The Apple Throne

by Tessa Gratton

  And there, in a box with a garish gilded sun, is an action figure whose packaging declares: Special Edition Sun’s Berserk. Soren Bearstar.

  I cover my mouth with my hands to keep from squeaking. The toy is shaped vaguely like him, with an odd skin tone more like dull sand than his lovely cinnamon. The spear on his cheek is exaggerated, as it is on all of them, and he’s grimacing as if about to go into battle, with a miniature Sleipnir’s Tooth sword in his hand.

  “Heya, you found him,” Amon says behind me.

  I whirl and actually smack him in the stomach with the back of my hand.

  Amon catches my wrist a little too roughly. “Whoa, whoa, joke. It’s not even a great likeness. Not like this one.” He drags me across the aisle to the row of god figures and taps a finger against the plastic sheath holding a very voluptuous, very angry-looking Fenris Wolf.

  “Oh my,” I whisper, appalled laughter catching in my throat. Her teeth are long and her breasts huge, her hair reddish like Loki’s instead of the dark color I know. “Is there one of you?”

  “There was, but I was recalled.” Amon pauses, leans down. “For a choking hazard.”

  The flirtatious tone makes his innuendo clear. Embarrassment warms my face. The godling laughs as I compose myself, smoothing down the flare of my coat.

  “Now that I think on it,” he says slowly, “there’s no Idun the Young action figure, though you can find any other of the gods in some form or another. Not to mention apples of immortality made of glass or marble or plushy.”

  I hold his lightning gaze, angry suddenly that it’s a secret at all. That nobody in the Middle World knows Idun is a girl like them, a girl with a mortal heart pretending to be a god. Mightn’t it be better if everyone knew? It would give people hope to know the gods need us, need a living girl to complete their immortal magic. Like Baldur, Idun could be a symbol of the connection between gods and humans.

  But if Amon discovers I’m not divine, he might not feel a need to help me. I say, “I like my privacy,” and scoot around him into the next aisle.

  It’s magic-themed, and I stop. Here are plastic seething wands and catskin gloves. Spools of red yarn with weaving instructions. Bags of runes.

  I reverently touch a cheap velvet bag hanging from cardboard that declares, Read your future in twenty-seven runes! The picture shows pale rocks carved with glaring silver runes.

  Amon joins me, dropping the Soren action figure into my hand basket. My noise of disgust only earns me a grin. “You want some runes?” he asks.

  Shrugging, I turn away. “I don’t know what use I’d have for them.”

  He grabs the bag and drops them in. “I know a fantastic drinking game.” “Which way to your nodders so we can go?” I do not let my gaze drift down to the runes.

  Amon leads me two aisles down to one that is entirely made up of Thor Thunderer paraphernalia that you could never find in a temple. Replicas of the god’s hammer Crusher in all sizes and types, from key chains to one made out of a beanbag; a goat-driven chariot toy and a few blue-and-yellow-painted goat skulls; fake red beards; children’s costumes of plastic armor; sock puppets and collectible statues and picture books. And, of course, a long row of bobbleheads.

  I stare in horror. Thor is the most popular god—the friendliest and, many argue, the best—but this is a shrine of tacky consumerism I can’t understand. He is a god. I’ve long felt isolated, but I’ve never before felt so sheltered.

  Amon looms behind me. “You really hate this.”

  “It’s so…crass. Disrespectful, after all he’s done for us.”

  “Us?”

  Pursing my lips to fake annoyance, I scramble for an explanation. “He protected everyone from the giants for centuries.”

  Amon leans his shoulder against the corner of the bright red shelf, a plastic hammer hanging inches from his face. “Why don’t you just call him then, or one of the other cousins, to get Soren out for you?”

  “You know the gods aren’t supposed to interfere with the affairs of mortals so directly.”

  “The Covenant? I don’t think it extends to helping you or getting Baldur’s pet out of jail.”

  I cross my arms and go silent.

  The godling narrows his eyes. “They don’t know about your relationship. That’s why you won’t call in a favor. They don’t know of your relationship with Bearstar.”

  “They do!”

  “They don’t approve.”

  I flick my fingers dismissively. He’s not wrong.

  Amon says, “I’m not a huge fan of gods having affairs with mortals, myself. Doesn’t end well.”

  Fighting another furious blush, I say, “I am not having an affair. That isn’t what this is.”

  “It’s platonic, jill?” he drawls.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I can’t go around calling you Lady of Youth—people will talk. Though you blend in better than the rest of the cousins.” He nods his chin at my coat and chaotic curls. “Not just your dress, but you don’t care when I grab you. You’re easily embarrassed and quick to worry. You’re nothing like them.”

  “Perhaps that’s how I want it to be,” I suggest.

  He tugs his eyebrow ring. “Sure. Sandra?”

  My mouth falls open.

  “Petra? Elizabeth? Florence?”

  I take a deep breath, my name caught in the back of my throat. I swallow and softly say, “Just call me Astrid.”

  “Astrid.”

  A shiver snakes down my back. No one—no one—has called me that except for Soren in six-hundred-and thirty-three days. I say, “Let’s get one of these stupid toys and be on our way. I am needed elsewhere.”

  • • •

  The sixth bobblehead is now stuck to the dash with some tackytape right in front of me. He’s the brightest of them all: Thor’s happy, nodding face over a sky-blue gown with painted feathers and a girdle of gold. He’s called Thrym’s Wife, and Amon gleefully explained it’s a new addition to the toy line or it would’ve been the first one he bought.

  It is funny, despite myself, and based on the story of the time a giant named Thrym stole Thor’s hammer. To retrieve it, Loki dressed the god of thunder up as Freya in order to pretend to marry the giant.

  Amon promises we’ll get to Soren tomorrow at the latest. There’s nothing I can do for the time being, though I’m unsure if he’ll be transferred or if there will be a bail hearing. Will his friends come for that? Rathi, the rich preacher, or Signy, the Valkyrie of the Tree? He’ll have a chance to contact them, surely, and perhaps already has. He couldn’t have called me.

  If this hadn’t happened just in time for him to miss our day together, I still would not know anything went wrong. I might’ve never found out until it was all over, or too late.

  Leaning my head back, I stare through the windshield at the mountain pass. My stomach is an aching hole, hungry and swimming with nausea at the same time. I close my eyes. Count the hours since I slept. Since the morning after the Yule feast, when I so greatly looked forward to Soren’s arrival. Twenty-nine or thirty hours. Hot air blows dry against my mouth from the dash, loud enough to hide the roar of the engine, the rush of wind. It ruffles my hair, tickles my temples. My head lolls to the side.

  I imagine Soren driving, imagine he’s the source of this warmth.

  I drift to sleep.

  • • •

  I slam awake, toes knocking the dash, hands flinging to either side.

  There were eyes in my dream.

  I dreamed. I dreamed.

  “What the skit?” Amon demands.

  My heartbeat thumps inside my skull, and my fingertips tingle. I saw something in the deep darkness, in the chaos. An image. Two moon-gray eyes watching me from a face half-swathed in stretched black skin.

  Freya, my Feather-Flying Goddess. She sees me. And I saw her.

  “Pull over,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “Pull. Over.” My hands ache for the smooth leather of my seeth
ing kit. But it’s ashes. “Do it now, Amon. There’s no time to lose.”

  “To lose for what?”

  I say, “I have to seeth, right now, because I dreamed.”

  “What?” The tires crunch against gravel as he obeys.

  I swivel in my seat for the plastic Walton’s bag and dig around for those cheap runes he bought. A tiny laugh pops out of me: Amon’s destiny is working in my favor.

  Amon says, “Wait,” but I’m already throwing open the door, tumbling onto the side of the snowy mountain with the velvet bag clutched to my chest. My head spins—what does this mean, what could this mean—as I crush through frosted undergrowth, down the slope toward the creek. Cold air cuts at the back of my throat and my breath puffs out before my nose, but my eyes feel wild. I turn, and there—there!—enough space to dance.

  I fall to my knees in the icy leaves and brush them aside as quickly as possible. I scramble, shoving the cold detritus, until I have a two-meter circle clear enough for spinning. Astrid Glyn, teen prophet, could seeth without tools, without herbs and tinctures and poison corrberries. If the need was great enough. If fate was with her.

  I shuck out of my coat and toss it away.

  Amon’s boots roar their way here, but he stops at the edge of my seething circle. I close my eyes and breathe. I imagine the spinning, fast darkness surrounding me, the wild magic, red strands of destiny reaching away.

  The world is waiting. Wind creaks the branches overhead, shaking loose the dry top layer of snow, and the babble of water is a subtle note. Amon breathes long and low. My heart and my breath form up.

  I lift a foot. I put it down. I sway. Wind cuts cold on my cheeks. I feel it seep into the bones of my hands. My nose goes numb. I turn again and again. Dizziness fingers my stomach, my head swims. I haven’t eaten in so long. I’ve barely slept. I’m so close, so close to the fall.

  I feel it first in my belly: a thin, sickly thread of cold. Cold like outer space, like the distance between stars. I grab at my chest, fingers digging as though I could rip through my dress, through my skin, and into the weave of fate.

  The thread is so weak, so tired. But I saw her eyes in my dream. I dreamed.

  With a layer of my skirt, I make a pouch and dump the runes out into it. They are so plain and cheap. Mine were hand-carved, made one at a time myself, out of rock and bone, antler and heartwood, and that one crystal god rune. It might still exist, buried under two years of fire debris.

  These in my skirt all look alike, silver paint filled messily into the carved runes. They’re real marble, though, mottled and milky. And—oh my—there are two fate runes. The joy rune is missing. A poor sign.

  “Astrid,” Amon says.

  I shake my head and sway again with my eyes closed. The dark behind my eyes is streaked with red. Lines spiraling together, crossing and bending, flailing out again into the blackness.

  Clutching my skirt-basket in one hand, I touch my other over my heart. I whisper Freya’s name. She already sees me—those were her eyes—and already must know I’ve abandoned the orchard. If I can’t have corrberries, if I can’t have my seething kit, at least I can pray.

  “Freya,” I say softly and then louder, “Oh Feather-Flying Goddess, show me Soren Bearstar. Let me see him. I call on you, Freya, goddess of fate, weaver of worlds, to give this gift, this fragment to your devoted daughter.”

  The words echo in the wintery forest. It is strange praying to her now, having held her hand.

  I spin slowly, again and again, and toss runes high into the air. One hits the earth, then another and another. “Soren,” I whisper. You’re part of my world, he said. You affect my destiny. I can find him. I can seeth him, if anything.

  “Soren.” A scattering tap-tap-tap as more runes hit. I grab another handful and scatter them in an arc as I turn.

  I spin faster, toes skidding, off-balance.

  The seething pulses. It shrieks through my blood. Oh, I missed it! The wild burn of it!

  I fling out my arms. “Soren Bearstar.”

  It’s there, a hot hot magma heart, flaring out through my back, down my arms.

  My head falls back.

  My back arches.

  Black.

  Blacker.

  There is no sound but a roar, a scream I recognize—SorenSorenSoren—surrounding me, encasing me. It explodes from my back, and my mouth is open, too—screaming, too.

  It hurts! It’s never hurt before. I bite my lip, but the pain is like jagged metal under my ribs, cutting up up up and out in all directions.

  Spinning.

  Red.

  Fire.

  I break open.

  FIVE

  Astrid Astrid Astrid.

  My name. I follow it, coming to wakefulness in a tight cocoon. Arms bind my arms, a mouth against my ear. Dull cold seeps through me. I can hardly move, my bones frozen to the earth.

  “Astrid.”

  I moan, but softly.

  Amon says, “You went bat-rag starking mad. I grabbed at you, and you attacked me.”

  The memory is dull, thick and slow-moving as sludge. I remember wild dark threads of scarlet winding around me, tearing me open, the heat and frenzy.

  It was Soren. I felt him. My seething has always been visual before. I’ve seen people and places, seen and dreamed the paths of destiny, not felt.

  But that was Soren. I know him, and he was bursting with hot fury.

  Berserking madness.

  I suck air through my teeth, and it’s so cold my jaw aches. My seething shows me possible—likely—futures. The next two minutes or two months or two years. It is nothing outright surprising to seeth of Soren caught up in his frenzy. That is what a berserker does. The only question is when it will happen.

  But I felt it. I was trapped in the seething. That isn’t supposed to happen to experienced prophets so easily. I didn’t go far enough to lose myself.

  I blink, opening my eyes to Amon’s worried face and the glare of sunlight piercing through the trees. “Oh, gods,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, Amon. It was—his frenzy. That’s what berserking feels like.”

  Tears burn the corners of my eyes, falling hot enough to steam against my frigid cheeks. I told Soren to embrace it. It was just chaos magic; it was just dancing, seething, power like mine. But that is not what I felt. I felt devastation and a hurricane of hot, sucking power. Rage.

  That is what Soren holds inside of him.

  My skull is scourged, my throat parched. My intestines are tied in ship knots. I am so grateful I’ve eaten no food.

  “Do I need to slap you again?” Amon asks darkly. He is not happy at all.

  I’m cradled in his lap. I owe an explanation, but all I long for is to cry. With horror and relief, both. I seethed, but it was that. I touched my power again, but only to lose myself in some future pain of Soren’s.

  I fumble at getting onto my feet. Amon cusses and helps me. I sink against his side so wearily he transfers me to a tree. As I cling to it, he gathers up my coat and the runes, shoving them into the velvet purse. I open my mouth and wheeze, wanting to say, Stop, wait, let me see what the runes say, but I’m too exhausted. My knees shake, and I press against sticky evergreen bark. I am so out of shape for this, for the berserking. I am gutted and raw.

  Amon grumbles to himself as he works. There’s a long double-scratch weeping blood from his neck. I did that.

  The bark cuts into my temple. I taste blood in the back of my throat, too.

  With two swift steps, Amon is before me. He picks me up, and I grab his shoulders. He swings an arm under my knees and carries me back up the side of the mountain.

  The blue van waits on the pullout, my passenger door hanging open, a tinny beep reminding us we abandoned it poorly, with the keys in the ignition. Amon settles me gently into the seat, slams the door, and goes around to the driver’s side. I watch, able to move little but my eyes. All the shadows sharp and dancing in the wind.

  When we’re closed inside the van, Amon turns towa
rd me, shoves the rune bag at my feet, and takes my jaw in one hand. “You’re no goddess,” he says in a low voice.

  White snow-light surrounds us, barely tinged golden from the thin winter sun. I pluck his fingers off of my face like counting loves-me, loves-me-not petals from a flower.

  “But that,” I croak, “is not even the best part of the story.”

  • • •

  He only agrees to turn on the van when I promise to tell him everything.

  I don’t warn him about the potential consequences of knowing my truth; I don’t know what they might be. I don’t know if he’ll even believe me.

  But the story of my life spills past my lips, words chasing each other to fill his ears and imagination. My mother is the famous seethkona he’s heard of, and my birth was brought about by Freya and fate in order that one day I would become Idun. My mother and I seethed together until she died—or rather, until she disappeared to become Idun before me and Uncle Richard took me in. I met Soren at school, and we were together when Baldur the Beautiful disappeared. I tell Amon what really happened over those nine days: how I dreamed of Baldur and raised Soren’s father from the dead to find the orchard, and when we delivered him to Bear Valley, the berserkers killed him. I gave up my own name to bring Baldur back to the Middle World and become the Lady of Apples.

  As I talk, I grow stronger. I put my fingers against the black horn beads Soren gave me, and the story curls around my heart, builds armor for my stomach, stacks buttresses against my spine. This is who I am. All of it. My history may have been torn from the world, but I remember it, and it built me. My face is warm, and I catch myself smiling at the memory of something Baldur said or pausing mid-sentence to relish the perfect image of Soren casually dropping against the trunk of that old Volundr Spark to press push-ups and shake the car.