The Strange Maid

by Tessa Gratton

  “Quite,” I say with relish.

  He twists his mouth. “He’d make you a good consort. Possibly he’s even who Freya had in mind when she made me promise not to love you myself,” he says more casually than I’ve ever heard him bother with.

  I laugh. “That’s not likely. Soren …” My laughter trails away and I stand there, stunned. He was supposed to forget Astrid. “Do you really think so?” I stoop beside him.

  His shoulders jerk in a shrug. “Why else would she care who I loved?”

  My instinct is to shove him over, to act out because he keeps dancing around that word. “It isn’t Soren you have to worry about.”

  “Worry about,” he sneers.

  “Sharkman is the one I kissed.”

  Ned hisses through his teeth; exactly what I wanted him to do. I smile, and he cusses. “I do not like this, little raven—Signy.”

  “It’s hard being the one not in the know. The one teased.” I skip back from his reach.

  He doesn’t chase. “Not being the one you’re kissing.”

  It hangs between us in the sticky air. I swipe the bottle of wine. “You know you’ll have to cut back how many nights a week you’re drunk when I’m the Valkyrie of the Tree. I can’t be surrounding myself with bad role models.”

  He studies me, slowly sucks in his bottom lip as if he’s tasting a last drop of wine. “I’ll consider it,” he murmurs.

  I offer the bottle back to him. As he takes it, our fingers brush together, and I slowly smile.

  The seven of us gather in the questionable shade of the mess tent to eat protein bars and talk. Sharkman and Soren sit at opposite ends, and Rathi folds his hands and bows his head like he’s in church.

  I describe my dream this morning, my feeling that the woman was the troll mother despite her lovely Valkyrie appearance. That if this mother is the first troll mother, perhaps this was her face before Freya put the heart into her chest.

  Ned’s lips tighten as if he disagrees, but he only says, “We should be ready before twilight. I’ve seen her walk under cloudy skies and rise when the sun still burned in the west.”

  “Is that because of the heart?” I ask. “If I’m right, it lets her use rune magic like the ancient Valkyrie could, like Odin and Freya do. That might be one reason why it’s my riddle’s answer—so I take that power from her, to use it myself, or … give it to Odin.”

  “That’s just a story,” Rathi scoffs. His eyes are dark and warm as the earth. It dawns on me he’s not wearing his contacts. “You’re forgetting the fossil record.”

  I laugh. Rathi sniffs and regards me with the familiar brown eyes from all my best memories.

  But Ned says, “This troll mother isn’t the original troll mother.”

  “What?”

  He only gazes at me as if I should already understand.

  “How do you know?” asks Darius.

  Ned twists his mouth, and his hand tightens on his knee, knuckles whitening.

  Impatiently I say, “He knows because he’s the original Unferth Truth-Teller. Raised from the dead by Freya to lead me to the troll mother. Ned, are you sure? I thought she told you this troll has the heart from—”

  Sharkman surges to his feet. “Freya!”

  “You knew Hrothgar Shielding?” Rathi interrupts. “Of the great Freyan kings? You were at Heorot?”

  Darius quietly says, “Beowulf Berserk.”

  Rathi stands up to, too, towering over Ned, and the sunlight gilds the smooth waves of his hair. “That’s why your version was different in places, like I’ve never seen or heard before. You wrote the poem!”

  Of course my wish-brother resisted the legend of the first troll mother being true, but he believes this with only scant linguistic evidence.

  “Sang it. I sang it,” Ned snaps. “When I was a poet, when I was a man, we didn’t murder poetry by carving it onto stone. It lived in the air or not at all.”

  There’s a long silence as everyone studies him.

  I rub my rune scar. “Ned, how do you know this troll mother isn’t the first?”

  He slowly turns his gray eyes to mine. “The same way she knew me, when she saw me. We are old friends.”

  “Grendel’s mother?” Darius asks.

  Sharkman says firmly, “She died. Beowulf killed her.”

  Suddenly I know. My rune scar. Strange Maid. Ned told me the answer months ago. And again last night: In the end, she was too dark, too mad, for her own good. I splay my hand and thrust to my feet. “Rag me,” I whisper. “Valtheow.”

  My troll mother. My mirror self, the monster of my dreams. Writing my name again and again, carved into her stone chest. But not my name. Her name. Valtheow.

  I push through the men and look down at Ned. Truth truth truth flickers against his pupil. “You lied,” I whisper, hoarse and shocked.

  He says numbly, “That poem was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  “What?” Rathi demands.

  “He made it all up,” I say. “What happened at the mere. The story of Beowulf.”

  “No. Most of it is true.” Ned blinks, staring at a thing from the past. “The berserker killed Grendel. But it was Valtheow who destroyed the mother and saved Heorot.”

  Darius puts his hand on Thebes’s shoulder as if to steady himself. Sharkman’s face is blotchy around the spear tattoo on his cheek. Bright sunlight pours down through the tarp, turning everything a haunted blue.

  “He’s our greatest hero,” Thebes rumbles.

  “But why?” Rathi whispers. “Why lie about that?”

  “Grendel’s mother had the heart,” Ned says, his voice hollow. “The magical stone heart from the very first troll that Signy was talking about. It’s what made Grendel’s mother so powerful. The trolls had passed it down, mother to daughter, over the ages.”

  I sink to my knees beside Ned’s camp chair. “Valtheow took it.”

  He says, “Because she made herself into a mirror of the creature, she recognized the heart. She felt its power and coveted it. She ripped it out of the troll thinking she could control it. Thinking she was strong enough alone. She wasn’t. The heart destroyed her, turned her into a monster in truth.”

  “You lied to protect her legacy,” I say.

  “I had to, didn’t I?” he begs. “I couldn’t let anyone know; I couldn’t make that her immortality. She was magnificent, but she … fell. She lost herself to the worst parts of her nature: vengeance and passion and the darkness that had always drawn her.” Ned grips my wrist. “Signy … you’re drawn to those things, too.”

  I push up and away from him as my heartbeat thunders in my ears, counting that old eight-point rhythm like Odin’s own pulse.

  “It’s happening again,” Rathi says ominously. “We have all the pieces: berserkers and Valkyrie, the poet and his king named Hrothgar. A troll mother. Even a one-armed troll-son.”

  “This isn’t Heorot,” Ned says irritably.

  It’s Thebes who rubs his scarred temple and says, “I hope it goes better for us.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  AS THE SUN slides in its arc across the clean blue sky, I stand outside the fort at the edge of the ocean.

  Valtheow.

  My palm tingles when I think her name, and I rub the rune scar. My Valtheow the Dark, transformed into the troll mother who destroyed Vinland, who nearly crushed me in her arms.

  I shudder and close my eyes. I can’t hold my fingers still; I can’t stop the chills screaming up and down my spine.

  I can’t tell if this is bliss or terror.

  Her aquamarine gaze was so sharp and clear when we met, and in the dreams, too. She was a Valkyrie but fell completely into monstrousness. Could the same happen to me? Signy, you’re drawn to those things, too.

  But how can I take my seax and shove it into the heart of Valtheow the Dark? Won’t that be like cutting out my own heart?

  A strangled laugh falls out of me as I remember putting my seax to my chest at Baldur’s ball and saying, Before I
would cut out his heart and offer it to the Alfather, I would cut out my own.

  Soren, as if sensing the rising panic, comes and takes me gently by the neck to go with him and check that all the weapons are ready and placed where we can easily get to them.

  “This changes nothing,” I whisper to him. “I still have to take the heart. Make her pay.”

  “Work,” he says, “and distract yourself.”

  Sharkman and Rathi sail to Mizizibi for some heavy nets and a second generator so we can reposition two of the UV lights to shine south over the island. We expect her from the north, to rise directly out of the water, and I take off my jeans to wade with Darius around the circumference of the fort, since the piece of the wall that dives into the ocean is the most likely place the troll mother could surprise us, if she stays underwater that long. Darius checks for weak spots, especially around the small drainage holes where the brick meets the concrete foundation. I draw invisible protection runes with seawater and spit, and imagine them being more than prayers, more than poetry, but feel silly.

  When I have the heart, my runes will have true power. I can have everything I wanted when I was younger.

  Is that what Odin always wanted? He must have known what happened to his Valtheow, whom he loved, whom he spoke of in such passionate terms. And when Freya offered him this prophecy, he knew I was Valtheow’s perfect heir.

  What could I do with that power?

  Anything.

  I splash out of the ocean and tear over the sand into the fort. Inside my little guardhouse I press my forehead against the edge of the slit window that opens up along the eastern side where the sally port is. There’s nothing but wild beach and grass billowing in the wind, a few wispy clouds clinging to the horizon. We have maybe an hour until twilight, almost three until full dark. Until my hero, my dark enemy, arrives.

  I’ll never survive her. I’m not strong enough; I’m terrified of her: she’s not only an impossibly old troll mother but a Valkyrie with all the strength of runes and centuries behind her.

  What am I?

  My throat closes; my mouth suddenly waters profusely.

  I’m going to throw up.

  “Signy.”

  I whirl and it’s Ned. I swallow, shaking my head. He helps me lower to my knees onto the cool slate floor. I spread out onto my stomach and press my cheek to the stone, my palms. I breathe deeply and think of the New World Tree. I think of the bright pearl of Odin’s mad eye, and the laughter of his ravens, so like the echo of seagulls crying outside.

  Ned rubs gentle lines across my shoulders.

  Until my stomach settles, until my pulse calms, I remain silent. I breathe. I pretend I can feel the oxygen spinning out to all my cells, filling my veins and arteries, out to the tips of my fingers and toes. I know what I need to know. Nothing can make me bigger or stronger, but I’ve got my weapons and my friends, and we’re as ready as we can be. I roll over. Ned kneels beside me. “Nu is se ræd gelang eft æt þe anum,” he says.

  Now our plan depends upon you alone. Words from King Hrothgar to Beowulf before he went hunting Grendel’s mother. I look into those rain-colored eyes.

  He says, “The heart, it will call to you, too. You’re so like Valtheow, and even younger and less experienced.”

  I open my mouth to curse at him for mirroring my fears, but he shakes his head sharply. “You don’t know how to kill, and she’d fought in battles. She’d sacrificed men with rope and knife since she was a child. It was different then; life was different, and its value different. Here in this new world you all place so much more value on individuals and choice, no matter the talk of destiny or Freya’s web of fate. Wyrd bið ful aræd, you like to say, that line from ‘The Wanderer.’ Fate is inexorable. But you don’t believe it. You think you can change your destiny.”

  “Ned.”

  “You’re brave, Signy, but so was she. You’re drawn to the darkness and power and blood, and so was she. She succumbed. She turned into a monster, don’t you understand? You have to be stronger than Valtheow.” His hands grope at the air but find my hips. The simple connection relieves me, offers up the answer I need.

  I grab his collar and drag him down to me; I push him over onto his back and roll onto him and do what I’ve dreamed of: I put my thighs against his, our hips together, our chests and lips together. I prop myself on my elbows and stare into his eyes from barely a breath away. Truth spins in his starry gray iris. “I don’t have to be stronger than Valtheow; we do. All of us. I have you and Soren and the Mad Eagles and even Rathi, and none of you will let me fall. You can’t. I need you.”

  “Me.”

  “I love you,” I whisper. “And I hate you. Both things stick in my heart, grounding me here. That’s the complete truth.”

  His hands cradle my neck, thumbs flick along my jaw, and he says, “I don’t deserve it.”

  “Make yourself deserve it; rise up to meet me if you want me.” I press my cheek to his shoulder and curl around him like he’s the earth. His heart pumps hard under my ear.

  “I’m afraid,” he says, an echo in my ear. “Of her.”

  I put my arms around his neck and pull him tight.

  “She won’t forgive me.”

  “I do.” I kiss him. I open my mouth and force my way in, to show him there’s nothing between us now, to show him I understand. His hands crawl down my hips. I scramble at his shirt, tugging it up, but I don’t want to stop kissing him. He rolls on top and pushes my face away to separate us so he can tear his shirt off. It catches on his braids like always and I laugh. He laughs, too, half a little snarl with his teeth, and I feel it straight down to my rocks. I tug at him and he shoves my shirt up, making my spine burn and arch. I don’t know where to put my hands and so I try to put them everywhere, and I open my legs to let him closer even though there are still clothes between us. Just the weight of him between my thighs makes me groan, and I clap my hands over my face because I’m too loud but I don’t know how to stop. He kisses my first rib, climbs his lips up the second and third. I bend under him; I grab his back. His skin is rough under my hands. I have the absurd thought he needs to eat more; he’s too whip-tight and the scars raking down his flesh curl my own fingers into claws.

  His teeth dig into my shoulder, my neck. I gasp and suck at his ear, I taste the salt at the hollow of his throat, and I feel so messy.

  I try to get my hand in his pants but can’t—quite—turn my wrist the right way, and he gets in mine first. Surprise and severe pleasure crack my head back against the ground so I see blobs of light and leave my eyes shut. I bite my lip until he kisses me again, slow and deep with his mouth, and with his fingers. There’s nothing for me to hold on to. So I just let go; hands rigid and splayed out, I open up with my whole body and try not to moan and hiss and beg too loudly.

  Hot satisfaction melts me into the floor. I reach for his braids, pulling, and whisper his name as I try to remember how jeans unbutton with tingling fingers. He helps finally, muttering things I don’t care about like how there’s no pillow or even a door, and everything is too hard and cold. But he lies back to pull me on top of him. Then Ned Unferth says “prophylactic,” and I rear back and stare with horror, not because that matters right now, but because it is absolutely the least poetic thing I’ve ever heard fall out of his mouth.

  I flatten my hands on his chest and laugh silently, shaking so violently his eyes go wide like there’s something wrong with me. He scowls and I don’t hear what he says next because his stomach flexes under me and he sits, pulling me into a close embrace. I curl in a ball, giggling and shivering, half undressed and holding on to the waistband of his jeans like my life depends on it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE LIGHT COMING through the east-facing window of this guardhouse is violet and low. Twilight. “I need a phone,” I say. Ned’s entire body tightens and I untangle myself from him, hurriedly grabbing my shirt, my boots, and my seax.

  I find Soren sewing two pieces of old leather armor t
ogether and borrow his cell. Dialing the Port Orleans Death Hall, I jog back to the guardhouse, where Ned is still on the floor but clothed. At the proper moment I put in Precia’s private extension and she says, “Hello?”

  “Precia.”

  Ned sits up, leans on his elbows.

  “Signy.” Her voice through the line is fragmented and thin.

  “The troll mother is coming tonight. I wanted to tell you, she’s Valtheow the Dark, who stole the stone heart from Grendel’s mother, but she lost herself and its power corrupted her. She became a monster and … I’m going to take the heart, too. I wanted to tell you, in case.”

  “Signy!”

  “I love you. And I love Myra and Elisa and all of you. That’s all. But you believed in me, and I won’t forget that.”

  Ned is on his feet, glaring at me. Don’t give up, he mouths. I shake my head harshly. “I’m as strong as you all made me,” I say into the phone, holding Ned’s eyes.

  There’s silence on the end of the line, and the distance between us rushes and crackles like a bonfire.

  Suddenly, outside, Red Stripe cries out. It’s a bark that shakes the foundations of the fort.

  He barks again. And again.

  “What is that?” Precia asks, startled.

  “Her. I have to go.”

  “Signy, I know where you are,” she says, but I hang up.

  Red Stripe howls. The troll mother is coming. I hear the Mad Eagles scramble outside, Darius yelling something.

  “Here.” Ned catches my wrist and offers me his sword, hilt-first.

  “No. I won’t leave you weaponless again.”

  “Take it, Signy.” He butts the pommel into my stomach. “It’s a gift from your poet.”

  “You’d better be at my side with spears, then,” I say fiercely, taking the sword.

  Out in the parade ground, Soren tosses me a hard leather vest with metal plates sewn into the lining. I thread my arms through as I dash after him up the spiral staircase to the cannon mounts. We climb the battlement and face southwest. The Mad Eagles will be going out through the sally port to wait on the beach while Rathi mans the UV lights.