Never

by K. D. McEntire

  “Time…time moves differently in the Bright Lands than it does here. My mother had many, many years with my father before Freyja realized that Eir had not returned to Fólkvangr with the farmer as requested.”

  “How many years?” Wendy asked, pulling away and wrinkling her nose. The flower felt wrong beneath her hands; fetid and soft, like limp, sweaty skin pressed against her collarbone, clinging with tiny, tiny burrs to her flesh.

  Piotr stepped back. His eyes crinkled as he mimed counting on his hands and toes. “Oh, about twenty-one, maybe twenty-two?”

  Wendy glanced left and the mists were gone now, obliterated by the hot streaming sunlight and the intense green-gold of the meadow. She could hear the nearby river rushing by, see the edge of the meadow clearing meld with the tall trees of the forest, and there, striding across the thigh-high grass was Piotr, four young girls trailing behind him and one older girl, no more than twenty, bouncing a babe strapped to her hip at the back of the pack, following along at a more sedate pace. The girls were mostly dark-haired except the oldest and youngest. They were true carrot-tops, though the baby's hair was bright, glossy auburn.

  “Keep up!” Piotr-in-the-memory demanded, stopping to scoop up one of the youngest, a child of no more than six. He balanced her on his hip and waved a hand toward the sounds of the burbling river. “Mother says the nest is this way!”

  Wendy was startled to realize that Piotr's twisting scar—the one that ran from his temple down the side of his face all the way to his jaw—was conspicuously absent in this time and place. His face was clear and smooth, his eyes bright with playful older-brother bossiness.

  “Piotr, put Þrima down! There's no need to rush, we have all day!” laughed the oldest, jiggling her baby to make the infant giggle and squirm. “Uncle Kirill and Yuri won't be back from the trading until closer to sunset at best. And there's no guarantee they'll even be here today!”

  “And won't he be a dear, hungry for dinner and none on the table, Róta?” Piotr replied tauntingly, sticking his tongue out at the older girl.

  It took Wendy a moment to realize that this easy familiarity was a shade too easy, their camaraderie a bit too relaxed. She didn't know why, but Wendy had initially thought the girl was perhaps Piotr's wife and that the baby was his child—they were the right age and the girl was very pretty—and Wendy had been sitting very firmly on her emotions, worried that her animosity toward the lovely girl would show.

  Now her petty jealousy suddenly felt very silly.

  “Piotr…are all these girls your sisters?” Wendy demanded, disbelieving, as the older girl cheerfully flipped Piotr a foreign gesture Wendy instinctively knew was rude. “How many brothers and sisters did you have?”

  “Three older sisters,” Piotr chuckled. “Five younger.”

  “EIGHT siblings?! No…are you kidding me? Were they all girls?”

  “All but me.” His eyes twinkled. “Nine children in all, and every one of us survived past infancy. My mother was a very patient woman. In the village she was lauded as being a very healthy woman, and a lucky one, for never having to bury a babe.”

  “I'd imagine,” Wendy murmured wryly. “Today the grocery bill would've been insane. Good thing your dad was a farmer, huh? But in that day and age, I bet he wasn't thrilled about the overabundance of girls.”

  “On the contrary,” Piotr said as his past-self guided the girls to a shady, marshy area where several large geese and more than a few goslings trundled amid the high grass.

  “My father adored all of us. He didn't begrudge Róta the dowry we could scrape together for her, even when her husband died hunting shortly after the wedding and she was forced to return home. We all took turns cooking and tilling, weaving and scrubbing, hunting and fishing and fowling. We did not begrudge one another any success.”

  “How very modern of you,” Wendy said dryly. “You're telling me that you scrubbed pots just like your sisters did and they went off and stabbed furry animals?”

  “I did no more than my sisters and no less. Wendy, we were a family on the farthest edge of the village, the closest farm to our nearest enemies. We had to work as one in order to survive, even the youngest among us. Every one of us was taught how to weed the garden as soon as we could walk, how to sweep the floors and how to tan the leather of whatever animal we could catch and kill.”

  Piotr looked at the memory moving around them and laughed. The blossom's petals shivered at the sound. “For example, Þrima's about to learn how to catch dinner on the wing, if I'm not mistaken.”

  Past-Piotr waved to one of the middle girls. She approached and knelt down, pulling from her pack a large, closely woven net made of fine, shining thread. Wendy's brow furrowed. “Is that…is that hair?”

  “Mother was an adept seamstress,” Piotr said, shrugging. “She could take any material and weave it into…well, into something like gold for us, since her wares sold highly in the village market. An hour in her hands could turn forest spider webs into a cloak for the chieftain's newest bride or simple willow fronds into the sturdiest fish snares you've ever held. But for items around the farm—practical items, or useful, everyday things—she always incorporated my sisters’ hair, especially Róta's or the other redheads, and these items were always stronger than similar items, more durable or flexible. My sisters knew to never cut their hair if they could help it. Every night the eight of them would sit in a circle brushing one another's hair, with Róta combing her own as well as Þrima's. At the end of the evening my mother would sweep the floor and pick clean the brushes, setting aside the hair for her projects.”

  “That is both fascinating and disgusting,” Wendy murmured, watching the scene before her.

  Beside them, past-Piotr and Þrima snuck up on the closest goose, little Þrima doing her best to mimic her older brother's every deliberate step. Downstream the other girls and Róta sat on large flat rocks and let down their elaborate braids, pulling their skirts up to their thighs, sunning themselves and finger-combing any debris out of their long, long hair.

  Piotr sighed. “It is a beautiful day, da? It is warm, the fields are growing, and we are a family.”

  The tableau before them darkened as he spoke; a fast-moving storm cut across the sky, clouds rolling over the sun and cooling the girls sunning themselves within minutes. Róta, scowling, gathered up her ankle-length hair in one arm and lifted her baby from her lap with the other. Piotr and Þrima had captured their dinner—a pair of fine geese with freshly-broken necks—and as a group, glancing up at the threatening sky, they hurried across the meadow as fast as they could, back toward the forest.

  “What happened?” Wendy asked.

  “Eir,” Piotr said, the blossom on his chest drooping along with him, “was remembered. And since she was Freyja's favorite Reaper, Freyja decided to give her one…last…chance.”

  The three warrior women rode horses as tall as houses.

  Unlike Eir, who'd simply stepped into being wherever she needed to be, these three were intent on making a scene as their horses pounded across the sky over the village, setting dogs to howling and roosters to crowing at the wrong time of day, feathers and chaff dusting the air.

  The girls, to their credit, did not scream or fuss. Instead they tripled their pace, legs pumping as fast as they could as they sped past the village, aimed directly for their father's fields. Piotr, carrying Þrima on his back and the geese tangled in the net at his hip and Róta, supporting her baby's head and snagged up by her long, long hair, both fell quickly behind and took the fork in the forest that led home instead.

  “I…feel like I know that one in the front,” Wendy said as they reached the dooryard of Piotr's home and found Eir there, blocking the way into her home from the three larger women. The leader of the three, curling locks framing her face, poked Eir in the shoulder repeatedly as she made her point. Wendy wondered what she was saying but the memory here was curiously silent.

  Eir looked so small and fragile compared to the Valkyrie—wit
hout her armor, without her cloak of feathers, Eir was just a normal woman with a brood of children who needed protecting and a homestead targeted by an enraged goddess.

  “Of course you know her,” Piotr said, his voice pitched in a low, harsh growl. “This is Sanngriðr. The Lady Walker.”

  “No!” Wendy could hardly believe it, the difference was so dramatic. But, as she looked the Valkyrie over, she began noticing all the similarities that had drawn her eye before. “She's prettier with a whole face,” Wendy noted. “Though I think I like her better as skin and bones; she seems more formidable this way, all muscles and bullying. But why is it quiet now? I can't hear anything but you.”

  “These memories are only cobbled together,” Piotr explained, glaring at the Valkyrie. “Some from me, some from my mother, and others from my sisters who could act as my eyes in times when I was elsewhere.”

  “Oh, geez, I barely noticed that you weren't actually here.” Wendy looked around the yard. “So who gave you this memory?”

  “Bolya.” Piotr gestured to a dark-haired girl carding wool on the porch; her eyes expression was open and startled as the three Valkyrie surrounded Eir and began gesturing pointedly.

  “What's wrong with her?” Wendy asked curiously, amazed at the intent way Bolya watched the tableau. “I thought you said you were all healthy growing up?”

  “Born healthy, yes, but even a Reaper can be wounded. My mother never buried a child to illness, but we didn't all leave childhood completely unscathed.”

  “She's deaf,” Wendy realized, feeling idiotic for not putting that together before. She was going to ask more but Sanngriðr was curt with her demands; while Wendy and Piotr were talking Sanngriðr and the others mounted their mares and took dramatically to the skies. Moments later Piotr, Þrima, and Róta arrived at the homestead.

  They found Eir shaking with anger and crying furious tears as she scrubbed the hearth. In the distance Wendy spotted Bolya rushing toward the fields and the rest of Piotr's absent family, waving her arms wildly to get their attention, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  “Pay attention,” Piotr said, taking Wendy by the wrist and gesturing toward his mother, his past self, and his remaining sisters. “This is important.”

  “Remember,” Eir said suddenly, the memory breaking into sound again as Þrima knelt beside Eir at the hearth and buried her thin face in their mother's strong shoulder, “remember that hearths are the best places to hide things.”

  Then, looking pointedly between Þrima and Piotr, she lifted up a heavy fieldstone that appeared to be embedded in the floor at the base of the fire. Instead it lifted easily and beneath was the cloak of many feathers, the golden chain, and a thin shift of white—all the clothing that she'd worn when she abandoned the heavens for Earth.

  Past-Piotr and present-Piotr, both standing in the doorway, said, “We'll remember, Momma. Please don't cry.”

  “These are not tears of pain, or of sorrow, Piotr, but of rage,” Eir said, wiping the wetness from her cheek and holding the drops up to the light, cupped in her palm like diamonds. “These are tears that must be shed. Now, listen to me and listen well, for we have only a short time before my sisters will return.”

  “We're listening, Momma,” Þrima promised.

  “Every spring,” Eir said, “I must travel to the river to wash my cloak. This cloak.” She held her hands out at arm's length and flapped, miming shaking out a great swath of fabric. “This must happen every single year. No matter the weather, the cloak must be washed.”

  “Why?” Þrima asked, leaning forward.

  “Because without the cloak I cannot return home,” Eir said. “And feathers must be kept clean to fly.”

  “You want to leave us?” Piotr asked, voice low.

  “Oh, Piotr, no! It is nothing like that!” Eir hesitated and then added, “Piotr…Þrima…for your father I have taken on human flesh. I have weighed myself down with meat and broth and blood and babies, but always I keep in mind that someday my husband will die, that my children will pass and I will live on.”

  Piotr frowned. “You can't die, Momma?”

  “Son, my sisters and I…we are long-lived. So long-lived we might seem immortal to humans. And, as my children, you are strong and healthy and will be long-lived as well, but you will never reach the years my kind will reach. Þrima here may live to be a hundred, or possibly two hundred years old, but no more. Even weighed down with this heavy human life I could easily—easily!—live on for two thousand years or more.”

  Smiling, Eir reached out and stroked Piotr's cheek. “Already Róta is of an age as the day I stepped onto the snow and soil and took on a physical shell for your father. I have hardly aged since then and people in the village are beginning to…talk.”

  “Who cares what they say?” Piotr demanded, pounding a fist on his thigh. “They're a bunch of busybodies anyway, and—”

  “Piotr! Peace, Piotr, peace! Their rumors are not unexpected, sweet boy. I know that one day, when my children and grandchildren have passed from this place, that I will need to return to the Bright Lands and present myself for punishment. The necklace allows me to go there, the cloak is my badge, my proof that I am one of the Reapers.”

  “Punishment? Momma, no!” Þrima shook her head, her red curls bouncing against her cheeks. “You haven't done anything wrong!”

  “She disobeyed an order,” Piotr corrected his little sister. “She did it for Papa. Because he had kind eyes and she loved him.”

  “Piotr has the way of things,” Eir said pressing her hand on the hearth. “I know that I will need, one day, to do the right thing, to face Freyja and explain myself. Thus I kept my cloak and I need to keep it safe.”

  “Can we help, Momma?” Þrima asked. “I'd do anything to help you so you're not in trouble.”

  Eir chuckled and ruffled her daughter's curls. “You are helping, my fierce, lovely girl. Now that I know that I may not, in fact, be granted the time I originally thought, I want you two to know that my cloak is here, and how to keep it. Can you promise me that, Piotr? Þrima? Will you swear to keep my cloak safe, my necklace safe, so that I may return home and explain myself?”

  “I promise, Momma,” Piotr said. “I'll keep your cloak safe. The necklace too.”

  “Þrima?”

  “I promise, Momma,” Þrima parroted. “I'll keep your cloak safe too. Better than Piotr will!”

  Laughing, Eir drew her children close as, in the distance, Wendy could hear the sound of pounding footsteps approaching. She glanced through the open doorway and spied a much-older Borys sprinting across the far garden at the edge of the homestead's clearing, his children trailing behind.

  With that, the world around them faded to white until there was no floor, no walls, and no roof above them, just an endless wash of white.

  Wendy opened her eyes.

  “That was…intense,” she said. “Piotr, how do you stand it? How can you stand getting all the memories back like this? In this…this huge painful flood?”

  He shook his head. “I share them. With you. Only you make…this…bearable.” Piotr leaned forward and brushed a finger against her cheek. “Come. We will be missed inside.”

  Wendy followed Piotr through a thin spot in the wall into the kitchen. Chel, Jon, and the others were examining the kitchen with dumbfounded expressions.

  Wendy winced. The lead Walker who had visited the previous evening to fetch her on behalf of the Lady Walker had overturned the fridge one-handed; the kitchen was a mess. Wendy poked at a water bottle with a toe. It didn't move and her foot slid through with no resistance at all. She thought of the Walker upstairs, how he had crushed her belongings with just one hand, bullying her into going with him. How had the Walker done that? “I'm really sorry about the mess.”

  Jon flipped the kitchen light on and tossed the car keys on the counter. “You can't control everything, Wendy. Okay, Chel, you get this corner,” he said, kneeling by the toppled fridge, “and I'll get this one. We'll lif
t together. One-two-three-HUP!”

  Together the twins uprighted the fridge, plugged it back in, and between the two of them, managed to shimmy it into place. Chel knelt down to finish cleaning the floor while Jon found old towels to wipe the walls.

  “Aw, man, I forgot about the cookies.” Jon said, lifting a paper towel off the counter and scowling at his burnt cookies underneath.

  “Guys,” Wendy said, “we need to pack and go. The intruder was definitely a Reaper. A baby Reaper, a Reaper-in-training, but a Reaper nonetheless.”

  “Reaper, schmeeper,” Jon said negligently, almost vibrating with energy as his second wind took over. “We can handle some chick breaking into the house, that's what 911 is for. You know what really has me creeped out? The Lady Walker. What's her deal, Wendy? How'd the Walkers manage all this?” He waved a hand at the pile of obliterated cookies and the broken bottles on the floor. “You know what sucks the hardest? I wasted a can of organic cocoa on these. That stuff is not cheap.”

  “Color me sorry, Jon, I'll spring for more when I've got a wallet I can actually open,” Wendy said testily, reaching down and trying with all her might to pick up the overturned water bottle. It's just plastic, she angrily thought. Why can't I budge it? What made those Walkers so special? “Walkers, Walkers everywhere, only bony asses to kick.”

  “That's it?” Jon asked, examining each cookie individually before dumping them one by one into the trash can. “That's all you've got? Just ‘Walkers’?”

  “That alone ought to be enough of an explanation,” Wendy replied, grouchy and not bothering to hide it. Giving up on moving the bottle, Wendy leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter. One elbow rested firmly on the Formica, the other slid through. Frowning, Wendy straightened. Fine, she decided, angry that even here, in her own home, she couldn't rest against counters that should be solid, and had been trapped behind walls that shouldn't be. Fine, whatever. I'll just stand.