The Strange Maid

by Tessa Gratton

  The troll mother.

  I step out of the alley. “Mother,” I call.

  She turns to me, her marble muscles shifting smoothly. Her eyes are shocking aquamarine, bright and alive.

  I raise Unferth’s sword in a challenge. “Fight me!” I cry, voice cracking.

  The troll mother roars.

  It’s an elegant howl, like the first strain of the Gjallarhorn that blows to signal the end of the world.

  Her sons echo the call and I’m trapped in this circle of them. They’re turned away from the Shipworm, and I force a smile so wide I imagine Unferth’s grin behind it, his teeth behind mine, both of us here and dangerous. As the first thin light of dawn kisses the red rooftops, we face each other. Maybe if I can just draw it out long enough. Maybe.

  The troll mother opens her mouth and she speaks. “Valkyrie.”

  My spine straightens in shock. She knows me for what I am.

  I work my mouth, but nothing comes out. It doesn’t matter, this shock, this troll mother recognizing me. What matters is distracting her, saving the others. I swallow grit and troll blood.

  “Yes!” I cry. “I am Signy Valborn, the Valkyrie of the Tree. The Alfather named me. I am born of death and for death, troll. Who are you to be here, to challenge me?”

  The troll mother stares at me, and I pray the people in the Shipworm are using the time to escape. I cannot glance their way, can’t let her notice them again. Unferth’s sword trembles in my exhausted hand.

  Her stone skin is nicked and lined with scars, claw marks dug in straight lines and patterns, as if purposefully made. One great sickle-shaped scar on her shoulder almost appears to be the rune for transformation, and another giant X might be the rune for day.

  The beautiful moon-marble troll twists her mouth into a horrible smile. She flexes her hands, rattling the bone bracelets on her wrists, and makes a huge barking sound.

  “Poor lost girl,” she says, and laughs again. “Never know monster inside.”

  I shake my head, knees weak.

  The troll mother opens her arms invitingly. “You defeat me, they all live.”

  I flick my eyes toward the red roofs. No true flash of sunlight, and low clouds could keep her safe for ages still, if Unferth’s stories of the mothers are true.

  Dull certainty settles on my shoulders. I won’t survive her that long. Whose poem is this? Hers or mine? My vision wavers; my shoulder burns. I’m so weary, and the arm with Unferth’s sword trembles.

  My story. It has to be mine.

  “For Hangatyr!” I scream wildly, then run at her.

  She doesn’t move but simply allows Unferth’s sword to cut into her chest. Dark blood bubbles around the blade. She casually lifts one arm and bats me away. Her sons hoot and bellow from the edges of the square.

  The sword rips from my hands. I tumble over the hard stone yard and hit in a mess of aches and limbs. I struggle up. She pulls the sword out of her own body and tosses it to me. It clangs against the cobblestones.

  I sway as I stand. The troll mother waits with an air of patience while people pour out of the Shipworm. Her sons growl and bare fangs at the people, but their mother flings a hand up to keep her sons from attacking. There’s Patty and some trapped guests fleeing for the docks.

  I step forward, arcing around to get between the mother and the inn. I charge her again, dashing across the courtyard, sword raised.

  There’s a scream of my name behind me, but I strike.

  The troll mother knocks the sword aside and catches me against her chest. Her eyes are right at mine, sea-blue and aquamarine, and her breath warms me; her arms embrace me. She’s so hot, not like stone at all but slick and warm. Comfortable. I feel the beat of her heart like the tide, ancient and strong.

  But there in her frozen eyes I see stone and heart.

  Her heart.

  The knowledge blazes through me. Sudden hope makes me twist and fight and scream again. I punch at her eye and her nose, and she coughs. I grab her tusk but can’t hurt her.

  Her mouth opens and she says, “Your heart.”

  I freeze. The runes pulse there in her eyes and I think, This is the end, but before I know, hands pull me free. I hit the ground and recognize Unferth’s boots next to my face. I grab at his ankle, but he charges her.

  Gore covers Unferth’s gray coat and he stabs a thick troll-spear into her ribs. The mother roars and picks him up by the neck. He kicks. I scramble for his sword.

  The troll mother squeezes and Unferth wilts. His arms dangle limp.

  My world narrows.

  Sunlight touches her head and she ducks. She throws Unferth’s body over her shoulder and barks at her sons.

  Then she turns away with him. I try to run after and she swings her arm at me, catches me in the chest. I slam into the cobblestone courtyard again, unable to breathe, wheezing, gasping, clutching at my chest. A sharp, horrible pain branches like lightning from my side. I roll, try to stand. My skull pounds; I can hardly claw my way up the side of the general store to watch the final troll-sons harass the survivors fleeing the Shipworm in every direction. The lightening sky begins to reach the streets and alleys, and the trolls dodge through the remaining shadows after their mother.

  I’m suddenly alone again.

  Your heart.

  Her heart.

  The inn smokes, sending up long lines of ashes into the sky. The wind is not only acrid but sharp with blood, the sticky and nauseating smell of a funeral pyre. Strings of lanterns and colored paper flutter on the ground, scattering fake coins everywhere.

  My eyes won’t focus at first on the lumps on the ground. There aren’t too many right here, mostly strangers I don’t know. Blood is frozen across their hands and faces. Their teeth shine from open mouths.

  I whirl away, but there’s Amelia the dentist against the well, her dress stiff with blood. And there the actor Leif pinned to the earth with one of the troll-spears. My throat closes.

  Then I see Bethya the mead mistress, but only because the tip of her braid suddenly catches fire. I stagger to her and fall to my knees, batting the fire out with my hands. The musky smell of burning hair gags me and I wretch against the ground, gripping deep into the cracked cobblestones until two of my fingernails break. Tears fall from pain and grief, and my heart is an ever-widening chasm.

  Wiping my eyes, I turn toward a sudden flurry of movement.

  The wind ruffles Jesca’s graying hair and the end of Rome’s blue shirt. No! They were supposed to escape. But here they are, fallen beside each other, his shattered arm half on top of her. A tiny wail worms its way out of my mouth. Both their faces flash before me, golden and laughing. I remember the roughness in Rome’s voice when he called me daughter and Jesca hugging me with hands as delicate as bird wings. Even the Alfather has a family.

  I lean over Rome, one arm pressed to my ribs. I touch his cold cheek. His eyes are closed already, and his lips are pressed tightly together.

  I open my mouth to say his name.

  But nothing comes out.

  Is this what my mother and father looked like, piled one atop the other in that faraway jungle? This is not how Freyans are supposed to die.

  What will I tell Rathi? My throat is raw and burning; tears fall onto my cheeks only to dry tight against my skin in the heat from the fires. With a shaking finger I draw the rune peace onto their faces.

  I lurch up to keep after the troll mother and her stone heart. There’s nothing I can do for them, but if there’s any chance, any at all, that Ned is still alive, that I can catch her and dig out her heart, I have to go.

  Scarlet binding runes mark the alley she took. They waver in my hazy vision and at first I think I imagine them: final destiny, which means Ragnarok, the last battle of the gods. And lost sun.

  But I stumble into one wall, and the rune lost smears under my hand. The runes are painted on my town in blood.

  Here on the cobblestones is Unferth’s sword, the sword he didn’t have to keep himself alive.


  And now I defile the blade by leaning on it, but I have to, I need the solid strength of it to pick carefully through the alley and out of town. Over heather and scraggly, muddy moorland to the festival. All I know is my harsh breathing, the painful pump of blood behind my eyes. Broken bones in my side, my shoulder a starburst of fire, bruises rising like dough over every part of me.

  Posters with my face in the Valkyrie paint are strewn haphazardly; Lady Serena’s booth is tossed on its side, spilling glass and pillow feathers like intestines. Game stalls lean precariously against each other. Even the stuffed animal prizes are singed.

  The feast hall is nothing but a charred ruin. Outside it is one of the retainer’s spears, shattered halfway down the shaft. The wide spearhead bends because it was only decorative, not a true weapon. Why didn’t they know? I find George near it, his chest crushed. Maybe he was too desperate to care.

  Red Stripe’s shed is leveled. I pick through the remains, heedless of injury. The smoldering wood burns my fingertips, and every breath I take poisons my lungs. Troll chains lie half-buried under sod and thick rafters. The can of paint we used to draw black and green runes on Red Stripe’s back has exploded in a viscous mess. A broken piece of the long broom jabs into my calf. Then there are the chunks of stone smoothly curved on one side like skin but jagged on the inside. A troll died here.

  I leave.

  The ceaseless wind scours my eyes, chaps my lips. But my blood runs hot and fast, groaning in my head as loud as the ocean. My breath rattles, and my tongue is as dry as a tundra.

  Nobody would need hunter training to read the troll-sign screaming at me from the land: boulders scoured by claws, and pine trees shattered halfway up the trunks. Wide swaths of moor are marked by the herd. Their sweet stink, more potent and ripe than Red Stripe ever was, clings to the grass. Weak white sunshine filters through low clouds. I walk and walk, a dragging step at a time, one hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of Unferth’s sword. We’re fused together now.

  I pass into a dense pine forest. Crows flap overhead. Moor wolves howl far away. My fingers are still numb, my ribs cracking with every breath. But the trees are destroyed, the ground cover flattened. They’ve left me a perfect trail.

  My feet go numb, too, and my leggings soak up freezing water. When my eyes drift closed, I clench my jaw, grip Unferth’s sword, and walk on.

  My ruined dress clings damply to me, and my breath is frost. There may be wolves stalking in my wake; I may go through a mass of caribou, but I’ll never know, because all I see is the meter of earth in front of me and Unferth’s body going limp. He has to be alive. It’s impossible that he’s dead. He only passed out, and she took him because … because …

  The eight-legged beat of Sleipnir’s hooves drives me, pulsing in my head and heart and the palms of my hands.

  I have to find him.

  Alfather, please don’t take him away, too.

  The trees drop off suddenly. A long flat moor pulls away south, gray and gold except for the single tree with branches only on one side. Around it is the herd of trolls like massive boulders, lolling about three bonfires. The sky remains cast over by thick gray clouds, but even without the sun piercing through they should be crouched in caves, sheltered. If anything I thought I knew about trolls is true, this makes no sense. Unferth said the wisest mothers could use rune magic to protect their sons, hide them, but is this one so powerful? She must be.

  In the pale light, I can truly see them. They’re all the colors of limestone and shale, some even with flares of orange and yellow lichen growing thickly down their backs.

  I stop. The mother isn’t here.

  Her sons sit like lumps, healthy and whole and enjoying their feast. Piles of bones, broken and sucked dry, are flung around their camp. There are caribou antlers and the carcass of a gray dog sprawled with its face broken in.

  It isn’t only animals they’re eating.

  Tattered clothes stripped off a few of the bodies give it away.

  And one mess of a dark red sweater turns my heart to stone.

  I think of him in that sweater, bulky sleeves rolled back to show off wiry forearms. He was so dangerous and sharp and young.

  I scream his name.

  The trolls hear, and their bulbous forms shift and grate as they get to their feet one by one. I count seventeen of them left. I raise the sword and hold it high.

  The air trembles around me, and a gentle thrum replaces the hoofbeats in my head like constant thunder kilometers away. “Where are you, Mother?” I scream, so raw it burns in my throat. I take one step, then another, the weight of the sword dragging me faster into the valley. So many of the ancient Valkyrie died young. Tears streak down my face and I know I should stop but I can’t.

  There, in the tall pine trees sloping up the opposite mountain. Their triangle tops shudder and tilt as she barges through. Easily recognized even from this distance by her dangling breasts and iron nose ring. She roars, but not at me.

  Wind pushes at me from all sides and the growling is so loud the force of it would shove me down onto my knees.

  Heliplanes.

  Three of them swoop down ahead of me, their massive rotary blades making the thunder. From their black bellies men spill out, leaping down ropes and landing hard onto the moorland.

  These men scream and pull axes and swords loose. They’ve no guns or armor like a militia or Thor’s Army but wear only black coats and pants and boots. Their heads are free of helmets.

  Though they are only men, and the trolls each three times larger, they run toward the trolls and the collision of battle, of blade against stone skin, of fist and bone, seems silent under the roar of the heliplanes.

  I stumble on, determined to be there. The heliplanes are landing, more men pouring out. I can hear it now, the clash of trolls and men, and smell the burning meat, the smoke from their fires.

  A man is thrown into the air, hard and fast. He hits the grass with a cry and skids toward me. Purplish blood covers his face and his grimace is ferocious. There on his cheek is a dark tattoo: the spear of Odin, marking him a berserker.

  These are men who carry the Alfather’s battle-rage inside their hearts, the madness that burns away self and doubt and terror until all that’s left is the fight. The purpose.

  The berserker near me leaps to his feet and hurls himself back into battle. I want to run after him. I need to be there. I need to be the one to kill her!

  But my legs don’t listen to me. My breath is shallow, cut off by fierce pain. I can’t keep going. I sink down with Unferth’s sword and stare.

  Trolls begin to fall under the onslaught of power and god-blessed strength. One is spiked by three swords and crashes hard enough to shake the moor. Another loses his head by well-swung double axes. One of the berserkers has his arm torn off in a spray of blood but rushes his opponent again, as if he feels no pain.

  Whether from the arrival of the heliplanes or Freyr’s blessing, the clouds overhead begin to disperse. Thin spears of sun appear, and two of the trolls run, while another is caught in the light and trapped while his legs solidify. The stone crawls up his chest and he lifts his arms to shield his head, but not before an enterprising berserker stabs straight through the monster’s throat.

  It is not long after that.

  The heliplanes have all landed, and now there’s only yelling and cries of pain. Steel on stone. Breaking rock. The tumble of boulders that is the death knell of a troll. Nine trolls are dead, purple ichor melting into the dirt. Four are trapped in stone, all but one cracked beyond regeneration. The rest escape, running off into the mountains. Including the troll mother. She looks over her wide white shoulder at me as she charges away and for a moment there’s a cracking magic between us that makes me whimper as it squeezes my broken ribs.

  Then she’s gone. But I feel my heart beat hard as an earthquake, loud in my ears as if it beats in a cavity as humongous as hers.

  The battlefield is quiet.

  She was r
esponsible for killing two of the berserkers herself. The third dead berserker is young, maybe twenty, with wide-open eyes. I get up, half-stumbling to him, needing to close his eyes. Another berserker whirls when he hears my boots on the grass and catches me around the waist, pulling me back.

  I open my mouth and nothing—nothing!—comes out. My words fail me still, so I push with all my might against this man’s black-clad chest. My fingers squish in the blood-soaked material. He says, “Stop struggling, girl,” then “Balls” as he grabs Unferth’s sword by the blade to keep it away from him.

  More arms come around me from behind, gentler but just as strong, and a new voice murmurs, “There, maidling, there.” Jesca sometimes called me that. The fight pours out of me and I let go of everything but the sword. My eyes close and my knees fold. I don’t breathe and there is a pause so long and quiet because my heart stops, too.

  All I know is the sword in my hand.

  ELEVEN

  WE FACE EACH other in a forest of thin white trees. Her eyes, like chunks of aquamarine, loom large. Smoke trails like a curtain around us, dropping flakes of ash into my hair and onto the mother’s great sloping shoulders.

  I stare at the crystal flecks of her irises, so human-seeming, but luminous.

  She stares back. She shifts her head slightly, studying one of my eyes, and I know she is looking for a rune. Like a Valkyrie would do.

  I shove at her cold stone chest and wake with my hands pushed out, flailing off the narrow cot.

  Morning light brightens the room, highlighting the hammer of Thor hanging against a peach-colored wall, just beside the door. Crafted from two railroad nails, it’s homemade, with blue yarn wound around the center like the god’s eye. A wallpaper trim of smiling stars and moons and short-handled hammers lines the ceiling. Sunshine courses through the open window, along with a breeze to rattle the billy goat mobile dangling over the empty crib in the corner. The bells on their plastic tails tinkle gently.

  As I sit up, gasping for breath, the cot below me creaks. I was brought to this small home on the North Ice military base late last night by a heliplane pilot named Sagan. His wife is called Esma, and she offered their baby daughter’s room immediately, as well as a bath, clean clothes, and sanctuary as long as I need it.