the strongest and most courageous from the fallen and take them to Valhalla. In Valhalla, the fallen warriors became the Einherjar, and it was their job to prepare for the final war, when they were to protect humans. If Asher is Einherjar, then once upon a time, he fought and died on the battlefield, and I guarantee he wasn’t wearing khaki when he did.”
Charlee’s heart was hurting. She pressed her hand against her chest to ease it. “His sword…”
“His magic sword,” Darwin said in agreement.
They both looked at each other. Charlee wondered if her expression was as strained as Darwin’s was. “Are we talking ourselves into this?” she whispered. “It’s all so fantastic.”
Darwin blew out his breath, his cheeks billowing. “I wish. But consider: you saw his sword disappear. Both of us have noticed that he
isn’t aging. And the guy has secrets. We’ve both run into the iron shield he has over something in his life. Then, he takes you to Ylva when you’re cut up by another blade, almost like she could do better than the doctors.”
“She did,” Charlee said, touching her cheek. “But Ylva is, well, she’s old. If they have been here forever and they don’t age, why is she old?”
“I guess that goes onto your list,” Darwin replied.
“My list?”
“The things you have to find out.” He grinned. “And when you do find out, you report back to me on the double.”
* * * * *
When Charlee returned to the big house on Fifth Avenue, she was assigned a table in the Store and after feeding the birds, including the falcon who had returned, she was put to work making a simple analgesic, using turmeric and ginger, and oil from a fresh batch of peppermint. It was absorbing work, but that wasn’t the only reason she was pleased with her new assignment.
Working on medicinals meant that her earlier work on the other tables had been satisfactory. She had been promoted.
It also put her next to the table where Victoria was working. Victoria was the Amica who had first mentioned Einherjar to Charlee, sometime before she had heard it again in Anja’s garment workshop, when she had been learning to mold the heavy leather armor. Now Charlee had more context for that skill. For whatever reason, Asher’s people still maintained a war-footing. Darwin had said the Einherjar were expected to prepare for a final battle. That would include keeping armor ready and weapons prepared, but actually making the armor would be considered a woman’s task. So the Amica or the Valkyrie—Charlee had yet to sort out if those terms were interchangeable—built armor from leather, rather than the plate armor the medieval knights had used. That gave Charlee a glimpse into the age of their culture, just as the lack of books and a written language had earmarked them as ancient.
Victoria was a short, happy Amica with a bubbly personality and long, straight blonde hair that swung around her hips when she let it loose. Mostly she wore it in a ponytail, with four leather thongs tied at intervals along its length. Hair was very dirty in medical terms, and Silia was a tyrant about keeping stray hairs under control.
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