The Apple Throne

by Tessa Gratton

  “Here you are, Idun.”

  I turn and discover Freya kneeling in a circle of silver light, red lines of fate spreading all around her like a delicate spider’s web. I kneel before her. The lines of fate are unaffected by my presence. “My lady,” I say.

  She regards me with soft gray eyes, her face whole, not split into the white of life and the curled, blackened Hel-flesh. A gray feathered cloak folds over her shoulders; her hands rest calmly in her lap. She is beautiful, and she is cold. “Your tree is dying.”

  Fear courses through me, and I shake my head in denial. It’s like moving through fog, as if I’m just outside my body, telling it to move, to speak, but there’s a delay between thought and action.

  “How long does it have?” I ask, voice distant, muffled.

  “Days.”

  “I promised to return in nine days. Surely, it will last so long… It is strong enough for that.”

  “Soon a god will arrive in the orchard only to find you missing. Soon more than the Thunderer and I will know of it. They will spread word the apples do not thrive and upset much for me, Idun. They will insist I replace you. They will want you dead so that I can replace you.”

  I shudder. My head falls slowly forward in acknowledgement.

  “Return, Idun. Return to your orchard.”

  “Soren is in danger.”

  “So I see.”

  “I need him.”

  “I know you believe that.”

  Gasping, I glare up at her, the first quick motion I’ve been able to make. “Belief is all that makes me anything. Out here, others believe that I am a god. In there, my own belief in the importance of what I do for those apples, for you…” I reach for her through the thick moonlight. “Freya, you gave my mother years once. You let her take my place because you loved her. My heart has always been yours, my faith and my prayers. I love you, and I love him, too. Please give me more time.”

  The goddess is still as glass. She does not breathe, nor does the cool breeze I feel shift the silver strands of hair falling around her shoulders. A thin flush of pink colors in her lips and she closes her eyes. Her lashes shine like snowflakes. “Your line will be the end of me,” she whispers.

  Relief spills out of me in a sigh, and I kiss her cold hand. She puts her other on my head. “I will give you the time I can, beloved, but the apples will dictate the boundary.”

  “Thank you,” I murmur, pressing my cheek to her knuckles. She strokes my hair, then gently lifts me up. I say, “Will you tell me where Soren is? Give me a prophecy of him?”

  The goddess of dreams slides her fingers along scarlet threads of fate spreading all around us, like playing a harp. Where her fingers touch, the lines shimmer. “I see the Bearstar in darkness and in light. I see him live, I see him die. Choices and choices, Idun the Young.”

  Fisting my hands, I press them into my thighs. “What can I do?”

  Her gray eyes flash at me, twin moons covered in ancient cracks and craters. “I do not see you. We, my love, are outside this web, this tangle. We have no thread of our own.”

  “But I can change things.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t…tell me how.”

  “I do not see you in the future.”

  I lick my cold, dry lips, pinch the bottom between my teeth as I think. “You saw me two mornings ago. I slept, and there you were, watching.”

  “As I see you now.”

  “You…see me as I act, but not how I will act.”

  “I see the ripples but do not know it is you who will make them until you do.”

  Carefully, I ask, “How does Soren die in the futures where he dies?”

  She skims the web of fate. She plucks one string. “I see him killed with a stone spear in his heart,” she murmurs, with a small smile. She plucks up another. “So enraged he bashes himself into rocks, again…and again…until he is dead.” The goddess’s fingers dance against the scarlet threads as my heart slows, growing cold. “Ah, this here, broken into pieces by a dragon!” She laughs delightedly. “A dragon!”

  “So…many…deaths…” I whisper.

  “Here,” she slides her forefinger along a strand to her left, leaning far over. The string shimmers gold. “Here he dies sleeping, finally burnt out as must happen to one who rages so bright.”

  My fingers are stiff, my breath hard as ice, cutting my throat. I’m not asking the right questions. She is seething for me, and I should know better than any that seeking answers depends entirely on the questions. “Where he is? How do I find him? How long does he have?”

  “You ask much of me tonight,” she says sharply.

  Chastised, I cover my mouth with both hands. All around, the air turns silver, as if it is freezing, wind so cold I can see it, and the leaves curl in upon themselves where the moonlight touches them. I shiver and then can’t stop.

  Freya leans forward, pulling the red web toward her. It slinks all around me and under me, as if I am insubstantial as breath. Freya lays threads over each other, twisting them, pulling them apart, tying knots and then unwinding them again. I stare, eyes burning with cold, lashes heavy as if tears have frozen in them. “Give me your prophecy, lady of dreams,” I finally say.

  The goddess curls a single thread around her finger. “The gold,” she whispers.

  “The elf gold?” The edges of the dream brighten and blur: dawn, or I’m passing out on the stump. There isn’t time.

  Her mouth opens and she speaks without moving her lips, a hollow voice filling my cracks and all the air in my lungs.

  “The hunter will follow the gold to your heart’s desire.”

  Vertigo hits me suddenly, as if the forest were spinning, and I squeeze my eyes closed. The air I hiss through my teeth makes them ache with cold. I open my eyes, but Freya is a bright blur against the silver shadows.

  The goddess reaches for me. She says my name urgently. “Idun.”

  I reach for her, and she grasps my wrists in ice-cold hands. “Four days and Soren Bearstar will join me in Hel. But get the Valkyrie’s heart for me, and I will save him.”

  I am sucked away by a storm, thrown like a rag against a hard rock wall. Freya, I cry, but nothing comes out, only a choking wail at the pain lashing through my skull.

  Then, there is silence.

  The weight of Soren’s sword fills my hand, but I cannot move, my fingers are frozen to the grip. My eyes are glued shut with ice, my toes and lips numb. As I shiver, I hear ice sliding through my curls. Darkness surrounds me.

  My breath rattles.

  “Astrid?”

  It’s Amon. He touches my arm, hand startling hot, and then he grabs me up, under my back and knees, holding me against his chest. “Skit rag rut you are a chunk of ice,” he whispers.

  The sword hangs from my wrist, string cutting my skin, dragging into my bone like a line of barbed wire. I push my face into his shoulder, groaning. A sharp thing slides against the back of my hand, and the sword falls away. I cry out, but Amon hugs me tighter. There is no sound of the sword hitting ground; it must have been caught.

  “Here, this way,” Sune murmurs. He’s near to us, near as a lover, near as a mother, clucking and brushing hair away. The hunter will follow the gold. I remember the insistence in her voice, and I let go into sleep.

  • • •

  I drift toward wakefulness, hardness at my back, and blankets warm enough I imagine Soren’s arms coming around me, holding me tight. He mutters something in my ear, but I don’t understand. When he does sleep, he sleeps hard. I whisper, “I’m here,” and tilt my head back to his. My heartbeat picks up pace as his does. I can feel his pulse in the palms of his hands where he touches me, in his chest where it presses my shoulder blades. There are heavy gold rings on my fingers, a thick golden chain around my throat, pulsing in time with our heartbeat, too. His arm under my cheek grows warmer. My neck itches and I scratch at it, but the itch travels down and out, tingling my skin. The blood drains from my head, my stomach drops
, and heat flashes back, raising sweat along my spine and under my breasts. Sweet swans, so hot. The blankets twist around my ankles and bind my elbows against my sides. I struggle, I whimper—I want to wake up! Soren.

  I open my eyes, and his face is before mine, wrenched with pain, but his eyes are black holes. He bares his teeth and grabs my face, shoving me back so my head slams against the side of the van. “Soren!” I scream, and he’s gone.

  I’m spread wide across the floor of Amon’s van, blankets trapping my legs, sweat ruining my hair. A cottony ache presses behind my eyes, and my mouth is tacky. The van is shut up, but bright sunlight pours through the windshield, glinting on the hanging nails. My breath puffs visibly in the cold air. Struggling up, I grab one of the water bottles scattered behind the passenger seat, unscrew the top, and gulp the entire thing down. Water trickles from my mouth. I wipe it off my chin, then lower my head and let it hang from my shoulders.

  The only rings on my fingers are the lovely, delicate gifts from the gods. I glance at the underside of the driver’s seat where Amon tucked the elf gold. Did it seep into my dreams?

  The hunter will follow the gold to your heart’s desire.

  My hands are shaking again.

  Four days and Soren Bearstar will join me in Hel. But get the Valkyrie’s heart for me, and I will save him.

  I clench my fists against my stomach and stumble on my knees to the sliding door. I drag it open. Amon and Signy look abruptly at me from the fire circle. Signy caps a flask and hands it back to Amon as he gets to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asks quietly.

  I nod, setting shaky feet on the ground. I’ve only got on socks. Without my having to ask, Amon gestures with his chin to my boots, slumped beside the front wheel. As I put them on, Signy saunters over. “Well?” she says. “It’s a good thing I convinced that family to move campsites. You were pretty strapped last night.”

  “I can tell,” I manage. My voice cracks. I rub my throat, but the memory of the itch in my dream freezes my fingers. Get the Valkyrie’s heart for me, and I will save him. I stare at Signy’s green eyes, knowing I can’t kill her and take her heart, knowing Soren wouldn’t want it, knowing that what Freya said was impossible, or a prophecy with a secret meaning.

  Soren only has four days, and we have to follow the gold to get to him. My heart’s desire.

  “Where’s Sune?” I ask. His Jeep is gone.

  “He went for some extra supplies about two hours ago.” Amon silently hands me the Walton’s bag with my toothbrush and gel inside, and a roll of toilet paper. I take them and hike the narrow trail to the facilities, stopping every few paces to catch myself against a tree trunk. The bark is silver with ice, and my hand melts the thin layer of frost. I try not to think, only focus on the tasks ahead. By the time I return, Amon has a mug of tea for me and is making oatmeal. “Come eat,” the godling says, dropping in dried cranberries.

  Signy digs into the earth with a stick. “You were seething until past midnight. At least five hours. You spun and then stopped with the sword held up. You screamed something. Your fingers were rigid, and the air around you…rippled.” She shudders visibly. “I saw runes crawling down your neck in red lines. Then you just passed out.” She screws her face and says, “Then the worst part came. You didn’t move for hours, but every ten or fifteen minutes you said something. Like you were having this long conversation with the universe.”

  Amon scrapes his spoon against the bottom of the pot as he stirs. “I was gonna climb up there and snap you out of it, but this one said it’d be bad.”

  Signy shrugs. “I didn’t like what was going on, but you seemed to be…tapped into something. I thought it might hurt you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, eyes drawn to her chest. She grips that pendant, just over her heart, as if she somehow knows what I’m thinking.

  I walk to Soren’s truck and lean across the tailgate to grab his greatcoat. I shrug it on and wrap it as tight around me as I can. It’s made of bearskin and too long and too wide for me. The leather is stiff, doubled over the shoulders and heavy with buckles and pockets, but inside the fur is soft and warm. It smells like sword oil. We have to go, soon, fast. I need to spill the story of my seething so that when Sune returns we leave.

  But my body aches. The dreams I had after the seething compounded my weariness. I remember I used to dream wild and far the mornings after a deep seething. My mom did, too. Residuals, she called them. Fears and unaddressed questions. I remember, too, three days ago—or four now?—when I longed for any dream at all. This is not what I had in mind. Soren’s face like a mask. Scaring me.

  Shuddering into his greatcoat, I slowly return to the fire and huddle on the log bench. I pick my tea up off the ground, accept the oatmeal, and eat it carefully as Amon pretends not to stare at me and Signy does so openly. She’s got on fingerless gloves that look like somebody just cut off the fingers and let them unravel. It adds another layer of disrepute to her entire self. It’s difficult to imagine she represents Odin Alfather and the New World Tree for anything.

  In a stroke of timing, Sune pulls up as I finish eating. He swings out of the Jeep and approaches immediately. His scalp is in need of a shave, though the stubble adds a dark shadow to his skull that balances out those hooded eyes. He notices my glance and runs his hand against the fuzz. “You’re awake,” he says with relief.

  “Nice observation, hunter,” Amon says.

  Sune ignores him and settles back on his heels, tails of his blue coat spread around him.

  I swallow the last of my tea. “Thank you all for standing with me last night. I didn’t lose myself into the seething this time, but flew into a true dream where I spoke with the goddess of dreams. She sees Soren in the strands of fate and said, The hunter will follow the gold to your heart’s desire. That’s you, Sune.”

  “And the elf gold,” Sune says, nodding as if he’s been proven correct.

  “Freya said Soren has four days to live before he joins her in Hel.” My voice drops off with the final few words.

  Sune’s satisfaction wipes away, and Amon stops eating.

  “Wait, Freya told you?” Signy says, thrusting to her feet.

  I nod, leaning my neck back to meet her suddenly angry gaze.

  “Freya can’t be trusted, especially not where Soren is concerned.”

  I frown. “What do you think seething is, Valkyrie, but a seethkona’s prayer to the goddess of dreams?”

  She works her mouth, then throws up her hands. “Of course she wouldn’t tell you where he is! She hates Soren. Rag me, Astrid, you should know that! He said you were stubborn! Freya hasn’t gotten what she wanted from him at least twice, and he keeps ruining her plans. If she says to follow the gold, you should do the opposite.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Her lips tighten, and then she glances at Sune and Amon.

  “You can speak in front of them. In fact, I insist.” I grip at Soren’s coat, holding it tight across my chest.

  “She wanted him to forget you, first of all. It was only his boon that let him remember your name.”

  I remain still. “That isn’t accurate. Freya wanted me to become Idun, and Idun’s identity is always erased from the memory of Asgard. It had nothing to do with Soren. That was a side effect that we happily found a way around.”

  Signy looks at me with pity. “Soren was supposed to be my consort,” she says harshly.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I just know. Your goddess manipulates us to get the future she wants. She plays with lives—and deaths, too. She set those trolls on my family two years ago. She’s responsible for so many deaths.”

  Amon actually laughs. “Says a daughter of Odin.”

  “Yes, a daughter of Odin,” Signy repeats. “I’m no stranger to loss and madness and death, Thorson. I’ve fought some desperate battles, and I know things Freya has done. She is no friend to me or to Soren Bearstar.”

  “Stop!” I jerk to my feet. “I
will not listen to you malign Freya this way. She does what she does because of the futures she sees—that is what I do, that is what we all do! We fight for the world we want, for the people we love. Why condemn a goddess for it when that’s exactly what all of us do?”

  Signy slashes her hand down. “I don’t manipulate. I don’t lie or trick others.”

  “She told me if I give her your heart, she’ll save Soren herself.”

  She steps back, startled. “My heart.”

  “Would you die in his place?” I demand, furious at her.

  Signy’s hand goes to her chest, where she clutches her pendant through the hoodie. “Yes,” she says in a harsh whisper. “But that isn’t what she means.”

  “It’s the pendant,” Sune says quietly.

  She releases it like it’s on fire and glares at Sune.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Nothing I’ll give the Witch. Soren would understand that. He’d agree with me.”

  I shove my hands into the large pockets of his greatcoat. “Then what do you think we should do, Signy Valborn? What is the opposite of what Freya suggests?”

  “I don’t know! Ask another god—can’t you do that?”

  “Can’t you?”

  She hisses through her teeth and stomps away.

  I sink down onto the log again. Amon knocks his shoulder into mine. “There are other gods who might help, too.”

  I close my eyes, thinking of the cell phone in my coat. I just bargained with Freya to keep my absence from the orchard secret as long as possible. It would not do to tell another god now, especially Loki who has his own agendas. “This is the way. The more gods who know I’m not in the orchard, the worse that is. Freya told me what I needed: follow the gold. We just need to do it fast. Four days.”

  Sune says, “I always find what I seek.”

  “And what about the Valkyrie?” Amon asks.

  I stand. “I’m going to make her go home.”

  • • •

  Signy is halfway back to her own rental car, standing in front of a lone boulder that leans into the lee of a redwood tree. Her hand is flat against it, her other against her chest where the pendant hangs under her hoodie. She’s breathing hard, like she’s just run a marathon, and her fingers scrape the stone. There are thin black runes painted onto her nails.